The bike crash that occured Friday on the Burnside Bridge sent a clear message to the city of Portland that bike facilities on the East Burnside/Couch Couplet have fallen short of meeting the world-class standards the city is known for. Wide-ranging complaints from even the most confident commuters raise serious questions about safety in the new corridor.
On-street parking makes Couch feel crowded and uncomfortable. Drivers and bicyclists on East Burnside shared a wide travel lane free of on-street parking during rush hour. With on-street parking allowed during all hours on Couch, cyclists are forced to ride too close to the doors of parked cars or out into the auto lane in the middle of traffic. The city should consider removing on-street parking on one side of Couch between the hours of 7 to 9 am (rush hour for westbound commuters) as is still the case on most of East Burnside from MLK to 50th.
Traffic congestion increases the risks of right hooks. The new design more than doubles the number of traffic lights on Couch between 14th and MLK, slowing the speed of motor vehicle traffic to the point where bicyclists and cars travel alongside each other at the same speed for several blocks. This design puts bicyclists at risk of being in the blind spot of a driver making a right turn across the bike lane. Meanwhile, cyclists compete with TriMet buses pulling in and out of the bike travel lane about once every 45 seconds during rush hour. By adding bike boxes at right hook risk points, we could raise awareness of bicyclists’ and the law requiring motor vehicles to yield to bicyclists traveling in a bike lane. By directing bike traffic to the left hand side of Couch, and across the MLK intersection to the onramp using a diagonal scramble signal like at the Rose Quarter, the city could drastically eliminate the right hook risks on Couch.
The sweeping curves on Couch leading up and onto the Burnside Bridge are unsafe. Taking three lanes of commuter traffic – including a bike lane that was striped two-and-a-half feet narrower than planned – and forcing them through multiple 90 degrees bends in just 200 feet is risky. We’ve already seen cyclists fall into the roadway here just last week. It’s time for a temporary fix until a permanent one can be installed. Buffer it out. Set it back. Elevate it up. Just fix it.
Didn’t the BTA have a representative on the Burnside/Couch design committee who signed off on the plan? Also, converting parking lanes to travel lanes during rush hour doesn’t create wider, more comfortable lanes – parking lanes are narrower than travel lanes (not to mention that streets with no on-street parking are very uncomfortable for walkers). Finally, more signals are good because they permit signal timing that slows vehicle traffic to the point where the street finally becomes human-friendly. It’s the best thing about this project!
The reality of the couplet is that everyday cyclists, car drivers and large vehicle operators are discovering for themselves how the design actually works: not well at all.
You may be a very confident and capable cyclist, but we need to make this route mom-friendly. Ride it every day for a week at 8:30am and then tell me how you think a parent towing a child in a trailer would rate the experience.
We’ve been following up with project manager, Chris Armes. She’s been very communicative with us and is working to problem solve creatively with us to help make Burnside/Couch accessible for the casual bike commuter.
Slowing down auto traffic and building up the walkability of the bridgehead, after all, does not have to happen at the expense of bicyclist safety.
Having cyclist and auto traffic moving together would be great, except for all right hook conflicts, with TriMet traffic alone cutting across the bike lane every 45 seconds at rush hour, not to mention car drivers trying to make their way to over to the right. The risk of being doored and the feeling of being pushed into traffic is the icing on this cake.
We look forward to the city making significant improvements as soon as they can be rolled out.
Before we’re done these fixes could be as significant as what’s been accomplished at the Rose Quarter, on a much faster time line.
In the meantime, bicyclists should use the utmost caution and consider other routes.
So what is the answer to Jessica’s question? Did BTA participate in and sign off on this design that you say doesn’t work well at all? I can understand where a design looks good on paper but bad in the real world. However, planning committees and PBOT are in the business of sorting this out ahead of time.
If PBOT simply striped it differently then planned, that’s just a mistake that they admitted to and began correcting several days before your blog post called on them to make these same corrections.
http://bikeportland.org/2010/04/30/safety-concerns-result-in-changes-to-new-curves-on-couch/
So, I guess I don’t get what the BTA has to do with this Burnside/Couch couplet. Can you clarify?
You seem to be both involved in the planning AND demanding improvements while taking credit for calling the design into question when BikePortland did so on April 20th, 2 weeks before your post.
As a BTA member, I’d prefer to see us concentrate on getting local control of speed limits, crushing the mandatory sidepath thing and building broad support statewide for bike advocacy issues.
Hey JR, you list some great priorities. I think Gerik and Susan and the respective Advocacy and Legislative Committee volunteers are tuning those campaigns up. Crash and fatality response and prevention is something we can’t ignore, though.
My personal involvement began on Apr 13th when I first rode it, after a friend raised her concerns to me and suggested I do so. Immediately after my first run I contacted TriMet and the city, and have been following the changes that have come into motion.
I have no involvement in the design planning, and neither does any current BTA staffer. As a former history major, I too am curious what happened to the B-C couplet, why the west side was stalled, and all that good back story. I made calls to Evan M (who’s out of town for a funeral) and to Michell P. I’ll pass on what I hear to you.
The thing is, though, that I don’t need to know any of the back story to know that Couch is not welcoming to cyclists. If we took the same care here that has been taken with the Rose Quarter, we’d be on easy street. We’re not there yet.
Still, I really don’t think the news is about what the city and the consultants and the non-profit signed off on as a plan on paper years ago.
I think this is about how people are experiencing it today, and how we can make it better before the project wraps.
It’s no more a design failure than buying a pair of pants that don’t fit. It’s not that the concept of pants can’t work, it’s just that sometime they need some tailoring.
I think we can make a Rose Quarter scale improvement on a much faster timeline.
As for planning from this point forward, I’m not the guy. The Build It campaign and the BTA’s Gerik Kransky are the ones to connect with to get more involved! (Knowing that your work with bike safety education fleet maintenance is already a big contribution – I’m just saying, if you wanna dig in to planning, we always welcome more help!)
Ride on.
~Mike
Michael, I’m confused by your assertion in this passage:
Traffic congestion increases the risks of right hooks. The new design more than doubles the number of traffic lights on Couch between 14th and MLK, slowing the speed of motor vehicle traffic to the point where bicyclists and cars travel alongside each other at the same speed for several blocks. This design puts bicyclists at risk of being in the blind spot of a driver making a right turn across the bike lane.
When motor vehicle traffic is traveling at the same speed as cycle traffic, as you say is the case here, cycle traffic can and should take the lane, which prevents right-hook conflicts and eliminates the risk of dooring.
To indicate this for both people driving and people riding who are not as comfortable with this maneuver (although everyone riding in Portland should be, because it’s also the safest way to cycle downtown), PBOT could lay sharrows in this area. Separating traffic going at the same speed is undesirable because it will only result in greater conflict at merge points (intersections).
I see no choice but to “control the lane” through this section. Maybe driver complaints coupled with ours will force change.
On a side note I crashed there a month ago when trying to be nice I rode on the edge of the lane and the caution tape caught the breeze, blew out and grabbed my handle bars.
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