[street_blades, info_design] New Portland Overhead Signs, and a New Street

1164. If you've been looking up and forward whilst waiting at any light in the Portland corporate area latterly, you'll have seen a sign bound to the overhead like this:

The City is, at last, addressing a real need in road signage. Most other larger towns up and down the valley (and across the Columbia too) have large signs denoting the street name on the traffic signal arm. Any driver who's been saved from having to frantically scan about on the corners to see what street they're crossing don't need to be told how good this is.

The standard has seemed to have been set; the iconic representation of the "Portland Rose", the red rose with three green leaves, and a simple representation of the street name at cross.

The notation on this particular sign deserves some explanation. For the past several months, a major realignment of the connection between Killingsworth Street and Columbia Boulevard has been becoming reality. The old Columbia Boulevard opening, a two-lane underpass under the railroad tracks, is a bottleneck. This old T intersection is being deprecated (and looks like it's being closed completely) in favor of a new higher-capacity, split access to a short road which is apparently being called Columbia Parkway, which goes frm NE 89th Avenue and Killingsworth Street over to Columbia Boulevard at the Holiday Inn Airport.

The (SB) denotes the split access–Columbia Pkwy splits into separated Northbound lanes and Southbound lanes.

The old part of Columbia Blvd east of that new intersection (which is also fully signalled) appears headed to a destiny as a dead-end stub.

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