The Bend City Council is scheduled this week to consider whether allowing more driveways and streets to connect with U.S. Highway 97 on the north end of the city would make the area more dangerous for drivers.

On one side are the owners of shopping centers in the area, who want more connections to the highway so more drivers can get to their stores. Bend officials are also interested in eliminating the expressway designation, which could relax some of the requirements for highway upgrades to serve traffic that new businesses generate.

Bend officials want to attract businesses to the mixed-use Juniper Ridge development on the city’s north end, but they are short on the money necessary to pay for street work that the state requires when development creates new traffic.

“If (the Oregon Department of Transportation) takes off an expressway designation, it would allow a lot more traffic on there,” said city spokesman Justin Finestone. “It would help Juniper Ridge and all the other businesses on the north end who want to expand there.”

On the other side, Oregon Department of Transportation officials say that removing the expressway designation from U.S. Highway 97 in Bend could make the highway more dangerous.

“The lifting of the expressway designation allows for more access (to the highway), and the more access you have, the more potential for crashes,” ODOT spokesman Peter Murphy said Monday. “We have it to keep the road safer, all the technical stuff aside.”

In the fall, ODOT began to assess whether expressway designations were appropriate at various highways across the state, a requirement in recent state legislation, according to Murphy. This spring, the agency will recommend to the Oregon Transportation Commission which sections of highways should remain expressways and which should lose the designation. Murphy said ODOT employees believe the expressway designation is still appropriate in Bend.

“We’re ready to recommend keeping the expressway designation (for U.S. Highway 97 through Bend) because of the speed and potential for collisions,” Murphy said.

ODOT employees met Monday with Bend employees and others who want to remove the expressway designation from U.S. Highway 97, Murphy said.

Ultimately, the Oregon Transportation Commission will decide whether to maintain the designation.

Lawyer Neil Bryant, who represents the Cascade Village Shopping Center, said he is concerned about whether the expressway designation will apply after a planned overhaul known as the Bend north corridor project. The project is supposed to ease traffic on the north end of the city.

“As they do that, if it’s an expressway, your access is really limited,” Bryant said.

Roads or driveways that connect to the highway must be at least a half-mile apart on an expressway. But they can be as close as a quarter mile apart on other highways, “which is much more appropriate for businesses and other uses up there,” Bryant said.

Murphy said his understanding of the current discussion is only about whether to keep the expressway designation for the existing section of U.S. Highway 97, not the future north corridor project.

Bryant said that removal of the expressway designation would provide more flexibility for businesses to deal with traffic. “We think it’s more appropriate for a roadway that runs through a city of our size,” Bryant said.

City of Bend Transportation Manager Nick Arnis said ODOT staff will explain the reasons for the expressway designation to the City Council on Wednesday. Bryant and the lawyer for a neighboring shopping center will also participate in the discussion, Arnis said.

Arnis said that even without the expressway designation, ODOT would maintain significant control over whether more driveways and roads can connect to the highway. ODOT purchased much of the right-of-way along the highway during construction of the Bend Parkway.

“I would stay that ODOT still has the trump card,” Arnis said. “They’re the owners and managers of the highway.”

As for how the expressway designation impacts the city, Arnis said the stricter rules make it more difficult for the city to gradually improve infrastructure on the north end. City officials have said they cannot afford improvements that ODOT would like up front, to accommodate additional traffic that new businesses in the area could generate. Instead, the city hopes to break the improvement projects into phases. Arnis said that more driveways and street connections to the highway could take some of the traffic pressure off the city.

Bryant noted that Deschutes County Commissioner Tammy Baney is on the five-member Oregon Transportation Commission, so Bryant hopes the commission is receptive to the wishes of city officials.