On March 20th, the Portland City Council approved minor code updates to change a term the City uses for streets the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) is not obligated to maintain. Formally called unimproved, the amended City code in Chapter 17.42 now calls these streets nonmaintained. The City of Portland’s policy is that abutting property owners maintain streets until street improvements bring them up to PBOT standards and the City accepts the street for maintenance. This policy has left many streets in poor condition, with only a center strip of asphalt or a full-width gravel street full of holes. In most cases, these streets also lack the required sidewalks and curbs.
Portland has an interactive map showing pavement maintenance responsibility where residents and developers can check a property’s frontage for added road maintenance obligations. According to Portland’s Property Owner Maintenance Code, it is “the exclusive duty of the abutting property owners to construct, reconstruct, repair and maintain nonmaintained street in a condition reasonably safe for the uses that are made of the street and adjoining properties.” This policy puts a financial cost and liability on the homeowners and, in some cases, limits development rights that require a property to have frontage on a street maintained by the City of Portland or the State of Oregon.
There are several ways a street can become the City’s responsibility. A developer can improve the roadway to minimum PBOT standards to be accepted. However, in most cases, the improvement must extend an entire block from intersection to intersection before Portland will begin maintaining it. Property owners on a nonmaintained street can form a Local Improvement District (LID) with the City. That cooperative method requires people to pay for their portion of repairs. The City bureaus often contribute to the project funding and replace or service underground utilities as part of the project. The SE 80th Ave and Mill Street LID is an example of such a project. On some rare occasions, Portland will reconstruct a street as part of a larger mobility project. Recently, that occurred on NE Everett Street from NE 76th Avenue to NE 78th Avenue. The replacement of that unimproved gravel road is part of the 70s Neighborhood Greenway project that is nearing completion.
People living on unpaved roads are not entirely left without support from the City. In 2018, PBOT started the Gravel Street Service to repair Portland’s over 50 miles of nonmaintained gravel streets. That program is on a three-year cycle, with crews focusing on different sections of the City each year. Aside from that program, property owners on nonmaintained streets must pay to keep their roads usable. This code change does nothing more than clarify wording, making it unmistakable that the City is not responsible for these streets’ upkeep.
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