Flashing crosswalks installation update

The seven east Portland on-demand beacon crosswalks that were listed as disabled (“Stalled demand/beacon crosswalk installations” MCM February 2016) have all been activated within the past one-and-a-half months, and all appear to be operative at press time, including a storied one at Northeast 117th Avenue at Glisan Street.

The Memo has learned that Portland Bureau of Transportation plans to install a flashing beacon crosswalk between the T intersections at Northeast 127th and 128th avenues and Glisan Street. This construction breaks up the 0.4-mile stretch of Northeast Glisan Street between 122nd and the 13000 block that has no marked crosswalk (“Incorrectly oriented markers dangerous to the blind” MCM November 2015). “The new rapid flash beacon, marked crosswalk and bike improvements near Northeast Glisan and 128th Avenue is part of the 130s Bikeway, which will build a neighborhood greenway corridor that provides comfortable north-south bike access on quiet residential streets,” PBOT’s public information officer, Dylan Rivera, told the Memo in an email. “We have worked closely with Menlo Park Elementary to make sure there aren’t any conflicts between access for school buses and the creation of an improved crossing for people walking and biking. This will provide space for an 8-foot bike lane on the north side and another 8-foot bike lane on the south side, for access to the crossing from 127th Avenue and 128th Avenue. It will also separate people walking and biking from school bus traffic. This is part of the East Portland Access to Transit Project, which has federal funds allocated by Metro, for the 130s Bikeway and sidewalk infill on SE Division. We expect to go to bid on the project later this year, with construction to be complete in 2017.”

Last month, during the Parkrose School Board’s public forum portion of their meeting, former city traffic planner and Russell neighborhood resident Scott King gesticulated with his copy of last month’s Memo while loudly decrying PBOT’s decision to install a flashing beacon crosswalk with an island/median at the intersection of Northeast Russell Street and 122nd Avenue. King told the Memo that he implored school board members to manage “driver expectation.” And driver expectation of that intersection is that one can turn left onto Russell Street when southbound on Northeast 122nd Avenue. He pointed out that the five-lane street will become a four-lane street since the center/left turn lane will be replaced at the intersection with the flashing beacon’s island/median. Additionally, he said that school buses and other vehicles turning left onto Russell Street will have to turn around the island/median from the inside southbound lane. “Flashing beacons are the best thing out there,” said King, but location is everything, and the planned Russell Street flashing beacon is definitely in the “wrong place.” King, who has lived in the neighborhood for more than twenty years, also observes very little pedestrian crossing of Northeast 122nd Avenue in that stretch near Russell and Stanton streets.

Moreover, King said PBOT’s justification for placing the flashing beacon crosswalk at Russell Street crossings (for Russell Elementary and Portland Christian School students) is a stretch. Even though one is private, and one is in the  Parkrose School District, students living west of 122nd Avenue attend Sacramento Elementary School, not Russell. The very real need since the closure of Sumner Elementary School decades ago is for Parkrose school buses to approach Russell Elementary southbound on 122nd Avenue to turn left onto Russell Street without being obstructed or obstructing other traffic while doing so. King said a flashing beacon crosswalk’s best placement would be neither at Stanton nor Russell streets—certainly not both—but “mid-block,” between the two.

At least one Parkrose bus driver, Steve Wilson, who daily drives a busload of students to Russell, sided with King against the flashing beacon’s placement at Russell Street “The crosswalk should have been placed at Stanton to begin with,” Wilson said in a Facebook message. “The one at Russell Street makes it where the buses turning left have to block 122nd. We have to use Russell [instead of Stanton] as there is no turning left [off southbound Stanton Street] into the turnaround at the school (due to traffic).” He concluded that a right turn he must make every day west of Russell Elementary has been rendered arguably less safe now by an anomalous curb extension at an unmarked crosswalk across an already narrow street. “I don’t know who these planners are, but they already made a big mistake when they extended the sidewalk on 132nd at Brazee. I have to swing my bus way into the oncoming [northbound 132nd] lane so I can make the turn onto Brazee.”

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“KEEPING PORTLAND GRIMLY WEIRD”

The center island/median’s striped post in the recently installed flashing beacon crosswalk at Northeast 117th Avenue on westbound Glisan Street has been curiously and grimly “decorated” for the past few months with plaintive and somewhat ghostly messages:

ALWAYS ♥

YOU MISS ME

MISS U

UR MY HALO

NICEST THING

All are printed in large bold capitals in 1–2 inch letters in what might be a child’s hand. All are wrapped in plastic—presumably to weather better—and taped in arcs at various elevations around the vertical post. All are anonymous but almost certainly are penned by the same hand. All seem to make reference to the loss of a loved one—possibly pedestrian Vijay Dalton-Gibson, who was killed by a car at that striped but beaconless crosswalk more than two years ago.

One anonymous reader has described the messages as “distracting”—as in unsafely distracting for westbound drivers, putting pedestrians at risk. This is an irony if there ever was one, as Amber Lapine, 35, was hit by a car driven by Edmond Balding, 89, Friday, March 18, at the same intersection. Police said Lapine sustained life-threatening injuries. It was the signs, right?