Bend to restripe Portland Avenue in safety effort

Beginning this Friday, the city of Bend will restripe Portland Avenue, from First Street to College Way, with a new layout to address citizen requests for corridor speed management, parking management, and improved bicycle safety and connectivity.

The project will be completed by the middle of next week, contingent on weather, the city said.

East of 12th Street, a buffer will be added to the existing bike lanes to improve bicycle safety and connectivity.

West of 12th Street, street parking will be removed on the north side of Portland Avenue to install an uphill bike lane. Parking will remain on the south side of Portland Avenue, and ” sharrows ” will be installed to remind users this is a multi-modal travel corridor.

Next spring, the city plans to construct temporary curb extensions at some intersections along Portland Avenue to further encourage slower speeds and improve safety.

Many of the city’s arterial and collector streets were built with homes fronting the street and frequent driveway accesses. Streets like Portland Avenue serve both local access and through traffic.

The Central Westside Plan identified Portland Avenue as needing improvements to address intersection safety, speeding and multi-modal use.

” Short-term improvements like the restriping of Portland Avenue help address these concerns until a full corridor study can be completed to identify long-term improvements and funding for those improvements, ” the city announcement said.

KTVZ 2019