Views looking east on N Killingsworth from N Montana. Markings appear to be from police investigation of the collision. (Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
Late Tuesday night around 10:30 pm Portland Police officers responded to a traffic collision on North Killingsworth street just west of I-5. When they arrived an adult male bicycle rider was on the ground near the intersection with N Minnesota suffering from what police say were “life-threatening” injuries.
The driver of the car that hit the bicycle rider was not at the scene and is currently on the loose as a hit-and-run suspect.
This section of Killingsworth has an unprotected, paint-only bike lane adjacent to a mix of parked cars and curb extensions. The speed limit is 20 mph and traffic volumes and speeds are relatively low. When I first heard about this crash I assume it happened at the Minnesota intersection, which is a de facto onramp to I-5 — which means many drivers make the turn onto it from Killingsworth without necessary caution.
I have since heard from a source who lives near the intersection that another nearby resident responded to the crash and stayed with the victim until the ambulance arrived. They say the impact was further west near N Montana and that, “The car accelerated and left his body about 100 feet from the original impact.” Based on markings from the investigation seen at the site this morning, the driver and bike rider were headed eastbound prior to the collision.
The police have opened an investigation and there’s a good chance one of the businesses adjacent to the collision has video footage. If you saw anything or have information to share, please email crimetips@portlandoregon.gov and reference case number 22-336821 .
Photos of the victim, John Baker. (From Facebook)
UPDATE: 12/23 at 9:54 am: The victim of this collision is John Baker, a 49-year old Portland resident. According to his adoptive sister, he was born in Panama and was adopted into an American family from a USAF base when he was 5. He owns a carpentry business, loves to surf, and is the grandson of the Chief of the Kuna Indians. His sister has made a Facebook page to provide updates. On that page she says he remains in the hospital and his mom has arrived to be with him. His injuries are serious and he is being stabilized, but the full extent of the collision’s impact is yet to be known. He has many broken bones and severe head and neck injuries. Please keep him and his family in your thoughts. I will update this post as I hear more.
— This guest opinion is by Bus Riders Unite! member and OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon Board Member Tristan Isaac.
We are in the midst of multiple economic crises and many working people struggle to recover in an economy ravaged by a global pandemic. Rent hikes and price gouging by greedy landlords and corporations are driving thousands into poverty, debt and homelessness. You could scarcely pick a worse time to raise prices on an essential service like public transportation. Yet that is exactly what TriMet aims to do, all while doing everything they can to avoid public scrutiny and accelerate the process with minimal outreach.
“The issues at TriMet stem largely from a lack of visionary leadership rather than a lack of resources. With a few exceptions, the Board of Directors is assembled of retirees, paper pushers and functionaries with dubious qualifications and problematic opinions.”
At a series of recent meetings, TriMet’s unelected Board of Directors, led by President Linda Simmons, pushed forward implementation of a 30-cent fare hike starting in 2024.They claim that without raising fares, the agency would be pushed into a budget deficit, leading to layoffs and service reductions. While such cost-cutting measures would be a disaster, it’s hard to ignore that, despite being flush with cash, TriMet has already been forced to implement unprecedented service reductions due to an operator shortage driven by decades of mismanagement and hostile labor relations.
TriMet claims to be concerned about a budget deficit but the real issue is a deficit of leadership. During the same meeting where they proposed a fare hike, the Board of Directors also attempted to torpedo the notion of a fareless system with a heavily-biased presentation. Several Board members also shared bizarre anecdotes to justify their skepticism of free public services like subsidized community college and engaged in alarmist rhetoric around unhoused people “taking over” a fareless transit system.
The truth is: Raising fares has nothing to do with finances or budgets and everything to do with who TriMet’s leadership thinks should and shouldn’t be allowed to ride transit. According to TriMet’s most recent budget, passenger revenue accounts for roughly seven percent of their total funding. Between administration, collection, maintenance and enforcement, the cost of collecting fares is barely covered by the fares themselves. Fares function less as a critical source of revenue and more as a convenient justification to control who is allowed to ride the transit system by criminalizing homelessness and poverty.
If TriMet’s administrators are truly concerned about the financial health of the agency, why limit the discussion only to that of fare hikes? TriMet, or rather the Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon, is a public agency charged with operating a public transit service established by legislative action more than fifty years ago. It is in effect a municipality unto itself with a ruling Board of Directors appointed by the governor. Within the district, these Directors have broad authority to pass laws and raise revenue from a variety of taxes, levies and bonds, many of which have yet to be tapped. Ad valorem property taxes, business license fees and a graduated net income tax where the highest earners pay more are all on the table.
Additionally, TriMet could enter into intergovernmental agreements with any of the numerous cities and counties that overlap with their district for additional funding. So far, they have yet to explore any such options, except in existing contracts where TriMet pays tens of millions of dollars to a dozen different law enforcement agencies to staff the Transit Police Division. TriMet’s government affairs division could also lobby the state legislature for an expanded mandate or additional funding. The last time TriMet turned out a major lobbying effort was–you guessed it–to protect the power of police to check fares, before reversing course years later in the face of public backlash against police officers following the murder of George Floyd.
From all of this, we can surmise that the issues at TriMet stem largely from a lack of visionary leadership rather than a lack of resources. With a few exceptions, the Board of Directors is assembled of retirees, paper pushers and functionaries with dubious qualifications and problematic opinions. Are they regular transit users? Hard to tell for sure, but not particularly likely. Agency bureaucrats are more interested in operating the district like a private corporation rather than a public agency. When riders are “customers,” forcing people to pay for service is only logical. However, TriMet is not a private corporation, it is a public agency almost entirely funded by tax dollars. We all pay for TriMet long before we ever step up to a ticket machine.
Rather than hiking fares on already cost-burdened families who rely on TriMet and continuing to use fare enforcement as a method of exclusion that criminalizes poverty and harms the most vulnerable, TriMet should take the bold step of making transit free for all users. Fareless transit would be a huge boon to our region’s climate goals, coaxing more people out of their cars and in the process easing traffic congestion, improving air quality and making streets safer for pedestrians. No fares also means faster boarding and better on-time performance, making the system more efficient and reliable. TriMet could also save tens of millions of dollars per year and alleviate the operator shortage by eliminating their fare administration divisions and putting dozens of reprobate fare inspectors to work doing something good, like driving buses.
It should be obvious that TriMet’s leadership lacks the radical ambition to implement such a bold initiative, which means it falls on us, the public, to hold them to account. TriMet will soon begin public outreach about their proposed fare hike and they need to hear from us loud and clear that we do not accept it. We need people to turn up to their board meetings and testify against fare hikes and for fareless transit. Be willing to take direct action against fare enforcement. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we need new leadership at TriMet. Two out of seven board members are currently approaching the end of their term and our new governor will need to replace them. Look to your community, we need transit advocates and riders who know and rely on the system to govern it. That could be your neighbor, your friend, your coworker or even yourself. Together, we can elevate bold new leaders, stop a fare hike and make fareless transit a reality.
What would change if all these were e-cars? (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
Oregon is the latest state to agree: gas cars are passé.
On Monday, members of the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission approved a rule to ban the sale of new gas-powered passenger vehicles by 2035. This comes after California regulators voted to phase out gas-powered cars in the state back in August with their Advanced Clean Cars (ACC) II Rule. This was a very big deal not only because of California’s internationally infamous car culture, but also because its government is so influential for other states across the country.
Slides from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality presentation on the new rule. (Source: Oregon DEQ)
The ZEV roadmap. (Source: Oregon DEQ)
According to the rule, zero-emissions vehicles include electric cars, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and plug-in hybrids (which have a longer-lasting battery than traditional hybrid cars). The rule grants that there will still be gas-powered vehicles on the road in 2035, however, since the ban is only on new car sales. People will still be able to drive and sell their old gas-powered cars on the used market. But as charging technology grows ubiquitous and electric cars become less expensive and are more readily available on the used market, electric car advocates hope their impact will be negligible.
Essentially, Oregon is simply adopting California’s ACC II Rule exactly. This rule “establishes a year-by-year roadmap” for zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) sales leading up to 2035. It’s going to take a lot of work to get Oregon to get there. According to the Oregon Department of Transportation, about 8% of new cars and trucks sold in Oregon were electric as of last July. The ACC II roadmap says that number is going to need to more than quadruple in less than four years for us to meet 2035 goals.
People addressed these concerns and more to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, cautioning that there isn’t enough charging infrastructure in rural areas and for people who live in multiunit dwellings. People are also concerned about the higher upfront cost to purchase electric or zero emissions cars.
While phasing out gas-powered engines will save our lungs and aid in the climate change battle, we’d be remiss to ignore the remaining drawbacks. E-cars are still cars whose oversized footprint takes up precious space from other road users (in addition to the environmental footprint of battery materials). They’re also heavier and quieter, and if you or a loved one is hit by a driver while walking or biking, it won’t give you much comfort to know their car runs on electricity instead of gas. And continued investment in cars means transportation agencies will justify spending billions on freeway expansion projects instead of allocating money toward things that are much more efficient, safe, affordable, and planet-friendly like electric bikes, better road designs, and so on. (But credit where it’s due: we might pass statewide e-bike rebate legislation next year!)
In the end, phasing out gas-powered cars will be nice for our lungs and bad for Big Oil; but it won’t solve all our problems and it could create new ones. Most environmental and transportation advocates agree there needs to be a balance between investment in electric cars and other modes of transportation. Hopefully government regulators will strike it.
Getting bags packed and ready to go. (Photo: Taylor Griggs/BikePortland)
If you’re involved in bike advocacy you’re probably familiar with the wistful yearning for the cycling infrastructure and policies of the great European cycling cities felt by many American activists. In Portland, our city planners and engineers have lifted design inspiration from cities in the Netherlands and Denmark. Now it’s my turn to see what all the fuss is about: After a stop at home (in Denver), I’m headed on a trip across the pond and I want to know what BikePortland want me to cover while I’m there.
When planning a trip to visit my sister Kylie, who is teaching English in Spain for a year, I got the idea to sneak in a few more locations to the trip and take BikePortland international for a few weeks to do some research and immersion. (I am very lucky to have a job where I can do this!) The result of my planning is a European itinerary that includes Brussels; the Netherlands (Utrecht and Amsterdam); Copenhagen; Malmö, Sweden; Paris and Spain (Bilbao and Barcelona). Other than a few scheduled plans, like to take a tour of some bike infrastructure in Paris that has been built under the new mayor and a date to join a “bicíbus” in Barcelona, my schedule is mostly open.
Jonathan, who did a similar trip in 2013, has urged me to not overbook in order to explore freely, but I feel like having a few more ideas and connections before I get there might be helpful.
Me (far left) at 17 in Hamburg, Germany.
I am lucky enough to have gone to Europe twice before: once in 2014, on a high school choir and orchestra trip to Germany with about 75 other American teenagers (I cringe to think of how we acted) and again in 2017, when I studied abroad in Prague for six months. I didn’t go into either of those trips thinking about city planning and transportation, but looking back, it’s clear that I was enchanted by the urban design even if I didn’t know it yet.
The most memorable day of our high school trip was when the teachers dropped us off in Hamburg’s city center and told us to fly free for six hours. My friends and I walked and walked, passing parks with incredibly upscale playgrounds, stopping at shops and cafes along the way. We thought we felt free because there were no adults watching our every move. But how much of that freedom was really because we could travel around an entire city on foot alone, without ever having to cross a six-lane stroad with cars zipping by at 45 miles per hour?
I doubt the chaperones on our high school trip to Germany could put into words exactly why they felt okay letting a group of 14-18 year old kids loose in Hamburg, but the built environment surely had something to do with it. I still think back on that day as one of the most magical of my life so far.
This time, I’m going into my traveling with a perspective I haven’t had before. After more than a year spending nearly every day thinking and writing about one aspect of transportation infrastructure or another — and learning about technical, wonky stuff like signal timing and parking-protected bike lanes — I look at and experience the world in a new way.
This new perspective involves me being an active participant in the cities I visit, and knowing these places didn’t just pop up out of nowhere, but were purposefully designed to function as they do. I’m sure I will be overcome with awe and disbelief at bike lanes in Utrecht, Amsterdam and Copenhagen, but I don’t want to mythologize these places so much that they seem entirely out of reach to us back home.
Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. These are just my pre-trip reflections: who knows what will happen along the way! But I would really like to know what BikePortland readers are the most interested in hearing about. Be as specific or broad as possible, please. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Traffic death memorial on 82nd Ave. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
Once again we are at the end of a year and once again I’m faced with the intense anger and frustration at another spate of road deaths. Four people have died while using Portland roads in the last seven days. Just since this past Thursday, three people were killed after being hit by a driver while walking.
According a statement by the Portland Police Bureau, the number of pedestrians killed on our roads has reached a 70-year high. (For some reason our tracker shows a much lower number than the PPB. I’m still working to figure out why.) So far this year they say we’ve had 66 total deaths, just one less than last year which was a 35-year high. Their numbers put the current toll of people killed while walking at 31 — a number we haven’t reached since 1952.
In 2021, the Portland Bureau of Transportation said the death toll was “devastating.” In 2020, they said the toll was “unusual” and “new and unexpected.” Now it feels like we’ve reached a new normal. It’s no longer possible for PBOT to excuse this rise in deaths as a fluke. Our collective inability to meet the challenge and respond to this crisis in a way that’s commensurate with its underlying causes is damning. If we want to end this madness, we must care about this issue — and the people who are dying — enough to act differently.
The PPB seems to care. But do their actions and policy choices reflect that?
“Despite advances in technology, infrastructure, education and awareness,” the PPB said, “We are still not solving the problem. And our traffic fatalities are at epidemic levels.” I’m glad the PPB used the word epidemic. Language matters, and advocates and policymakers should hold them and other agencies accountable to respond accordingly.
But “advances”? Really? If we’d truly made advances on those fronts, I wouldn’t be writing this piece.
Let’s take each “advance” the PPB says we’ve made.
Technology: I’m really curious what technology they’re referring to here. With obscenely large screens and so much illegal phone use, cars have more high-tech distractions in them than ever. That’s not an advance, that’s a red flag. Almost every piece of car technology benefits only drivers and their occupants. Is the PPB referring to smarter traffic signals perhaps? Those are no match for selfish, scofflaw drivers who ignore anything that gets in their way. Maybe police have better technology to track down speeders? That only matters when they actually use it. Take automated traffic cameras: Despite finally passing a law early this year (after PPB fought against it) that lets civilians take the place of police officers in the processing of citations, PBOT has not installed a single automated enforcement camera since fall 2021. Cameras are perhaps the single most effective piece of technology we have to battle unsafe roads and PBOT has so far failed to deliver on it. Since launching the program in 2016, there are only five intersections citywide that are monitored with speed cameras.
Infrastructure: Yes we are busy with road projects, but work itself isn’t progress. Time and time again we’ve made decisions on road designs based on what makes politics safe, not what makes people safe. Our infrastructure is still way too imbalanced because PBOT and ODOT and too many Portlanders are reluctant to change the status quo. Why? Because they are afraid to make it less convenient to drive everywhere all the time. Similar to how some Portlanders say they care about affordable housing but fight new apartments in their neighborhood; far too many people in this town say they care about safe streets only to oppose changes that would make them possible.
Far too many of Portland’s powerful policymakers are incrementalists who talk a big game but shirk in the moments that matter. Like I wrote two years ago, we will never have safe streets if we continue to make safe choices.
Education and awareness: Just about a year ago, the PPB held a press conference to talk about the high number of traffic fatalities. A traffic division sargeant told the assembled media outlets that staffing levels at PPB are so low, “They had to dismantle the almost the entire traffic division.” The sargeant went on to educate the public that he was the only full-time motorcycle officer in the entire bureau and that, “All the other motorcycle officers and car officers were sent back to the precincts…And they do not have enough people to help them out to patrol your streets.” This was part of an ongoing campaign to set a narrative that results in PPB getting more funding and more officers. True or not, it is based on a political goal, not a safety goal — not to mention how absurd it is for the police to tell the public they won’t be punished for breaking traffic laws, and then blame the public for deaths and injuries caused by people breaking traffic laws.
Local media also plays a role in education. But far too often they act more like an arm of the PPB public relations firm than actual journalists. A story that aired Monday on KOIN was framed entirely on how the record number of road deaths was related to low police staffing levels. No evidence for that correlation was shared, but the misleading story did include an interview from the leader of the police officer union who assured viewers that more people have died because they don’t have enough officers on the streets.
We’re also coming to the end of two years where the director of PBOT (Jo Ann Hardesty) and the PPB were often at odds. Did the public get a fair shot at productive collaboration on this complicated issue between these two important entities when they were tangled in a messy lawsuit?
To push back against this tide of tragic traffic deaths, we must move beyond the normal state of affairs. We must care. We have to truly care about the problem in order to make real progress. We also must care about the people impacted by these crashes enough to be inspired to do something about it.
I can’t shake the feeling that if it were someone other than “pedestrians” and/or people who live on the street who were being killed at record numbers, we might see a different response. Our society is at an all-time high of hate and othering. I feel like the lack of care for others on the road — and its often deadly consequences — is related to that.
Here’s a thought exercise: What if we had a record number of city or state work crew members killed in traffic crashes? What if this tragic record belonged to police officers themselves? Or powerful downtown business owners? Would we respond differently if those type of people were being killed?
Something needs to change. Instead of pointing fingers or playing politics, we need to look in the mirror. Progress will only come when we care about the people outside our cars as much as those inside them, and then create policy and projects accordingly.
Alameda Elementary School. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
For the first time ever, Portland Public Schools wants to hire someone to manage their Safe Routes to School program. The job was posted mid-November and it comes with a starting salary of $73,912.
The position was funded through an Oregon Department of Transportation grant that will prove the district with up to $150,000 over two years. It marks a significant step forward for Portland’s ongoing work to get people to stop driving to school and consider other options like walking and biking. Getting more people to ditch the car will be crucial to meeting the city’s goal of 25% of all trips by bike by 2030. Fewer drivers near schools will also increase safety, clean the air, and encourage more positive social interactions.
The City of Portland has had one of the nations strongest Safe Routes for decades, and the transportation bureau works in close collaboration with PPS on a variety of fronts including engineering projects near schools and educating kids on how to walk and bike safely.
The job listing also comes as PPS has fully embraced the bike bus movement popularized by physical education teacher Sam Balto at Alameda Elementary School. Balto’s viral videos and personal activism around the issue have put the issue of biking and walking to school squarely on PPS’s radar like no other initiative in its history. On a recent trip to PPS headquarters in north Portland, Balto noticed a framed photo of him leading the bike bus hanging in the office of a senior level PPS staffer.
According to the job description, the new PPS Safe Routes to School Program Coordinator will create and facilitate a district-wide SRTS steering committee to coordinate implementation of their Safe Routes plans. The job will also include coordination with students. Whoever gets the job will become liaison between the district and the Portland Bureau of Transportation and Oregon Department of Transportation.
The position will significantly strengthen the already close relationship between PBOT and PPS. As part of the deal, the two agencies have signed a 7-page intergovernmental agreement (IGA) that lays out expectations and responsibilities.
ODOT plays a significant role in local SRTS work because they hold the purse strings for project and program funding. On that note, just this week ODOT announced their own Safe Routes to School Advisory Committee has recommended 26 projects across the state totaling $32.4 million to be funded through a grant program. Region 1 (where Portland is) won $8.5 million of that total including a $1.9 million grant that will build new sidewalks, crosswalks, and buffered bicycle lanes for students at Powell Butte Elementary School.
We have money, enthusiasm, and political support — all we need is someone (amazing and capable) to capitalize on it. As we’ve seen with the bike bus, the best ideas and execution often come from someone with a fresh perspective and deep passion for getting kids and families outside of cars and onto their bikes.
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.
In response to our article last week on the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s new authority to set speed limits within the city of Portland, readers commented with another strong round of our informed engineering vs. enforcement vs. speed-setting debate.
But rather than limiting ourselves to an ongoing abstract discussion about how other people are going to react, gosh, you, dear BikePortland reader, can set an example. Just follow the speed limit. Our numbers are greater than you might think. As Jonathan noted in a recent subscriber newsletter, our contents reach hundreds of thousands of people a month. If everyone who reads this committed to driving the speed limit, we could save lives. Heck, maybe we could get slower speeds to become a trend.
An anonymous commenter did a nice job making that point, while also summarizing their position on the speed limit debate in general, in this information-filled Comment of the Week:
Speed Limits help some drivers make informed choices. When I see a 20 is plenty sign, I slow down to 20, even if I’m riding my bicycle. Signs work. They are not 100% complied with but that’s ok. If the person in front of you is driving the speed limit and you’re approaching their rear at 10+ over, you will soon be slowing down to the speed limit too.
Enforcement is also important. People who speed must be cited and fined, your income level may deserve a break, but you get enough points and your privilege to drive gets revoked. The speed limit should be photo enforced, not PPB enforced until they earn back community trust.
Other cities in other states set their own speed limits with approval by their city council. ODOT setting speed limits is sophomoric, we don’t need a state agency telling us how to run our city, let alone our streets. The sooner all orphan highways are out of ODOT’s control, the better. ODOT cares more about efficiency and convenience rather than safety and the lives of people walking and riding bicycles.
Thank you Anonymous for the timely reminder to behave responsibly. Anonymous’s comment, and the full thread can be found under the original post. Happy holidays, and wishing everyone all the best for the New Year!
Today’s Monday Roundup is made possible by Action LED, where you can find high quality bike lights to keep riding through winter.
Here are the most notable stories our writers and readers came across in the past seven days…
The driving delusion: Cars aren’t freedom machines for everyone, especially those who have the most to lose when our system offers them no other choice. (NY Times Opinion)
Affordable mobility: Portugal has become the first country in the EU to take advantage of a policy that allows member nations to reduce taxes on the purchase of bicycles. (European Cyclists’ Federation)
Remove or remodel?: There’s growing tension between people who want to use the new federal “Reconnecting Communities” grant fund to remove highways or to simply add a bit of lipstick here and there (cough…. ODOT in Albina… cough). (Route Fifty)
Serious about public spaces: How can you tell when your city is moving from rhetoric to action on carfree places and other high quality public spaces? When they hire a full-time position to oversee the job like New York City is doing. (Streetsblog NYC)
Not Just Bikes: Amsterdam makes its transit highly accessible to, thanks in part to a new program that will give free fares to low-income riders. (NL Times)
Cars are not people: I am beside myself that the California Coastal Commission ruled that a bunch of restaurants near San Diego have to replace outdoor dining areas with car parking on absurd grounds like “privatizing public space” and “beach accessibility.” This is a backward, car-centric, anti-human planning decision that is a case study of transportation discrimination. (San Diego Union-Tribune)
A license for vigilantism: A few New York City activists are so fed up with people breaking parking laws by intentionally covering up their license plates they’ve started to fix the plates themselves. (NY Times)
Drivers behaving badly: A year-end survey from AAA shows how drivers know they are doing bad things but many of them admit to doing them anyways. (Auto Blog)
Gender and the carfree movement: Women are at the forefront of efforts to remove cars from Berlin roads and their fight illustrates how male-centric perspectives often dominates road design decisions. (Yes Magazine)
One-wheel, one mission: A teenager is cycling 3,000 miles on a unicycle from Maine to Florida to raise money and awareness for the East Coast Greenway path project. (The Guardian)
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Sweepers parked in PBOT’s Albina Maintenance Yard. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
“Unless there is a really dramatic change…a strike is very likely.”
-James O’Laughlen, Laborers’ Local 483
A few months ago, some Portland Bureau of Transportation maintenance staffers made their grievances with the city public, sounding the alarm on a crisis that had been simmering for years.
“Many of my coworkers and myself work 70 to 80 hours a week during weather emergencies,” PBOT traffic crew leader Andrew Sterling testified at a September Portland City Council meeting. “Then we have to pick up where we left off for maintenance operations.”
Sterling is the Vice President of Laborers Local 483, the union that represents PBOT maintenance workers. The union had already been running into trouble negotiating a new Portland City Laborers’ (PCL) contract with the city back in September, and frustrations were brewing. Now, almost three months later, the situation still hasn’t improved — and may be coming to a breaking point.
State of the union
Leaves and puddles obstruct bike lanes across the city, including this one on N Rosa Parks. (Photo: Taylor Griggs/BikePortland)
Portlanders aren’t staying silent about their frustrations with the status of our streets. It seems like every day that social media is abuzz with people citing their concerns about the state of Portland’s streets — especially the ones designated for people biking and using active transportation. Earlier this week, bike advocate Cathy Tuttle tweeted a video that showcased the dire state of the new protected Broadway bike lanes downtown (the next day, it was cleared). In some cases, people are deciding to take matters into their own hands, taking to the bikeways with rakes and leaving with bags of debris.
Advocates don’t mind doing a bit of volunteer grunt work. But it seems as if these maintenance duties have fallen on the shoulders of individuals just trying to use bike lanes as intended. What’s going on here?
PBOT points to the ever-expanding, $4.4 billion maintenance backlog which the transportation bureau simply doesn’t have the budget capacity to handle right now. But Local 483 union representatives say a lot of it has to do with the way maintenance staffers are treated. Department morale is subzero and getting worse.
“People are overtaxed and burnt out, and it’s been that way for years,” James O’Laughlen, Field Representative & Organizer for Local 483, told me in a phone call earlier this week.
When I talked to O’Laughlen in September, his message was much the same. Now, he says the fact that tension between the union and the City of Portland has only grown stronger in the last three months is cause for real alarm.
The PCL bargaining team lists their goals for the new contract as follows:
● Generous across-the-board pay raises that honor our members’ sacrifices and keep up with the rising cost of living
● Targeted class wage Increases to retain and recruit in demand workers whose positions are understaffed and underpaid.
● Equitable and Enforceable Contract Language that will hold the city to their word and force them to live their stated principles.
● Improved Safety with more resources and new policies that keep our members safe while they serve the city through crisis after crisis
According to O’Laughlen, the city isn’t being upfront with the financial package they’re willing to offer. The PCL bargaining team is asking for 10% wage increases for all maintenance division staff, which includes cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) appropriate for the dramatic inflation we’ve seen since the last time the union updated their contract.
“They’ve left us in limbo,” O’Laughlen said.
O’Laughlen said he thinks there could be several reasons why city negotiators haven’t tried harder to meet PCL requests.
“They’re either playing some kind of game and thinking they can benefit from it in negotiations, or they just don’t prioritize this kind of work over other things on their plate,” he said. “It’s the same disregard and disrespect for our members and what they’ve been doing.”
As of November, there were dozens of staff vacancies within the maintenance division. Most notably, there were 36 vacancies in the Utility Worker II position, which O’Laughlen described as the “backbone position of PBOT,” who work on everything from the emergency crews to street repair to sewer cleaning.
As you can imagine, all of these vacancies are spreading workers thin — and are a major reason why our streets are in the shape they’re in.
“We’re stuck in a loop of crisis, which is a bad way to do anything — but particularly city infrastructure,” O’Laughlen told me. “We need to have a routinized process that stays ahead of the schedule instead of falling behind.”
What a strike would look like
The next bargaining session the PCL team has scheduled with the City is on December 20th. O’Laughlen said they’re not optimistic.
“Unless there is a really dramatic change in what they’re willing to offer and how they’re willing to engage in the conversation…a strike is very likely,” he said.
A maintenance staff strike could occur as soon as February. O’Laughlen said that if you thought things were bad now, just you wait. A strike would mean no employees to clear out sewers, sweep the streets, clear ice and more. People would notice the effect immediately, and it would also hinder the city’s ability to get larger projects done even after things have cooled down.
As far as the more than $4 billion backlog is concerned, O’Laughlen said it’s no excuse for abandoning the needs of frontline staff.
“The resources for what we’re asking are absolutely there. We’re the fundamental foundation that you have to built upon for those other aspects of the work,” he said. “If our workers aren’t there with sufficient numbers and sufficient talent, nothing gets accomplished. These are the bills you have to pay in order to get to anything else.”
However, O’Laughlen is hopeful that change within the city government will help with the crisis in the long-term.
“Ideally charter reform leads to more ownership of the issues we’re facing so it doesn’t fall just on one commissioner,” O’Laughlen said. (Former PBOT Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty indicated a similar line of thinking during her meeting with the Bicycle Advisory Committee earlier this week.)
In the meantime, O’Laughlen said employees have to advocate for themselves and the integrity of the city. It hasn’t been easy.
“Our folks are civil servants. The pride they take in providing these services to the city is a major part of why they do what they do,” O’Laughlen told me. “We hoped that bargaining would restore that pride. But it’s been the opposite.”
A Portland Police officers confiscates stolen bikes during a drug bust in Old Town in 2012. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
A few weeks ago while scrolling my inbox I came across a press release from Multnomah County DA Mike Schmidt. “Today… Leroy Alfred Parsons plead guilty to three counts of Unauthorized Use of a Vehicle, Possession of a Controlled Substance, and Theft in the First Degree. A Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge sentenced Parsons to 50 months in prison,” read the statement.
The name sounded familiar to me so I went to Google and typed, “bikeportland leroy parsons” (pro tip: the best way to search our 17,000 posts is to type “bikeportland” plus whatever you’re looking for). Sure enough, I got several hits. This Parsons guy is probably the most prolific and brazen thief in the history of Portland. This most recent bust involved stolen cars, but his vehicle of choice used to be bicycles.
Here’s a quick and very incomplete rundown of his 20-plus year crime spree:
These most recent charges from the DA include unlawful possession of six cars between 2021 and 2022 and an “unlawful amount of meth”.
In 2015 he was caught on camera stealing bikes and then admitted to stealing bikes while being filmed for a local TV news segment.
In November 2015 we reported on an exchange Parsons had with a PPB officer where he showed no remorse for stealing bikes. “I promise you I’ll get away with a lot more than I’ll get caught for… So let’s play and see who wins,” he said in a conversation caught on the officer’s body-cam.
Later that same year he was sentenced to 30 months in prison for stealing bicycles (and other crimes), which at the time was the longest-ever bike theft related sentence.
Given his long history of brazen crimes, lack of remorse, and repeat victimization of innocent people, it’s a testament to how complicated and embattled Multnomah County’s legal and mental health systems are that Parsons was ever still back on the street without any change in his behavior.
Parsons served only 90 days of his 25 month sentence in 2018. Our only hope is that because his latest sentence involves cars (and not bikes, which often don’t get the same level of concern from law enforcement or the judicial system), he might actually serve a longer sentence. And hopefully it’s enough time for Parsons to get the help he so desperately needs. We all deserve better than to have him return to the streets just to continue his crime spree.
Are the tears and cold worth it? (Photo: Shannon Johnson/BikePortland)
I had great plans: Our first ever Christmas lights night-time bike ride. It was going to be beautiful, sparkly, twinkly, with Christmas music playing in our ears and sugar plums dancing before our eyes. The children would be in sweet awe, and even my husband would admit it was a wonderful outing and we should make it an annual holiday tradition.
Ha.
I should have remembered one of the first principles of family biking: Test the route alone first.
Instead, I thought we could wing it. After spending a lot of time and tears gearing up, I did a whole lot of coaxing to convince everyone that going out into the cold darkness was really going to be worth it. We were going to enjoy some holiday lights in the coolest way possible, by riding our bike slowly past the inviting displays.
Except, on our route, there were very few houses actually decorated with lights. I had assumed we could just ride around and enjoy neighborhood light displays, that we would just find a whole bunch of decorated houses…but I was wrong. And my husband, who hates being cold, captured the mood by singing praises to the Grinch and making up his own versions of “the weather outside is frightful–why are we not at home!”
Alas.
Not every outing is a winner. Heaven forfend that I should give the false impression that every ride is a rousing success. I know, on social media it often looks like everyone is having a perfect time, with permanently smiling children, and an always-perfect-looking parent. Let me be clear: that’s not us!
And yet…as I look at the pictures and videos, my husband teasing me and my son complaining in the background…I still see mostly smiles and giggles. True, I didn’t take pictures of the tears (mittens that didn’t fit, helmets that were hard to wrestle over hats, a cranky baby), nor did I photograph the unlit houses. But still, the recorded evidence shows a lot of smiles, and at least a few illuminated trees.
I think there’s a sweet lesson there. The rides aren’t always what we wanted them to be. But even the failures can leave us with a lot of happy memories. There’s something about biking together, being outside, exercising, adventuring, sharing a screen-free activity, all ages, as a family, which outshines a lot of disappointments and mishaps. And years later, sometimes the goofy, soggy, chilly mishaps are the fondest memories. I’m glad we went. In my mind, it’s already a happy holiday memory….just not exactly the way I planned it.
I hope your holiday rides are lovely. And if they aren’t…I still hope you will remember them fondly years from now. Happy Holidays, from our family yours!
