The St. Johns Truck Strategy is a package of eight sub-projects that are designed to address long-standing issues with cut-through freight traffic that impacts livability and safety in the St. Johns neighborhood. The main elements of the strategy are focused on either (1) improving the designated freight route around the neighborhood to encourage its use or (2) traffic calming and safety improvement projects to discourage freight traffic from using residential streets as cut-through routes, particularly N St Louis Avenue and Fessenden Street.

Phase II of the St. Johns Truck Strategy implements three of the eight sub-projects identified in the St. Johns Truck Strategy adopted by City Council in 2001. Two of the projects are focused on traffic calming on N St Louis Avenue and Fessenden Street between Columbia Way and Lombard Street. The third is focused on multimodal issues on the N Lombard Street freight route between N St Louis and Bruce avenues.

The two projects on N St Louis Avenue and Fessenden Street will include:

• Restriping the roadway to reduce lane widths and create buffered bike lanes.
• New median refuge islands with street trees and striped crosswalks at six locations: Kellogg Street, Smith Street, Seneca Street, Oswego Avenue, Allegheny Avenue and Tioga Avenue.
• New curb extensions with street trees and striped crosswalks at Burr and Midway avenues.
• Speed reader boards on both sides of the St Louis Avenue and Fessenden Street curve.
• New rapid flashing beacons at the intersections of Seneca Street and New York Avenue and at Seneca Street and Midway Avenue.
• A new HAWK signal at Charleston Avenue.
• A reconfiguration of the New York Avenue leg of the New York Avenue and St Louis Avenue intersection to create a perpendicular alignment.

On N Lombard Street between St Louis and Bruce avenues, PBOT will:

• Restripe the roadway from St Louis Avenue to St Johns Avenue to widen the traffic lanes to 12 feet to better accommodate freight trucks.
• Restripe Lombard from St. Johns Avenue to Bruce Avenue to provide bike lanes.
• Install a curb extension and a striped crosswalk at Catlin Avenue’s northeast corner.
• Install curb extensions at Reno Avenue.
• Reconfigure the St Johns Avenue intersection to reduce speeds, improve sight distances through the S-curve in the roadway and crossing safety.
• Install missing sidewalk sections on Lombard Street north of St Johns Avenue.

PBOT is grateful to the St. Johns community for their participation in the development of these projects and we are excited for work to get underway starting in February 2019!

For questions or more information about the project, please contact the project manager, Rich Newlands:  rich.newlands@portlandoregon.gov or 503-823-7780.