Residents raise Portland Avenue speed concerns

Speeding traffic is a major concern for residents on a busy street in northwest Bend, and now the city is taking a closer look at what can be done.

The speed limit on Portland Avenue is 25 mph. But people living there say they’ve seen people driving double that speed, and they took their complaints to the city council Wednesday evening.

Last fall, the stop signs on Portland Avenue and 11th Street switched places. Now, 11th Street traffic has to stop at the intersection, and cars on Portland Avenue don’t. Some residents said the sign swap has made the speeding problem worse.

“Cars now go for nearly a full mile on Portland Avenue without a stop, and so this has generated a situation where cars reach excessively high speeds, and they sort of become accustomed to moving quickly and don’t yield to pedestrians,” Steve Porter said Thursday. He and his wife, Michelle, were among a group of people who voiced their concerns to the City Council on Wednesday.

Porter said he wants to see several changes, including four-way stops at Portland Avenue and 11th Street and at Portland Avenue and Juniper Street, increased police presence and a marked crosswalk at Juniper Street.

He said city officials are listening and working with him and other concerned neighbors to find a solution.

Jenna Conrad was happy to hear someone is looking into ways to slow people down.

“This is the way people drive to get to COCC, so especially in the morning, afternoons, people are going to school. I mean, it’s insane. Sometimes I can’t even pull out of my driveway because of how fast people are going,” she said.

David Abbas, director for the city’s Streets and Operations Department, said the city has received a number of citizen service requests in the area.

He said the department acknowledges the concerns and is now analyzing traffic in the entire corridor. Because Portland Avenue is a collector street, meaning it is meant to move traffic, Abbas said, more stop signs are not the answer. He also said the situation is unique because, unlike most collector streets, Portland Avenue has many driveways butting up to it.

Abbas said it will take time to collect the data the department needs, but in the meantime, the city is working on some temporary fixes.

“We’re working with our Bend police, when they have the resources to be able to help with the traffic, monitoring of the speeds. We’ve got the speed radar signs out there, trying to help with that,” he said. “We’re also looking at maybe some pilot type projects that we can do, temporary mountable-type things.”

Abbas said according to the data the department has gathered, the intersection with the highest crash rating was Ninth Street and Portland Avenue, which has a four-way stop.

He said the department will need to look at the corridor as a whole, over a longer period of time, and then re-evaluate the data to determine what the best long-term solution will be.