Big plans for Bend transportation projects underway

(Update: Council agrees to match for federal transportation grant request)

The still-growing city of Bend has plenty of transportation upgrades in its future, and officials know it won’t get there without a lot of dollars from state and federal partners. So city councilors actually committed more dollars than requested Wednesday night for a match to a federal grant request for major improvements in the works for the area along traffic-clogged Highway 97 on the city’s north end.

City and ODOT officials presented a list of planned projects to councilors at a work session, from a $5.3 million roundabout at Highway 20 and Cooley Road to the $50 million (state-committed funds) to $70 million (if a federal grant happens) improvement at the troublesome intersection of Highway 97 and Cooley Road.

Add in $15.3 million in city improvements to the Empire Avenue corridor and $15 million worth of upgrades to the Highway 20 corridor through town, and the estimate for north-side projects hits $145 million.

The federal government’s new INFRA (Infrastructure for Rebuilding America) grant application deadline is Nov. 2, for projects to be funded by 2021.

The city had proposed a match of $5 million, using $2 million set aside from transportation partnerships and $3 million from the Juniper Ridge urban renewal fund, aimed at helping make that controversial city project get moving.

But councilors said that in order to show the commitment the feds want to see, they want $500,000 from several recent Juniper Ridge land sales devoted to the proposed federal grant match, for a total of $5.5 million.
Long-term plans also include a northern extension of Third Street (Business 97) and an eastward shift of the existing highway, to relieve congestion and improve access.

An environmental impact statement completed three years ago should help make the projects happen quicker, said city Growth Department Director Nick Arnis.

“Clearly, this is a high priority for the whole region,” Mayor Casey Roats said. “For years, we have had to say no to development in that nick of woods.”

Earlier, the Bend Metropolitan Planning Organization met Wednesday morning to discuss some of the upcoming transportation plans.

On a more immediate note, OSU-Cascades is getting a new transit app for its students, a year after the campus introduced a bike-sharing system.

Now, students have access to an app that’ll make getting to campus even easier. It’s provided for students through Cascades East Transit, and lets them know where the buses are.

“Just another benefit, I think,” OSU-Cascades Transportation Manager Casey Bergh said. “Students are using apps for everything these days. It’s definitely going to be a real benefit to the students and help them get where they’re going on the bus more efficiently.”

The campus is also working with Cascades East Transit to make a more direct route to and from campus from the northeast side of Bend. It’s also trying to expand the bike-share program.

The app was one of several topics discussed at Wednesday’s meeting.

Among them are new roundabouts, including one at Empire Avenue and Purcell Boulevard in northeast Bend. The city also wants to improve the Murphy Road corridor in the southeast part of the city.

Most of the money for these projects will be raised locally, but the commission is getting a lot of help from the transportation package passed this year by the Oregon Legislature.

“There’s going to be a lot of new money available for street preservation — we’re going to see our streets kept up better, major modernization projects, lots of new transit funding, and new money for projects near our schools,” Bend Metropolitan Planning Commission Manager Tyler Deke said.

The plan was adopted in 1999 and is updated every five years. It’s due for another update in 2019.

It won’t be completed until beyond 20 years from now. By that time, many technology experts say we’ll have self-driving cars, with roads that communicate with the cars. Hard to imagine that being in our near future, but we need to plan for it nonetheless.

“We’re in a period of major change,” Deke said. “We’re going to be needing to update our plans and review how things change over time, and as we move toward that world of connected and autonomous vehicles.”