Portland Will Reopen Catafalque Drive in Payson Park After Months-Long Traffic Safety Pilot
Motorists driving through Portland’s Payson Park will see normal traffic patterns restored soon. The city of Portland plans to reopen a heavily traveled stretch of Catafalque Drive on Nov. 16, ending a pilot closure that began in June, pressherald.com reported. That section of the road between the baseball field parking lot and Baxter Boulevard next to the playground has been off-limits to vehicle traffic while city staff analyzed how shutting it down affected neighborhood safety and local congestion.
The pilot project emerged from the city’s broader Vision Zero pedestrian safety initiative. Park visitors, local residents, and community organizations like the Friends of Payson Park had raised persistent concerns about motorists treating the park’s internal roads as a shortcut. Speed limits across the park are posted at 15 mph, but traffic data gathered by the city paints a stark picture of everyday driving habits.
Study Reveals Widespread Speeding on Park Roads
A speed study conducted in March revealed that 97% of drivers exceeded the speed limit on Arboretum Road, where vehicles enter the park from Ocean Avenue, clocking an average speed of 24 mph. WMTW noted that the 85th percentile of speed on Arboretum Road reached 28 mph during the study, while 58% of drivers on Catafalque Drive exceeded the speed limit.
Payson Park is one of the city’s most active public spaces, featuring ball fields, tennis and pickleball courts, a basketball court, a disc golf course, and popular winter recreation areas. Its strategic location between Washington and Ocean avenues makes it an attractive bypass for drivers trying to dodge peak-hour bottlenecks on nearby arterial roads.
To combat the speeding, the city launched a series of physical interventions. Crews installed three speed tables with pedestrian crossings in June. Following further local requests for traffic-calming measures, road crews installed six additional speed humps across the park, placing two on Catafalque Drive, two on Inlet Road, and two on Arboretum Road, according to city officials cited by pressherald.com.
Mixed Public Reaction to the Park Closures
The changes did not win unanimous praise from the community. When a city of Portland social media post attempted to explain the project in early October after someone spray-painted “why” on a “Road Closed” sign, the comment section lit up with sharply divided opinions. Some residents complained that diverting traffic made congestion worse on surrounding streets, while others urged the city to make the closure permanent.
“Please keep it closed,” one commenter wrote in the pressherald.com report, noting that their family uses the park daily and that Catafalque Drive has historically functioned like an extension of an Interstate 295 on-and-off ramp.
City spokesperson Jessica Grondin explained that the Parks, Recreation and Facilities department always intended to reopen the road before the winter season sets in. However, because city staff have not yet finished analyzing the data collected during the test period, additional safety measures could be implemented later depending on the final review and available funding.
When the gates lift on Nov. 16, traffic will resume through the park alongside the newly installed speed humps and widened bike lanes, marking the end of a contentious summer-long experiment in urban traffic management.
