The era of the City of Portland looking the other way when it comes to expired registration, missing license plates, and parking violations will soon come to an end. In recent weeks the transportation bureau has hired a fresh contingent of enforcement officers and they announced today these new ticket-writing troops will hit the streets July 8th.
Whatever people say about this move, they can’t say they weren’t warned. PBOT made it clear during budget talks back in February that the lack of enforcement of these violations was robbing the bureau of precious resources needed to maintain streets and perform other core services. According to PBOT estimates, of the one million registered vehicles in Portland, nearly half (460,000) have expired tags.
“Over the course of many, many years, PBOT has been quite altruistic and has taken on opportunities to be in service to community without necessarily charging,” PBOT Director Millicent Williams told city council members at a February meeting.
And the number of cars without license plates (both front and rear are required by law) and folks parking in places they shouldn’t has skyrocketed in recent years — a result of the combined shift in behavioral norms after Covid and PBOT’s laissez faire enforcement approach.
Now those days are over.
In a June 4th meeting with state legislators and local agency leaders, Williams was direct: “We are coming for you if you have not registered your vehicle. This is registration summer,” she said in a forceful tone, while adding that the new officers will also provide, “An additional set of trained eyes and ears are situations that arise on our streets.”
PBOT has received permission from council to hire 22 officers. In a statement today, the agency said recent hires are a, “large expansion of their parking enforcement operations.” Currently the bureau employs around 59 parking code enforcement officers. Once the hiring is complete they’ll have 81 on staff.
The more robust team of officers (who make between $42,00 and $79,000 per year) will allow PBOT to patrol all paid parking districts on a daily basis. They’ll be busy because the bureau estimates only about 50% of meter users are paying the required fees.
PBOT’s 2023-2024 budget listed a “strategic target” of 280,000 parking citations issued; that would be 125% more than the 124,00 citations they issued in the 2021-2022 fiscal year.
Specifically, the officers will be citing people for expired tags, missing plates, wrong-way parking, and drivers who park their cars in a way that blocks visibility at intersections. And yes, they’ll also be booting cars that have a tow order from Multnomah County Circuit Court. The citation fees range from $55 for parking the wrong way on a street, to $145 dollars for tags that are more than 90 days expired.
The result of this effort is expected to net the bureau an average of $3.8 million per year over the next five years and increase compliance rates by about 5% per year, bringing total compliance to 75% within that timeframe.
— Learn more via PBOT.
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.
Oh HELL yes!
Will they be ticketing vehicles that have devices to obscure their plates as well? It seems like eliminating those license plate covers etc will be needed if the speed cameras are going to work.
Assuming that is in fact illegal, I think they would give tickets for that!
https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors_803.550
About time we start enforcing our laws again in Portland. The no license plate cars that I see all the time drive me nuts (sorry about the bad pun).
I disagree with Millicent’s characterization. Not enforcing the laws of the community is not “altruistic”. Their “hands off” approach is part of what has led to an aura of lawlessness on our streets. In my opinion this lack of enforcement is part of the reason why we have been setting records for traffic violence in Portland. It’s upsetting PBOT is only taking action because they want $, instead of realizing enforcing our laws and having order on the streets reduces bloodshed. Better late than never I guess.
The ideology of “law and order” is unsupported by evidence and conveniently ignores the “bloodshed” created by those imposing the “order”. The COVID-19 pandemic probably played a more significant role by disrupting social norms as well as causing an increase in poverty, which leads to crime.
My understanding that government efforts during COVID-19 actually led to a DECLINE in poverty.
Bolstered by pandemic relief, economic security programs kept 53 million people above the poverty line in both 2020 and 2021, far surpassing the previous 2009 record of 40 million people protected from poverty. Public programs transformed what, without the programs, would have been a near-record surge in poverty in the COVID-19 recession into a record one-year overall poverty decline in 2020 and a record one-year decline in children’s poverty in 2021. The strong policy response brought the U.S. poverty rate in 2020 to its lowest level on record in data back to 1967, and then to a new record low of 7.8 percent in 2021, an analysis of Census and other historical data shows. Government aid helped prevent a sharp rise in poverty for all major racial and ethnic groups and narrowed differences in poverty rates between groups, yet wide inequities remain.
https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/governments-pandemic-response-turned-a-would-be-poverty-surge-into
Keep reading: “With the expiration of temporary pandemic assistance, poverty likely rose in 2022.” Indeed it did. The overall U.S. poverty rate went up dramatically in the year after pandemic benefits ran out, and the child poverty rate more than doubled.
You’re asking people to conveniently ignore their own memories of what things were like just a few short years ago. I think people are very done with this current experiment and the empathy bucket only goes so far when there is rampant disregard for basic rules out of the concern the cops may be mean to a very small portion of interactions they have with the public. Poverty was worse in 2014 than it is in 2023 and we didn’t have many of the issues we have today, there is another explanation for why things are the way they are.
Why take the time to think back to the last few years of your personal experience, when you can instead rely on non-peer-reviewed studies published by political advocacy groups in other states?
And of course the ACLU is a completely unbiased organization that would never ever help pay for a study that helps them based on the findings? Nah, not them, never.
/s
Cops, as has been famously said, are ‘crime janitors.’
I would love for them to pull more nutso drivers over, but I dislike their habit of shooting and tasering black people, so I’ll deal.
Good point, we shouldn’t trust reports by political advocacy groups. Instead we should rely on [checks notes] memories of “personal experience”, which are famously accurate and unbiased.
Overall poverty rates have declined slightly since 2014. Meanwhile there has been an increase in extreme poverty since the pandemic.
There is documented racial bias in traffic stops. Personally I’m OK with taking traffic enforcement out of the hands of cops if it means less police brutality.
This would all be fixed by upzoning.
The clarification should be, there has been an increase in extreme poverty globally. Not sure I think you’ve got anything to stand on that driving infractions shouldn’t be enforced in Portland because people in Sub-Saharan Africa are poor.
This seems much more illuminating… https://www.census.gov/newsroom/stories/poverty-awareness-month.html and you may really like this part…
“The official poverty rate for Black individuals decreased between 2021 and 2022. The 2022 rate was the lowest on record (Table A-3).”
Personally, and I don’t think this is the minority opinion, I am very okay with the cops continuing to enforce traffic violations (even a dramatic increase) with the realization that in a very small portion of those interactions, the ability for the offending party to adequately follow instructions will create an environment that escalates the opportunity for the situation to spiral out of control quickly, and likely to the offending party’s detriment.
I said I was OK with taking traffic enforcement out of the hands of cops. I never said driving infractions shouldn’t be enforced. Personally I’m interested in whether an action will reduce harm. I don’t care if it reflects majority opinion or not.
Putting the blame for police brutality squarely on the shoulders of the victim is telling. Did Philando Castile “adequately follow instructions”? Did Tyre Nichols “create an environment […] for the situation to spiral out of control”?
I hope you are not conflating the ticketing of vehicles with bloodshed.
The only time most people drive the speed limit in my neighborhood is when they’re running the stop signs.
Underrated comment
It occurs to me that people who have to park on the street (mostly apartment dwellers and other renters) will face much greater exposure to ticketing than those who have off-street parking available to them.
Make of that what you will.
If only there were a known solution to this problem that didn’t involve giving scofflaw drivers free rein!
ie: don’t buy a car if you don’t have a place to store it.
They don’t have to park illegally.
Are you taking away the agency of those apartment dwellers to find a safe and legal spot to park?
I’m not doing anything besides pointing out that this enforcement program will hit different groups unequally. I’m not making a value judgement on that observation.
I think that’s a good observation. On the other hand, you could say that people who rely on on-street parking may also be the ones really needing the City to crack down on people taking up limited on-street parking illegally.
Why would they face any exposure? Registering your car and parking legally isn’t too much to ask.
I’m all for making scofflaw drivers pay their fair share, but has there ever been a more unprofessional bureau head than Williams? “We’re coming for you” is not the attitude I want from a public servant, thank you very much.
They didn’t have to announce anything. No grandious chest thumping. All they had to do was a simple, “city council we are finally going to stop being SJWs and do our jobs by enforcing the rules and laws of this once great city.”
People know they are supposed to have current tags. 1/2 my neighbors’ cars don’t have current tags, and those are vehicles being used, not just parked.
Bring on the tickets and the boots!
No “chest thumping”, just anti–social justice virtue signaling. Got it. When was Portland a “great city” exactly?
Just before each of us moved there, obviously. Why would any of us deliberately move to a mediocre Portland? And ever since then, it’s gone downhill.
It is exactly the attitude I want. I’m tired of this tomfoolery.
A belligerent, us-versus-them mentality like Williams’ can be comforting, as long as you’re one of “us” and not “them”. The problem is what happens when the roles are reversed.
Spot on comment.
I disagree. Giving warnings like this is a good way to get people to comply so that they don’t have to give them tickets. And the tickets aren’t what generate revenue, compliance is the goal, so the more people start complying in advance of enforcement out of fear of getting a ticket, the better. It’s always good to give ample warning.
It’s not the warning I have a problem with, it’s the way it was delivered.
Let’s f’in gooooo
I’d do this just for free coffee if I could.
I have been waiting two months for my tags. If I get a ticket I will be cheesed.
Just keep your receipt. You’ll be fine.
Cheese is delicious, so I’m assuming “being cheesed” is a good thing.
You should be ok, they have a record of your registration associated with your plate and vin. The actual tag should not be the important part.
Now if your plates themselves are stolen, you might want to get a replacement asap. Make a police report, get a copy of the report # at least, and go to the DMV. Annoying but fairly straightforward.
“You should be ok, they have a record of your registration associated with your plate and vin.” At least – a benefit to ME from the surveillance state!
Good to know; thanks!
I have no real comment about how many parking officers we really need but it is interesting that we have fully embraced a certain level of acceptance, for better or worse, that more enforcement will lead to fewer violations..
For this and other reasons it feels like the Era of Good Vibes is ending in a few days — four months and change ahead of the leadership that brought us here becoming lame ducks, for the most part…
THANK GOD!
Maybe once drivers realize there are consequences for their actions of speeding, swerving in and out of traffic, and blowing through stop signs the streets might become just a smidgen safer for pedestrians and cyclists alike.
Of course more enforcement will lead to fewer violations, that much is obvious. Look at TriMet. Every time they stop enforcing fares on MAX…what do you know, more and more people just don’t pay the fare!
If they start ticketing vehicles without license plates there are going to be an awful lot of p*ssed off Tesla Y and 3 drivers.
Good.
The question is, who will pay the fine, the Tesla drivers who don’t want a front plate or the Altima drivers who don’t have bumpers.
Before anyone gets worked up about this being some kind of punitive money grab based on citations, please know that PBOT doesn’t really make money off the citations themselves. It all gets eaten up by the courts and by administrative costs. The point of all this enforcement is not to get the citation revenue, but to get compliance rates up and get the actual registration fee revenue (part of which gets passed down to cities) and parking meter and permit revenue (all of which goes to PBOT and funds maintenance and operations). Plus the additional benefit of better visibility at intersections, fewer cars parked in illegal places like bike lanes or blocking corner ramps, and probably a lot fewer junky abandoned vehicles all over. I think this is a fantastic move.
Woo, Re: PBOT money grab: according to this Bike Portland piece from February it will net PBOT an estimated $5.5 million in the coming fiscal year. Once you figure in the cost of employing the new deputies it’s a whole lot less than that. That said, I think it’s an entirely sensible thing to do.
I would much rather see a crackdown on speeding and dangerous driving. The focus on registration and parking is a misguided broken windows reflex that reinforces the impression that the government will always police the little guy with much more scrutiny than the well off. As a bicyclist, I care a lot more about cars that are moving than unregistered, parked vehicles. It’s pretty difficult to register a beater car because they will often fail the DEQ inspection for reasons unrelated to emissions. To deny somebody plates because their check engine light is on and then give them at $145 citation for parking on the street seems pretty harsh for the limited social benefit of an enhanced sense of order on the streets.
I don’t know vehicles parked too close to an intersection frequently cause drivers to not see me. That’s probably the biggest problem I encounter on my work commute. Even drivers that roll stops are better when intersections are clear because they’ll typically stop if they can see me.
Some of the most dangerous driving I observe around the city are the “broken windows” type cars. Their operators are significantly more likely to be DUII, as well.
A lot of the cars I see speeding, ignoring lights, and driving dangerously don’t have plates or have long-ago expired tags. At a practical level, that means no one has verified their insurance, either, so if/when they’re in an accident, victims might suffer.
If a car is parked without plates, registration or insurance, it’s driving without those either.
The safest and least confrontational way to deal with it is when they are parked.
This isn’t in opposition to addressing moving violations, it augments those efforts. If you can just drive around w/o plates, as I see people do every single day, then automated or non-sworn traffic officers can’t safely and consistently issue tickets for moving violations.
Then we’re back to over policing and dangerous traffic stops by cops.
And check engine lights are in fact mostly emissions related. There isn’t a right to have a polluting “beater”. If you can’t get a car past DEQ, either for insurance or emissions, it shouldn’t be on the road. If we want to have a low income program for DEQ fees, I can see that, but to allow people to simply drive around w/o registration is a total joke.
That’s a good point about ticketing parked cars being less confrontational than a traffic stop.
As for beaters, it’s no problem to register beater cars everywhere except for west coast wokeistan. It used to be easy here, too, when DEQ actually measured the emissions at the tailpipe. Now many things unrelated to emissions will cause your outfit to fail DEQ. A lot of people rely on beater cars to get to work and do other things. Do they pollute more than late model rides? Probably, depending on distance driven, fuel type, etc. Are they as big of a social problem? I guess it’s the consensus of the BP commentariat that they are. I agree that car ownership is a responsibility, folks should have their car registered and insured, and I fully support DEQ. My guess is that asshole drivers are broadly distributed among the social classes, but this crackdown on unregistered cars parked on the street will affect mostly low income folks.
“Now many things unrelated to emissions will cause your outfit to fail DEQ”
Like what?
You may think you can pass emissions but almost all the OBD2 error codes that cause a check engine light are by design emissions related.
I seriously doubt a large portion of the population with a CEL is passing a tailpipe test. The funny thing is, any beater scofflaw worth their road salt would know that they can clear the code or even just disconnect the battery and temporarily make it go a way. You only need to have it gone once every 2 years. It’s not rocket science.
And just take a look at all the states that not only due emissions but safety checks (some yearly). Also, most of the country salts their roads potential beaters are rusted to oblivion before they can attain beater status. Oregon is super lenient and the little that is asked of some metro areas is totally reasonable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_inspection_in_the_United_States
I can only speak from my own experience. In the 1990s I registered three different cars here. They all passed the tailpipe test no problem even though one of them burned a significant amount of oil. I lived elsewhere for a couple of decades during which I became the second owner of a 2000 Volvo V70. I had no trouble registering that car in TN and then WA, despite the fact that it has always had lights on the dash going on and off sporadically (Check Engine, ABS, Brake, Maint., etc.). When it was time to register the car here I dutifully took it to DEQ. No dice. The dude running the kiosk gave me a print out with a list of issues. The first was called ‘COMMUNICATION ERR’ or something like that. He said that if any lights on the dash are on the car will fail, that it was likely not emissions related, and that I should take the print out and car to a shop if I wanted to get the car registered. That conversation was the basis for my comments above.
Based on experience with that car I can say with certainty that disconnecting the battery does not always clear the lights: several times I have removed the battery to bring it inside to charge, including immediately before taking it to DEQ. With only slightly less certainty I can say that if I took the car back to WA or home to ID I could easily register it (maybe OR is small government compared to CA). As a ski car, the volvo has seen plenty of salted roads (a practice I fervently hope goes out of vogue soon). It still runs like a champ.
I also want speeding and bad driving enforcement. But hey, if you take a look when you’re out today, you’ll see that many of the cars without plates or current tags, they don’t sit idle because the owners know they shouldn’t be driving without plates or current tags. If they aren’t keeping up on that why should we assume they’re insured? I don’t want to get hit biking to work by an uninsured, plate-free car. And if your car can’t pass DEQ, that sucks, but that’s why we have the DEQ, to help keep beaters off the road. All PBOT is doing here is what they should have been doing all along and what other cities all across the country do, too. This isn’t about targeting the little guy, it’s just very basic enforcement of rules that already exist.
And if someone said “I’m not a cyclist, so what happens to them isn’t my concern”?
If one can’t both maintain and register their car, they shouldn’t own one. It’s a responsibility.
The focus on ensuring registration/plates are on cars is necessary for things like speed enforment cameras to be effective.
All these things work together.
How do you know who to write the ticket to if the car doesn’t have any license plates?
Via the VIN that all vehicles have. The DMV has a record of this.
They could just boot it if they can’t find a vin.
I’m all in favor of enforcing against registration and missing plates. Seems like the incentive for missing plates is under cost, though – one missing plate in a speeding or red-light camera area and they may just skip sending you a ticket, so you’ve saved yourself $265. So we should probably adjust those upwards.
Also, blocking vision at intersections seems worth a ticket.
The wrong-way tickets seem silly; most of those are on neighborhood streets that it doesn’t really matter which way you’ve parked given the low traffic volumes. Imagine a narrow neighborhood street with parking on both sides and one travel lane (and drivers pull over to let oncoming traffic pass). Doesn’t really matter which way the cars are parked.
I’ve been nearly clobbered twice while on my bike by cars pulling out of a wrong-way parking spot. Drivers can’t see the travel lane when they are parked the wrong way. It is a major safety hazard.
Hogwash! You can see the travel lane better when pulling out of a wrong-way parking spot (the traffic is oncoming). There is no rational way to defend the claim that wrong way parking significantly increases the hazard that cars present to bikers (or any other road users). I think the biggest hazard presented to bicyclists associated with street parking is getting doored by people exiting their cars. This is significantly less likely in wrong-way parking situations, which makes me think it may be safer (not that that is a good argument to park backwards). The zeal here to enforce inconsequential regulations is really surprising to me.
If you’re parked the wrong way and there’s a vehicle in front of you (what would be behind you if you were parked normally) you can’t see the oncoming traffic AT ALL if it’s a van, truck, or any vehicle you can’t see through. You only see oncoming traffic after your passenger side front corner is several feet into the lane.
See above.
You also have to drive the wrong direction to park, and again to leave.
Your statements are a reason why it DOES need to be illegal, and enforced.
I think you’re picturing a wider street than I am. Imagine a 26 foot cross section – 7 feet parking on each side, and one shared travel lane in between.
Only one car can be going down the center at a time – cars have to pull over to the side to let oncoming traffic through. So the “drive the wrong direction” doesn’t really apply.
On those narrow streets, drivers have to look both ahead and behind them to see the travel lane.
Sounds like you were nearly hit on a wider street – so that’s not what I was trying to talk about. Cheers.
I think you mixed my comment up with Geoff’s.
But…being on a narrow street doesn’t change the safety issue caused by drivers parked the wrong way pulling out and not being able to see approaching traffic if there’s a vehicle parked in front of them. The view is obstructed because the driver is sitting alongside the curb, where they may have no view at all towards oncoming traffic–until they pull out so far their front passenger-side corner is already well into the lane.
Parked the correct way, the driver is sitting on the street side, so can see traffic approaching from the front by looking forward, and can see it coming up from behind by either looking at their side mirror, or turning their head to look back.
That is exactly right.
I concede that the driver’s view of upstream traffic is more easily obstructed when pulling out from the wrong side of the street than the correct side. I still maintain that the additional hazard to cyclists is offset by reduced door hazard.
Both times when I have been nearly hit, the car was parked the wrong way on a narrow neighborhood greenway. I was approaching on bike, positioned to the right side of the travel lane. The wrong-way car was pointed in the opposite direction as me, to my RIGHT, when they pulled out into the travel lane. Their view was blocked by the vehicle in front of them until their car was nearly all the way out into the travel lane. It is clearly a safety issue.
Good! I’ve heard that unregistered cars in the UK are towed and the owner has a short period of time afterwards to register and insure the vehicle before it gets crushed. We need to start towing and crushing all unregistered vehicles of all kinds on the streets. If people are living in them, use homeless tax money to put them up in apartments.
Are they going to phase out “officers’ discretion” and leave as much as possible to the courts and uniformly enforce it without discrimination/favoritism? The troubling trend that has been the part of cronyism culture is their unspoken loyalty to developers and construction industry.
You have to have permit to store things and equipment to store on any street, but monied construction companies often omit it and get away with it and PBOT often brushes aside complaints.
Despite the fact construction companies have a whole ton of money, PBOT silently refused to exercise summary abatement. Temporary Street Use Program verified the absence of permit and PBOT Public Works Construction did not say they obtained permit to store it. PBOT is being PBOT and it hasn’t fulfilled the request that they provide a written statement saying “no violation occurred” with regard to Oxbow, a company known to do public works construction.