HOOD RIVER — The City of Hood River and the Hood River County School District have partnered with the Portland State University (PSU) Better Blocks program, Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) and Anson’s Bike Buddies to develop a three-month pilot program to demonstrate a safer active transportation network for students at Hood River Middle School.
This Safe Routes to School project will temporarily repurpose sections of the 40-foot-wide roadways along 17th, May and 18th streets to demonstrate a 9-foot wide protected, two-way, protected bikeway from Sherman to Taylor, and a shared-use path from Taylor to Belmont.
To accommodate this pathway, drive lanes will be narrowed, and parking will be prohibited on the east side of 18th and 17th streets for the duration of the project. The city will also install a temporary stop sign on eastbound May Street at 17th, making this intersection an all-way stop, according to a city/school district press release.
Installation is underway and is expected to take up to two weeks before completion. The demonstration will be taken down Nov. 1, or sooner if inclement weather degrades the temporary materials.
The project is designed for these specific months so the community can adjust to the new layout before students return to school and for the first eight weeks of the school year while the weather is traditionally better for walking and biking to gather feedback not attainable to a one week or weekend event.
“The main goal of this Safe Routes to School project is to improve safety for and awareness of students who walk, ride or roll their way to school, and encourage more students to participate in active transportation to and from school,” said the press release. “All of these improvements are being temporarily installed to give the community a chance to experience these new transportation options and to provide constructive feedback before the city plans for or invests in future right of way improvements.”
The project began in 2022 with PSU planning and engineering students observing middle school students’ behavior and safety issues. Simultaneously, the city was undergoing the ODOT Safe Routes to School planning grant, which included safety walk audits and parent surveys of barriers to walking and biking to school. During this process, the community prioritized the streets and intersections of 17th, May, and 18th for infrastructure improvements. In January, an afterschool program of fifth through eighth graders called the ‘80s Walk & Roll Club was launched (see article at columbiagorgenews.com). These students led the demonstration project planning, which included a community outreach process. The students engaged 100% of neighbors along the project corridor.
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