Sometimes questions are more revealing than answers, and Steve Novick, City Council candidate from District 3, posed a good one at last Wednesday’s Bike Happy Hour. “We have seen this really unfortunate drop off in bicycling as a percentage of trips over the past nine years . . . So my question is: What should we focus on to get ridership back up?” And then he continued with a long series of possible reasons which showed his command of transportation issues.
145 of you — so far — have answered him.
But amid his questions, Novick also slipped in some thoughts about increasing the percentage of Portland Clean Energy Benefits Fund (PCEF) money going to transportation, and suggested redirecting some of that money toward building out complete networks.
One commenter, SD, picked up on the PCEF angle and wrote,
The way to mobilize resources from PCEF and other sources around climate and equity is to center a core tenet that is already a reality of the city for most people and needs to be applied to every decision. “Make Portland a city where you don’t need a car for most trips.” Every decision should start with, “does this decision increase car dependency or decrease car dependency?”
That caused me to sit up straight. Anyone (me) who has ever dug deep into PBOT documentation knows that PBOT is an anti-racist organization. This means that PBOT views all its actions through a, “Will it advance equity and address structural racism?” lens. SD seemed to me to be suggesting that a similar rubric regarding car trips might be useful.
Here’s SD’s full comment:
Asking people who bike “What can we do to get more people biking?” has generated a lot of great responses. Many of them are frequently covered on this site and in the comments. Foremost — let’s fully execute greenways and protected lanes. We have tried to create a secret invisible bike network using passive aggressive implementation, but it is not safe because of drivers.
However, the question that Novick is actually asking is how to make a viable, enjoyable, sustainable, equitable transportation system politically expedient? What big change will mobilize support and dispel the haters? The answer to this question is that Portlanders are not going to stand up en masse and fight for dramatic changes to a transportation system that they are heavily invested in, even though it is killing them. This is even more the case since the most immediate deaths are people in poverty.
A strong coalition of support for the best transportation system has to be established within city government, first. I listened to Novick’s interview on OPB along with other candidates, and there were many candidates that said “bikes and transit” were important to them. We have heard this for decades. But when it came down to it, they compromised, they folded, they implemented half measures, because the political juice they got from “bikes” in that moment didn’t stand up to the political juice they got from whoever else was yelling at them.
A decade ago, Portland had a strong vision and identity. A decade later, it is still there, but obscured by self-hatred and weak leadership that was installed by wealthy individuals whose fortunes depend on car-commuters.
The way to mobilize resources from PCEF and other sources around climate and equity is to center a core tenet that is already a reality of the city for most people and needs to be applied to every decision. “Make Portland a city where you don’t need a car for most trips.” Every decision should start with, “does this decision increase car dependency or decrease car dependency?” Part of this is just people waking up and realizing that it is already true. The other part is building infrastructure. The other part is looking to specific demographics, like seniors, and providing car-free living services that take the place of cars.
Thank you SD. Do I need to say that there are many, many strong comments in this thread? Steve Novick commented (pinned at top) that he was “awestruck by the number and thoughtfulness of the comments.” He’s going to try to respond to them, but my understanding is that he will be pretty busy through November 5th.
