Dangerous Broadway/Williams intersection will be addressed
Posted by: Scott YeltonOct 03 2008, 5:58 pm
After a woman nearly went under the wheels of a turning truck at N Broadway and Williams in Portland last week, city staff and advisers will fast-track the development of a design over this 
coming winter in hopes of averting another serious crash.
This intersection is one of the top crash locations for bicycles in Portland (as is nearby Broadway and Flint; see adjacent crash map).
The Portland Office of Transportation planners and engineers, and the Bicycle Advisory Committee (BAC), have struggled with designs that would make this intersection safer. Of the fourteen identified last year for special green bike box treatments, this is the hardest one to solve.
After I received a slew of emails and phone calls last week from people wanting to know what they could do, and what the BTA would do, to fix this danger zone as soon as possible, I called the city's traffic engineer, Rob Burchfield; the bicycle program manager, Roger Geller; and the chair of the BAC, Mark Ginsberg. They were already thinking the same thing, and they're ready to fast-track the development of an innovative design for this intersection in time to get it in with the suite of Broadway street improvements that will accompany a new Streetcar line.
On the agenda for the next BAC meeting (this is the most interesting committee meeting in the city, by the way, you should attend at least once) is the formation of a small group to agree on a design for this spot. I'll report more in a few months when they've done that.
Just an idea, but what about moving some lanes around and then putting in a light just for bikes like on the west end of the Broadway Bridge? Also, is there a collision map of that sort available for the entire city? I wouldn't mind being able to look at the whole thing.
Oct 05 2008 at 5:09 pmthe problem is the bike lane striping, which to the right of two traffic lanes both permitted to turn right (in combination with a stupid law that requires cyclists to stay in a striped bike lane against their better judgment). in the particular case, probably also the trucker did not signal his intention to turn right the required 100 feet in advance — almost no one does. but that is not a problem you can solve by engineering. what you can do with engineering is (a) get rid of the bike lane, allowing cyclists to merge left a lot earlier and (b) limit right turns to the right lane only (though you will still have people merging over at the last moment). also, while the police are out there "stinging" people for rolling stops, maybe they can ticket people for failing to signal lane changes and failing to yield to bikes in the striped bike lane (apparently they failed to ticket the truck driver in this case).
Oct 06 2008 at 12:29 amORS 814.420 ("Failure to use bicycle lane or path") states that one may legally leave the lane when "avoiding debris or other hazardous road conditions." Most judges would agree that trucks trying to run you over constitute a "hazardous road condition." I'm not a fan of ORS 814.420, but to say that it "requires cyclists to stay in a striped bike lane against their better judgement" isn't entirely accurate at this intersection.
That said, I did watch a messenger try to argue in court that the SW Broadway bike lane (The infamous taxi-filled "hotel zone") constituted one long "hazardous road condition" and thus gave him license not to use it. That didn't fly. The exceptions to ORS 814.420 do have their limits.
Oct 06 2008 at 11:14 amWhat is the software used to generate the map? Is it, or anything like it, available as shareware/freeware?
Oct 06 2008 at 12:24 pmthe fact that a messenger was not able to persuade a traffic judge that the hotel zone was a hazard should tell you something. it would be even more difficult to persuade a judge that moving to the left out of the striped bike lane was a strategy to "avoid" a hazard approaching from your left.
Oct 06 2008 at 2:23 pmEric, I believe that map was created by PDOT. You can contact Greg Raisman at 503-823-1052 for more info. But any GIS program can create different sizes and colors to represent severity and/or frequency of crashes.
Oct 07 2008 at 12:53 pm