(Photo by Noah Nelson)
The new Greenwood Avenue, also called the Greenwood Road Diet, is part of a larger plan called the Midtown Crossings Project. Implemented by the City of Bend, the project aims to make East to West travel safer, quicker and more accessible for all modes of transportation with a focus on pedestrian and biking safety.
However, since the completion of the Greenwood section, as it travels through Downtown from Wall Street to NE Second Street, there have been some major issues for local businesses on Greenwood, such as the Cascade Theatrical Company.
“The effect on the theatre is devastating — for our shows, our performers, creatives, staff and especially difficult on our loyal patrons who have supported us for the last 47 years,” said Christine Mehner, the theatre’s executive director. “Many of our patrons are older and many have disabilities and are unable to walk the four or five blocks from the closest parking structure. During the winter months, it’s difficult for anyone to walk through the snow and slippery sidewalks — let alone a senior or person with disabilities. On the other side of Greenwood, those businesses have significant on-site parking as well as parking on their side of the street.”
Mehner says that the conditions for the theatre are worse now than they were during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Even with the regulations of COVID we were able to keep the theatre afloat, largely in part from the COVID relief grants,” she said. “In our long history of loyal patronage we have never suffered such extreme losses.”
The big picture is that the new Greenwood has spelled trouble for certain local businesses — especially ones on the north side of Greenwood, the same side as the Cascade Theatrical Company.
There were a total of 11 businesses and now four of those businesses have moved, gone out of business or currently have their business up for sale. Various business owners have reported that this is because they are unable to survive the loss of parking, customer aggravation, inaccessibility to their business, loss of commerce deliveries, no ADA parking for people with disabilities and no drop-off zone for seniors or people with disabilities.
The following statement from Mehner shows how her theatre has taken a hit: “The City took out around 14 parking spots, and when you have two or three people in a car to come to see a show, that equates to over 100 people a weekend. Our shows are three-four weeks, so we lose between 300 and 400 people for the run of the show. With an average ticket price of $40, that is a loss of about $10,000–$12,000 per show.”
Mehner has run the numbers for the first half of their season and the results are troubling. “We are down $10,000 a month and our attendance is down 40–60 percent,” she said. “We have heard from many of our seniors that they simply can’t navigate the parking and the walking and road closures. One patron said she and her husband would park at Safeway and take a taxi over.”
Michael Walker, a retired civil engineer with 47 years of professional experience and a managing partner of a small building on Greenwood, has been tracking this project for years now. He has pointed out a number of key issues with the new Greenwood along with other construction projects across town.
He says that the City has made false claims on the safety benefits of the new construction, misconstruing the data.
For example, the City claims that the reduction of travel lanes to one in each direction to allow for a new dedicated left-turn lane will reduce car crashes by 29 percent. However, Walker pointed out that the TSAP (Transportation Safety Action Plan) states that the potential collision reduction is 29 percent. In theory, the new turn lane will reduce three types of collisions: sideswipe, rear-end and turning movement. “The City has failed to check the ODOT crash database,” said Walker. “The original Greenwood, with no turn lane, had only one more of these types of collisions over a six-year period than Franklin had with its existing turn lane.”
The City says that the buffered bike lane reduces crashes with bikes by 47 percent but Walker pointed out that the TSAP states the potential collision reduction is a range from 0 to 53 percent. A second overlooked TSAP finding is that 89 percent of collisions occur within 250 feet of an intersection. Both streets have intersections within 250 feet over their entire length and that is not counting the multiple driveways. Bicyclists are at the greatest risk from vehicles turning across the bike lane.
Mehner expressed frustration referencing the GO Bond measure 9-135, which was meant to address the growing population in Bend. The measure aimed to improve citywide traffic flow — through East to West and North to South connections — and increase on and off-ramp options. Additionally, the bond was supposed to support businesses who had been financially hurt during COVID, create new roadways that cut down on travel time, reduce emissions by not sitting in traffic for so long and other stipulations. “The mandate was clear and concise in its language: to get vehicles moving,” said Mehner.
Unfortunately, Mehner has not seen these proposed benefits and instead now has to contend with a severe drop in business. Instead of benefits, Walker has pointed out that the increase in traffic — especially gridlocked traffic — has actually increased overall vehicle emissions.
While there is some sentiment in the community put forth by the City Council and Mayor’s Office that the downsides will subside as other construction projects across town are completed, Walker argues the opposite. “Over the next few years, a series of construction projects will continue to temporarily worsen the east-west traffic flow,” he said. “These construction projects will cause a temporary increase on the remaining east-west corridors during construction and the final designs for each will reduce the future capacity of each of these east-west corridors.”
Looking at Greenwood as an example, Walker laid out why future improvements will not result in better traffic flow: “The City intends to extend the lane reduction easterly through the Third Street intersection to Fourth Street. This work was not completed last August because this segment was under the control of ODOT and therefore ODOT will do this last step. When this action is completed, the Third Street intersection capacity will be significantly reduced. According to Transportation System Plan documents, this intersection was at 98 percent capacity before 2020 and was forecasted to be at 133 percent of capacity by 2040 with the four existing through lanes, not two. The road diet in this intersection will make a bad intersection worse than the community experienced with the Portland Avenue construction closing,” Walker said.
Seemingly, unless thousands of car commuters switch to other modes of transportation in the coming years, Bend’s busiest roads will be well past their capacity and traffic congestion will continue.
Walker says that the City should not have insisted on adding a protected bike lane on Greenwood Avenue. The Transportation System Plan assumed the parkway and railroad bridges would be widened to create more width to complete the Midtown Crossings. “The City’s ‘Low Stress Bike Network’ was created to ensure bike routes have a minimum spacing of every half mile,” said Walker. “Greenwood Avenue/Newport Avenue were not included in this network. Greenwood Avenue is not one of the ‘key bike routes’ and streets with ‘high traffic stress’ such as Greenwood Avenue should not be chosen for a bike route.”
Walker would like the City to fulfill their promise made to the public in the Bond Resolution by prioritizing traffic flow. Similarly, Mehner would like to see increased transparency and compassion from the City in every step of their process, going back to the beginning.
“The GO Bond required a steering committee to obtain feedback from the businesses being affected by the measure before any construction began,” said Mehner. “But the steering committee never contacted businesses on Greenwood to get input. Instead, they went to a completely different quadrant of Bend and we found out about the meeting three days before — only to find out that all the decisions had already been made.”
Mehner says that, in a follow-up meeting with the chief engineer of the project, concerned business owners were told, “The plan is going through whether you like it or not and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“After that, we made all kinds of phone calls to see what we could do and also researched the GO Bond, the bicycle laws of Oregon, the state laws and we called a City Council member who stated adamantly that ‘the Mayor and the City Council were going away from the original direction and intent of the bill,’” said Mehner.
Continuing, she said, “The vote was five years ago and the general public is unaware of how the current Mayor and the City Council have completely deviated away from the stipulations of the GO Bond. We have attended all the meetings, asked for help, voiced our valid concerns and the response has been radio silence.”
