TriMet shares its thinking about Bybee MAX station plans
By Eric Norberg
The Bee, Nov 25, 2009
TriMet hosted a presentation and discussion about the progress of its planning for a light rail station at S.E. Bybee Boulevard, under the Bybee Bridge, at the Eastmoreland Grill on the evening of Monday, November 9.
A sizeable crowd was present to view the diagrams and illustrations, hear a discussion of the plans, and to ask questions and make suggestions.
It became clear that there were a number of people concerned about the dropping of plans to widen the north side of the Bybee Bridge, as it was designed to do when rebuilt recently, in order to provide a bus-stop turnout. TriMet spokespersons explained that, with bus stops nearby on both sides of the bridge, widening it did not seem cost-effective.
However, one diagram shown indicated that in response to this concern, TriMet had already planned to add a westbound bus stop on the bridge — without widening it. Loading and unloading buses would block westbound traffic, but the statistics suggest that buses would normally not stop westbound traffic more than a half minute at a time. Continued comment from attendees led the light rail officials present to agree to take another look at the widening idea, but it was clear they did not believe they had the budget for doing that.
Instead, the current thinking is to build stairways and elevators on both sides of the bridge for pedestrian access from the middle of the bridge to the station below. And, for security, tickets would have to be bought at the bridge level, before descending to the platform. “Nobody without a ticket could legally be on the platform,” it was explained. Other security features, including multiple closed-circuit TV cameras, would also be part of the installation.
Also causing some comment was the provision in the design for eastern-side widening S.E. McLoughlin Boulevard to three lanes each direction between Harold Street and Tacoma Street. However, this is not a TriMet plan; it’s a long-planned ODOT project, for which there has been and still is no funding. ODOT insists it will be done, but perhaps not for a couple of decades. But TriMet still has to allow space for the planned expansion.
TriMet also acknowledged the ongoing Westmoreland interest in a Harold Street station, by showing it on all route maps as a “future location”. The rails are to be constructed there in such a way as to allow a station to be added later, when funding is available for it.
The final design of the Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail line, and its stations and Park-and-Rides, is to be attained by sometime next year or in 2011; full funding is expected by 2012; Construction is planned for 2011-2015, and the line is projected to be open and running by 2015.
TriMet plans more meetings on aspects of the project, and develops mailing lists for meeting notifications from sign-in sheets at the meetings. They also notify the media, and THE BEE carries notice of such meetings affecting the area we serve in our monthly calendar listings.
For information on the project, call TriMet Community Affairs at 503/962-2150, or go online to:
www.trimet.org/pm. You can sign up for e-mail meeting notifications there as well.
Also resources for the public are the 24 members of the project’s Citizen Advisory Committee. These include Michole Jensen, for Ardenwald-Johnson Creek; Lance Lindahl, for the Brooklyn neighborhood; Dan Packard for the Eastmoreland neighborhood; and Reid Kells for the Sellwood and Westmoreland neighborhoods.
ODOT studies McLoughlin onramp problem
MAX RIDER TRAFFIC
By Eric Norberg
The Bee, Nov 25, 2009
So, there is to be a 1,000-vehicle “park and ride” structure to be built east of McLoughlin Boulevard, and south of Tacoma Street, in the Ardenwald neighborhood.
Given that apparent fact, neighbors from Ardenwald and Sellwood are focusing on a single issue that will determine the degree to which each will encounter cut-through traffic every afternoon as Clackamas County MAX commuters disembark, get in their cars, and head south back home.
The issue centers on the short, single-lane entrance to S.E. McLoughlin Boulevard southbound from S.E. Tacoma Street. At a special “Tacoma Street Traffic Meeting” held at Ardenwald School on October 26th, the various agencies involved with the Portland-to-Milwaukie light rail project were confronted with something they apparently had not expected: This entrance to McLoughlin southbound is dangerous.
ODOT and TriMet estimate that at least half of the vehicles that will be using the parking structure come from, and will return to, Clackamas County. Those vehicles will easily be able to enter the parking area via a grade-level right turn from McLoughlin; but getting back onto McLoughlin Boulevard southbound will require crossing the Tacoma Street overpass, turning left, and entering from the short ramp.
The reason why the onramp issue is critical to both Ardenwald and to Sellwood is that if the southbound entrance to the highway is difficult, cars will back up as drivers wait for a safe opening — and that will cause drivers backed up in the queue to seek other ways to where they are going. On the east side, they could head up Johnson Creek Boulevard or south on S.E. 32nd past Providence Milwaukie Hospital into the City of Milwaukie. In Sellwood, they could keep going west on Tacoma and then turn south on any of the streets up to 17th.
The problem, as nearly everyone who has ever driven that short ramp is aware, is that it is situated on a blind curve, with very limited sightlines to oncoming traffic; and the right hand lane, which they are entering, is matched by a bus lane which turns into a right-turn lane for exit to Tacoma — but which clearly continues past that point as a third traffic lane.
Thus, drivers seeking to enter McLoughlin at that point must first try to wait for a gap in oncoming traffic which is hard to see, since the highway is bending to the right under the overpass — and then hope that any vehicle moving into the right-hand lane under the overpass is intending to exit, and not just continue south in the emerging right-hand lane.
Joseph Auth of ODOT, involved in this conversation, suggested that finding a way to make the right-hand lane under the overpass clearly an exit lane would resolve most of the perceived danger in pulling out into the same lane from the ramp. Just how this could reliably be done remains the problem.
Subsequent to the meeting, ODOT has had conversations with the Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail Citizens Advisory Committee, on which Reid Kells is the SMILE representative. Kells reports that ODOT is “currently examining the possibility of having the right-hand southbound lane of McLoughlin act as a slow-down lane for the two Southbound exits that leave just north of and just south of the Tacoma overpass. They’re also looking into the possibility of removing the stop sign at the base of the Southbound onramp and adding some space for a better acceleration and merge lane after southbound users enter McLoughlin.
“This would have the effect of keeping the onramp drained of users and ready to accept new users turning left from Tacoma. With enhanced signage and marking at the base of the onramp to keep pedestrians safe, this could be a really positive solution for keeping the southbound traffic flowing away from the Tacoma Park and Ride.”
Also at the October 26th Ardenwald meeting, neighbors also pointed out that people tend to cross McLoughlin, scrambling over the Jersey Barrier in the process, to avoid walking some distance to cross more safely at the Ochoco Street traffic light. It was suggested that one solution might be to construct a walking path from McLoughlin up to the Springwater Trail bridge over it, south of Tacoma. At present, ODOT has announced no plan to prevent this dangerous and illegal method of crossing a six-lane state highway that has a concrete barricade down the middle.
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) -- at the very least, this is a business that should be boycotted.
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