The City of Bend installed new diverters and physical barriers on Old Bend streets to help protect cyclists and pedestrians from vehicles, reduce speeding and prioritize walkers and bikers on shared streets.
The new installations are part of the Bend Bikeway Project, an organized initiative with the goal of creating safer connections for pedestrians and cyclists around the city. The new installs were placed in the Old Bend Neighborhood, where city officials have fielded concerns about the safety of cyclists and pedestrians.
“With these traffic diverters, we are attempting to lower traffic volumes on these local neighborhood greenway shared streets that are also designated as the Bend Bikeway,” said Jacob Larsen, community relations manager for the City of Bend. “We have also received more feedback from our community that speeding through neighborhood streets is becoming more of an issue.”
According to Larsen, the Old Bend and River West neighborhoods will have diverters and physical barriers installed in existing Greenway routes, or low-traffic residential streets where pedestrians and cyclists are prioritized.
Although signage on Delaware Avenue has urged drivers to maintain speeds lower than 20 miles per hour, Larsen says feedback from residents in the Old Bend neighborhood and “speed and volume data” have shown that signage has not corrected driver behavior.
“We knew from other cities’ examples that greenways are a phased process where some streets will need additional improvements,” Larson told the Source.
John Fischer, chair for the Old Bend Neighborhood Association, says that the Northwest Sisemore Street sees a large number of commuting vehicles coming from Northwest Colorado Avenue, and that cyclists and pedestrian conflicts between vehicles were a daily occurrence.
“My buddy lived on the corner there and he eventually moved because he had three little kids that were toddler age. He said ‘I can’t raise them on this corner — they can get squished,’” Fischer says.
Fischer says the OBNA met with city transportation engineers and shared concerns and propositions to find a fix for vehicles cutting through neighborhoods.
“Cut-throughs became a topic that lots of people were asking about,” Fischer says. “We felt like the neighborhood was getting cut in half and Sisemore was becoming a thoroughfare instead of a pedestrian neighborhood.”
Old Bend Neighborhood resident Garrett Smith says he noticed when the diverters were installed on March 25. Smith says there have been frequent accidents at the Northwest Sisemore Street and Northwest Colorado Avenue intersection, and that he is in favor of the installations.
“I don’t mind the idea of them,” Smith told the Source about the new installations. “There’s a lot of traffic that goes through here when people rip off the Parkway and then they shortcut through here.”
Smith says he believes the installations will cut down on traffic going through the area.
The diverters currently sitting in the Old Bend neighborhood are painted blue, though Larson says the city officials intend on painting the curb while adding road striping to delineate the diversions.
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Why are the city planners of Bend so intent on destroying our transportation network, in the name of bikes? Less than 1% of road users in Bend use bicycles.
Every road you shut down, leads to increasingly frustrated drivers. Commuters will not suddenly slow down because you took their main route away, they will just speed even faster on the next street over.
Love the improvements, inconvenient, yes, I can get over it. I’ve lived downtown forever…I’m all in for slowing traffic. Getting out on a main arterial by my house, is ridiculous. Speeding and middle fingers flying (their fingers) from many who won’t go the speed limit.
I agree with Csp, here here!
We live in a different neighborhood, but cut through traffic has gotten much worse over the years where we are as well.
Another commenter asked why we continue to try and keep cut through commuters out of neighborhoods, especially as only 1% of folks use bikes (their words). As a bike rider I can address an aspect of that: it’s because despite our demographic, Bend is not a bike friendly city, and far from it.
I should clarify that. I live in NE Bend, and getting from here to other parts of town can be frightening. However, we’ve started rides from friends’ houses in Woodriver and it’s an absolute delight, and feels 100% safe.
Granted, part of that is because bikes were considered before some areas were developed, or redeveloped.
It’s a lot harder to retrofit safe bike corridors into fully built out areas, but it’s a challenge that Bend should embrace, and I think they are, as this story speaks to.
So again, here here!