A truck driver encroaches into the buffer zone of a bike lane on North Skidmore Ave. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
In recent years, the Oregon Department of Transportation has slowly but surely added buffer zones to create wider bike lanes on many road projects. In some cases, they’ve implemented road diets and narrowed the existing lanes to make more room for bike riders. These shifts represent progress from ODOT to build a system more accessible to walkers and bikers. They also follow a general consensus among safety and road design experts that wider driving lanes lead to higher speeds, that more space is needed to make cycling attractive to more people, and that lanes used for driving have historically been wider than necessary.
But for trucking industry representatives and other ODOT advisors, concerns about narrower lanes have been percolating for years. As we reported in September 2022, tensions between ODOT advisory groups that represent trucking and active transportation interests revolved largely around the lane width debate. For people who drive large freight trucks (and their advocates), every inch matters. They say their vehicles simply don’t fit on some Oregon lanes and drivers are forced to steer into the buffer zone of bike lanes to avoid oncoming traffic.
When they encroach into buffer zones, they not only risk striking a bicycle rider, they are also concerned about lawsuits if a crash happens.
Now trucking advocates want to change Oregon’s bike lane law to make driving on the buffered portion of a bike lane legal. They also want to add a definition of “buffer space” into the Oregon Vehicle Code. Two members of ODOT’s Mobility Advisory Committee (a group that focuses on how road projects impact freight routes), Oregon Trucking Association Government Relations Policy Advisor Mark Gibson and Associated General Contractors Board Member Walt Gamble, shared a presentation on the issue at a meeting of ODOT’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee on Tuesday.
Slides shown by Gibson and Gamble.
Mark Gibson, Oregon Trucking Association
“A lot of this has to do with designated freight routes throughout the state,” Gibson said at the meeting. “Which unfortunately, today those freight routes go through the middle of a lot of urban areas and a lot of times there are no other options for trucks… That’s really what we’re trying to solve. There’s a great deal of stress, being a truck driver in an urban environment.”
And Gamble added, “We’re trying to provide safety for all users… We’re the ones delivering all the rock pavement concrete through all of these urban urban contexts. And that’s why we get so passionate about it, because for our drivers it’s very difficult for them to make that make that happen.” (Gamble also said later in the meeting that, “We’re all suffering from the road diet era.”)
To make his point, Gibson shared a slide that showed the width of a typical freight truck as 10 and-a-half feet wide (with side mirrors). “In an 11-foot lane, we have three inches on each side,” the slide stated. “Our margin of safety has clearly been reduced.”
Walt Gamble, Associated General Contractors
To trucking advocates, it’s an untenable situation to have Oregon’s urban design guidelines (adopted in 2020) call for 11-foot wide lanes, when truckers (and other vehicles like buses and box vans) need more than 11 feet to operate. Freight advocates in Oregon have long said they’re prefer to either have no bike traffic adjacent to trucks or have it physically separated with concrete, not a painted buffer. (“I think that’s good for everybody, but unfortunately funding doesn’t allow that to happen,” Gibson said at the meeting.)
Gibson and Gamble are members of a special ODOT advisory group subcommittee called the Travel Lane Widths Work Group, which formed in March 2023 and met monthly through November to tackle this issue. Also among the group’s members was the leader of automobile advocacy group AAA Oregon/Idaho, the ODOT Pedestrian and Bicycle Program manager, and a captain from the Oregon State Police. After seven months of meetings they sent a proposal for the ORS changes to the Oregon Department of Justice for Review. What Gibson and Gamble presented yesterday was what they hope is the final product that will now be forwarded to the Oregon Legislature for consideration in the upcoming short session.
Their proposal would change two existing statutes — ORS 811.370 (Failure to drive within a lane) and 814.430 (Improper use of lanes) — and add the new “buffered space” definition into the Oregon Vehicle Code.
The text highlighted in yellow below would be added to 811.370:
The text in yellow below would be added to 814.430:
The proposed definition of “buffer space” would be:
A buffer space means a neutral space between a bicycle lane and a motor vehicle lane delineated by two longitudinal stripes and is intended to be used for the circumstances described in ORS 811.370 (3), and in ORS 814.430 (2g).
In a public comment at the meeting, The Street Trust Executive Director Sarah Iannarone questioned the reasoning, intent and timing of the changes. “It is not clear to us what problem this proposed revision is seeking to address,” Iannarone said. “In our opinion, the above proposed change is superfluous and unnecessary.”
Iannarone pointed out that the statute as currently written says drives must stay in their designated lane only “as nearly as practicable” and that if drivers do need to leave their lane they are allowed to, as long as “the movement can be made with safety.” Iannarone said her organization would rather ODOT adopts the Safe Systems approach to inform policy changes. Iannarone made it clear The Street Trust does not support the proposed changes and wants the issue studied further.
It’s notable that this law change wouldn’t just apply to freight carriers. If this proposal succeeds, all motor vehicle operators will have clearer, legal right to encroach into buffer zones.
The legal standing of bike lane buffer zones have always been a bit squishy. Currently, the law is vague in terms of where a bike lane ends and its buffer zone begins — or whether a buffer zone is legally a bike lane or some other type of space. In my experience, drivers are much more likely to drive and/or park in a buffer zone than a bike lane and I’ve long been curious about whether or not they’re violating the bike lane law when they do so.
A source at the Portland Bureau of Transportation said they generally consider buffer zones to be part of the bike lane. But they also shared it’s accepted that larger vehicles will sometimes intrude into buffer zones on heavy traffic roads. However, the outside paint stripe is 8-inches wide, which designates it as a bike lane in the State of Oregon (as opposed to the four-inch wide stripe for a shoulder). Suffice it to say, the current law is vague and there appears to be no right answer.
The question now is, is the proposal from these trucking interests the best way to remedy the situation.
We’ll hear much about this in the coming weeks as a bill to change these laws should be filed by the time the session begins February 5th.
