Two stretches of road in Bend are set to become more welcoming for bicyclists this fall.

A section of NW 15th Street between Simpson and Galveston avenues and a piece of Sixth Street between Butler Market Road and Greenwood Avenue are scheduled to become the first in a series of “neighborhood greenways” — residential streets with low speed limits and traffic-calming devices meant to encourage biking.

Neighborhood greenways often run parallel to busier roads — in these cases, Third, Eighth and 14th streets — that can intimidate cyclists even when they have features such as marked bike lanes. The greenways will have a marked 20 mph speed limit, shared-lane markings to remind drivers to share the road with bicyclists and speed humps — four on the 15th Street greenway and five on the Sixth Street one.

Phases of the 9-mile, $900,000 project could include mini traffic circles, Bend project engineer Rory Rowan said.

“Speed humps are a little simpler and easier,” he said.

“Obviously from the city side, we’re trying to be judicious with the resources we have.”

Although Bend doesn’t have any other branded neighborhood greenways, all of these traffic-controlling measures exist on other roads in the city, Rowan said.

Construction on the $100,000 first phase is expected to start this fall and take one or two months, but the city is looking at ways to speed up that timeline based on feedback it heard during recent open houses, he said.

Marie Phillips, who lives on Elgin Avenue a few houses from where it intersects with 15th Street, said she’s been going to meetings and closely following the greenway proposal. She said 15th Street often sees speeding cars when high school students get out for lunch and when the Galveston roundabout backs up.

Because of the traffic and because 15th Street doesn’t have sidewalks, Phillips only walks about half a block on 15th Street when she takes her dog out, just far enough to reach a safer street. But she said she’s hopeful the lower speed limit, speed humps and signs will make the street better to walk along.

“There’s lots of kids and people that walk on 15th, and it’s not safe,” she said. “For bike rides, I wouldn’t let my kid ride a bike on 15th Street now.”

The 15th Street greenway ties in with a street Oregon State University-Cascades includes in its master plan, said Casey Bergh, the campus’s transportation program manager. A public hearing on the master plan is scheduled in April.

“If 15th Street’s improved, that would provide a nice bike-ped path for students,” Bergh said.

— Reporter: 541-633-2160; jshumway@bendbulletin.com