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Sandy Boulevard sees traffic improvement in its future

Editor's note: For your reading pleasure, we present Perlman's potpourri - a round up of news items from the neighborhoods of Gateway and Parkrose in Mid-Multnomah County from veteran Beat Reporter Lee Perlman.

Perlman attends dozens of meetings and reports on important concerns, issues and events relevant to your life in our Parkrose and Gateway neighborhoods.

In July's potpourri Perlman reports on the planning going on for street improvements to Sandy Boulevard east of Northeast 122nd Avenue in the Argay neighborhood. Also in this month's potpourri, Perlman tells us whom the four recipients of the $1,000 scholarships awarded to Parkrose High students by the Parkrose Business Association are. Perlman also relieves worried taxpayers that loan payments on the half-million dollars the Portland Development Commission loaned the owners of the short-lived, now closed Physicians' Hospital are being made. Perlman reports that due to its dramatic increase in enrollment, the David Douglas school district will construct a new building adjacent to the high school to alleviate overcrowding. The wrangling over the price and type of art to be displayed in the traffic jug handle at 102nd and Northeast Halsey Street has been resolved Perlman reports. The folks at our own East Portland Neighborhood Office have a permanent, but not new, boss at the City's Office of Neighborhood Involvement. Perlman's final item this month is about the progress being made in the pilot program Safe Streets to School at Prescott Elementary in the Parkrose School District.

LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO

Traffic improvements considered for Sandy Boulevard
City and state traffic planners had good news to share with the Wilkes Neighborhood Association at its meeting last month: there soon may be new traffic safety improvements on Northeast Sandy Boulevard, even if they aren't in the Wilkes neighborhood.

Residents have long complained that Northeast Sandy Boulevard is both hazardous and difficult to navigate for both motorists and pedestrians. At times, one person said, you can find a backup of "20 or 30 cars all trying to turn left." Russell Neighborhood Association Chair Bonny McKnight said that Sandy has some of "the best transit service in the city," but it is hard to access because of a lack of safe crossing places.

A complicating factor is the competing jurisdictions on the road. Sandy is a state highway east of Northeast 99th Avenue, and therefore under the jurisdiction of the Oregon Department of Transportation. Since the improvement program completed in the late 1990s in Parkrose, however, ODOT has shared maintenance responsibility with the Portland Office of Transportation west of Northeast 122nd Avenue. McKnight asked what it would take for the city to take sole possession of the street. "When we ask questions, (government officials) play ping pong with us," she said.

The officials present last month said they agreed with the need for action. Sue D'Agnese of ODOT said that this stretch of Sandy is "in the top 10 percent" of "crash sites within their jurisdiction." John Gillam of PDOT said that Sandy between 122nd and 141st avenues was "one of only three places we consider a top safety priority."

It is not a given that money for changes will be appropriated. D'Agnese said that hearings on the issue will be held in July, "and it's important that you all be there."

Still to be determined are what will be done if money is available. PDOT's Will Stevens said that if he had his way and unlimited funds, he would give this part of Sandy "an eight-foot sidewalk on the south side and four feet on the north side, and a center turn lane." He said that an additional traffic signal would create more problems than it would solve by attracting additional traffic. D'Agnese said that crosswalks are "controversial. There are some studies that say doing nothing at all is better."

There was some frustration that ODOT is proposing to improve only a small part of Sandy Boulevard. One resident said, "This sounds like a Band-Aid approach that deals with a series of little cuts rather than treating the whole wound. Do we keep getting kicked aside?"

D'Agnese replied that if PDOT proposed to take on too large a project with too large a budget, the project was less likely to be funded.

Most people were happy that something was being done. One resident said, "I'm really excited that they'll do that much. Right now I can't even walk safely to K-Mart."

Kyle Ziegler of the Argay Neighborhood Association, who attended the meeting, later told the Memo, "It was a little strange. Wilkes (whose boundary on Sandy extends westward from Northeast 148th Avenue) called the meeting, and we were the ones (Argay) who got the bennies." Ziegler added that she is personally happy with the end result.

At Stevens's urging those present agreed to reconstitute a Friends of Sandy Boulevard alliance consisting of the Argay, Parkrose and Wilkes associations, which would lobby for the proposed and future improvements. Wilkes Chair Ross Monn later told the Memo, "I had hoped to get it improved out to the city limits, but at least we got something started and a recognition of the problem."

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