The last year has seen a major cleanup on the Marine drive bike path below street level east of 122nd. The stripped and burned cars are gone. The large piles of trash are gone. The number of homeless cams are down to the single digits. Anyone who uses the path knows there are concrete barriers strategically placed. The largest of theses concrete barriers is east of 158th and the outflow overpass. It left a space wide enough for one person or one bike. This week the barrier is still there but it has been rotated so the path is open over its entire width. This is great news for group rides. I just wonder what this indicates. Do the powers that be think they have conquered the vehicle and camping issue? Are they preparing for some use of large equipment on the trail which will bock access? Stat tuned
Good to hear it’s somewhat better. Thanks for the update.
Do the powers that be think they have conquered the vehicle and camping issue?
Surely you jest about conquering the camping and vehicle issue. 
The city won’t even keep our school routes safe and clear. And Multnomah County continues to hand out free tents and tarps. This is from today:
*By Julia Silverman | The Oregonian/OregonLive
Almost exactly a year ago, Mayor Ted Wheeler issued an emergency order banning street camping along the city’s most commonly used routes to public and private elementary and middle schools.
A year later, the order remains in effect. But complaints about tent and RV campsites mushrooming around the edges of school properties and adjacent side streets are still flooding in, even as schools around the city prepare to reopen next week.
In the past two weeks, parents from Cleveland High School in Southeast Portland have been raising an especially loud ruckus over the encampments that sprung up over the summer, including along busy Powell Boulevard. Tents and RVs are sprinkled along the edges of a parking lot reserved for teachers and another cluster of tents sits along the path students take to reach the school’s track which sits half a mile from the main campus.
City maps show that numerous other public schools have either had nearby campsites cleared in recent weeks or the city has posted notices that a sweep is imminent, including near Lincoln High School and Vestal, Kelly, James John and Beach elementaries in the Portland Public Schools district, Menlo Park and Gilbert Park elementaries in the David Douglas district and Powell Butte Elementary in the Centennial district.
Parents in affected neighborhoods say it is the most frustrating of crusades — sometimes their repeated complaints get lost under the crush of reported campsites, or sometimes the city will take action, only to have campsites pop up again in a matter of days or weeks.
“There are a lot of people involved — at PPS, at the city — but no one communicates with one another about the grand plan,” said Cosette Posko, who has children at Cleveland and at Hosford Middle School. “Nothing is happening, nothing is being enforced, and I don’t know who the enforcers are supposed to be.”
Homeless residents, meanwhile, say they are exhausted by the constant uncertainty and unhappy with the shelter options they are supposed to be offered in exchange for moving. Advocates for the unhoused have said people may have their personal possessions lost or damaged during sweeps and might lose contact with a caseworker when they change locations. There are about 6,300 people experiencing houselessness in Multnomah County, according to a 2023 count, a 20% increase from last year.
“They know (a sweep) is coming,” a man who asked to be identified only as Tony said Tuesday, gesturing at a cluster of about 25 tents and RVs that lined Southeast Waverleigh Boulevard, where a jumble of belongings, trash and bike parts was spilling into the street. The street is a regular route for Cleveland students cutting between their school and the track. “It’s just really confusing to know where to go next. I feel for the people who have houses here and for the ones who don’t.”