In recent years, the City of Bend has pushed back a road project which aims to expand the roundabout at Reed Market Road and Bond Street, causing frustration for residents who say the busy intersection cannot handle the current flow of traffic.
At a June 18 meeting, Bend City Councilor Mike Riley requested that the Council return to the discussion this summer, calling the roundabout a “bottleneck” for drivers, with long waits in all directions and stand-still traffic near the Old Mill District at certain times of the day.
While the City initially had plans to address the roundabout sooner, starting the design in 2024, the project was pushed back, with current plans to start the design in the summer or fall of 2028.
“We need to make them work as effectively and efficiently as possible and as soon as possible. I think the current timeline is too long,” Riley said at the meeting.
The roundabout, which serves as a major east-west route, has become overburdened in recent years. Drivers notice severe traffic backups in all directions throughout the day.
According to resident Todd Torczon, who lives near the intersection, the roundabout causes frustration for drivers and concerns about evacuation routes if a fire were to occur.
“Basically, it can’t handle the current traffic on a normal day. There’s no way it can handle a wildfire evacuation,” he told the Source. “Just on basic common sense, we need a roundabout that has two lanes in order to handle the traffic flow.”
Cars stuck in traffic have also begun cutting through nearby neighborhoods, Torczon said, often speeding to get to their destination.
According to Ryan Oster, City of Bend engineering director, construction on the roundabout was identified in the City’s 2020 Transportation System Plan, to address concerns that the intersection was reaching what the City called its “capacity.”
“During the busy hours of the day, or what we call ‘peak hours,’ there’s long delays, so there’s a long backup of cars coming from one or more directions into the intersection. So, it’s just not functioning as efficiently as it is intended to,” Oster told the Source.
The City initiated a study of the intersection in 2020 to help alleviate traffic backup, testing ideas such as a “signalized roundabout,” which would turn on a signal system during peak hours to help the flow of traffic – a lower-cost solution. The public, however, offered feedback that prompted the City to plan for a bigger, more expensive solution down the road.
Residents and officials are now asking the City to evaluate if it needs to do that project sooner.
Torczon, who is part of the Southern Crossing Neighborhood Association, has advocated for a timelier reconstruction of the roundabout.
“At this point, we’re looking for a substantial improvement over the late five-year approach. I understand that the City has constraints, and so we’re not trying to be ridiculous on this, but we are trying to say, ‘this should be really high on your priority list,’” said Torczon.
According to Oster, certain projects and funding opportunities have held the project back in recent years.
“This project, it has slipped a few years. With other priorities in the system, things got reallocated to be deemed, at that time, more important than fixing this intersection,” he told the Source.
Another big piece of this, he said, was potential funding from the Oregon Department of Transportation for the Reed Market corridor, which involves a series of improvement projects that ODOT and the City of Bend identified in a 2023 safety study.
“It’s becoming more and more clear that we probably can’t just wait for there to be money from ODOT at the Reed market interchange,” Oster said.
“At one point, we were trying to pull these together. It looks like the logical thing to do is probably pull them back apart and try to address the Bond and Reed Market intersection independently from the timing of any future ODOT improvements at the Reed Market interchange.”
When it comes to evacuation routes, Oster can see that the roundabout is a concern, but believes it’s part of a much bigger discussion.
“There’s no denying that there are limited river crossings. There’s only so many ways to get across the river,” he said. “there’s a lot of factors that would go into play there.”
If an evacuation were to occur, Oster added, the City would likely close down north/south movement at the roundabout to allow cars to keep flowing from west to east.
Following Riley’s request to bring the project back in front of the Council, Oster said the City made plans to discuss changing the timeline at an August 20 meeting.
“If we do that, it means we’re probably going to have to pick a project that has to move back a couple years,” Oster said.
This article appears in Source Weekly June 19, 2025.
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“There’s no denying that there are limited river crossings.” There are also limited parkway crossings. Empire/Third Street has failed as well while the city temporarily closed Olney/Portland and reduced Greenwood to a crawl by cutting east/west lanes in half.
I really wish residents would wake up. The City of Bend is in bed with Brooks Resources and developers (mostly from out of State) in a race to squeeze every last drop of money out of this area.
Are we this stupid to not realize you can’t just build and build and build and not think about roads, medical and dental care? You know, important stuff!!
Why aren’t the developers on the hook for this? People that have a brain know exactly why they aren’t.
The City of Bend is incompetent and corrupt. They couldn’t have seen this coming? It’s only going to get worse. The Newport crossing is just as bad. Wake up, people.
There is no denying that our streets are not built for this kind of traffic flow then you add tourist season on top of that along with the increase of people moving here. It is pretty frustrating.
The City must have not noticed, with the density they are seeking, cars come along with the population growth, we now have dense circles too.
Fix 3rd and Empire first. The 97 “upgrade” did no favors for the North side residents. Multiple engineering failures and wasted opportunities. There are some easy wins with little effort if they just take a closer look.
Gee, over and over again we are told “no significant impact” – the EIS system is broken and only allows developers off the hook for costs.
So let me get this right, if a fire breaks out and the city closes down the north and south of the Reed market traffic circle and only east west flow is allowed to commence, doesn’t that just push the problem directly to third Street? I think what everybody is failing to recognize is that we had a town of 50,000 people on the Reed market Traffic circle and Bill Healey Bridge were installed. We are more than three times that and the city has no plans and slowing growth. Development is happening at a rapid pace. Pahlisch Homes is going to put 500 homes just behind McClellan Road? And they are all going to feed into the Reed market traffic circle. Everything on Broster House feeds into Reed market everybody going to work to build big homes and Tetherow and beyond is using Reed market.
A bridge from the Murphy Road area over to Century Drive is needed now not someday.
I also think we need to call it for what it is, over population with limited resources.