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Trucks and people. North Portland’s St. Johns neighborhood is busy with both, and an underway transportation improvement project is designed to make city streets a place where the two can coexist safely. 

The current effort plays off a couple of already adopted plans: The 2001 St. Johns Truck Strategy, which aimed to reduce affects of freight on neighborhood livability, and the 2004 St. Johns/Lombard Plan, which includes pedestrian safety recommendations.

Now, with $2.2 million from the Metropolitan Transportation Improvement Program, the City of Portland and a citizens advisory committee are focused on two big goals.  

“The whole concept of this project is trying to deal with pedestrian safety and freight movement,” Gary Boehm, president of the St. Johns Boosters and advisory committee member, said.

The truck-vs-people issue has been at play in the neighborhood, which sees heavy truck traffic as the Highway 30 oversize route, since the 1960s.

“It’s somewhat inevitable,” said Brenda Hanke, an advisory committee member and St. Johns Neighborhood Association representative. “It’s just a function of where we live.”

Tuesday night, people streamed into the St. Johns Community Center to see what the advisory committee came up with. The open house – attended by truck drivers and neighbors alike – was the public’s first glimpse of what the group’s been working on since summer 2007.
On the pedestrian side, efforts centered on recommendations for where new crossings should go and what kind of improvements – like curb extensions and stormwater management strategies – would make the them work best.

“We just want to give them something that makes them happy and comfortable,” PDOT’s Kathy Mulder said.

The biggest buzz, though, came from the planned installation of a signal at the tricky North Ivanhoe and Richmond streets intersection. Hard to cross and heavily trafficked, the spot – which sees Highway 30 bypass traffic – been plaguing pedestrians for years. 

“Once that fell in line,” State Rep. Tina Kotek (D-Portland) said, “it diffused a lot of tension with the rest of the plan.”

On the freight side, recommendations include streamlining a series of traffic lights through the neighborhood’s town center, which will make more continuous truck movement possible, as well as increasing the truck turn radii at key intersections. That also includes a recommendation for a “dual corner” radii, which sends car traffic around a tighter turn, but delineates a raised area that trucks can mount if they need to. 

And the dual corner, neighborhood resident Tom Guinan said, is something he wants to make sure is safe for pedestrians before he supports.

“I have to err on the side of caution and say,’No way in hell,’” he said.

The process will continue with refinement design concept, and move into design engineering in mid-2008. Construction is slated for 2009.