The transportation priorities of the Bend City Council have left the city’s street standards in the dust.

Attitudes of city leaders have evolved so quickly that even though new standards took effect six months ago, it’s time to think about updating them again.

That’s the discussion city of Bend Chief Operations Officer Russell Grayson began with the city council Wednesday evening. He told the council that city engineers and consultants are facing conflicting pressures to balance the desires for more bicycle and pedestrian-friendly streets with vehicle travel, growth, public safety response times and new regulations from the state — all without clear direction on what they need to build.

“It’s causing some confusion, and I would say delays in getting projects out the door in a consistent manner and that’s what we want to try to do with the standards and (specifications),” Grayson said.

With a new set of street standards, safety elements like bike lane buffers, medians, turn lanes and heavy green paint — features of recent street makeovers — could become the norm citywide. But a question remains about how far the city council is willing to go.

The transformation of Third Street and Wilson Avenue and the Greenwood Avenue “road diet,” adding bike lane buffers and skinnier car lanes came as a novelty for road users. For those projects and others, the city has had to pivot quickly, granting deviations for staff to create a street that looked different from the standard.

As recently as last summer, city engineers were operating with a set of old standards that focused on wider lanes for faster vehicle travel and a 6-foot bike lane and sidewalk with little or no separation from cars. Last fall, after several years of work, a set of new standards went into effect stemming from policy direction from 2020. The 2024 standards emphasized serving pedestrians and cyclists in addition to drivers, with narrowed travel lanes to slow speeds, widened bike lanes with buffers, and wider sidewalks or paths on busier streets.

“While we were working on this, the world is changing,” said Janet Hruby, assistant city engineer with the city of Bend. “So many communities are focusing on safety.”

Safety first 

A new goal of the city council is to have zero deaths on Bend’s streets. Councilors still have concerns about how to make streets safer by slowing speeds and separating bicycles and cars.

“Having someone wait for 20 or 30 seconds — and frankly its usually more like 10 or 12 seconds — in order to have a narrower, safer street that people can cross, I think that’s a trade off I feel like our residents would probably take any day if it’s near their house,” City Councilor Ariel Méndez said during Wednesday’s discussion.

“I want to unleash the floodgates on safety,” he added.

Méndez said he feels Bend is missing out on safety elements other cities are using that would not cost much time or money to implement, like planter boxes or low-rise barriers to create separation.

Bend Bikes, a group that advocates for bicycle transportation, has called for an update to the street standards, and sees the process as a chance to make big changes. In a March 5 letter, the group urged the council to narrow street widths, put “raised” crossings over all busy streets, add protection and lighting to crossings and implement more traffic calming measures.

“Historically, city street standards have been adapted from standards developed for highways,” David Green, a Bend Bikes board member, said in an email. “We think a major revision to the standards is needed to make our streets work in an urban setting where there are people walking and biking, cars, and buses.”

Congestion complaints

There’s also pressure on the city council to pump the brakes on changes that slow down cars. Public surveys have shown that a majority of respondents don’t approve of the new Greenwood Avenue design restricting speeds and adding space for bikes. A veterinary clinic pushed back against designs for safety improvements to Olney Avenue because a new concrete median restricted turning access.

Many drivers were frustrated with the Olney Avenue project this winter as the construction collided with winter snowstorms for significant traffic delays.

That frustration is not likely to go away anytime soon as the city enters a period of heightened road construction to complete the project list from the $190 million 2020 transportation bond.

And with growth, more drivers will be using Bend’s streets each year.

City Councilor Megan Perkins said she is worried people’s concerns about traffic congestion aren’t being addressed. She said 51% of workers in Bend commute, and most of them come by car.

“I don’t disagree with a single thing anyone has said, but I think we have to think about the people that are commuting every single day in this town,” Perkins said.

“I’m wondering, are we trying to do too much on every road, and should there be certain roads in our community that are meant to get a car from point A to point B,” she said.

Street standards are different depending on the business of a given street; major arteries will look different from local roads.

Because of state rules, the city is limited with how it can grow its transportation system to accommodate cars. Instead, the focus is on improving flow and capacity within the existing system.

Councilor Mike Riley said speeding cars are a big problem, and it may not be realistic to make congestion go away.

Even if some streets are built for cars, Méndez said, there still needs to be a way to cross them safely. In the event that the city must choose between speed and safety, he said, “I would pick safety.”