Explosion of road construction coming soon to Bend

Published 5:30 am Friday, January 3, 2025

Four years have passed since Bend voters approved a $190 million general obligation bond for transportation projects across the city. The bond resolution promised that the nearly 30 projects would be complete by the end of 10 years, intending to create safer and smoother travel while reducing congestion.

The promise comes with an impending side effect Bend residents haven’t yet begun to feel: An explosion of road construction.

Traffic cones, lane closures and detours will become an increasingly familiar sight for road users over the next three years as bond-related activities reach a zenith that likely won’t subside until 2028.

Traffic effects from the bond will also compound with construction activity from development, utility work and street preservation.

Ryan Oster, lead engineer with the city of Bend, said the city acknowledges people may feel “construction fatigue” over the next few years.

“Nobody wants traffic to be coming through their neighborhood or coming down their street,” he said. “It’s really just asking people to understand that the city’s growing. You can’t stop a city like Bend from growing. We’re trying to build the infrastructure we all need to get around and have consistent times to travel. But there’s going to be some short-term impacts for long-term delivery.”

Spending so far

Most of the work on the bond so far has gone into planning, design and public outreach, said Ryan Oster, lead engineer with the city of Bend. The city has put a handful of projects out to construction bids recently, with quite a few more on the way in the next six months.

“We have a lot of projects that are right on the precipice,” he said.

According to the city’s dashboard for the transportation bond, about $29.4 million has been spent out of $181 million total. About $15 million of bond spending to date went to the intersection redesign at Wilson Avenue and Third Street. Another $5 million went to coordination on the state’s recently-completed highway redesign in north Bend. About $3 million apiece have been spent on minor bicycle and pedestrian enhancements through the Neighborhood Street Safety Program and an extension of Purcell Boulevard near St. Charles Bend.

Upcoming projects

Oster said the bond includes five or six projects that will tie up major east-west corridors to make safety improvements. The city will stagger construction on those projects to avoid sidelining key thoroughfares all at once. For example, work on the Franklin Avenue underpass and surrounding corridor, for which a design was recently selected, won’t begin until late fall 2025, after completion of bicycle and pedestrian enhancements on Olney Avenue to the north, a project set to begin construction in February. Oster said closing both of those roads at once would put too much stress on Greenwood Avenue, a road where recent safety improvements slightly increased travel times and flattened car usage.

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Even with the staggered schedule, if the city wants to meet the deadlines set out by the bond, some overlap in major closures are necessary, Oster said. Other major projects include improvements to Butler Market Road, Bear Creek Road, 27th Street and Reed Market Road. It’s possible that drivers with a cross-town commute might run into more than one hindrance related to those projects in the same trip.

The city expects 2026 might be the busiest time for bond-related construction, with Butler Market, Bear Creek and 27th and Franklin set to be in some phase of construction.

The roundabout at 15th Street and Reed Market Road will be somewhat incapacitated by construction starting in 2025 and into 2026 for conversion into a two-lane roundabout. The idea is to complete that project — and possibly improve the 15th Street and Ferguson Road intersection after a push from neighbors — before closing Reed Market a few blocks away to build a railroad overpass.

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Timing for that project is dependent on federal funds, but it could begin as soon as 2027. If the city receives some of all of its $32 million federal grant application for the project, it would free up bond funds to be used elsewhere, Oster said.

Timing for the entire bond construction schedule is still in flux, Oster said.

Bend picks design for Franklin Avenue improvements