Recently, crews working with the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) added a new line of street trees along NE 82nd Avenue adjacent to Glenhaven Park’s parking area. The new plantings occupy a 600-foot-long planting strip created by shifting the formerly curb-tight sidewalk west, closer to a mature tree line on the city park’s edge. This pedestrian update will improve the daily walk many schoolchildren take on their commute to Leodis V. McDaniel High School and Roseway Heights Middle School, eventually providing them with a tree-canopy-buffered pathway along a fast-paced road.
Parents of students walking along 82nd Avenue have expressed many concerns for safety over the years. The former State Highway has several long, uninterrupted blocks near McDaniel. Those stretches include two vehicle travel lanes in each direction, with no curbside parking to buffer sidewalk users from the heavy automotive flow. Updates to the public high school completed in September 2021 added wide sidewalks with a planting strip buffer between NE 82nd Avenue’s curb and the pedestrian zone. However, the school shares part of the frontage with Portland Parks & Recreation-owned property that was not updated in 2021. It featured narrow sidewalks pushed to the edge right next to the roadway, where wind can whip off passing vehicles and tire spray soaks walkers on rainy days.
The sidewalk’s previous location close to the street did not seem necessary, with nearly 25 feet between the road’s edge and the tree line. Portland acquired the park in 1948 as a primarily open green space without sidewalks. In 82nd Avenue’s earlier years, it supported street parking until widening and left turn safety efforts removed parking along the road in favor of two travel lanes in each direction and a center turn lane. Aerial photos up to 1978 show a visible parking strip between the sidewalk and curb. The sidewalk’s curb-tight placement likely occurred after street widening shifted the curb west.
This sidewalk replacement project rectified a decades-old deficiency in pedestrian infrastructure around a park and school where residents value safe sidewalks. The improvement work is part of the Building a Better 82nd initiative, created to address deferred maintenance issues identified after the jurisdictional transfer of 82nd Avenue from the Oregon Department of Transportation to PBOT on June 1st, 2022. People can already use the set-back sidewalks, and as the trees mature, the pedestrian space should become a more comfortable place to walk to the park or school. NE 82nd Avenue construction in this area is ongoing with lane closures for raised median installations in some sections and sidewalk corner reconstruction. During working hours, pedestrians may need to cross the street to avoid work-site blockages. Drivers will retain access to at least one lane of travel in all directions.
Promotion: Montavilla News is supported by contributions from businesses like Otter Wax, a neighborhood producer of small-batch specialty goods handcrafted in Portland. Using only natural ingredients, they make modern care products that are steeped in tradition. We thank them for their support.