NEWS
4 • The Southwest Portland Post
August 2008
City plans Gibbs Street pedestrian bridge
By Lee Perlman
The Southwest Portland Post
City planners are at working design-
ing a new pedestrian bridge along
Southwest Gibbs Street, underneath
the Oregon Health and Sciences Center
aerial tram.
When completed it would provide
pedestrian and bike access from the Lair
Hill neighborhood to the South Water-
front, help to re-unite a neighborhood
torn apart by large roadways, and help
mitigate the presence of the tram on the
historic neighborhood.
As Jody Yates of the Portland Offi ce of
Transportation told the Portland Design
Commission last month, the designers
have abandoned their original notion
of having the bridge slant downward
from west to east.
Instead, they now plan to have its
deck remain level. This will make the
bridge itself easier to negotiate by foot,
bike or wheelchair, but also means its
eastern end will be 60 feet above the
ground.
While there will be a stairway, most
people will use a pair of elevators,
which will be large enough to accom-
modate bikes. Design work for the west
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end is not complete, but the bridge will
have to “nestle into a developed com-
munity,” consultant Kevin Peterson
told the commission.
The bureau is also working on a pe-
destrian path, with crosswalks, which
will allow people and bikes to continue
upward to the tram terminus on Mar-
quam Hill.
Commission member Andrew Jansky
was skeptical about this last idea. Not-
ing that the proposed path will have to
cross Southwest Barbur Boulevard he
said, “Traffi c calming is great, but not
when people are in a hurry, and that’s
what you’ll have here.”
Instead, Jansky said, the city should
build “one great bridge” that will take
people all the way from the South Wa-
terfront to Marquam Hill with a Lair
Hill access point. Commission chair
Lloyd Lindley urged the design team to
make the span wider than 15 feet.
Commission member Gwen Millius
agreed, saying the bridge will be used
in a future when “the cost of gasoline
is causing more and more people to use
these facilities. I’d hate to perpetuate the
idea that riding your bike is about per-
sonal virtue and nothing more. Make
it something that doesn’t look horrible
and works really well.”