Year: 2022

Pondering Portland’s puddles

The so-called ‘Blumenauer Lake’ (after it had dried up a bit). (Photo: Taylor Griggs/BikePortland)

After months of desert-dry weather, the tide has turned in Portland and we got a few big soakings in the last few weeks. We need the rain, but for people who bike around the city, wet weather comes with caveats.

There’s a lot you can do to keep relatively comfortable while biking in the rain. For the first time in all my years as an Oregonian I actually have the gear needed to comfortably exist outside in the winter (thanks to Portland-based Showers Pass for suiting me up, and stay tuned for a product review!). Good outerwear, shoes and bike fenders go a long way to make riding in the rain more palatable. But even the best rain outfit can’t solve every puddle problem.

(Source: PBOT)

Bikeway maintenance proves tricky enough for the city to keep up with throughout the whole year. In the fall and winter, however, conditions get really rough. Portland’s stunning autumn leaves give our streets a beautiful yellow and orange carpet, but when big fall rainstorms meet piles of leaves, things can get messy. The debris clogs up the storm drains, forming puddles on the sides of the street – often right where the bike lanes are.

The Portland Bureau of Transportation is in charge of cleaning storm drains, but with everything else the maintenance crew is tasked to do this important job can get pushed to the side. Therefore, PBOT relies on community volunteers to keep storm drains clean. They even have a program encouraging Portlanders to “adopt a storm drain” because while “PBOT crews work hard to keep more than 58,000 storm drains clear,” they can’t get to them all.

“If drains get clogged with fallen leaves and other debris, it can lead to dangerous ponding along city streets and intersections. That’s why we’re asking Portlanders to adopt storm drains in their neighborhoods to keep them free and clear of leaves,” a recent PBOT news release states.

I am happy to help out and volunteer to make our bike lanes usable, but it bears mentioning that people who drive cars are not expected to spend time and energy fixing the streets so they can drive on them.

There are several areas around the city that are known to pool up during winter. One place that’s gained notoriety this fall is the bike lane on the northeast side of the new carfree Blumenauer Bridge in the Lloyd District. Despite all the fancy new bike infrastructure adjacent to the bridge, there’s a spot in the bike lane that has been a magnet for water to pool up at quite impressive depths (leading some people to name it ‘Lake Blumenauer’).

It’s ironic to see this beautiful new bridge and infrastructure tarnished by something as seemingly small as leaves stuck in the storm drains. But it just shows what can happen when routine maintenance is overlooked.

So, what can we do? It may be worth asking why PBOT is in charge of all the storm drains when the Bureau of Environmental Services (BES) handles other storm runoff and has had the capacity to create a truly remarkable residential rain garden program. On a Pedalpalooza ride this summer, PBOT and BES staffers admitted the bureaus haven’t always been able to work together to fix problems like this.

Something’s gotta’ give. Bikeway maintenance is a persistent problem in Portland and a sure way to throw cold water on our cycling goals is to make people ride through puddles of it.

For more puddle content, don’t miss our video of Jonathan riding through the atmospheric river!

With Hardesty out, who will take reins of PBOT?

After last night’s political earthquake, one of the many questions we are curious about is: Which city commissioner will oversee the bureau of transportation?

Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty has been in charge of PBOT since January 2020 when Mayor Ted Wheeler plopped the responsibility on her lap despite her showing no prior interest in managing the 800 person, $570 million bureau. Given that PBOT is considered one of the most intractable bureaus, giving it to a newcomer like Rene Gonzalez, who beat Hardesty in a decisive victory last night, is not likely.

The way Portland’s government works now, the mayor has sole discretion to assign bureaus to himself and the other four city commissioners. In a “weak mayor” system, it’s one of the position’s major sources of power. But with the passage of charter reform last night, that’s all set to change.

So Mayor Ted Wheeler will not wait until the reforms go into effect in 2024. According to a statement he made just a few minutes ago, Wheeler will start to shake things up right away. When it comes to bureau assignments, he said today that, “I will start knocking down the dysfunctional siloed bureaus that are a plague of our outdated commission form of city government.”

More specifically, he plans to group bureaus by “service area.” That’s a term the city doesn’t really use anymore, but it refers to a way bureaus were traditionally organized together. The five service areas (one for each commissioner) are: Public Safety; Public Utilities; Legislative, Administrative, and Support; Parks, Recreation and Culture; and Transportation and Parking. Over the years, those categories have disappeared (even stickers that referenced them have been removed from the city hall office doors) as the number of bureaus has expanded and they were assigned to achieve political instead of administrative goals.

Now service areas are coming back thanks to charter reform. Here’s how a city hall insider explained it to me this morning:

“There’s an implicit working assumption in the mayor’s office that the city administrator [a new position coming in 2024 that will oversee all bureaus] will have deputies on their staff, like assistant city managers, that will each have a portfolio,” the person shared. And those portfolios would be based on the five service areas.

This sounds good in theory, but it’s more complicated in practice.

There are currently 23 bureaus split between the mayor and four commissioners, and not all of them fit neatly into a service area. So decisions will have to be made not just how each bureau is categorized but who gets put in charge of it. Workload also complicates things. It might make sense from a policy perspective to put the bureaus of water, environmental services, and transportation into one service area — but no one commissioner can handle the demands of all three.

Which brings us back to who will be in charge of transportation come January.

My money is on Commissioner Mingus Mapps.

When I interviewed Mapps two years ago, he had a lot to say about the topic. I’ve also heard he lobbied to get PBOT when he first took office in 2021. Since then, there have been rumors that Mapps wants to be mayor. His deep bench of wealthy backers and his plan (now scrapped) to counter the charter reform proposal with one that would have a stronger mayor, have only furthered that perception.

One city hall source I spoke to today said their money is also on Mapps as PBOT commissioner. “Mapps should get the assignment. He wants to be mayor. And I think anybody who wants to be mayor should be tasked with a complex bureau.”

If he does get the assignment, sources say his current senior policy advisory, Shannon Carney, would be PBOT liaison. Carney’s resume includes a stint at transit agency King County Metro in Seattle, where she managed a marketing program that aimed to get people out of cars.

What type of PBOT leader would Mapps be? That’s hard to say. Stay tuned as we try to figure this all out.

UPDATE, 11/1: Willamette Week has shared the latest info from City Hall about how each bureau might be clustered. According to their story, the transportation bureau would be in the “Utilities” service area along with the water and environmental services bureaus.

Opinion: Despite panic, I understand why activists deflate SUV tires

Last Thursday morning, one southeast Portland resident said she woke up to find the tires on her SUV were flat. A leaflet attached to her car door explained why the perpetrators did it: according to local news outlets KOIN and KGW, a climate activist group called the Tyre Extinguishers have claimed responsibility. (Some people also went on a big tire-deflating spree in northeast Portland in October, but no group claimed responsibility for that.)

The ‘Tyre Extinguishers’ (or TX for short) is the name given to an informal group of climate advocates around the world who have decided to engage in direct climate action by making it inconvenient to drive a gas-guzzling SUV. This group first sprouted up in Europe (hence the British spelling of ‘tire’) and has migrated to the USA in recent months. According to the group’s website, their mission is to “make it impossible to own a huge polluting 4×4 in the world’s urban areas.”

The woman whose SUV tires were deflated is named Nicole Driscoll, who told reporters she was in “emergency mode” when she realized her mode of transportation was temporarily out of commission until AAA could come fix the problem.

The way local media framed this story leaves out a lot of context in favor of sensationalism about crime.

“I support activism, but this is not the right way,” she said. “Don’t mess with people’s property.”

I understand that Driscoll was frustrated to have her morning derailed. But the way local media framed this story leaves out a lot of context in favor of sensationalism about crime. And at a time when the impacts of the climate crisis are becoming more and more dire for people around the world, especially in poorer countries with negligible greenhouse gas emissions compared to the United States, this framing is irresponsible and anti-intellectual. It takes for granted the idea that the comfort of middle class and wealthy people is the most important issue facing our society – the idea that got us into this crisis in the first place.

The reason people are turning to direct action tactics like letting the air out of neighborhood gas-guzzlers in the middle of the night is because nothing else has worked.

“Governments and politicians have failed to protect us from these huge vehicles,” the TX website states. “Politely asking and protesting for these things has failed. It’s time for action.”

Scientists have been politely but emphatically explaining the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions in order to stop apocalyptic global warming for the better part of 50 years. They showed politicians and corporate leaders the potential for an easier, more comfortable transition toward renewable energy that is now impossible due to the scale of what we’re dealing with. Even protesters like Greta Thunberg, who is essentially the face of the international climate movement, advocate for diplomacy over direct action. Still, people are so scared of a life without fossil fuels they will use any excuse to ignore these messages. At what point do climate activists get up off the ground and realize Lucy is not going to stop pulling the football out from under our feet?

In the Twitter replies to the KGW story about Driscoll’s SUV (the reporting seems most concerned with the well-being of the inanimate object), people are sounding the alarm about how protest tactics like these will only alienate people from the climate movement.

“This type of performance theater is a massive turnoff. Even to folks who may sympathize with their sentiment,” one person on Twitter said.

But this misunderstands the Tyre Extinguishers’ strategy. These activists are smart enough to know that the kind of people who become hysterical about things like this were never going to join them in the first place. If someone claims to care about and understand the magnitude of the climate crisis, their support for protesters should not be so fragile it could deflate as fast as the tires on a Jeep Grand Cherokee.

The goal of actions like this is not to gain popularity and attract more people to the climate movement. The goal make it so annoying to own a needlessly huge car or truck that people will just stop buying them.

While I think news coverage of these events should be far more nuanced, the protesters wanted the news to cover this. They’re not going out in the middle of the night to deflate people’s tires just for fun – they’re obviously trying to make a point.

“People are suffering in far worse ways than inconvenience. How could you possibly complain about being late to work under these circumstances?

Other people make the point that individuals aren’t responsible for the climate crisis and protesters should “go after the private jets and military vehicles” instead. This is a common argument to defend oneself from criticism about living beyond a reasonable carbon footprint and is very rarely used in good faith. As we point out quite often on this site, personal transportation contributes massively to overall greenhouse gas emissions, in Oregon and across the country. Of course private jets and military vehicles should be the subjects of criticism, but who said we can’t walk and chew gum at the same time?

The biggest indictment of people who make so much hullabaloo over a situation like what happened to Driscoll is that the language they use shows a fundamental lack of understanding about the fact that other people are suffering in far worse ways than inconvenience. Here’s what I want to ask people worked into a tizzy about “property damage”: what about all the land currently being destroyed in floods, wildfires and droughts across the world? What about people who are dying in heat waves in India – or on Portland’s very own streets? What about the livelihoods of the children who have been killed by people driving ridiculously large SUVs and the parents who now must cope with that loss for the rest of their lives? How could you possibly complain about being late to work under these circumstances?

Oh, and one quick tip: if you wake up to find your SUV out of commission, ask someone who relies on active transportation to help you figure out a new route to work. I assure you that anyone who rides the bus or bikes to get around the city has dealt with their share of annoyances preventing them from getting where they need to be on time.

I do not condone property damage. But we need to think about the crimes perpetrated against all of humanity, especially the most vulnerable among us, by the fossil fuel industry and people who have bought into it. I acknowledge that having your morning disrupted is inconvenient, but Al Gore told you this was going to be inconvenient almost 20 years ago. We’ve waited far too long to be arguing about civility.

Portlanders vote resoundingly for change

Portland City Hall in 2008. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

Tuesday was a very big night for Portland.

On a night when Republicans and conservative causes overall did much worse than most pundits expected, incumbent City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty is almost sure to lose her seat on Portland City Council to newcomer Rene Gonzalez and the charter reform measure breezed to victory.

Here’s how things shaked out (so far):

City Councilor-elect Rene Gonzalez. (Photo: Rene Gonzalez campaign)

Portland City Council: Hardesty supporters breathed a big sigh of relief in the primary back in May when she did better than expected. But her campaign failed to increase its support since then and voters sent a clear signal last night that it’s time for change. As of this morning, Rene Gonzalez holds a commanding lead of nearly 11 points. During his campaign, Gonzalez promised to be much tougher on crime — including enforcing laws against people who live on the street — and he successfully painted Hardesty as an “ideologically driven,” polarizing force in City Hall.

A business owner and lawyer with no political experience, Gonzalez built a broad coalition of support that included endorsements from the Portland Police Association, Smart Growth America, and the Willamette Week. This was the only city council race on the ballot; and with homelessness, crime, and a sense that the City of Portland has been ineffective in tackling big problems, votes against Hardesty can be largely be seen as a referendum on the status quo.

Charter Reform (Measure 26-228): Another sign that Portlanders want big changes was that the hotly debated charter reform measure passed easily with 56% of the vote. If you’ve missed our extensive coverage, here’s a brief summary of what this means: Portland will ditch its century-old form of government for something totally new. We will expand the number of city councilors from five to 12, with three representatives from four geographic districts. A new city administrator position will be created and that person will handle day-to-day operations of the city and will oversee the various bureaus. The mayor will oversee the administrator, will be able to introduce laws, and will have a tie-breaking on council. Ranked choice voting will replace our current single vote system.

The first election with these changes in place will happen in November 2024. For more context on what this change means, check out this article from Rose City Reform author and charter reform proponent Maja Harris.

The win for charter reform came despite a vast effort to defeat it — an effort strongly supported by Rene Gonzalez and Commissioner Mingus Mapps. Mapps had said he’d introduce an alternative version, but said before last night’s vote that he’d respect the outcome. With such a clear mandate for change, Mapps and councilor-elect Gonzalez might feel like they have to reconsider their views on this and other policies because they’ll face fresh elections in just two years.

Governor: Democrat Tina Kotek holds just a 1 point lead over Republican Christine Drazan. This one is going to be a nail-biter, but I’ve seen some reliable pundits say the remaining votes favor Kotek. UPDATE: Race has been called by The Oregonian for Kotek.

Multnomah County Chair: Incumbent Jessica Vega Pederson has received 52% of the vote and has a six point lead over challenger Sharon Meieran.

How are you feeling after last night?

New freight (and bike!) bridge considered north of St. Johns

“Any such bridge would also include separated pedestrian and bicycle facilities.”

– Hannah Schafer, PBOT

Initial talks have begun on what could be a very exciting project: A new crossing of the Willamette River north of the St. Johns Bridge between Highway 30 and the Rivergate Industrial District.

At a recent meeting of the Portland’s Freight Advisory Committee, we heard an update about the 2040 Freight Plan. This is a major effort from the Portland Bureau of Transportation to update the city’s Freight Master Plan that was last updated in 2006. On a slide with a list of projects that would be late additions to an action list, I saw an item that read: “Conduct a study of a freight-only or freight-priority bridge over the Willamette River from Highway 30 to Rivergate.”

Why would this bridge be a such a big deal? Let me count the ways…

First, the state’s main justification for not putting bike lanes on the St. Johns Bridge is that they need all the space for large freight trucks. A new bridge would remove that excuse from their quiver. But even larger than that, in terms of impacts to Portlanders lives, is if we had a way to get trucks off the St. Johns Bridge it would remove thousands of toxic, dangerous vehicles from neighborhoods along the Lombard and Columbia corridors. People have fought for decades to tame truck traffic in St. Johns. Removing it from those streets would also free up space for more things like buses, bike lanes, or even light rail.

Then there’s the lesser important, but selfish dream I’ve held for years: A better cycling connection between Kelley Point Park and Sauvie Island that would remove (most of) Highway 30 from the route. This would push an already nice route into world-class territory.

Eager to know more about this, I asked our friends at PBOT to share more about it.

Slide from Westside Multimodal Improvement Study presentation.

Turns out this idea has been bouncing around since at least 2007 when it was mentioned in PBOT’s Transportation System Plan (TSP) as a “future study.” For some reason however, the study didn’t make it into the recent TSP update in 2018. Despite that, PBOT Interim Communications Director Hannah Schafer assured me that, “There is still strong community desire,” for the project. She pointed to public feedback heard during PBOT’s Columbia Lombard Mobility Corridor and North Portland in Motion planning processes. Even freight advocates have expressed concerns about the current trucking routes over the St. Johns Bridge during 2040 Freight Plan discussions.

Another place this project is being discussed is in the Westside Multimodal Improvements Study, a process we covered back in June. Led by Metro and Oregon Department of Transportation, this study is establishing priorities for investment along the Highway 26 corridor in Washington County. One of their specific goals is to speed up trucks carrying freight from Beaverton and Hillsboro to the Portland Airport. (Given the folks around the table, it’s likely this could be the place where talks of a new “Westside Bypass” freeway takes root once again, but I digress.)

“Based on all this, we think it is appropriate to recommend [the new bridge idea] be included in 2040 Freight and the TSP as a future study,” Schafer shared in an email today.

Schafer also wanted me to know that Portland would not support a bridge that serves standard car traffic and that the idea would be for a new bridge to focus solely on moving goods. That’s why they plan to frame any talk of a new bridge around “freight-only” or “freight-priority.” This could mean the bridge would require special permits for use, or it could have tolls for non-truck users, truck-only lanes, and so on. Those things would need to be studied in more detail.

One very pleasing thing Schafer wrote about a potential bridge was that, “Any such bridge would also include separated pedestrian and bicycle facilities, so it would not be truly ‘freight-only’ when you consider uses outside the curb-to-curb area.”

Imagine a situation where bicycle riders and freight haulers are considered default users of a major new bridge and car users have to organize and advocate to justify access for their vehicles!

Suffice it to say I’m eager for this idea to gain a toehold in local funding and planning conversations.

It’s election day. What’s on your mind?

The big day is here. You have until 8:00 pm tonight to get your ballot into an official drop site. After that, all you can do is hope and pray that your candidates and issues come out on top.

I’ll admit we haven’t done as much political coverage as I wanted to do this time around. One reason is that transportation isn’t even on the radar of candidates this time around, which is unfortunate given its vast role in many parts of our lives. I hope you were able to find the information you needed to make informed choices from other sources.

I’m curious… what are you feeling and thinking as we head into what is likely to be a very wild news cycle?

No, PBOT did not permit a car photo shoot on the carfree Blumenauer Bridge

Over the weekend someone sent me an interesting Instagram post. It showed a custom car parked on the Blumenauer Bridge. It was a striking image, not just because of the racey sports car, but because cars aren’t allowed on that bridge.

I wanted to have some fun with however posted the photos, and I figured folks would want to know about someone posing a car on the sacred space of our beloved new bridge, so I reposted the images and a link to the original IG post. The photos were taken by a photographer who goes by The House Ophidian on IG. The car was built by someone named Casey, whose Casey’s Garage IG account has over 47,000 followers.

Not surprisingly, some folks who follow BikePortland left some comments on the post that expressed their anger. I say it’s no surprise because carfree infrastructure has somewhat of a sacred space in the hearts of people who are forced to navigate scary, car-dominated spaces every trip they take. In some ways, the deck of that bridge is hallowed ground.

This exchange summed up these feelings:

fritglass: “I cannot belive [sic] people like that exist. What terrible lives they must have to be so mad over a photo of a car.”

– reply by kevkevshield: “It’s not “a photo of a car” it’s a car parked on a bridge that was specifically made for bicyclists and pedestrians. It’s insulting and infuriating how entitled motorists are with their private property.”

The folks responsible for the post implied they received permission to take the photos. Oddly, they also implied that BikePortland gave them that permission. “Thanks @bikeportland for all the support in capturing this photo,” said the post after it was edited following a burst of negative comments. I have no idea why these folks are saying we had anything to do with their stunt. It’s misleading and 100% untrue. I reached out to the photographer and to Casey to learn more about them to share in this post but never heard back.

I personally don’t have a beef with this — especially since it was taken before the bridge was officially open to the public (note the lack of pavement markings). Portland has a big car culture that shares many of the same traits are our bike culture. People love to trick out their cars, take photos of them, drive them together, race them. They love cars! And that’s fine with me (as long as they drive safely of course). And for what it’s worth, Casey seemed like an OK person in a short exchange of DMs I had with them.

Oh, and if you’re curious whether or not PBOT permitted the photos, I followed up with them on Monday. They say they did not give these folks a permit. So, either the people who arranged this got permission from construction crews on the ground. Or they’re lying.

I was hopeful they’d do a little Q & A with me because I think this episode was a potential bridge (ha!) to better relations between bike and car lovers. Or at least an opportunity for better understanding. And who wouldn’t want that? Having car lovers and bike lovers get even more mad at each other is something I have zero interest in being a part of.

Portland to take part in international World Day of Remembrance for traffic victims

An image from the 2016 WDoR commemoration in Portland, where activists displayed hundreds of pairs of shoes to represent victims of traffic violence. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

“There’s just too much. Too much serious injury. Too much death.”

-Cathy Tuttle, Bike Loud PDX

Portlanders are planning a local event for the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims (WDoR). At 1:00 pm on November 20th, participants will gather at the intersection of SE 122nd Ave and SE Powell Blvd, where they’ll hear from speakers including the family members of people who have been killed in traffic crashes. Portland Bureau of Transportation Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty will also speak at the event.

Event participants will ask for action from local policymakers and transportation agencies to do more to prevent these largely preventable tragedies that have already claimed the lives of 46 Portlanders this year.

Members of local transportation groups The Street Trust, Oregon Walks, Bike Loud PDX and Oregon Families for Safe Streets are working together to organize this event with help from the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s Vision Zero team. The three main organizers are Bike Loud board member Cathy Tuttle, The Street Trust’s Educational Director Lindsay Huber and local safe streets advocate Michelle DuBarry, who began her transportation safety activism after her young son Seamus was killed in a traffic crash in 2010.

There have been WDoR events in Portland in the past – in fact, three years ago Mayor Ted Wheeler officially designated November 17th World Day of Remembrance after hearing from activists like DuBarry who have a personal experience with traffic violence. (Organizers of this year’s event have chosen to follow the international WDoR community’s lead and observe it on November 20th.)

But Tuttle said she thinks Portlanders could seize on the opportunity to commemorate WDoR more than they have in the past. Tuttle said that when she worked as a safe streets advocate in Seattle, she valued the day as a chance to organize and create more awareness about traffic fatalities and how to prevent them.

The logo for the international World Day of Remembrance event. (Photo: WDoR)

The main ask from advocates at this event will be directed at the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), which owns and operates many of the most dangerous arterial streets in Portland. Seamus DuBarry was killed on ODOT-owned N Lombard St in 2010, and Sarah Pliner was killed by a truck driver while trying to bike across ODOT’s SE Powell Blvd in October, sparking a local reckoning about street ownership and how to make sure vulnerable road users are safe.

Many advocates want ODOT to make a jurisdictional transfer of its streets to PBOT ownership so the city can operate these streets as neighborhood corridors that see a lot of bike and pedestrian traffic and not the state highways they were first built to be. But some people are looking at another way ODOT can make its Portland streets safer: by following its own guidelines.

ODOT has a Blueprint for Urban Design which outlines engineering standards and specifically emphasizes keeping vulnerable road users safe. On WDoR, organizers will ask ODOT to make sure they’re keeping their streets up to their own standards.

“Nearly half of all Portland fatalities happen on a very few ODOT streets and [following their Blueprint for Urban Design] will save lives,” Tuttle wrote in an email to BikePortland about the event.

Tuttle pointed out that activists aren’t only concerned with ODOT. They also want to hold the Portland’s transportation bureau responsible for their own part in local fatalities.

“Frankly, people and their families who suffer after traffic violence don’t give a damn who owns the road,” Tuttle said.

While Powell is owned by ODOT, 122nd Ave is another high-crash corridor that’s operated by PBOT. Meeting at the intersection of both of these large, car-dominated streets will give people an opportunity to see how dangerous it is for people walking and biking in east Portland and also to take a look at some of the projects ODOT and PBOT have planned to make the area safer.

Event organizers hope this can be an impetus for change.

“There’s just too much. Too much serious injury. Too much death,” Tuttle wrote to BikePortland. “Death that upends the lives of the victims, their friends and families, the witnesses, the first responders, the circles grow and grow of death and life-altering injury that we’ve decided is a reasonable price to pay for driving cars without consequences…we have chosen not to invest in a reliable 24/7 transit system, bike share network, sidewalk network, long distance fully protected bike network.”

There are WDoR events happening in cities across the world. You can find out more about events in the United States on the Vision Zero website. Stay tuned for coverage from Portland’s event.

Get a sneak peek at ODOT’s latest designs for I-5 Rose Quarter project

A revised environmental assessment (EA) for the I-5 Rose Quarter project is due to be released next week. And based on an early look from activists with No More Freeways — who received a copy of the plans through a public records request — the project’s surface street design proposals are likely to raise many eyebrows.

This new EA is part of the project’s National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process that the Oregon Department of Transportation must go through in order to get federal approval. To refresh your memory, the Federal Highway Administration rescinded their “finding of no significant impact” for the project back in January. This was in large part due to the addition of a major project element — the highway cover — that was added to the plans through a major compromise brokered by Oregon Governor Kate Brown. The new “Hybrid 3” concept gave ODOT an opportunity to refine their plans for how the freeway elements of the project connect to the surface streets.

No More Freeways co-founder Joe Cortright tells BikePortland the EA gives us our first look at several changes that, “make things worse for bikes and pedestrians in many ways.”

Initial proposal on the left, the “Hybrid 3” proposal on the right. (View shows NE Weidler at the top. Freeway lanes are light grey. Ramps and surface streets are black.) Source: ODOT

ODOT plan drawings show the southbound I-5 off-ramp making a u-turn and exiting directly onto N Williams Ave (above right). This new off-ramp would add to an already dangerous intersection that includes the southbound I-5 on-ramp from NE Wheeler Ave and Ramsay Way. It’s worth noting that N Williams is one of the busiest cycling corridors in the city and riders will now have to cross over two freeway ramps back-to-back. This seems like it would also make for perilous conditions for people walking back onto surface streets after large events at the nearby Moda Center and Memorial Coliseum venues.

The new proposed design would keep the existing I-5 southbound on-ramp at Ramsay (instead of from Weidler, like in the “before” image above left). The bike lane on Williams between Ramsay and Weidler be moved all the way to the right side of the street. This means northbound bicycle traffic on Williams will face two right-turn lanes at Weidler. Thankfully the plans call for a bike lane signal phase, but crossing in front of two right turn lanes is always stressful.

On a related note, on the east side of I-5, ODOT plans to add another right turn lane to the NE Weidler off-ramp. This means eastbound bicycle traffic on Weidler (which is the new route for the Green Loop) will cross over two turn lanes instead of one.

“X” marks locations where Cortright says ODOT will remove painted crosswalks.
Yellow markings show where Cortright suspects ODOT will shave corners to widen turn radii for drivers.
Green arrows show route drivers will take to go from I-5 southbound to Moda Center.
(Source: ODOT, with additional markings from No More Freeways)

In addition to these surface street concerns, Cortright worries moving this off-ramp just creates more out-of-direction travel for car and truck drivers, and ultimately creates more opportunities for conflicts with other users due to additional turns required to access surface street routes. This is most clearly evident in the route drivers would take to reach the Moda Center parking facility. From the plans, it appears drivers using the southbound I-5 ramp would then go north on Williams, drive two blocks to Broadway then go west to Vancouver to take another left to reach the parking garage.

Drawings in the new EA also make it official that the Clackamas Overcrossing — a carfree bridge that would have gone between Clackamas Street in the Lloyd Center with Ramsay Way near Moda Center — is no longer on the table. (Note that many bike advocates felt it was nothing more than a greenwashing effort to begin with and there isn’t cycling demand at that alignment).

Cortright says No More Freeways has found shaved corners with wider turn radii at over a dozen locations and the closure of two crosswalks (“which ironically connect to the widely-ballyhooed covers” he points out).

The public comment period on the new EA will begin November 15th through January 4th (2023). There will also be a virtual public hearing on December 14th. Save these dates if you want to influence this project.

Another opportunity will come as staff from ODOT and PBOT share a presentation about this project at tomorrow’s (Tuesday, 11/8) PBOT Bicycle Advisory Committee meeting.

Below is a PDF of the full plan drawing obtained by No More Freeways through an ODOT public records request:

Portland seeks two federal grants to mitigate freight truck impacts

If truck operators could reserve space at the curb we might be able to avoid this. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

The Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) is seeking $2 million from the federal government to look into ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the freight industry, and the results could be helpful for more than just transportation decarbonization goals. 

This comes at a time when freight truck reform has the spotlight from many Portland transportation advocates, who are questioning the influence the freight lobby has on active transportation policies locally and statewide. An infusion of federal money could help propel advocates to rethink the future of the city’s trucking industry and look into zero-emissions, multimodal freight options to mitigate freight’s safety and climate impacts. 

This freight program is one of two transportation decarbonization projects PBOT wants to receive federal funding for. The other one (which City Council spent the majority of its time discussing last week) is intended to help the city develop a pole-mounted electric car charging network in the right of way. 

The freight decarbonization project is more novel for PBOT. This grant is managed through the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) program, which is included in the Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act (IIJA) and for projects “focused on advanced smart city or community technologies and systems in a variety of communities to improve transportation efficiency and safety.”

This grant application goes along with the community response to Portland’s freight system, which PBOT has sought out as they plan the 2040 Freight Plan, an update of the Freight Master Plan adopted in 2006. This plan is intended to guide PBOT’s strategy to support “safe, equitable, efficient, and sustainable urban freight movement in Portland.” 

In July, PBOT released a report outlining what planners found during an outreach process for the 2040 Freight Plan. They went to various advisory committees, like the bicycle and pedestrian advisory committees, and issued a survey for public input. 

According to that report, members of the advisory groups and the public alike agree that the freight industry’s environmental and safety impacts are the most pressing issues for PBOT to tackle. There is widespread concern about how freight impact street access in the city and makes it more difficult and dangerous to walk or ride a bike, especially in residential areas. 

If approved, PBOT will use $2 million in funding over 18 months to “test strategies to reduce freight emissions.” One notable idea is a curb reservation system to manage truck traffic from freight deliveries.

A 2019 Streetsblog article about curb space rental pilot programs in Boston, Minneapolis and Bellevue refers to curb space as the “Wild West of neighborhood transportation, a 24-hour battle pitting delivery vans, big trucks serving the internet economy and app-based taxis like Uber and Lyft against entitled car owners as they all seek a narrow slice of asphalt.” A curb rental system could lead to less bike lane obstructions.

PBOT has been interested in some type of curb zone management system for several years now. In 2019 PBOT managers met with representatives from Curb Flow, a company that uses “computer vision” to analyze curb space, then handles reservations between truck company operators and local government agencies.

During his presentation on the SMART grant, PBOT’s Jacob Sherman mentioned e-trikes as a viable delivery vehicle that would qualify for zero emission loading zone status. Local companies like B-Line trikes have shown the efficacy e-trikes have as delivery vehicles that don’t spew greenhouse gas and clog up valuable street space, so it’s good they’re getting PBOT recognition. 

We’ll find out about the status of these grants early next year.

Comment of the Week: All eyes on SE Gladstone

Comment of the Week

Welcome to the Comment of the Week, where we highlight good comments in order to inspire more of them. You can help us choose our next one by replying with “comment of the week” to any comment you think deserves recognition. Please note: These selections are not endorsements.

Comment of the Week

Last week, the Portland Bureau of Transportation released plans to more appropriately route truck traffic accessing the Union Pacific Annex Yard, just east of the Brooklyn neighborhood. The rerouting comes in response to the deadly crash last month involving a semi-truck at 26th and Powell.

The comments in response to our story illustrate one of the strengths of the BikePortland comment section: knowledgeable readers commenting about what they know first-hand. I spent almost an hour with a satellite map following along.

Without wanting to detract from the seriousness of the problem, much of my interest came from the fact that I used to spend a fair amount of time in this neighborhood over a decade ago, but I haven’t visited it in a long time. So Andrew’s comment pulled me back into the area. Another commenter had me trying to figure out his route to the Winterhaven School. And entrance and egress to the rail yard consumed me for several minutes.

In another words, Andrew’s comment, and the thread of responses it initiated, were interesting.

Here is what Andrew wrote:

Insane that they don’t mention anything about how Gladstone between the Annex and 26th is a Safe Route to School and a city bikeway. The city doing anything other than closing the annex completely is a total abandonment of safety for every vulnerable road user. Elementary students from the Brooklyn Neighborhood use Gladstone to get to school at Grout, and it’s the only bikeway going southeast from Brooklyn as well.

The annex does not need to exist to fully serve the rail yard, they have full access to the entire regular freight transport network via Holgate and Harold entrances. They have plenty of other routes – and just elect not to take them due to how UP choses to run the yard operations. It’s insane to suggest that we just have to keep that area of the yard open – it doesn’t serve a single industrial client directly anymore and is only used to shortcut trucks onto Powell (via 26th and Gladstone).

Andrew’s comment can be found under the original post. Thank you Andrew and everyone else for commenting.

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