City of Eugene

Amount Appropriated?

$6.0M

FFID tracks stages 1–2 — stages 3–5 vary by agency, assistance type, and earmark structure.

Project Description

This project will connect the River Road and Santa Clara neighborhoods with a pedestrian and bicycle bridge that will enable more people to use active transportation for school, work, shopping and more. The bridge will connect half of the North Eugene High School service area to the high school and allow students to travel on quiet neighborhood streets and avoid streets that are on the Vision Zero \u201cHigh Crash Network.\u201d The City of Eugene has completed an engineering feasibility study for the pedestrian and bicycle bridge and is ready to move to the next phase of the project. \n\nUsing our region\u2019s Safe Routes to School (SRTS) Infrastructure Assessment Tool, this project ranks the highest of 340 projects reviewed. North Eugene High School serves the highest need student population of Eugene School District 4J's four traditional high schools in a community bisected by Beltline Highway. Approximately half of the students are cut off from a safe walking or biking route to school by the highway and must go through the highway interchange at River Road to get to school. A bridge over Beltline would connect the community to the north of the school so that hundreds of students would gain safe walking and biking routes to school on neighborhood streets, without the need to travel through several of Eugene\u2019s most dangerous intersections. \n\nThe community is investing $135 million in a rebuild of the high school as well as safety improvements to the high school's frontage street. The county, city and school district have already invested in SRTS infrastructure improvements in the area, including traffic calming, sidewalk infill, and safer crossings for Howard Elementary and Kelly Middle, and more investments are planned on River Road, Hunsaker, and Irving Road. Together with this planned bridge, these investments will increase mobility and access for students and their families.