Another person is dead after using outer Southeast Stark Street. Portland Police say someone walking at SE 146th was hit and killed by a driver just before 7:00 am this morning.
This is a recurring nightmare on Portland’s deadliest stretch of road.
13 people have died while traveling on a less than two mile long section of SE Stark between 122nd and 160th since 2017. Eight of the victims were not inside cars. Just last month, 26-year-old Ashlee McGill was standing on the sidewalk waiting at a bus stop near SE 133rd when someone decided to race their car and they ran over and killed her.
This section of Stark is so dangerous that in 2018 the Portland City Council invoked an emergency rule to lower the speed limit. But it’s clear speed limit signs won’t stop the deaths.
What makes this morning’s tragedy sting even more is that the Portland Bureau of Transportation has a $20 million “Safer Outer Stark” project ready to go but it continues to be delayed. They started outreach and design of the project in 2019 and, as we reported back in September, PBOT says it won’t break ground until 2024. That’s a painful delay that means more people will die before any planned changes are made.
One of the key elements of that plan (which was completed in December 2020) is a new signal and safer crossing at 146th — the same intersection where the person was hit and killed this morning.
PBOT was also supposed to install a new automated enforcement camera just two blocks away at 148th last fall. As of August of this year, the official PBOT Fixed Speed Safety Camera website said the camera would be installed in “early 2022.” Unfortunately that location has recently been scrubbed from the website and it appears PBOT is still grappling with delays that have plagued this program for years. Reached today for an update on that camera, a PBOT spokesperson said it has been installed by hasn’t been activated yet. There remains no date for when it will start issuing citations.
PBOT successfully passed a bill in the 2022 Oregon legislative session that will allow non-police staff to process camera citations. That law goes into effect January 1, 2023 and is expected to help speed up camera implementation. Will it help? That remains to be seen. We’ve uncovered some squabbling between PBOT staff and the camera equipment vendor that might be adding to the delays (we’re working on that story).
Regardless of the causes, the slow pace of change to address traffic violence on our deadly streets is maddening.
No one else should die on outer Stark (or anywhere!). What else we can do to keep people safe? Why doesn’t PBOT install concrete barricades to narrow the driving space and improve behaviors? Don’t these deaths warrant more substantial emergency measures? Will anyone in City Hall stand up and demand action?
UPDATE, 10/18: The victim who died was Asher Drain, a 21-year-old Portland resident. His family says he was on his way to work when he was hit.
Thanks for reading.
BikePortland has served this community with independent community journalism since 2005. We rely on subscriptions from readers like you to survive. Your financial support is vital in keeping this valuable resource alive and well.
Please subscribe today to strengthen and expand our work.
Because PBOT values motorist speed an access over human life. It’s just that simple. I know that I come across as hugely cyncial but I just have no patience left for PBOT and ODOT’s silly greenwashing projects.
A signal wont change the reality that Stark is designed as a drag strip. People use Portland’s streets exactly as they were designed. Todays death is just the cost of doing business for a motorists first organization like PBOT.
Until PBOT actually prioritizes safety above all, the dying will continue. Paint is not protection. Speed limit signs are not protection. Speed bumps aren’t protection. Hard, evidence-based infrastructure should be the only acceptable project for activists. Instead we cheer gutter lanes and beg barrels.
“Evidence based infrastructure” should be retired; it does not mean “safer”. Most streets in Portland were built according to designs and principles that had considerable evidence backing them up. It’s just the particular balance between competing values of safety, cost, speed, volume, et. al. were not what you would want today, many decades after the roads were built. That balance is a political question, not a scientific one.
Just as I don’t want folks from E Portland telling me that inner Powell needs to carry more/faster traffic to make their commute to work easier, I think it’s a bit arrogant for activists who live in other parts of the city to tell residents in E Portland what’s good for them. If you live there, this comment does not pertain to you.
Let’s hear what folks there want, and elevate those voices. If they want slower, safer streets, then I’m all in. If they value the tradeoff between safety and speed differently than I do, I think we should listen. It may be that distances and travel times are so much more significant than where I live that a bit more risk is tolerable.
There’s nothing wrong the term ‘evidence-based’, its clear from my comment that I’m talking about evidence-based safe road design rather than evidence-based ‘as fast as cars can go’ infrastructure.
Why? Commuters shouldn’t decide how safe or fast a road is and neither should residents. Everyone is a resident of somewhere and we all travel throughout the city.
Who gets to decide risk? Say residents of one part of the city value fast speeds for cars. When I travel through on a bike, I then have to deal with the risk that I had no input on.
Roads do not belong to the people in the neighborhood and they don’t belong to drivers. Roads belong to us all.
That’s why PBOT/ODOT needs to develop evidence-based road designs that value human life as the first priority and then implement them rather than letting random people dictate how safe the roads are based on their own personal preferences
This is a philosophical issue, and I know I’m in the minority here, but I believe that while roads do belong to all of us, different people have different levels of “skin in the game”, and that those who live (or in some cases work) in an area should have a greater voice over what happens there than someone who rarely visits.
This idea probably seems less controversial when talking about someone in Medford expressing an opinion over the Rose Quarter project (I think most of us would agree that while they may equally “own” the highways in Portland, they should have less sway over how they’re designed than Portlanders do). I believe it also holds between neighborhoods as well, if to a lesser degree.
If you’re going to impose your values onto others, it seems only right you should be equally willing to let them impose their values onto you. There are many people around the city (but not me) who think streets like Hawthorne and Division have swung too far away from their role of carrying vehicles.
And when someone from afar travels through your neighborhood, they have to deal with the congestion and pay the time cost that they had no input on.
You say, “who gets to decide risk?”… I say “those who have to live most closely with the consequences”.
A corpse is a corpse. It doesn’t matter if a dead road user was using a segment of road for the first time or the thousandth, we all deserve to be safe.
I’m not imposing “values”. I’m trying not get obliterated by a speeding motorist or a massive truck.
Those who have to live most closely with the consequences are those crossing or using the road at any point.
I agree, it comes down to opinion. I personally don’t think NIMBYs should be able to decide to maintain a deadly road because they want to go fast.
I’m not even sure what that means. What level of risk is “safe”? Do we all “deserve” zero risk regardless of cost? A lot of the rhetoric around safety just doesn’t make sense. Safety is not a binary, and it isn’t helpful to keep thinking of it that way.
Agreed. Those are the people I want to have the loudest voice. I’ve never crossed Stark anywhere near 146th, so my opinion counts very little (and is why I haven’t offered mine, though I definitely have one). I’m guessing the same is true for you.
Increasing safety shifts is all about balancing tradeoffs, moving costs from one category to another. Let those who live with those tradeoffs tell us how they want to strike the balance. There is no right or wrong answer.
PS Calling people names isn’t helpful.
I’ve dealt with tragedy lately. For the family and for the friends who lose a person, that risk is not worth taking, even if they don’t live in the neighborhood, even if they live in another state or a different country. The person who has just died will be missed, there will be a hole where that person’s presence once was and nothing can compensate for that. It’s not a decision you can make for other people.
Bad road design is a public health and safety issue. Should Texans be able to criminalize abortions and non traditional gender identities? It is about human rights in a modern society. Safe roads should be accessible for all.
“Safe” and “accessible” are often at odds. And who decides when a road is safe enough to meet the standards of “human rights”, if not the people who have to live with it?
Car traffic throughput does not mean accessibility. I am referring to accessibility to the 1/3 of the population that can’t drive. Transportation is a regional issue and we all have to live with the externalities of those decisions regardless of where we live and travel to.
A couple people living next door should not be a barrier to furthering safe, non-polluting, and equitable forms of transportation.
85% of Portland households have a car, probably more in E Portland, and I’m guessing that most people living there use theirs regularly.
All I’m saying is to ask folks in the area what they want rather than make decisions for them.
Is that really so controversial?
It is when you think you know the right answer to how a city should function—walking, “…and bikes everywhere!”, a particular look and feel to your built environment. And when feeling good about the location and lifestyle choices you’ve made depends in part upon feeling you’ve made the superior (in taste and morals) choice, pointing out what you see as deficiencies in other ways of being and tradeoffs you wouldn’t make. I say this as one who does prefer a walkable and bikeable place to live and be that looks and feels a particular way—but recognizes there are other ways that it is okay to physically structure and move about a society and telling folks (or just talking about them as if) their way of being is wrong and the choices they’ve made are somehow ill-informed is at best useless and on average alienating.
This isn’t a matter of saying that car life is wrong (I think so but that isn’t what is being debated here). Is installing crosswalks suddenly an impedence on that way of life? I just don’t want people to die and sorry if that feels like the “superior choice”
I don’t think I’ve ever heard even a single person (outside of PBOT officials) oppose installing crosswalks. If that’s all you’re talking about, we have no argument. I am utterly confident that the community would support that.
Does not mean every member of the household can drive. Between elderly and children that can not drive, that percentage is much lower.
Neighborhood input is important, but should not be the only deciding factor. Too much local control on regional issues has time and time again shown to produce negative effects.
Not enough local control has also led to plenty of negative effects, including the razing of neighborhoods to make room for highways. But perhaps you would make an exception for things you agree with.
Ultimately, it comes down to the illiberal urge, prevalent on both the left and the right, to impose your will on others.
Yes, I agree with safe street design and I want to impose that will on others. A 21 year old shouldn’t die trying to get to work. What are you trying to say? Your libertarian ideology does not work in a modern society.
I’m trying to say that local communities should set the priorities for street design in their neighborhoods rather than having them be imposed from well-meaning outsiders who may not understand the full array of issues people living there face.
Mine is a very communitarian, pro-social viewpoint (not libertarian), while yours is a bit authoritarian.
Local control, especially of infrastructure networks, is often a tool of exclusion.
So… let ODOT make all the decisions in the name of equity?
The illiberal urge to save lives.
Indeed. Many illiberal programs start with imposing things on others “for their own good”.
If your ideas are good, you should be able to convince folks and get their buy-in. Building alliances and working co-operatively is not always easy, but it can be a very powerful vehicle for change.
Do you apply the same zeal to peoples eating habits given more people die from poor diet than transportation?
This is important. The current set of benefits and burdens are intentional. They may not have all been the intent of the design or approach (few intentionally design for deaths and injuries), but given the years and decades of evidence on how these treatments perform, continued tolerance is based on an assessment of the balance between benefits and burdens (as well as the costs of changing this balance) as approximately correct by enough people—a perspective somewhat distorted by lack of information on the scale of the problem and personal risks that if corrected could tilt the general public and its politicians towards caring about this a bit more.
I agree with this. I especially appreciate the recognition that the problem is at its root political, and the way to create enduring change is to change the public’s perception of the problem and try to get them to rebalance their risk perception.
Americans are, in many ways, very risk averse when it comes to health and safety. It should be possible to shift the conversation by recalibrating the way people see the problem.
Americans value human life very cheaply. Saving lives is too much effort if it means giving up their “rights” to use public ROW as they see fit, to own and mishandle guns, to not take 5 seconds to mask up during a pandemic.
That’s why this stuff is never going to change (at least in my lifetime) and the only clear answer is to stop trying to convince the selfish, short-sighted narcissistic idiots I was born among to do things differently.
Fortunately there are places on earth where people with more sense have already forced the herds to behave in a manner more respectful to other human beings.
It seems a majority of Americans and their elected leaders want automobiles to have unfettered access to our public streets. The automobile is a symbol of freedom, status and wealth and I don’t see this attitude changing anytime soon given this American ethos. Even poor people who the active transit system is designed to help will buy a car as soon as they can afford it. Most people are to weak to put in the effort to live carfree and by the rise in obesity this trend doesn’t seem to be slowing. Who knows maybe when the Great Simplification arises we won’t have a choice other than to rely on human power to move about.
The plan for Safer Outer Stark includes curb-protected bike lanes, signalized crossings, medians, all that good stuff. The plan is really good, it’s just taking a long time to implement. I think the article is wise to focus on the pace of implementation, rather than the content, because the plan itself is quite good.
Another grim statistic.
This area was annexed by the city between 1986 and 1991, over 30 years ago. According to the County, this area has among the highest property taxes per value of property in the city, yet gets the lowest value of city services overall. It has a far higher poverty rate, a greater ethnic, BIPOC and racial diversity rate than the rest of the city, and a much larger percentage of youth. Locals and the county government have long accused the city of using this area as a cash cow to pay for downtown city improvements – keep that in mind when you see sudden improvements for the Central City in Motion while people keep getting killed on outer Stark, outer Division, outer Glisan, 122nd, 148th, 162nd, and so on. It took the city 10 years to implement the 130s greenway even with full state funding, and the 4M is still unfinished.
This ain’t 26th at Powell, this is far worse.
And no one cares.
I’m sure the street trust, oregon walks, and bikeloudpdx are having an emergency meeting to plan a “human-protected crosswalk” action. Wear white shirts everyone!
While we are finger-pointing, lets add some more context. The county (Multnomah) doing the accusing in this unsubstantiated telling seems to have a remarkably short memory for an institution, especially as the institution that set the stage for the mess going on in mid-county right now, including performing the equivalent of what ODOT and PBOT have done with 82nd Ave—jurisdictional transfer—for several similar streets (Stark, 122nd, Division, Glisan, Halsey, Holgate—all the most dangerous sections of our region’s most dangerous streets) but with no cash to address their deficiencies.
You speak of abundant and instant projects in the Central City: Central City in Motion has been going on the better part of a decade (do you remember how long it took to even get going??) and only recently have we started seeing improvements; the years-long wait from project idea to construction (or even from having a plan set and money in hand to construction) seems to have more to do with being in the city of Portland than what neighborhood of the city you are in.
As for lopsided investment, Central City in Motion is said to cost $72M, once completed; so far, approaching $400M has been spent on or allocated to East Portland in Motion projects alone. This is an incomplete picture to be sure (we could look at transit, for example: for every streetcar line in inner Portland, mid- and east- county have gotten a MAX line), but a helpful illustration of where the city seems to be spending transportation dollars on marquee projects.
The point is that this is more complicated than “Inner Portland bad. Takes money from east Portland, spends on bike projects downtown, does nothing for us”. I’m tired of unnuanced, fact-light, incomplete, and/or ahistorical takes on east Portland, the past and ongoing investment, and who is to blame. We don’t need to spread anymore cherrypicked narratives that do little more than enrage and provide more excuses for chips on shoulders. Many of the right folks are awake and spending gobs of time, attention, and money on the area. The transportation outcomes in east Portland are still horrendous, so there is clearly a lot more work to do. But a misunderstanding of how we got here that feeds a sense of enduring and hopeless disempowerment in a zero sum game doesn’t add constructive energy to putting out a fire everyone wants to see cold.
Great point about the annexation basically being a giant jurisdictional transfer but with no money to actually make improvements. Most people probably don’t realize that the property tax limitations passed in the 90s made it so this area could never properly generate enough taxes to pay for needed improvements. Plus, no property taxes whatsoever go to transportation anyway, so it really was a giant unfunded transfer from the County to the City. And the County is responsible for the design of these massively wide roads in the first place. It’s understandable why it has taken so long to finally get the needed investments.
And yes, also a good point that Central City in Motion pales in comparison to East Portland investments. Outer Powell is like $150 million, Outer Stark $20 million, the recent Outer Division project was also massive $10s of millions including the FX Line improvements. No street in Central City in Motion is getting those kinds of dollars.
It’s ironic you should bring up outer Powell and Division. Powell is an ODOT project while Division is Trimet; neither are PBOT. And 136th was largely paid for by the state legislature, not by the city. Of course we could bring up the $750 Million ODOT Rose Quarter project for comparison…or the $570 million “Green Line” project which was spent mostly downtown to redo the bus mall…but why quibble?
Even the city auditor admits in their budget mapping that downtown takes in far more of the PBOT project budget than the downtown is worth, even after you factor in pre-covid jobs and housing – over half of the entire city transportation budget – for all those wide sidewalks, signals at every corner, streetcar, green bike lanes, and so on. All this long before the CCIM was even started. And who pays for it all? Residents who live outside of downtown, who have to drive and park downtown because their local bus service is so poor or nonexistant, because bike routes are so dangerous, and sidewalks simply not there, folks in East Portland. Southwest, North, Cully, and so on – the poor, the overwhelming majority of city residents, the 80% who are have-nots, the people who live where Portlandia is not weird, but hell.
To paraphrase Chomsky:
“The [market urbanist] classes are very class-conscious—they’re constantly fighting a bitter class war to improve their power and diminish opposition. Occasionally this is recognized. We don’t use the term “working class” here [ in Portland] because it’s a taboo term. You’re supposed to say “middle class,” [or missing middle] because it helps diminish the understanding that there’s a class war going on.”
Not to mention that Inner-SE does not have a MAX line going through it while the Red and Green lines serving Outer-SE/NE are being upgraded right now!
Downtown, inner SE, and fast-gentrifying Milwaukie (the orange line likely contributed to this)
The Orange line does not primarily serve inner southeast. I’d say a sane definition of “inner southeast” is Cesar Chavez to the river, between Burnside and Johnson Creek. Realistically the Orange Line purposely underserves inner southeast to improve travel time for Milwaukie residents – just look at the alignment through Sellwood (and Brooklyn to an extent). Fully bypassing the actual hearts of the neighborhoods to have faster speeds down McLoughlin! It would be hard to chose an alignment that would do a worse job of serving the people who actually live in inner southeast, maybe that’s why the Orange line has such bad ridership
Thanks for your acknowledgement that there is a light rail line that runs through a big chunk of the inner SE (the only point of my comment).
“or the $570 million “Green Line” project which was spent mostly downtown”
That is false. Only a minrity of the project budget was used downtown, and that was absolutely necessary: the trains had to go somewhere downtown, they couldn’t share the Blue Line / Red Line tracks which were already too busy.
The Green Line project main costs were building the 6.5 miles of new track and 8 new stations along I-205. At an estimated cost of $58 per mile (excluding the cost of 22 new trains), that segment probably cost about $377 million, or about 65% of the total budget: https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/2014-Oregon-Portland-Green-Line-Light-Rail-Project.pdf
I found this source that says the budget for the transit mall rebuild and extension was $160. It was 3 miles including both 5th and 6th avenues, so that’s $53 million per mile, a little lower than the final cost after inflation – https://web.archive.org/web/20120331125657/http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=27133
So the downtown portion was half the cost of the new tracks and stations along I-205.
And while the whole cost was included in the Green Line project, the same tracks are now also used by the Yellow Line in North Portland and the Orange Line in SE Portland, Milwaukie and Gladstone, and the transit mall is used by most of the buses that enter downtown from all parts of the metro area. The Southwest light rail project will also share the tracks, if it’s every built.
Why does it matter who pays for it? ODOT and TriMet have all the big money so obviously their projects will be much bigger. The point stands that the total amount of public investment in East Portland far exceeds the amount of public investment in the Central City.
I’m not sure what City of Portland auditor’s budget map you are consulting, but it isn’t the one on the City of Portland’s Auditor’s Budget Mapping webpage (which I can’t seem to link to without getting spam blocked).
Cycling through the years and between transportation capital and operating expenses, there is no discernible geographic pattern in cost/user (which is probably a census-derived number and thus, with its focus on where someone lives, undercounting the number of folks who likely use a lot of downtown’s infrastructure), other than that consistently described in the auditor’s notes (“the Central City has a higher proportion of expenditures [in Transportation operating dollars] because of the intensity of transportation and parking services…streetcar operations, metered parking, public parking garage operations, and transit mall maintenance”)—all activities that bring in revenue and pay for themselves or receive contributions from other agencies (e.g. Streetcar).
The Transportation (Capital) category also encompasses asset management and is relevant to your claim that maintenance spending on sidewalks and signals downtown results in lopsided expenditures—but it’s not supportive of your claim.
To dismiss local credit-taking for how and where money is spent by ODOT or TriMet or from any other federal or state source is to ignore or be unaware of the local influence on how and where that money is spent—that is, Portland electeds and officials spending political capital advocating for where that money should go and usually having to match outside dollars with discretionary local money.
You seem to want to keep putting the blame back on a single institution for east Portland’s woes when, again, it’s not that simple; please dismount the hobby horse. We can continue to debate whether or not the amount allocated is equal or appropriate (and what constitutes equal and appropriate), but I don’t think it is debatable that what is going into east Portland is substantial and capable of making meaningful change. That one institution funnels so many resources to the area yet the problems persist as acutely as they do should be what bothers us.
Land value tax would solve this.
It would not. Any tax or revenue generation no matter how fair or equitable will not affect a political process on how those resources are spent that is already inherently inequitable.
Urbanists don’t really care about inequality, they just want “nicer” housing choices for themselves.
The fact that “nicer” housing is out of reach for most working people is an example of inequality that “urbanists” do in fact care about.
It would solve the problem of outer neighborhoods having “among the highest property taxes…in the city”. So they would no longer be paying disproportionately dearly for inferior services.
Perhaps installing speed bumps would reduce the risk of speeding vehicles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KotMBAHhkQQ&ab_channel=SpeedBumpOlympics
Here is the cross section that we should demand for outer Stark. (Source: PBOT Safer Outer Stark plan)
Who is the “we” who should demand this? Does that include those who live in the area?
Here is the cross section that PBOT chose for the (delayed) Safer Outer Stark plan.
I made a comment here, it was approved, and yet it hasn’t shown up. Weird.
Hi Bryan,
I recently deleted one of your comments because it included an unacceptable insult. Maybe that’s the one you’re thinking of?
I can’t imagine what was unacceptable about that comment.
That’s OK Bryan. Lisa and I are the only ones who need to determine what is acceptable here. I just reread your comment and I think my decision to trash it is a good one. Feel free to rewrite it and try again. If you want to talk more about specifics, feel free to email me. Thanks.
Not worth the effort. You know, I have defended your censoring of egregious comments in the past to others. But this was over the top. I’m a progressive, a cyclist, and a concerned citizen. The tone of articles and comments here is increasingly aimed at a smaller and smaller audience of people who feel that they’re about the only “True Scotsman”. I think I’m done here.
OK Bryan. Sorry if you feel this place isn’t for you. You are always welcome here, but we have standards for the content of our comments and that one didn’t meet it. As for the size of our audience… it’s never been larger!
Also, the comment I deleted made inappropriate assumptions about who was killed on SE Stark. In the last hour or so I’ve learned the name of the victim and it happens to be the child of someone I used to know. So yeah, I’m not in the mood to put up with any shit.
I wasn’t sure if you had realized you knew this family. I knew you knew the family, as do I. Even though I don’t know what the comment was, having known this young man for the past 16 years, I am glad I didn’t read presumptive comments. It’s hard enough to hear him called a “corpse”, but that’s what I get for reading the comment section of a story about someone I knew and loved
Where’s the protest for this one? Or are activists scared of venturing east of 82nd?
Are there no activists east of 82nd?
Activists should only care about traffic violence in their own neighborhood?
According to Watts, activists shouldn’t impose their values on other neighborhoods.
Why would activists go east of 82nd? Politicians don’t, and if there was a protest out that far from downtown our politicians would likely go “ho hum”.
Ugh. I ate dinner outside in Montavilla last night and watched the cars FLY by. People get the green light at 82nd and then just race east through Montavilla proper, while pedestrians and cyclists try not to get hit. I saw drivers weaving through and changing lanes around slower vehicles, saw a couple near-misses, heard screeching tires, horns, etc. If PBOT can’t slow down this small stretch through a major business section, I’m not optimistic on their reforming the huge, wide sections on outer Stark where speeds and vehicle volumes are even higher. Maybe it’s time to decouple Stark & Washington?.
maybe its time for some reckless driving tickets and driving without a license tickets? the cops can just ticket white people so we won’t have any problems with structural racism.
Legalize car theft until DRIVERS stop killing PEOPLE. Make sure that dri ers prove that they deserve to have their property protected.
I’ve stopped killing people (not just when driving, but in many aspects of my life), so luckily, under your plan, my car would still be protected from theft. How will the thieves know which cars are OK to take and which aren’t? And would it still be theft if it were legal for anyone to take cars of drivers involved in fatal crashes?
Obviously those cars with bumper stickers marked “I Subscribe to Bike Portland” will be exempt from theft, just as soon as JM gets them printed and sold to discerning readers everywhere.
The speed limits in outer SE are idiotic, frankly. They are a bullshit bandaid when the only viable solution is a road diet. If you want folks to actually go 30, make the road narrower.
There’s a reason inner-Division never goes faster than 20-30mph. It’s really narrow.