Plan for Alternative Street Designs

The team working on the Comprehensive Plan and the Transportation System Plan are going to include a section on Alternative Street Designs which will address the use of extended shoulders and climbing bike lanes/pedestrian walkways/extended shoulders, continuous sidewalks on one side of the street as lower cost alternatives to improve our active transportation infrastructure. Lower costs will enable more miles of improved infrastructure to be built for the same investment.

The first actual in place example of such improvements, which SWTrails has been advocating for 10 years, was the extended shoulders on SW Maplewood Road built with funding and the cooperation of PBOT and BES. SW Stevenson and SW Hamilton are scheduled for work this year, but current plans call for gaps in the system which will require people to cross the road or walk in the road. SWTrails is sending a joint letter with Arnold Creek, Bridalmile, Hillsdale, Homestead, SWHRL and the Friends of Marquam Park requesting the city to add more dollars to make the improvements continuous on one side of the street. Included in the joint letter are requests for extended shoulder/climbing bicycle lanes and walking space on SW Dosch and SW Marquam Hill Road also in conjunction with possible improvements installed by BES. Stay tuned, we are making some progress.