By Louis Chase
César E Chávez Blvd. is the main north-south connection for much of Portland’s Inner Eastside. Chávez Blvd. is also a high-crash corridor, meaning it is among the deadliest eight percent of city streets where 62 percent of traffic fatalities occur. On February 1, the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) announced a $2.4 million state- and federally-funded project to improve traffic safety on a portion of SE Chávez Blvd. between SE Lafayette Ct. and SE Schiller St. The project aims to reduce conflicts and improve pedestrian safety by converting the outer driving lanes to on-street parking, adding new left-turn pockets at key intersections and replacing the traffic lights at SE Holgate Blvd.
At neighborhood association meetings with PBOT staff, local residents were overwhelmingly in favor of safety improvements on SE Chávez Blvd., but some had questions about the scope and timing of the project. Reed and Woodstock residents were especially concerned about the SE Schiller St. intersection immediately south of Trader Joe’s, with one parent of young children calling it “a major livability problem” due to the lack of a safe crossing.
At a more contentious Creston-Kenilworth neighborhood meeting, attendees were split between those who felt the project went too far by removing travel lanes and those who felt it did not go far enough by lacking bike or bus lanes. Still, between the dozens of attendees at the three neighborhood meetings, only one couple questioned whether safety improvements at the expense of traffic throughput are worthwhile.
From 2014 to 2023, there were 145 crashes serious enough to be reported on the .65-mile stretch of SE Chávez Blvd. in the project area. Crashes where a car hits a pedestrian or cyclist are especially deadly. In 2015, Mark James Angeles was killed by a left-turning driver while cycling at the SE Gladstone St. intersection, and in 2025, Tuyet Nguyen was fatally hit by a car while crossing at SE Cora St. 10 other people were seriously injured in crashes on the project corridor during the same time period. PBOT says SE Francis St., SE Gladstone St. and SE Holgate Blvd. are the highest-crash intersections overall, with SE Francis St. standing out because it lacks signals. Many drivers speed along the route, while pedestrians on narrow pre-ADA sidewalks are exceedingly close to cars.
The proposed reconfiguration is divided into segments north and south of SE Holgate Blvd. because the roadway further south is wider. North of SE Holgate Blvd., portions of the roadway would have two travel lanes, with the speed limit lowered to 25 mph. South of SE Holgate Blvd., where the speed limit is already 25 mph, PBOT proposes a three-lane cross section with one travel lane in each direction and a center turn lane.
There will be parking on both sides of the street throughout the corridor wherever it would not obstruct visibility or intersections. SE Raymond St., which is discontinuous with the corridor but recently had a serious crash, will also see left-turn upgrades. Most of the budget, though, goes into replacing the signal at SE Holgate Blvd. to eliminate a conflict between left-turning vehicles and opposing through traffic.
PBOT expects traffic impacts to be relatively minor because Chávez Blvd. south of SE Powell Blvd. sees less traffic than most other four-lane streets. Modeling predicted 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 delay 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 distributed across parallel streets in each direction, but there would likely be no diversion at other times.
Planners at neighborhood meetings emphasized these are conservative estimates and traffic delays on other projects like the similar SE Foster Rd. road diet have always been less than models predict. PBOT spokesperson Dylan Rivera explained that the models don’t account for how greater pedestrian safety could encourage walking, biking or taking the bus over short car trips; one attendee at the Creston-Kenilworth meeting said he currently drives the 800 feet from SE Francis St. to Safeway because walking is too dangerous.
There is not currently funding to build upgraded crossings, but PBOT will learn the results of grant applications in June. Rivera said crossings at SE Francis St., SE Schiller St. and SE Cora St. would cost $750,000 each, a tough ask for an agency with a $6.6 billion maintenance backlog. If funding comes through, engineers will investigate whether it is possible to construct the crossings at the same time as the rest of the reconfiguration. In response to questions about whether the reconfiguration would still be useful without new crossings at the Woodstock Neighborhood Association meeting, PBOT planner Leeor Schweitzer explained, “Making changes to the lane configuration will make crossing much easier and much safer but not where we want it to be, not where we feel great about it.”
The public outreach period for the SE Chávez Blvd. safety project concluded at the end of March. Next, PBOT will integrate public feedback into the plan as they proceed to the design phase. Construction is expected in 2028.
The SE Chávez Blvd. improvements are part of Portland’s Vision Zero plan to eliminate deaths and serious injuries on city roads. Portland failed to meet its original 2025 target date, but traffic fatalities are beginning to decline after a post-2020 surge.
Editor’s note: This article was submitted prior to revelations of misconduct by César E Chávez that may lead to the street being renamed.
Memorial to crash victim Tuyet Nguyen near the intersection of SE César E Chávez Blvd. and SE Cora St. Photo by Louis Chase.
