Infill and Small Developments | Portland

Portlander said:
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I've often wondered if the CMP power station on Union Street could be developed by building above it or relocating the generators and associated equipment to another nearby location. Seems like such a waste of valuable downtown real estate. Does anyone know if CMP actually owns the property or does it belong to Tim Soley?
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Love that line of thinking. Looks like it’s owned by CMP, based on the data in the city’s GIS.
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Two interesting projects on the docket all eliminating upper floors of office space .
First is 245 Commercial Street, The Portland Harbor Hotel is expanding into the building next door on commercial street eliminating floors 2 to 5 of office space and turning them into hotel rooms.
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The other project is on 482 Congress Street, which turns office into apartments. I wish they would develop the lot behind the building.
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Thanks PWMFlyer, the expansion of the Portland Harbor Hotel into 245 Commercial Street is a surprise and that address appears to be three separate buildings from the street level. Hopefully those vacant parking lots across from the arena will get developed in the future. This photo shows when the Brown Street lot was "filling" station and I'm guessing around the late 20's with the top of the Chapman Building (1924) looming in the background.

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Portlander said:
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Anyone know what is going on with the Congress Square makeover?
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7 years for public comment and input, 2 years for the design finish and permitting process, 1 year to choose a bid from a contractor, and 5 years to build. It's a 15 year timeline. And by this time, robots will have replaced the workers and they will break down a lot or make odd mistakes, I'm guessing.
 
Last I read the city said construction will restart next year, but my confidence is low. The current condition of Congress Square is the most puzzling and sad affair in the city's entire built environment, IMO. As mentioned above, there was a lengthy and broad public input process that resulted in a pretty good plan for redesigning the intersection: making it more visually appealing, green, pedestrian friendly, etc... The proposal to renovate the "park" to make it more of a performance space with greenery and public artwork seems good, but there just does not seem to exist an entity with sufficient capacity, organization and the force of will to get it all done (including the City itself).

The Friends of Congress Square is a small, almost entirely volunteer group, and they don't seem to have any authority over the rebuild. The PMA is tied up with their own issues and doesn't seem to be able to exert substantial influence over the issue. The Schwartz Building, owned by Geoffrey Rice, is maddeningly still empty and dormant despite the occasional flurry of activity at the site. It seems to me like there needs to be a working group of nearby businesses who are able and willing to take action, hold some peoples' feet to fire, maybe raise more funds if needed to get this thing done. But maybe that kind of interest and willpower just doesn't exist. Walking down Congress there seem to be an increasing number of vacant storefronts and signs of neglect. If the square can't be improved it seems like the street will just continue to fester.
 
nomc said:
A few days ago the PPH reported the city has restarted the conversation about converting High and State to two-way roads. I'm wondering if this will slow down the restart.

Portland considers reverting High and State streets to two-way traffic
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And the idea to reconfigure Franklin Arterial too, will result in a big slow down of traffic on the peninsula going from west to east, or east to west. Portland has no real traffic issues now, or like other cities do. Virtually none, really. Why fix something that is not broken? Unless, they want to slow everything down with a result of more gasoline being used from idling cars. And then add bus and bike lanes. Autonomous driving cars will be appearing on the roads soon, and bicycles never. Portland has cold weather for half of the year, and many hills, so bicycle riding will never be a thing, or like Amsterdam. It's not that and never will be.
 
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TC_zoid said:
And the idea to reconfigure Franklin Arterial too, will result in a big slow down of traffic on the peninsula going from west to east, or east to west. Portland has no real traffic issues now, or like other cities do. Virtually none, really. Why fix something that is not broken?
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I think it's mainly about making it more pedestrian friendly
 
nomc said:
I think it's mainly about making it more pedestrian friendly
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Well, then get rid of cars. Make most walk and ride a bike (yearly average daily mean temp is 47.5 degrees, so a lot of shivering going on outside if not bundled up). Portland is not Amsterdam or Zurich, and can't be for many reasons.
 
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TC_zoid said:
And the idea to reconfigure Franklin Arterial too, will result in a big slow down of traffic on the peninsula going from west to east, or east to west.
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That's quite an assertion – but it's false.

Traffic engineers have already modeled the design and found that a 2-lane Franklin Street will function just as well as the poorly-designed 4-lane version, which wastes a dozen acres of valuable downtown real estate.

If you at MaineDOT's new traffic counts database the AADT (average daily traffic) for Franklin NW of Cumberland Ave. has been declining, to the point where it's now under the MaineDOT's formal thresholds for a 3-lane road diet.
Combined, these volumes fall comfortably under MaineDOT's 20K-25K AADT threshold for consideration of a 4-lane to 3-lane road diet (https://www.maine.gov/mdot/edi/docs/RoadDietGuidelines.pdf).

In fact, Franklin's combined two-way AADT south of Fox/Somerset is comparable to Washington Avenue between Presumpscot and Ocean (19,020 AADT) and outer Congress between Frost and Stevens (19,340 AADT in 2019), places where the city has successfully implemented 4-to-3 lane road diets with no impacs to traffic.

Traffic is caused by cars, and the best way to reduce traffic is to make more room for housing downtown to accommodate more car-free households. We've seen this on Franklin Street: as more development has happened on India Street and the eastern waterfront, traffic on Franklin has actually gone down over the past 20 years.

It's fine if some people feel like @TC_zoid and are too delicate to walk outside in the winter – but there are plenty of places for those folks in the suburbs. The vast majority of people are perfectly fine being outside in colder weather – and if we build more housing for car-free households in the city, instead of forcing them to buy cars and commute in from places like Buxton and Windham, then we'll have less traffic not only in Portland but across the entire region.
 
cneal said:
That's quite an assertion – but it's false.

Traffic engineers have already modeled the design and found that a 2-lane Franklin Street will function just as well as the poorly-designed 4-lane version, which wastes a dozen acres of valuable downtown real estate.

If you at MaineDOT's new traffic counts database the AADT (average daily traffic) for Franklin NW of Cumberland Ave. has been declining, to the point where it's now under the MaineDOT's formal thresholds for a 3-lane road diet.
Combined, these volumes fall comfortably under MaineDOT's 20K-25K AADT threshold for consideration of a 4-lane to 3-lane road diet (https://www.maine.gov/mdot/edi/docs/RoadDietGuidelines.pdf).

In fact, Franklin's combined two-way AADT south of Fox/Somerset is comparable to Washington Avenue between Presumpscot and Ocean (19,020 AADT) and outer Congress between Frost and Stevens (19,340 AADT in 2019), places where the city has successfully implemented 4-to-3 lane road diets with no impacs to traffic.

Traffic is caused by cars, and the best way to reduce traffic is to make more room for housing downtown to accommodate more car-free households. We've seen this on Franklin Street: as more development has happened on India Street and the eastern waterfront, traffic on Franklin has actually gone down over the past 20 years.

It's fine if some people feel like @TC_zoid and are too delicate to walk outside in the winter – but there are plenty of places for those folks in the suburbs. The vast majority of people are perfectly fine being outside in colder weather – and if we build more housing for car-free households in the city, instead of forcing them to buy cars and commute in from places like Buxton and Windham, then we'll have less traffic not only in Portland but across the entire region.
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It "may" be worth noting or considering that the drop in numbers is due to the pandemic and rise in work-from-home options.

Despite the developments for WEX, Covetrus, and the Sun Life buildings - we may never see full capacity onsite workers traveling to these sites.

However, the Foreside development really hasn't taken off. If we ever see a full buildout of this project, that will impact traffic toward the waterfront both via Franklin and Commercial. We'll see if this ever comes to fruition.

Narrowing Franklin of course opens up land for redevelopment into an urban boulevard. The savior of this corridor will be traffic circles at both Marginal and Commercial streets. Who knows, a cool circle at the intersection at Congress could be cool too if designed well.

My concern for State and High is only the sheer stupidity and lack of awareness of drivers, but I otherwise could care less if they're switched back to two lanes. I will say having used both extensively - the two lanes does help traffic flow toward Forest Ave and subsequently 295 ... as well as toward the drawbridge. It might be an indication that the flow is working well and maybe shouldn't be fucked with?

Lastly ... investment in public transportation (an erasing the colloquial stigma of utilizing it) would go a long way for Portland if they're planning on changing anything along these corridors. Eliminating lanes for excessively wide bike lanes doesn't seem to work well. You can see this on Park Ave and how it made navigating around turning traffic and other stupidity a huge frustration.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
 
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It's obvious why two lanes in the same direction on roads without exit ramps work better than one. One of the primary reasons that traffic slows down is because of turning cars. With two lanes in the same direction, it's simply going around this car without having to slow down. And if that turning car is waiting for a slow moving pedestrian/s to cross, even more so. When we can dramatically reduce the use of automobiles, then yes, go to single lanes.
 
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TC_zoid said:
It's obvious why two lanes in the same direction on roads without exit ramps work better than one. One of the primary reasons that traffic slows down is because of turning cars. With two lanes in the same direction, it's simply going around this car without having to slow down. And if that turning car is waiting for a slow moving pedestrian/s to cross, even more so. When we can dramatically reduce the use automobiles, then yes, go to single lanes.
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Not to mention those who come to a complete stop before taking a right-hand turn. Even at the most open, visible, wide intersections. It's EVERYWHERE ... WHYYYYYYY?
 
DanielPWM19 said:
It "may" be worth noting or considering that the drop in numbers is due to the pandemic and rise in work-from-home options.

Despite the developments for WEX, Covetrus, and the Sun Life buildings - we may never see full capacity onsite workers traveling to these sites.
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The traffic volumes have actually been on the decline for 20+ years – this trend was also observed when the city did the older Franklin Street redesign study way back in 2015.

Daily traffic volumes on Franklin are actually pretty similar to the daily pre-pandemic volumes in the 2022 counts I cited above. But what's interesting is that the *peak* hour volume – i.e. the rush hour – is down considerably (because fewer daily office commuters). Traffic is more evenly spread out over the course of the day now – there's less traffic at rush hour, but more traffic at 11 a.m., for instance. A much larger proportion of commuter traffic now comes from service workers who don't work 9-to-5 schedules, thus their trips are more evenly spread out throughout the day and night – and this probably isn't going to change.

This matters because the peak-hour is the major constraining factor for roadway design if your primary concern is traffic (there's a very powerful argument to be made that our primary concerns should be the climate emergency and safety and freeing up more lane for housing, but nevertheless). So if there's a smaller peak-hour traffic volume, you don't need to have such a big roadway.
 
My understanding is that MEDoT is completely unwilling to accept any significant lane reduction from Exit 7 to Cumberland but is supportive of the City’s plan to narrow the road to 2-lanes from Cumberland to Commercial plus create bi-directional separated bike lanes all the way across the peninsula.
 
Cosakita18 said:
My understanding is that MEDoT is completely unwilling to accept any significant lane reduction from Exit 7 to Cumberland but is supportive of the City’s plan to narrow the road to 2-lanes from Cumberland to Commercial plus create bi-directional separated bike lanes all the way across the peninsula.
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That was the case 7 years ago, but the traffic volumes cited above now justify a 3-lane cross section all the way from Commercial to Fox/Somerset (and as I noted, there's precedent: MaineDOT has already allowed similar road diets on busier streets, like Washington Avenue in East Deering).

I've heard from some of the more enlightened traffic engineers at MaineDOT that it should be on the table, and that it would create a more financially feasible project, although some of the older, more regressive engineers are still resistant.

Augusta's desire to keep 4-5 lanes instead of going to 3 here comes at a pretty steep cost: it would add millions of dollars to the cost of the project, and remove about 1/3-1/2 of an acre of potentially developable land, which could potentially support 30-60 additional housing units in the corridor, and generate more taxable value for the city.
 
My personal preference / fantasy would be to keep the Franklin corridor wide enough to easily enable future transit projects, be it BRT or light rail. I don't want unnecessary road lanes but I also don't want to see the corridor needlessly constrained. There are absolutely positive factors to "future proofing" the right-of-way in some capacity. Every city in the world has multi-lane roads and when designed thoughtfully with transit and bike/ped and traffic calming in mind they can be very nice. It needn't be some alarmist choice between the current street and 50 ft' wide corridor....


Also, the problem of how many units can fit within the land freed up by this reconfiguration can very easily be solved by going up....which is what ReCode is proposing.
 
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TC_zoid said:
And the idea to reconfigure Franklin Arterial too, will result in a big slow down of traffic on the peninsula going from west to east, or east to west. Portland has no real traffic issues now, or like other cities do. Virtually none, really. Why fix something that is not broken? Unless, they want to slow everything down with a result of more gasoline being used from idling cars. And then add bus and bike lanes. Autonomous driving cars will be appearing on the roads soon, and bicycles never. Portland has cold weather for half of the year, and many hills, so bicycle riding will never be a thing, or like Amsterdam. It's not that and never will be.
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You obviously don't need to commute through Portland at peak times of traffic. Some areas have become ridiculous and it can take more than an hour to cross the city.
 
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