Do you have 15 minutes to help make the Red Electric Trail a reality? The segment north of Pendleton Park and Hayhurst Elementary School (from Shattuck Rd to Fairvale Ct) is one of 24 projects Metro is considering funding under its Regional Flexible Funding Allocation.
It’s a competitive process, and Metro seeks public feedback about which projects they should support. Here’s their survey:
https://www.oregonmetro.gov/public-projects/2028-30-regional-flexible-funding-allocation/step-2.
SWTrails has been advocating for the Red Electric Trail for 30 years. With your help, we can continue getting it built. Please join us in advocating for safe walking and bicycling in southwest Portland.
Along with participating in the survey, SWTrails has also sent a letter to Metro’s Regional Flexible Funding Allocation Committee, which we would like to share with all of you:
Dear RFFA Committee,
To appreciate the importance of the Hayhurst segment of the Red Electric Regional Trail it is crucial to keep in mind that this neighborhood has very few sidewalks. Only 14% of area streets have a sidewalk, making Hayhurst one of the neighborhoods with the least sidewalk coverage in Portland.
This means that schoolchildren walk to Hayhurst Elementary School in the road, alongside cars. And the problem will only become more urgent once the Raleigh Crest development builds 263 new residences on the Alpenrose site.
Portland Parks & Recreation’s proposed RFFA project connects the Alpenrose site to the elementary school and to Pendleton Park, and has the potential to become a car-free, safe route to school for many young children.
The regional importance
The Red Electric Regional Trail (RERT) will become a key connector for local, short distance trips within and between the many neighborhoods it passes through. And giving residents a safe way to walk across their neighborhoods is important! But the bigger significance of the RERT is that it is regional. It will provide a 16-mile, family-friendly walking and cycling route from Garden Home to the Willamette
River and downtown Portland. Heading the other direction, from Garden Home to the south, trail users would be able to connect to Tigard’s Fanno Creek multi-use Trail for a total 24-mile trip.
Because of this, both the Portland City Council and the Metro Council conferred the trail with the “regional” designation in 2007 and 2008, respectively. The new Raleigh Crest development of the Alpenrose site will be building a segment of the Red Electric trail across their property. If Metro were to fund the Hayhurst/Pendleton Park segment of the trail, the combined private public-private dollars
would anchor the western end of the Red Electric to the Fanno Creek Trail and would be a gap-free extension of this walking and cycling path.
Equitable transportation
Finally, having a safe route to walk or roll would be transformative for those who do not drive—children, the disabled, people living on low incomes and the elderly. Because it is a multi-use path, the Red Electric Trail would be particularly helpful to disabled people or others who rely on a scooter or other wheeled device. In this way, the Red Electric multiuse path would reduce car trips and help non-drivers achieve independence. Please keep in mind, the area does not have safe access to the bus stops on Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway; Shattuck Road does not have a sidewalk (and there was a pedestrian death crossing BHH at Shattuck a few years back).
Boy walking on the Red Electric’s Hillsdale Bridge.
Photo: Peter DeCrescenzo
Evaluation scoring
One last comment about the evaluation report scoring. It is an impressive and comprehensive set of criteria, and obviously Metro put a lot of work into evaluating the projects. As we review the Red Electric scoring, we have some comments which might clarify southwest’s existing conditions, several of which seem invisible to this framework.
Residents of Southwest Portland live with a dearth of infrastructure—the area has the least sidewalk coverage, the least number of planned bike routes that have actually been built, and the worst bus coverage and frequency in Portland. Only 33% of our biggest roads, the collectors and arterials, have sidewalks.
SWTrails has built and maintains our 55 miles of trails as a safe alternative to roads which lack basic infrastructure. The point is to avoid high crash corridors and intersections where possible. The Hillsdale-Hayhurst segment of the Red Electric Trail is a good example of this. It runs near, and parallel, to the Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway high crash corridor, which has a bike lane, but no sidewalks. Confident cyclists will ride on BHH—no one else will; the Red Electric offers
children and less confident riders the only alternative route.
The first several Safe System criteria don’t capture our reality of needing an avoidance and safe alternative strategy, and a few other questions seem to be evaluated incorrectly. (For example, MO4. “Does the project provide a safer alternative to a high-crash location?” was scored 0.0) Our infrastructure is so minimal that the need isn’t registering.
In closing
SWTrails has worked closely with the Portland Bureau of Transportation, PP&R and Metro over the decades to make the Red Electric Regional Trail a reality. We hope that Metro will continue to support this worthy project. Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Lisa Caballero
Vice-President
Don Baack
Founder
Milestones in the Red Electric Regional Trail project
1995-1997 Multimodal trail on the old red electric route conceived by SWTrails,
PP&R and Metro;
1998 PP&R receives funding from Metro for feasibility study;
2000 Urban Trails Plan adopted by Portland City Council (including Trail
2, a portion of the Red Electric route);
2007 The 1998 feasibility study results in this route being approved as a
multimodal regional trail by Portland City Council with subsequent
approval in 2008 by Metro Council. The “regional” status means the
route requires public right-of-way dedication from future development
along its length.
2021 State Senator Ginny Burdick secures a $750,000 State grant, “covid
funding,” for PP&R to design a multi-use path along the Hayhurst
segment;
2022 Red Electric Trail Pedestrian and Bicycle Bridge over the Fanno
Creek headwaters in Hillsdale opens. This multimodal bridge connects
Hillsdale business area with “Little Bertha” area immediately west of
Hillsdale – a key connection for the overall trail.
2022 Metro recognizes the transportation potential of the Red Electric Trail
in its Regional Trails Prioritization Tool Report, ranking it “Very
High.”
2024 Portland approves the Land Use plan for the Raleigh Crest
development. Includes design for the Red Electric multi-use path
across the property.
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