The City of Bend is preparing to begin work on a new stretch of Franklin Avenue which means closing a section of the street surrounding the railroad underpass for a total of six months. Crews recently finished work on Franklin between NE Fourth and Eighth streets. Now the focus shifts to a stretch of road between NE Fourth west to NW Harriman Street, which includes the underpass. The City says an average of 14,000 vehicles travel through the Franklin Avenue railroad underpass daily.
Starting in May, crews will begin fixing storm drains to address the historic flooding issue under the railroad bridge, replace aging water lines, improve sidewalks, bike lanes and add lighting at pedestrian crossings.
The work is part of a larger construction plan to, in part, make travel safer for all users on four key corridors: Franklin, Greenwood and Hawthorne Avenues as well as Second Street. The intersection at Franklin and Second will include raised bike lanes buffered from the street by planter strips as well as a pedestrian island in the middle of the street.
During construction, portions of Franklin Avenue between Fourth and Harriman will be restricted to one lane, switching directions depending on which side of the road is torn up. During a City Council presentation on March 11, city staff indicated it would be tricky to maintain a one-way direction for a longer duration simply by redirecting traffic to the opposite side of the street due to traffic signals.
From May to November there will be partial lane closures between First and Fourth Streets with some short segment directional closures between Second, Third and Fourth streets. Garrett Sabourin, principal engineer for the City of Bend told the Source that closures along busy Third Street at the Franklin intersection will only take place during night work.
The City will have to completely close a portion of Franklin Avenue for several months to work under the railroad overpass. That’s due to the narrow space between walls and the need to excavate 20 feet with large equipment. The Downtown Business Association sent a letter to the City expressing concern over the timing of the shutdown affecting busy tourist months. As a result, crews will stop work before the Thanksgiving holiday and resume in January. Franklin Avenue will be completely closed from First to Fourth Streets from January to May 2027.
Detours will take drivers to Greenwood Avenue. Customers will still be able to access businesses. Sabourin says during construction, pedestrian and bike access will always be maintained on one side of the Franklin underpass.
Construction costs for this portion of work is estimated at $15 million with money coming from GO Bond funds, the Bend Urban Renewal Agency, state and federal grants and the stormwater fund. The City plans to notify the public in a variety of ways including message boards, mailers, an open house, door-to-door outreach in the affected area, social media, business signage and emails.
This article appears in the Source March 19, 2026.
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Just another idiotic plan implemented by the brainless engineers and city council, that brought us the Greenwood failure, the Olney failure, and the Wilson failure. It’s like they hate the people that live in this town.
Instead of adding more driving lanes through town and adding these walkways and bike lanes, they are just delaying the inevitable when they will be forced to add lanes. Sure, it’s a cheaper fix in the short term, but the traffic in Bend will only get worse, not better. By being shortsighted in fixing the real problem which is traffic, they are pushing it down the road until someone knocks down houses to make the arteries 4 lanes. They did it for the parkway, they’ll have to do it again in the future. Entire neighborhoods were leveled for that, it’ll happen again
$16M, closed for 6 months and it will still be 2 lanes?