NE Glisan & 130. – BikePortland

I always made an effort to visit places where people were killed while driving on the streets of Portland. It changes me to be in the place where something like this happened. It is radicalizing, enlightening, sobering, often frightening and usually extremely frustrating. Frustrating because I've done this dozens of times over the years and each time it feels like a pointless waste of human potential and something we could have prevented. Whenever I hear from family members or friends of victims, I always say, “I'm sorry.” And I say that not only in the traditional, general sense of sympathy for their loss, but also “sorry” because that's how I feel that we all play a role in keeping our roads safe and if we don't do enough, a death can result.

On Saturday, as I sat in the passenger seat of our car, balancing my phone on the dashboard to take a video of NE Glisan (I also wanted the driver's perspective) as it passes Menlo Park Elementary School, I became angry. All last week I have been in contact with a local resident who has been sharing videos of people driving into medians and sign poles on the same stretch of road. But it was the video of a sports car driver flying west on Glisan near the pedestrian overpass in front of the school that made me angry. Actually, it was the seconds before the car whizzed across my screen. The seconds when someone was riding a bike leisurely and hands-free in the middle of the traffic lane (not the bike path). I've done this so many times myself. As a child, I used to drive home late from my friend's house. I lived in a quiet suburb of Orange County, California, and the vast streets in my neighborhood were sparsely busy late into the night. I drove as fast as I could in the middle of the road, trying to beat my record. Since I had wind noise in my ears, especially when it was raining or storming, I imagined I wouldn't hear a speeding driver coming up behind me.

While I was there on Saturday, all I could think about was this video. The noise of the car and its effect. The finality of what happened. Just because a selfish person decided in those few fateful minutes that he was more important than everyone else.

The sight lines are perfect at this location. The driver traveling west on Glisan toward 128th (and the pedestrian overpass) would have had nothing in front of him to obstruct his vision. I will not speculate further about what may have happened until I can verify the details.

I'll talk about what I saw on Saturday: concrete center islands that were obviously damaged by reckless drivers, and many plastic posts that were either damaged or completely uprooted. Glisan has park-protected cycle paths at this location. This means PBOT will build a roadside bike path and on-street parking. Supposedly, these parked cars form a protective buffer between drivers and cyclists. PBOT likes the design because it's cheap (parked cars usually replace solid concrete) and doesn't disrupt the apple cart as much as removing parking spaces. However, a problem with this approach is that when there are no cars present we have a wide road and completely unprotected cyclists. The only thing that will “protect” someone using the bike path are a few parking sign posts on slack springs, perhaps plastic delineator posts (if they haven’t already been ripped out by negligent drivers), and paint stripes.

Roadside bike paths are also more likely to be clogged because dirt accumulates there and PBOT still does not reliably keep these areas clean. I have no idea why the victim in this collision was driving in the general lane and not the bike lane. They may have been preparing to turn left and head south on NE 128th on the neighborhood greenway a block away. Or they had the feeling that the bike path was too narrow and blocked. Looking west at the point of impact, the bike path narrows due to a sign pole, then is blocked by a stormwater drainage grate, then turns around a planted bioswale, then makes another curve into the protected intersection and bike path in front of Menlo Park School.

I'm not sure what else to say about this place. Typically, fatal accidents occur at intersections that involve turning movements. Collisions like this, where someone simply rams into another person from behind, are very rare.

I'm still waiting to hear from police about the driver's identity and an update on the hit-and-run investigation. Stay tuned.

If you would like to attend a vigil for this rider and for the person who died while cycling just three miles away, a vigil is planned for this Saturday. It is organized by Bike Loud and Families for Safe Streets. They will meet at 11:30 a.m. at NE Marx and 105th (I will have a post and video on this soon) for a moment of silence and then head to NE Glisan and 128th for a vigil and call to action. More event details here.