What's happening now?
This project is substantially complete. Several speed bumps, particularly on the north segment of Fessenden, will need to be repaired upon the return of warmer and dryer weather.
Project Background
The St. Johns Truck Strategy, adopted by City Council in 2001, consists of eight sub-projects designed to eliminate or reduce safety and livability impacts of freight traffic within the St. Johns neighborhood.
Phase I, completed in 2012, included Truck Street Improvement Areas 1 and 2, which upgraded the existing signal system between the St. Johns Bridge and N Lombard and improved the turning radius of three corners to improve truck mobility and encourage use of the designated freight route.
The four main strategy projects of Phase II improve the designated freight route around the neighborhood to encourage its use and install traffic calming and safety improvements to discourage freight traffic from using residential streets as cut-through routes, particularly N St. Louis Avenue and Fessenden Street.
PBOT refined general design concepts for this group of sub-projects and Truck Street Improvement Area No. 3 (which includes improvements to the N Portland Road / Columbia Way intersection completed in 2013) after a 16-month public involvement process. Download the final recommendations of that process below.
The two projects on N St. Louis Avenue and Fessenden Street include:
- Restriping the roadway to reduce lane widths and create buffered bike lanes.
- New median refuge islands with street trees and striped crosswalks at six locations: Kellogg Street, Smith Street, Seneca Street, Oswego Avenue, Allegheny Avenue, and Tioga Avenue.
- New curb extensions with street trees and striped crosswalks at Burr and Midway Avenues.
- Speed reader boards on both sides of the St. Louis Avenue and Fessenden Street curve.
- New rapid flashing beacons at the intersections of Seneca Street and New York Avenue and Seneca Street and Midway Avenue.
- A new HAWK signal at Charleston Avenue.
- A reconfiguration of the New York Avenue leg of the New York Avenue and St. Louis Avenue intersection to create a perpendicular alignment.
On N Lombard Street between St. Louis and Bruce Avenues, PBOT will:
- Restripe the roadway from St Louis Avenue to St Johns Avenue to widen the traffic lanes to 12 feet to better accommodate freight trucks.
- Restripe Lombard from St. Johns Avenue to Bruce Avenue to provide bike lanes.
- Install a curb extension and a striped crosswalk at Catlin Avenue’s northeast corner.
- Install curb extensions at Reno Avenue.
- Reconfigure the St. Johns Avenue intersection to reduce speeds, improve sight distances through the S-curve in the roadway and crossing safety.
- Install missing sidewalk sections on Lombard Street north of St. Johns Avenue.
Project Funding
Funding for the plan development of Phase II came from a federal grant received in 2010. The identification of specific design recommendations allowed the City to apply for and receive another federal grant in the amount of $3.3 million for the final design engineering and construction of sub-projects (Traffic Calming / Safety areas 1, 2 and 3).
Design and construction of Truck Street Improvement Area No. 3 is funded through a future final phase of the project with System Development Charge (SDC) funds. Sub-project Truck Street Improvement No. 4, which implements freight route safety improvements on N Burgard, is currently funded and awaits construction.