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LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO
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| Last month, the Portland City Council adopted Out of the Mud, a set of regulations allowing property owners to build scaled-down city streets for reduced prices. COURTESY PORTLAND BUREAU OF TRANSPORTATION |
Currently, the minimum standard for city streets calls for two travel lanes, two lanes of parking, curbs and sidewalks. Paved roads with sidewalks are built when local property owners form a Local Improvement District and assess themselves based on the lineal frontage of each owner. The city assists by doing the paving work and issuing Bancroft bonds that offer favorable interest rates. However, property owners must pay all the costs; on average, this costs a typical property owner $300 a month for 20 years. Until now, the city was only willing to maintain streets that met this standard.
The new proposal provides for LIDs, bonding and ongoing maintenance for streets with just 18 feet of paving (enough for two lanes of traffic), and gravel shoulders that typically will cost just $65 a month. An additional, separated paved sidewalk raises the price to $85.
There are some restrictions on use of the new standards, Christine Leon of the Portland Bureau of Transportation told council. The street can have no more than 500 vehicle trips a day and have good visibility. Such streets will also have speed limits of 15 M.P.H., and have speed bumps and other traffic-calming devices.
Another feature, which the city hopes to add to the program, is an opportunity for LID members to defer payment for five years if 51 percent or more of participating households have incomes at 80 percent of median area household income or less. This intrigued Commissioner Amanda Fritz, who wanted to know if individual low-income households could defer payments. She was told they could not.
Nonetheless, Fritz said, the new program “makes a lot of sense for a lot of people.”
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