DO-IT-YOURSELF TRAFFIC

[September 7th, 2005] A world-famous Dutch engineer's seemingly anarchy-generating new approach to traffic safety has already been the practice for decades at a Portland intersection.

The iconoclastic traffic-safety concept that is gaining traction in Europe and has earned its 59-year-old creator, Hans Monderman, writeups within the past year in The New York Times and at wired.com: Taking away traffic signals doesn't endanger traffic safety.

Or as Monderman told the Times, "Who has the right of way? I don't care. People here have to find their own way...use their own brains."

Turns out that's the way Portland motorists have negotiated the busy six-point intersection of Northeast Fremont Street and Sandy Boulevard at 72nd Avenue for as long as anybody can remember.

The intersection lacks a left-hand turn signal, leaving left-turning drivers coming from the opposite direction to inch up side by side and make turns behind-rather than in front of-the car opposite.

And that seems to work just fine in this working-class neighborhood where low-brow yupster newcomers vie with girlie clubs and an old Coke sign atop Fairley's drugstore stands guard over the noodle shops, Asian groceries, and trees softening the gritty Sandy thoroughfare.

Portland's district signals and street-lighting engineer, Tod Rosinbum, knows of no other such intersection in the city. And he says there's no reason to change, because the wide intersection doesn't have an accident problem.

Portland's Office of Transportation data from 1998 to 2002, the most recent period where stats are available, show only 10 collisions between vehicles at an intersection where 21,000 cars pass each day. During the same period, there were 111 crashes down at 39th and Sandy, an intersection where 30,000 cars pass each day, according to Mark Lear, traffic investigations manager for the city.

Argelis Lewis, a Roseway resident for four years, regularly navigates the Fremont turn at Sandy. "It's unusual," says Lewis, "but it works."