Traffic congestion in Bend ranks as the number one traffic concern of residents according to the last six biennial polls, and to polls and promises surrounding the $190 million bond issue passed in 2020. Some actions by the City in the past year are very concerning and appear contradictory to the objective of reducing congestion around downtown, the heartbeat of our city.
First, consider the changes on Greenwood which clearly increases congestion problems as pointed out in the excellent article by Noah Nelson in the Cascade Business News on April 16, 2025. In trying to aid a couple hundred bikers, the City is inconveniencing 15,000 drivers daily. Absurd. Regardless, rather than reducing congestion, the City actions here increases it. Idling motors and start-and-stop traffic are not beneficial to air quality.
Second, the only other major East-West connection to downtown is obviously Franklin Avenue. Incredibly, the City proposal for traffic management here is to intermingle bikes and cars in the railroad / Parkway underpass. Undoubtedly, it will likely significantly slow traffic, which adds to congestion. More importantly, it obviously creates a very, very dangerous situation for bikers, despite the City saying bike safety is their number one concern. Mike Walker, a civil engineer, says this is “the worst traffic safety design I have seen in my 47 years as an engineer.”
Franklin Avenue is obviously a major East-West route for both bikes and cars. The Downtown People Street Study presentation of December 9, 2024, reinforced the Council goal that Franklin Street is the major crosstown bikeways route and it is one of the 12 “Key Bike Routes” of the 2040 transportation plan. It also provides the only direct connection from Drake Park to Juniper Park as desired by the City. It must be improved, not downgraded. A bike bridge here is the only solution for safe bicycle and vehicle travel on this major travel route.
Third, the most egregious and expensive move by the City is placing the bike bridge over the railroad and Parkway at Hawthorne Avenue. Many negative impacts have not been considered. No evidence exists that if you build this that more people will bike or that it will incentivize development. And it contributes nothing to achieving the desired, better East-West bicycle connections, which a bridge at Franklin would. Plus, the impact of the bridge will substantially increase congestion downtown by closing the Parkway exit at Hawthorne.
The planned closure of the Hawthorne exit from the Parkway is the biggest negative impact of the Hawthorne project. It now provides the best Parkway access to downtown, and eventually the urban renewal district. This closure alone should disqualify Hawthorne as an appropriate location. At no other bridge location would closing a Parkway access to downtown be required. This negatively impacts 3,000 drivers daily, to potentially serve a couple of hundred bikers, and at a cost of $30-$40 million! This makes no sense.
Closure will force downtown traffic to use the Lafayette exit. This directly contradicts the 2019 US 97 Parkway plan Phase 2, which, after extensive study, explicitly recommended, on page 24, closing the Lafayette exit and retaining the Hawthorne exit. Additionally, the midtown crossings project open houses of last August stated: “The current Bend Parkway plan… maintains the exit for vehicles to go westbound on Hawthorne.” Now a complete reversal, without a detailed study of its impacts.
The City claims the Hawthorne exit must be closed due to safety concerns. It does have more rear-ends than Lafayette, primarily entering the parkway, but it has triple the trips. Also in the 2019 US 97 Parkway plan, page 6, states, “As traffic volumes increase in the future, the crash frequency at US 97 and Lafayette is expected to be higher than the comparable sites.”
Moving 3,000 cars per day to Lafayette will create significant congestion at Wall Street intersections with both Lafayette and Greenwood. It will also require extensive work on Lafayette as traffic will increase by 3,000 from the approximately 800 today, causing more congestion not less! The additional expense required here because of the Hawthorne bridge location must logically be added to the project cost.
This bridge is now planned to be 20 ft wide. Why? The state standard for bike bridges is 10 ft wide. I was just in Southern California and Arizona and noted that bike bridges over 1,000 ft long over freeways are 10 ft wide. This doubling the width creates an exorbitant increase in costs.
Besides the additional expense, the 20 ft wide bridge has another major impact: it requires the closure of the Hawthorne exit from the parkway, negatively impacting 3,000 drivers daily, as noted above. And it will obviously create more complex traffic patterns and increased congestion. Closing the parkway exit was never considered when the Hawthorne location was selected, or even when the design was chosen last August, as was clearly stated in printed documents at the symposiums last summer.
An interesting and apparently totally ignored impact is that this bridge will create a 20-foot-wide elevated concrete structure from the railroad to Second Street. This will make all the property on both sides of Hawthorne very undesirable for development. Who wants an elevated 20′ wide ribbon of concrete in front of their business? Undevelopable property in the middle of the new CBD? And it will obviously create a major impediment for all forms of transportation on a 36-foot-wide street in the middle of the CBD.
Additionally, to the east, Third Street is a major impediment to safe biking: a ground-level crossing creates a second new dangerous situation (in addition to the dangerous merging of cars and bicycles in the Franklin Street under crossing). There will also be an attendant increase in stopped traffic on a very busy highway, likely affecting the Franklin and Third Street intersection. Again, idling motors and start-and-stop traffic is not beneficial to our air quality. It would also require dangerous biking through the very congested bus center. Alternatively, a crossing at Franklin Avenue, just two blocks away, could efficiently move cars and bicycles across Third Street together, as at the recently reconstructed intersection at Third and Wilson.
An editorial in The Source (November 27, 2024) noted that the most dangerous part of the route is crossing Third Street and that leaving it unfunded and unplanned for sends the message: “This is not actually about safety; nor is it about serving the low-income, diverse population that lives in and around Third Street.” If this money were spent on Franklin, it would address problems otherwise created by “the bridge that leads to nowhere.”
To the West, any bike route from Hawthorne would entail the removal of extensive parking, and bikes intermingling unsafely with cars through congested downtown streets. To provide for the connections further west, a priority of the City, cyclists would then have to access either Franklin or Greenwood. Better to start with a bridge at Franklin and the Greenwood underpass and avoid congested streets downtown?
The cost of addressing these problems is obviously part of the bridge project cost and should be planned and costed before any bridge is built. Currently the plan is truly “a bridge to nowhere.” Again, this alone should disqualify this location for the bike bridge.
Another factor never addressed or discussed: the bridge must be built to the ADA standards. This normally requires a 5% grade. But because the length of this bridge and the restricted area for its landings, it cannot be done. Instead, to meet ADA, it will have a slope of 7.5% grade, but this requires a 5 ft flat landing approximately every 33′ ft. Over the length of the bridge, this platform will interrupt the flow more than 20 times. This is obviously not the type of ride, up or down, most would anticipate. Certainly not a smooth gliding ride one might expect or enjoy.
When looked at as part of the overall traffic flow and congestion problem, it is apparent that these unintended consequences of the bridge at Hawthorne negatively impacts the downtown. Nevertheless, the City inexplicably continues to promote this location, perhaps because about half of the $30-$40 million may be funded by a federal grant. (This grant should be transferred to the Franklin Avenue location.)
Regardless, the City has refused to acknowledge or address these many negative aspects and the substantial additional costs that will be incurred by locating the bridge at Hawthorne, instead of on Franklin Avenue. In addition to avoiding these additional off-site costs, moving the bridge to Franklin would likely cost substantially less because it could be a couple hundred feet shorter, by not having to go over First Street, and could be built to the standard 10 ft width. And of course, the vital Hawthorne exit from the Parkway could be retained.
The city should be able to assist bicycling without worsening travel for the 90% of its citizens who choose to drive. The obvious start is to move the bridge from Hawthorne to Franklin thereby providing much safer east-west traffic for both bikes and cars on Franklin and retaining the exit from the Parkway at Hawthorne. This would be consistent with the words of city counselor Perkins who is quoted in The Bulletin (April 4, 2025): “I think we have to think about the people that are commuting every single day in this town. 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.”
Additionally, the primary sales point for passing the GO bond issue in 2020 was to address the traffic congestion. However, the result of the City plans regarding Greenwood, Hawthorne and Franklin will create the opposite of the objective the people voted for.
For better overall traffic flow downtown, and because the Hawthorne project requires so much money, has so few potential users, has no good East-West connection, and creates so many traffic problems due to closing the exit ramp, the project must be terminated.
The alternative location at Franklin Avenue offers excellent long-distance East-West connections, keeps the Parkway exit open, directly connects Juniper Park and Drake Park, provides a non-disruptive crossing at Third Street, and likely would be significantly less costly because it could be shorter and narrower.
No one has ever articulated any logic for choosing Hawthorne as a better location than Franklin for the bike bridge.
The facts are conclusive. The proposed Hawthorne bridge project must be canceled and the bridge moved to Franklin, to the benefit of all.
The above article was prepared by the author in his/her own personal capacity. The opinions expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cascade Business News or of Cascade Publications Inc.
