PBOT Advances Safety Improvements on SE César Chávez Blvd Near Reed

After years of community demands and deadly crashes, the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) is conducting public outreach for a project that would significantly improve pedestrian and auto safety on a portion of SE César E Chávez Boulevard near Reed, between SE Lafayette Court and SE Schiller Street. Chávez is identified as a high-crash corridor in the 2023-25 Portland Vision Zero Action Plan. This means it is among the 8% of streets where 62% of Portland traffic deaths occurred in the preceding five years. At a packed Woodstock Neighborhood Association (WNA) meeting on Wednesday, February 4, local residents gathered to hear PBOT staff present on how they plan to make Chávez safer by removing two lanes of traffic, adding on-street parking as a buffer between pedestrians and vehicles, enhancing left-turn protections, improving signals, and preparing for future sidewalk and crossing upgrades. PBOT says that the $2.2 million project is currently in the “project development and public outreach phase,” with construction expected in 2028. 

Transportation planner Corrine McQueen explained at the WNA meeting that PBOT had been working behind the scenes on the project for some time before launching it publicly on February 1. To fund safety improvements on Chávez, the bureau secured an All Roads Transportation Safety grant allocated through the Oregon Department of Transportation and supplemented by the city matching funds. She described the current project as a small to medium sized one by Portland standards but with the potential to lay the groundwork for more comprehensive improvements when additional funding becomes available in the future. Roadway striping, lane configuration changes, left-turn pockets, and signal upgrades at Holgate are funded by existing sources. Signal upgrades at Gladstone, including protected left turns, are partially funded. Crossing improvements at Francis, Cora, and Schiller are unfunded, as is coordination with TriMet on bus stop placement. 

The existing conditions on Chávez in the project area are dramatically unsafe and the roadway is in deterioration. Chávez has two travel lanes in either direction between Lafayette and Schiller, with many vehicles turning onto and off of local roads or driveways. There is a 30 mph speed limit north of Holgate, but almost half of drivers speed, “many go 35 mph or faster,” and 2% go 40 mph or faster. PBOT says the pavement is in such poor condition that it is no longer possible to repave and the roadway needs to be completely rebuilt in a separate, currently unfunded $7 million project. The sidewalks are as narrow as 5 ft. along the project corridor, and anyone who has walked that stretch of Chávez will know there is often even less clearance due to overgrowth. The existing curbs are also not ADA-compliant, making the road hostile to mobility device users.

Meanwhile, traffic volume analysis shows that the four existing automobile travel lanes are excessive for the level of demand present on the road. This creates a needlessly hostile environment for pedestrians and cyclists, and increases excessive speeds and conflicts leading to crashes. In the most recent 10-year period for which data is available, from 2014 to 2023, there were 145 crashes on the 0.65 mile stretch of Chávez in the project area. This is slightly over one crash per month, or alternatively, 223 per mile. Crashes where a car driver hits a pedestrian or cyclist are especially deadly. In 2015, Mark James Angeles ’15 was killed cycling at the Gladstone/Chávez intersection just a week after graduating, and in 2025, local resident Tuyet Nguyen was fatally struck by a car while crossing Chávez at SE Cora. Ten other people were seriously injured in crashes on the project corridor during the same time period. PBOT says Francis, Gladstone, and Holgate are the most dangerous intersections. Gladstone and Holgate are already signalized, while Francis is not. 

PBOT is proposing to address these issues with a number of measures along different parts of Chávez. The project is divided into segments north and south of Holgate Boulevard because the roadway on the southern portion of the corridor is 50 feet wide, while the northern portion is only 40 feet wide, making the possibilities for each slightly different. North of Holgate, portions of the roadway are proposed to have two travel lanes for vehicles. The outer lanes would be converted to parking “wherever possible” and the speed limit lowered to 25 mph. South of Holgate, where the speed limit is already 25 mph, PBOT is proposing a three-lane cross section with one travel lane in each direction and a center turn lane. There will also be parking on both sides of the street to the maximum extent possible. 

Left turn safety improvements are another primary project component. At the Holgate-Chávez intersection, the existing signal will be replaced with one that has left-turn signals for vehicles turning onto Chávez from Holgate. PBOT says left turn pockets are currently “recommended” at Lafayette, Francis, Schiller, and Raymond. Raymond is discontinuous with the project area, but has been incorporated due to a recent serious left turn crash. Existing left turn lanes at Holgate will remain, and Gladstone will be “addressed through a separate grant project.” The new center turn lane on Chávez south of Holgate will accommodate left turns onto driveways.

Unlike a similar project on SE Foster completed several years ago, the Chávez reconfiguration will not include bike lanes. According to PBOT, “Chávez Boulevard is not a priority bikeway in the City of Portland's Transportation System Plan” and there are no plans to introduce bike lanes as part of the reconfiguration. PBOT encourages cyclists to use the neighborhood greenways paralleling Chávez.

McQueen said that lower speeds with a reduction in travel lanes will result in fewer crashes and lower crash severity. There will also be fewer conflicts for left-turning traffic. On-street parking will create a physical barrier against traffic for pedestrians on the existing narrow sidewalks while maintaining space for future sidewalk extensions, crossings, and ADA ramps. Traffic analysis showed that reducing the number of travel lanes would have minimal drawbacks for drivers, with an average 30-60 second increase in travel times, including an average increase of 10 seconds at intersections. Queuing behind left-turning vehicles would amount to one or two cars on average. At peak hours, up to 30 cars per hour could be added to parallel streets in each direction, but there would likely be no diversion at other times. 

McQueen affirmed that community members have long been asking for improvements to Chávez and PBOT agrees there is a need for change, saying the bureau is interested in “figuring out a way forward and working with you all to create a solution.” She singled out left turn pocket and crossing locations as issues community members could provide valuable information on. The PBOT team then opened up their presentation to questions.

One attendee whose name was not known to the Quest said the existing intersection of Schiller and Chávez presents a “major livability problem” for him and his family, including a child who goes to school nearby. The road curves approaching Schiller northbound and traffic goes from two to four lanes. He said he drives a lot but would rather have safe walking than easy driving, and suggested that pedestrian improvements should be a higher priority than the other parts of the project. PBOT analyst Leeor Schweitzer said that making a change to the lane configuration such that pedestrians cross fewer lanes of traffic “will make crossing much easier and much safer but not where we want it to be, not where we feel great about it, but still an improvement and hopefully we can get the money for more soon.” In response to a follow-up question from WNA secretary Sonja Miller, Schweitzer elaborated that the degraded pavement and lack of updated ramps pose a major challenge, meaning the cost of a single crossing “will blow your mind… even if we’re just pouring concrete.” For ongoing improvements on SE Division Street, a single-intersection crossing upgrade can cost $234,000-$400,000. The bureau applied for more money and didn’t get it.

Attendees raised a number of additional questions that PBOT staff said will have to be addressed more fully during the engineering phase, particularly around visibility at Schiller, daylighting at specific intersections, and lane configuration at Trader Joe’s. Staff verified that no-parking signs for daylighted areas will be part of the project. One Schiller resident asked if it was possible to add speed bumps or lights at Schiller to mitigate blindspots and fast-turning traffic. In response, Schweitzer emphasized that the lane reduction is inherently an anti-speeding measure and said that in forthcoming research he found removing extra travel lanes reduces excessive speeding by 70%, while PBOT Capital Delivery Manager Steve Szigethy said that the bureau cannot add bumps because Chávez is a primary emergency response route and they would require an exemption from the fire department. Another Schiller resident then said that if bumps were not an option, they wanted to advocate for some other physical or signalized speed solution. 

With the initial project development phase complete, PBOT is continuing its public outreach process. The presentation at the WNA meeting was the first part of that process, and upcoming presentations at the Reed and Creston-Kenilworth neighborhood association meetings on February 19 and 23, respectively, will follow. There is also an online open house with an interactive map and survey available on the the City of Portland website at portland.gov/ChávezSafetyProject. McQueen said at the time of the WNA presentation that only about five people had filled out the survey, but it is open until March 23. After the public outreach period, the project team will consider community feedback and proceed to design.

PBOT is also initiating a planning study this year to explore options for Chávez between Powell and the Banfield (I-84), where many of the same problems persist. A pedestrian was killed in a still-unsolved hit-and-run near SE Clinton St. in 2021, and a TriMet rider was killed by a reckless driver at SE Taylor in 2023. In November 2025, a driver killed an 87-year-old crossing Chávez at SE Harrison St. At the WNA meeting, PBOT staff said they would like to pursue safety improvements along the entire length of Chávez when funding is available in the future. In the meantime, a $6 billion maintenance backlog is preventing PBOT from undertaking projects on the scale the city requires to meet its Vision Zero goal of no fatalities or serious injuries on the roads.