The Portland Bureau of Transportation has been getting static for many years over the unsafe street crossing that students going to and from Llewellyn Elementary School have been using, despite advice not to.
It was never supposed to be a crossing; it’s on a blind curve at S.E. Bybee Boulevard at 14th Avenue, and a car speeding around the curve on 13th towards eastbound Bybee would come upon the 14th intersection too soon to slam on the brakes and stop, if people are crossing there. PBOT and the SMILE Transportation Committee have been fretting over this for a long time.
While PBOT was trying to encourage schoolchildren to walk a block east and cross in the marked crosswalk at 15th – but without a lot of success – residents have been adding eye-catching vinyl ribbons to the warning sign on 13th, where the road starts to curve, to urge drivers to slow down. THE BEE has received and published letters about the dangers of that intersection from time to time.
Now, PBOT has made its move. The intersection has been re-engineered to try to make it safer, and in the process it has acknowledged that children will cross wherever they want to, like it or not, and have tried to accommodate them in the process.