Bike advocates halt diverter removal plan
Mayor reverses city decision announced only one day earlier
Plans to remove the traffic diverter at Northwest 20th and Everett ran into the local bike lobby and came to a screeching halt. At last night’s packed meeting of the Portland Bicycle Advisory Committee, at which city staff were scheduled to explain the rational for removing two sets of diverters, the committee learned instead that Mayor Keith Wilson had stopped the project.
After taking testimony from the public and three City Council members, nearly all of whom held pro-diverter signs, the committee voted unanimously to recommend retention of the diverters. The meeting facilitator, noting the sweeping consensus, said, “I’m not surprised.”
Not only was the committee united, no member of the public expressed a contrary view on the diverter question.
In the prior week, a demonstration in defense of the diverters drew a throng to 20th and Everett and was prominently covered by local TV stations.
In addition to the more publicized diverter on Everett, the project targeted diverters blocking eastbound traffic under the Interstate 405 bridge on Northwest Johnson Street.
City Manager Michael Jordan issued an Aug. 11 memo identifying the Everett Street diverter as an impediment to law enforcement in an area of increasing crime.
“There is limited access to routes between West Burnside Street and Couch Park” that limits police access and maintenance of “routine police presence.”
But no city official came to the meeting to defend the plan or the lack of public process, both of which drew broad derision. Many speakers discounted the claim of limited police access, suggesting that police cars could drive around the diverters in an emergency.
Councilors Mitch Green, Tiffany Koyama Lane and Sameer Kanal were disturbed to have received little notice of the diverter removal project, which came from the Portland Environmental Management Office, a problem-solving team working out of the mayor’s office.
The trio plans to take the offensive on local transportation policy. They quote Portland City Code 16.10.100, which designates “the City Council is the road authority for all public streets, except state highways” and only delegates that authority to other government branches “as the council deems appropriate.”
Green said the city administrator should have asked the City Council for permission to change the diverters before acting. A fight over diverters in Northwest Portland may soon echo across the city.
After the meeting, the three council members posed with signs stating “Save our diverters” and “Diverters are public safety.”
Thus far, no one has been able to explain how concrete diverters on one side of NW Everett St blocking north-bound cars from continuing on NW 20th Avenue make bicycle riding safer. For years, I have advocated for all-way stop signs at that intersection (as well as at NW 22nd & Everett, NW 20th & Glisan, and NW 22nd & Glisan). If all traffic approaching the 20th & Everett intersection were required to stop, pedestrians, bicycles, and cars could cross the street more safely. There would be fewer situations in which a car is T-boned. The concrete barriers DO NOT make that intersection safer.