The story behind that surprise blockage of the Springwater Corridor path – BikePortland

A contractor hired by the Oregon Department of Transportation to do work on the McLoughlin Viaduct in southeast Portland near the Ross Island Bridge has blocked the Springwater Corridor path several times. That’s not a big deal, except that the community was given zero notice of the project. And the project began with ODOT not following the proper permitting and community notification procedures.

Several BikePortlanders have reached out wondering what’s going on. Here’s the deal…

After receiving photos and messages about the path blockage from a few of you, I reached out to Portland Parks & Recreation to ask what was going on. The Springwater path is a crucial link in our transportation network. For bicycle riders it’s just as important (if not more so) as Highway 99E that runs adjacent to it. So when I saw photos of a large crane and piles of fencing materials blocking the entire paved path, I wondered why I wasn’t notified about the closure. Whenever there’s even the slightest impact to the Springwater path due a construction project, Parks has a standard procedure for permitting, public notification, and detours. Ironically, I often get these closure notices and don’t even share them because the impacts are so minor. But this is not a minor impact.

(NOTE: Before this post gets totally misunderstood by haters, no, I’m not “in a rage” about this. The blockage of the path isn’t a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, I’m just telling folks what happened because I’m getting a lot of questions about it.)

This crew is working on a project that includes fencing off space under the viaduct and highway (which I assume is related to keeping campers out). The location was too hard to reach from the highway, so they changed their approach and used the path. That’s where things went south. Beginning just over one week ago, people began telling me about the blockage and how there was zero advance warning of it. When I notified Parks about the situation, they were surprised too and said a permit was still in process.

So, an ODOT contractor blocked a busy section of the Springwater Corridor path without even getting the proper permit from Parks and without following signage and detour standards?

I reached out to an ODOT spokesperson on Monday to learn more. Here’s what David House, who works in ODOT’s Region 1 public affairs office, told me:

During contractor work under the McLoughlin Viaduct on OR 99E, the contractor first tried to reach the worksite from 99E to delivery materials but needed to switch to the Oregon Pacific Railroad right-of-way and the park. Although we got access to the work site from the trail to deliver materials, we were not at first aware that Portland Parks & Recreation required notification and posting. So we and the contractor apologize for this and have corrected it.

Going forward, we have implemented a signing plan for advanced notification on the trail and are able to detour cyclists and pedestrians around the crane outriggers using the gravel trails adjacent to paved surface.  Fortunately, the weather is dry, and the trails are firm.

Our contractor is telling us that they only think they have one more day of moving materials into place.

We apologize for the lack of advance notice about the trail detour.

After I connected with ODOT, one of the contractors posted a handwritten sign on the path. The sign tells people that the path will be blocked two more times before the project wraps up and that the detour is to just go around and use the singletrack dirt trail along the riverfront. If you ride this section of the Springwater, be aware of this detour today (June 12th) and and June 16th.

Thank you to the readers who gave me the heads up and shared photos about this.