Placing a check on Portland’s changing transportation system

Britt Masback ‘20

Thirty-four Portlanders died in traffic-related crashes in 2018. 18 were pedestrians or bikers. Photos courtesy of Ian Sane and Vertex Pages.

In a typical week, Stephen Gomez rides past the red steel gridirons of the Broadway Bridge 16 times, pedalling back and forth over the bridge’s multi-use path. Gomez, an avid bike rider of 20 years, enjoys the freedom of travelling on two wheels, and the countless health benefits that come with it. 

“Biking is incredibly convenient,” said Gomez. “I know when I get on my bike exactly when I'll get to my destination. I'm seeing and absorbing the city, the people, the buildings, the smells and it's good for my health.” 

Gomez, a local biking and community advocate, is one of the many Portlanders who depends on biking or walking to navigate Portland’s gridded streets. 

“I do a fair amount of biking. If one of my meetings is within the city of Portland, I'd say I bike 95% of the time,” he said. 

In a city with deep liberal roots, advancing modern transportation measures has long been considered a priority, and Portland has become synonymous with many of the country’s leading transportation initiatives, from leading the push for above-ground streetcar and light rail systems, to the long networks of bike paths that stand unparalleled elsewhere in the United States. 

But here’s the problem. While auto deaths in Portland have declined in recent years, biking and pedestrian deaths have risen to 20-year highs. With a rapidly expanding populace and uptick in auto congestion, forward progress has stagnated. 

Since 2014, there has been a 61% increase in the number of traffic-related fatalities, with more than half involving bikers or pedestrians. Despite a brief reprieve in 2018, with 34 traffic fatalities, this year has already seen 48, on track to be the highest number since 1997. 

As the city gears up for the 2020 election cycle, government officials, community advocates, and everyday citizens are poring over current transportation models, trying to find ways to help pedestrians and bike commuters like Gomez, while still meeting the glaring demands of auto consumers.

Portland as a Transportation Utopia 

Just 21 years ago, Dr. Bradshaw Hovey, Co-Director of the Urban Design Project, referred to Portland’s transportation offerings as a “utopia.” In a glowing 12-page chapter of his “Utopian Studies,” Hovey lists off the many transportation and city-planning methodologies that, in his mind, rank Portland a leader in “urban design control” and “mass transit development.” 

This history is a familiar one to Dr. Chris Monsere, a professor at Portland State University focusing on multimodal transportation safety. Monsere tracks patterns in transportation planning and sees Portland’s interconnected bike paths as a historical strength.

“What’s really different in Portland compared with a lot of cities is that there has been a long-range plan to have a connected network,” Monsere said. “[The goal is to] design a low-stress bikeway where there is more separation from traffic and more people would feel comfortable riding on it.”

Gomez is well aware of this work, and largely credits the bold political decisions of the 70s, 80s, and 90s with bolstering Portland’s innovative transportation network. He points to work during Mayor Neil Goldschmidt’s administration in the 1970’s, which took action to explore light rail, despite having received funding for a new Mount Hood Freeway. 

“And then Goldschmidt came into office, and he and a number of other people opposed that,” said Gomez. “Ultimately those monies were repurposed into what became Portland's light rail system.” 

Throughout the waning decades of the 20th century, Portland would spearhead a number of similar projects, repurposing major thoroughfares into public spaces and instituting some of the first ever taxes or levies on driving. As Gomez asserts, it’s these policies that have cemented Hovey’s claims of a transportation “utopia.” 

Safety Remains Elusive for Bikers and Pedestrians

Portland’s commanding position as the nation’s most bikeable city is unlikely to change anytime soon. However, despite enjoying the highest per capita bike rates nationally, these levels have largely plateaued as concerns around some safety and accessibility have increased. Gomez, a member of Metro government’s Transportation 2020 Taskforce, is acutely aware of these changes. 

In his view, Portland can continue to tout favorable bicycle mode share numbers — the percentage of travelers riding bikes — but says these numbers are not reflective of the need for forward progress, especially on matters of safety. 

“I think our mode share now hovers between six and seven percent, but it was at eight percent in 2009 and it's actually gone down a little bit. And the reason principally is because there's really no safe infrastructure in the city,” Gomez said.

Jillian Detweiler is the Executive Director of the Street Trust, a Portland-based nonprofit working to promote and improve public transit, walking, and bicycling conditions across Oregon. As an advocate for bikers and other multimodal travelers, Detweiler also worries about recent transportation trends. 

There aren’t enough separated spaces,” Detweiler said. Even on Portland’s greenways — streets with low traffic volume where bikers and pedestrians are “given priority,” but critically are not separated from traffic — Detweiler constantly sees incidents that endanger bikers and pedestrians. 

Just last week, Detweiler was wearing a reflective vest with flashing lights and was almost hit while biking. 

“I passed in front of a car that I assumed could see me—It was at a stop sign and I did not have a stop—and it pulled out and was within inches of hitting me,” said Detweiler.

These and other safety concerns led the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), in 2016, to initiate an intensive review and subsequent multi-year overhaul of current practices, all housed under “Vision Zero.” 

Matt Kelly is the Vision Zero Specialist for PBOT and Dylan Rivera is the Public Information officer at PBOT. “Vision Zero is a philosophy that says that every fatal and serious injury crash is preventable,” Dylan said.

The Vision Zero program not only aims to bring yearly fatalities to zero, but also aims to design streets that act as checks to all types of driving, including reckless driving, speeding and even impairment.

Equity is a Foundational Aspect of Safety

As with many local issues, a history of underinvestment in low-income communities and communities of color, as well as underlying forces of gentrification, have amplified existing safety concerns. This is something Monsere tracks through his research. 

“There’s a strong equity piece to transportation safety, because a lot of people that are transit dependent or more likely to walk are in these places where we have historically underinvested in infrastructure. And when you look at the pattern of crashes in cities, there is a correlation between infrastructure gaps and income,” he said.

Locally, 29 of 30 high crash corridors — streets with disportionate numbers of fatalities and serious injuries — are on the East Side and 23 of the 34 deadly crashes in 2018 were east of 82nd Avenue. Furthermore, 65% of Portland’s traffic deaths occur on just 8% of Portland streets. 

Detweiler, who is also a member of the Vision Zero Taskforce, is worried by these trends. 

“Today you are far more likely to be killed in the neighborhoods that have the highest concentrations of households with low incomes and people of color. That’s wrong,” said Detweiler. “We need to prioritize redesign of streets in those neighborhoods so that people aren’t killed.” 

This need stems from the fact that many of these streets currently embolden car drivers to speed and disregard traffic laws, with little protection for bikers and pedestrians. 

Monsere says these problems often arise from a lack of protected spaces. He points out that, for example, freeways are actually a model that separates cars from pedestrians and other “vulnerable users.” 

“Intersecting vehicles are kept separate from each other and there are no pedestrians. We get into problems with streets where we are trying to move large vehicles quickly and we have people forced to mix with them,” he said.

A Political System Stretched Thin

Uncovering the origins behind many of Portland’s current transportation problems is a complex issue. Some blame the overall increase in daily commuters as a driving force behind the recent safety issues. Others, however, see a cultural shift and a lack of political will as the real underlying causes. 

Jonathan Maus is the editor of BikePortland, a nationally syndicated biking blog covering cycling and transportation issues in the Portland region. His advocacy work often necessitates pressuring local government agencies like PBOT to take action. He considers the current stagnation to be a byproduct of government incrementalism — policies and talking points that accept driving as a sustainable way of life instead of working towards the needed reductions in auto travel. 

Maus thinks Portland needs to shut out the powerful voices, plan for growth and “actively discourage driving, which means make it less convenient.”

This is part of what he sees as a larger cultural fear attributed to transportation reform. He believes that people’s attachment to and dependence on cars limits our ability to openly welcome biking reforms. 

He says in that in Portland, there is a sense that, "we can't do anything for biking transit unless we throw a huge bone to the highway industrial complex.”

Monsere says the city needs political leaders who prioritize safety over efficiency.

“We need political leadership to say, ‘We are going to take away a traffic lane here because it makes it safer for people to cross, and if it slows down travel speeds and it takes you 5 minutes longer, then that’s the price we are willing to pay,’” said Monsere.

Solutions Exist but only with Significant Investment

Kelly and Rivera recognize the public’s angst and offer their data driven approach as a way to work towards PBOT’s goal of zero traffic deaths. 

“[The] Vision Zero philosophy suggests really a data driven approach,” said Kelly. “Someone might say it's really important to enforce traffic laws near the Moda center because 20,000 people go to basketball games there. But if ... more fatalities are happening on 120nd Avenue in East Portland, where there's inadequate street lighting or four to five lanes of traffic and high speed limits, then maybe we should actually prioritize there.” 

With speed a factor in 47% of fatal crashes, Vision Zero is aiming to reduce speeds citywide, especially in the high-traffic corridors that invite dangerous speeds. Kelly and Rivera view their work as being a multi-tiered approach.

“We have specific actions designed to address speeding, with more safety cameras, address speeding with a targeted enforcement and address dangerous behaviors with public education,” said Kelly.  

That last component, public awareness, was something they offered as an already successful model. They provided two key examples. First, the “Struck Campaign” which educated the community on the human toll of driving incidents.

“The struck campaign has communicated broadly with people across the whole Portland Metro area about the need to be more cautious behind the wheel, look out for others and not cause a fatal crash,” said Rivera. The work aimed to convey the individual responsibility of each driver, and detail the human cost of just a single failed choice. 

Second, the Twenty is Plenty campaign, which aimed to change the culture around speeds on small, neighborhood roads. PBOT created more than 7,000 yard signs and according to Rivera, couldn't keep them in stock due to their popularity. 

“We enabled community members to educate other community members about the need to drive more safely. And [that] was very helpful because it showed community support for this sort of action,” said Rivera.

Vizion Zero has also tackled issues of street design. Monsere identifies intersections as a leading hotspot for crashes and urges further development of these sites. 

“Trying to slow the turning speed of cars is probably the most important thing you can do for bikes at intersections,” said Monsere. In between intersections, he sees adding barriers as essential to protecting bikers and pedestrians, which would provide them “some buffer space and some vertical separation that gives bikes their own space.” 

In Detwieler’s work, she notes the importance of protected bikeways but believes the core issue is the width of roads, which is a large contributor to speeding. She wants PBOT and other agencies to reduce the number of lanes on high-crash corridors.

“I would be more aggressive in reducing the number of lanes on the high crash corridors. [Some streets are] just too wide and it tells people that you can go fast,” said Detwieler.

Kelly and Rivera stress that increasing the number of protected bike lanes need not come from increasing road size, but rather from taking advantage of current space.

“We're not going to wipe out half of the Arlene Schnitzer concert hall to make way for a bike lane or bus lane or a car lane for example,” Rivera points out. “So we know that we have to do more with the same roadway space we have.”

They point to a recent city council-led push for a network of protected bike lanes. These bikeways are being added through the reduction of street parking and other commonplace street features. 

“[These policies] will in some cases, reduce on street parking. And in some cases, reduce, general purpose travel lanes, to prioritize access for people biking” said Rivera. 

Looking Forward to the Ballot Box 

The path forward remains foggy, but community advocates like Detweiler, Maus and Gomez still have hope. 

For Maus, hope can be found in the current scheduled portfolio of PBOT projects. 

“There's definitely good news on the horizon because for the first time, the City of Portland actually has money for this stuff and lots of projects in progress,” Maus said.

When it comes to Metro’s plans for a potential transportation ballot measure in 2020, which would aim to fix many of these problems, there is wide agreement that the work will continue and the issues will remain the same, even if the gameboard is rapidly changing underneath.