About FRA: Home Page

Urban Street concept for Franklin StreetView and comment on three concepts for the redesigned Franklin Street.

The Franklin Reclamation Authority (FRA) is a citizen based action group dedicated to redirecting transportation planning and land use development in Portland. Through education, collaboration, and advocacy FRA aspires to realize the promise of community based planning for our community. The FRA is working with transportation planning consultants, the City of Portland, stakeholders, and a citizen stewardship team to develop a comprehensive Context Sensitive Solution redevelopment plan to transform Franklin Arterial, the greatest pedestrian barrier on the Portland peninsula, into a vibrant mixed-use street that promotes economic development and balances the needs of automobiles, pedestrians, and bicycle travelers.

Above: Franklin Street in 1966 (left) and in 1970 (right).Photos courtesy of the Portland Press Herald.

Franklin Street in the news

The Portland Press Herald has created a web site containing its ongoing series of stories about Franklin Street’s past and future. The site includes multimedia features, including an excellent audio slideshow about the destroyed Franklin Street neighborhoods that were bulldozed to make way for the planned expressway in the late 1960s and a slideshow of side-by-side photos taken in 1924 and in 2009.

Get involved!

Franklin Street Arterial Group Meetings are held in City Hall. The public is welcomed to attend.Franklin Arterial The Mission of the FRA is to restore and enhance safety, viability, and sustainability for pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists, and land use development along the Franklin corridor and adjoining areas.

Our Vision Franklin Street will be a beautiful, vibrant, urban street in the center of new neighborhood. It will:

  • a multi-way boulevard connecting the Waterfront to Back Cove that serves autos, existing and future transit, pedestrians, and cyclists equally.
  • be designed for lower speeds, accomodate pedestrian and cyclists safety, and lower exhaust levels.
  • provide a positive gateway experience, connect historic neighborhoods, reconnect the street grid, provide for human scale, pedestrian oriented development, and allow for buildings oriented to the street.
  • be redesigned to maximize the use of space, and provide an environmentally friendly framework for mixed use development and housing.
  • provide connections to multi-use trails, access to greenspace, opportunities for community gardens, add land to Lincoln Park, and providefor trees and public art.

In summary, redesign of Franklin Arterial will reverse outdated planning assumptions and reintegrate the Portland Peninsula.