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Originally Posted by hat
A story in Bike Portland yesterday covered the recent three car-related deaths last weekend Fri/Sat/Sun. This may not otherwise make the news, but the city announced a Vision-Zero for pedestrian deaths just prior to this. Story here
If you look at Interstate avenue, on the pedestrian injury/death map, there are a couple incidents at Going (which is essentially crossing a freeway and needs to be redesigned), and Lombard. Otherwise the corridor has been pretty safe.
Looking at Powell, particularly inner Powell between 21st and 50th, there are numerous deaths/injuries every few blocks. These are the blocks that BRT will likely have no dedicated ROW, hence zero safety improvement.
The MAX on Interstate is essentially a pedestrian island. I have stood on that island with two bags of groceries, one foot in the crosswalk, and waved at drivers with no result (other than getting their attention). But despite their reluctance to stop, I am still safe waiting behind the metal fence. This is what Powell needs. If we can't change the behavior of drivers, we can certainly improve the infrastructure around them. |
There's plenty of safety improvements that could be made without adding MAX. Powell is a major state highway also, whereas Interstate parallels a major state highway (I-5) by a few blocks. They're really not very similar at all.
I don't think that reducing Powell to one lane is going to get much support, especially from the neighborhoods around it. Also I'm not sure where the extra 20+ feet of ROW that MAX would need would be something the neighborhoods would be okay with.
If a MAX line is going to be built east-west through SE then Holgate is probably the better option. It's already got a fairly wide ROW versus the number of lanes except from SE 24th to SE 28th, it could connect to the Orange line at SE 17th and Holgate, but would need to either replace or build a new viaduct to get over Brooklyn yard.
You'd lose a few industrial buildings and a storage place, but Portland seems to prefer that over losing houses. East of 28th you'd lose some on street parking and some houses might lose their front yards, and near I-205 it might be a little tricky, but it seems like it would be a lot easier than Powell.
As another option it could run across Holgate and cut up to Powell somewhere around 50th where the additional ROW from the Mt Hood Freeway starts to show up.