After a man was killed by a driver while bicycling on Northeast Glisan one week ago, I heard from a nearby resident who wasn’t shocked at all. Why? Because he’s seen dozens of speeding, dangerous drivers over the course of the past few years wreaking havoc on the street outside his door.
“People drive reckless on this section,” the resident (who has asked to remain anonymous) told me. “They use the bike lanes and center lane as passing lanes. Driver’s regularly do 60-plus mph.” And in dozens of videos clips taken by home security cameras and shared with BikePortland, many of these drivers slam into concrete medians, metal sign poles, and other infrastructure — all of it installed to make the street safer.
In the video above you can see — and hear — some examples. Drivers hit the concrete medians between 128th and 130th at full speed, sometimes launching into the air. You hear the breaking of metal, the “crunch” of impact, then see the damage to cars and the infrastructure we all pay for. The clips I share are a selection of what he sent me, and there are many more he hasn’t sent. About two years ago, he estimated there used to be about three crashes a week. Now he sees damaged infrastructure and/or captures a collision on video about once every 10 days.
The one video I’m not sharing yet clearly shows a driver speeding westbound on Glisan and striking a man on a bicycle from behind. In one angle, I watched a man riding with no hands, looking like he had no care in the world while he enjoyed a late night ride. Then, in a flash, a blur flies across the screen. It’s a driver going at least twice as fast as other drivers on the road and headed directly for the rider. Then the unforgettable, gut-knotting sound of impact.
Glisan a ‘High Crash’ Location
This section of NE Glisan is on the City of Portland’s list of “high crash corridors” streets that have an above average rate of serious crashes, injuries, and deaths. As such, the Glisan gets priority for safety investments and more scrutiny from transportation bureau officials.
Reached for comment on this story, Portland Bureau of Transportation Public Information Officer Dylan Rivera said PBOT has already made some “safety improvements” on Glisan and has more on the way.
“The observation of crashes at a place where we have a public school entrance, a pedestrian bridge, a marked school crossing with a flashing beacon, crosswalk and cross-bike and bike lane protected by concrete curbs indicate the need to address education and enforcement, as well as engineering as we work to make our streets safer,” Rivera shared with BikePortland.
Rivera said they’re “eager” to install more automated enforcement cameras and that PBOT will consider more location on Glisan in addition to ones installed 2.5 miles away at 82nd Avenue. A forthcoming $20 million investment into 122nd Avenue will include major upgrades to the NE Glisan intersection about 10 blocks away.
But what about this particular spot?
I asked Rivera how often PBOT maintenance crews have had to come out and replace broken signs, poles and other infrastructure in the blocks near NE 128th and 130th. Here’s the list he sent back:
- 3/1/2022 – Replaced 9 delineators at the intersection of 122nd and Glisan
- 8/4/2022 – Replaced 1 delineator just east 122nd on Glisan
- 3/29/2023 – Replaced 19 delineators on the islands and curb bike buffer at 128th and Glisan
- 1/10/24 – Replaced missing delineators on the island at 128th and Glisan
- 7/11/22 – Replaced down pipe and sign at 132nd and Glisan
- 3/29/23 – Replaced missing pipe and signs at 130th and Glisan
- 1/24/2024 – Replaced downed signs on median on the island at 128th and Glisan
- 3/27/2024 – Replaced missing pipe and sign on the island at 129th and Glisan
- 4/5/2024 – Reinstalled pipe and sign in Bio Swell 126th and Glisan
- 7/30/2024 – Replaced missing sign at the median on 130th and Glisan
- 10/14/2024 – Reinstalled downed pipe and sign at 133rd and Glisan
I could see some of the damage during a visit to the site over the weekend. Large chunks of curb are missing. Plastic delineator posts are battered and/or missing.
If this is what happens after PBOT does a major safety intervention, what are we doing wrong?
The resident who shared videos with me says one big factor is that local drivers don’t respect the bike lanes because they rarely see people riding in them (a situation I’ve been concerned about for years as well). He’s also concerned that staff at Menlo Park Elementary School do nothing to build that respect when they allow parents in cars to use the protected bike lanes outside the school to drop-off and pick-up their kids.
I hope people realize the design issue is there’s not enough concrete. The median crossings are relatively robust compared to the anemic protected bike lanes which rely only on paint. That leaves the existing medians floating on islands in the middle of a relatively wide and fast arterial. If we added more concrete to define the bike lanes we’d have better protection for riders and we’d give drivers more visual cues to slow down and it’d be less likely they’d strike the islands.
Rivera at PBOT hinted that the city knows the infrastructure on Glisan isn’t as robust as it needs to be. He said they felt pressured by, “public interest in moving quickly to improve traffic safety, especially to create protected bike lanes using inexpensive, temporary materials, as a way to deliver timely improvements.” So Glisan, Rivera explained, is a location where they “moved quickly and used plastic materials to provide protection.”
But these video clips, Monday’s horrible fatal collision — and the three other deaths on east Portland roads since — should make it clear that PBOT’s quick-and-cheap bike lane approach is just one reason this is happening. It feels like this is yet another illustration of the epidemic of lawless, inattentive driving that plagues our city — and the lack of enforcement that goes along with it.
It also shows that PBOT’s incremental, under-designed, under-funded Vision Zero projects are simply not enough to meet the threat of today’s drivers. I had a bad feeling about this when elected officials and PBOT staff held a press conference in 2018 just 1.5 miles away on NE 122nd Avenue. They patted themselves on the back for adding a few medians and a crosswalk, but I worried that it wouldn’t make a dent in driver behavior. “It will take much more to tame the wide and fast 122nd Avenue,” I wrote in a recap of that press conference six years ago. “Even with the crowds and cameras at the newly updated intersection this morning, I still saw close calls and aggressive driving.” The same can be said for NE Glisan.
The person who lives within yards of where that man was killed on Monday also happens to be a cyclist himself. But given what he’s seen and what his home security cameras have captured, “I do not ride on this street,” he said. “I drive my bike to other neighborhoods to ride.”
Given the harrowing footage I’ve seen, I don’t blame him.
Thanks for reading.
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Just prior the recent improvements by PBOT, in 2014 or so PBOT put in a series of small bioswale curb extensions paid for by BES on the north side of Glisan between 148th and 128th. Almost immediately afterwards the city Police were hitting the bioswales at 90 mph, at night, without their headlights on (or flashing lights either), totaling their cars of course. I learned this at a Hazelwood NA meeting, so we had to ask, why exactly were the police driving 90 mph at 2 am on Glisan, with or without any lights on? Why the hurry? Their explanation was that they had always done so, ever since Glisan was widened (in the 1980s) – Glisan has always been a speedway – you know, like Stark, 148th, 162nd, Holgate, 122nd, Division, Halsey, …
For all these 90-foot wide stroads, you need a lot more than just a bunch of concrete and medians, you need to re-think the whole point of these stroads, reduce the sightlines on them so drivers can’t see more than a block or two down the street, make the lanes deliberately curve, add chicanes, diverters, signals, roundabouts (with huge concrete statues or somethings to block the view), very slim road diets, the whole 9 yards.
We’ve tried every quick-fix already. Now what is needed is something complicated and network-wide, or else the speeding will just get passed to some other poor stroad.
I was hit by a driver while riding my bike in 2021. Thrown 20 feet bc the driver was going ~35/40mph – in a place where speed drops from 40 to 20. He hit me bc he was distracted, speeding, and tried to avoid one of those concrete median dividers. I hate them. I think they’re a waste of concrete when a roundabout makes far more sense.
It’s the sound of this video that gets to me. They are last sounds some poor souls heard before they died on this poor excuse for a road.
White paint and flex posts and 20MPH signs and signs that beg people driving to “STOP HERE FOR ME” don’t work. Roads that prioritize people, not speeding cars, have to be engineered with narrow lanes and wide, tree-lined, concrete-protected sidewalks and bike lanes. You can do this PBOT.
Considering that PBOT has nowhere near enough funding to maintain its existing sub-par road network, I’d be interested in where you think the political will and billions in new taxes needed to build a complete network of “wide, tree-lined, concrete-protected sidewalks and bike lanes” will come from?
One thing I’ve learned from reading this blog is that council can use “leadership” to escape the confines of budgetary and political reality.
The capital property/investment gains of the “new middle” causes them to deny that redistributive anti-capitalist politics built the “world-class” transportation infrastructure they admire.
Redistributive policies and capitalism are not inherently at odds. We can have both (if we want to, which we probably don’t).
I mean, they very much are insofar as people understand them. Capitalism is the protection of private property under the guise of profit (capital formation) and the right of private property owners thereto. Redistributive policies (at least in this context) are about taking capital from private property owners to improve the livelihood of those who don’t own capital (or are unable to as effectively use their own capital to generate more). Redistributive policies are specifically anti-capitalist, because they don’t take into account who owns the capital or generates more of it; it’s about providing a more equitable baseline for society.
Specifically, in this case, it’d mean dramatically increasing the taxes of driving to put funds towards other modes of transportation, so that those who can’t drive for whatever reason aren’t encumbered at the cost of those who can, and the only ones left driving are those who enjoy driving for its own sake.
Frankly, I have no problem at all with redistributive policies, and the extent to which we don’t do them here (for transportation or anything else) is kinda shameful. I admit that specifically regarding transportation, there’s a lot of false consciousness-busting we have to do to get people to be for taxing driving, but showing driving to be the enormous burden to require people deal with as a functional baseline for participating in society is a worthwhile endeavor, considering all the good that lies on the other side.
“Redistributive policies (at least in this context) are about taking capital from private property owners to improve the livelihood of those who don’t own capital.”
This is more commonly called “social spending” and is widespread in many capitalist societies, including the US (though to as lesser extent than in many European countries). I’ve certainly heard people attack taxes, but never on the grounds that they’re “anti-capitalist”.
Northern Europe is highly capitalistic and highly redistributive showing both can comfortably co-exist.
Strictly speaking, it is anti-capitalist, because it’s a usurpation of private power by the state, and capitalism is fundamentally about private power. It doesn’t mean that they can’t co-exist, but they typically are made to do so specifically because they work in opposed ways.
Social spending doesn’t need to be redistributive; it can be purely public debt-financed social spending. The real hardliners will argue even that is still redistributive insofar as increasing public debt weakens the value of currency, disfavoring those who already have capital (denominated in a currency); that’s one of the reasons you have goldbugs and people who seem to know one word: “inflation”!
It’s the whole “taxation is theft” thing you hear some people say; it’s nonsense.
“Taxation is theft” has nothing to do with “capitalism” per se, and everything to do with paying less taxes. Nobody likes to pay taxes.
Deficit spending is simply borrowing from your children. Not always bad, but not something to do without careful consideration.
Well, that’s where I say people need to take a more abstract view of what taxes are. (And you absolutely can find people who say “taxation is theft” because “the government” is taking their “property”, even though that “property” is income or things bought therewith that’d only have been possible with government intervention. Property rights aren’t natural rights, after all.)
Taxes are an exercise of those in power of their power over you; you have a much better chance of getting away with not paying taxes to a government that’s on the brink of collapse than one that is well-organized and resourced enough to ensure the taxes they levy on you are collected. In short, no one likes taxes, but unless you’re a king, there’s always going to be someone more powerful than you (and even then, the guillotine or more powerful other king’s sword awaits), and so you’re better off paying your taxes to a power you can (or should feel you can) trust to at least prevent you from being extorted in more direct ways–say, pure theft or prima noctis type scenarios. At bottom, it’s a protection racket, in other words.
What the 20th century should have taught us all is that democracy is the tool that lets our taxes buy us more than physical security. Education, healthcare, transportation, food safety, pollution control…the list is obviously very long. That’s why it always bugs me when people complain about taxes. They’re not a new thing, after all; there’s always someone more powerful than you who will, when it’s useful, use their power to make you do something you may not want to. The point is to ensure that it’s as fair an exchange as possible. Trying to stop that control over you is a losing game; it’s state dissolution and anarchy vs. socialism.
And I don’t disagree, deficit spending isn’t ideal. Nonetheless, unless you’re assuming your currency is going to increase in value in the future (i.e., that economic growth will slow dramatically), debt spending can/will be essentially inflated away, in time. That’s why the U.S. has outperformed Europe economically for the past 2 decades; we debt-spent a lot to avoid the worst possible consequences of the Great Recession, while the EU worried about inflation and inflation only.
You spend during the bad times, and tax during the good times. Failing to do either eventually erodes people’s ability to trust their government to do good and also the actual ability of the government to do good, which erodes trust, which erodes gov’t…It’s a positive feedback loop. Democracy–and keeping all the people in a polity involved and as roughly equal beneficiaries–is what makes taxes work for those who pay them.
Yes, some debt can be inflated away, but too much inflation leads to political instability (which may manifest itself next week). It’s really helpful in this regard to be the leader of the world, and have what amounts to the world’s reserve currency (and to have the world learn our language so we don’t have to work as hard). We jeopardize those benefits (unfair as they are) at our peril.
“That’s why it always bugs me when people complain about taxes.”
It doesn’t bother me one bit. I realize taxes are what lets us build the society we want, but I really dislike paying them. In short, I’m not anti-tax, but I sure don’t like seeing the bite they take out of my paycheck.
I see no contradiction there, but I’m sorry it bothers you.
It’s growth that makes debt insignificant.
But only if your debt doesn’t increase faster than your economy grows.
….To be honest, it does sound like a bit of a contradiction. If you don’t like to do something, doesn’t it follow that you should try not to do it? Insofar as “I don’t like it, but I do like the things it does for me”, it seems like a confusion as much as anything. It’s like saying you don’t like flour, sugar, and butter, but you like cookies. Well of course you don’t like the ingredients; you’re not really meant to. Discussing them is just beside the point; is the cookie good? Are you getting–out of the expenditure of your tax money–what feels like a fair trade?
Asking why you’re getting less of what you want than you think you should get out of your tax dollars–or are getting an altogether different thing from what you want–is a fair question, because you’re no longer discussing the practical impossibility that you’re not paying taxes at all (power’s going to exercise itself over you, whether you get something out of it or not). I wish more people would expect more from their tax dollars–more from their government–rather than hoping to pay less in taxation, because focusing on the latter leaves open the third possibility that you’re both not paying less in taxes and you’re not getting much from your government for what you do pay.
It just seems like a more productive way to reframe the conversation.
“possibility that you’re both not paying less in taxes and you’re not getting much from your government for what you do pay”
In Portland, we seem to get very little for the taxes we pay, so you may be on to something.
Some things are good for us despite being unpleasant. Taxes are one of those things. If paying taxes makes you feel happy, I can assure you that you are in as small minority.
I am curious why they do not use Type 3 object marker signs.
https://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/HTm/2003/part3/part3c.htm
The dehumanization of the “other” who walk/rolls has a large degree of overlap with the dehumanization of those who are houseless. I would not be surprised if some of the creeps who drove at high speed and slammed into curbs and/or signs are part of Mia Birk’s “new middle”.
Baseless, absurd attempt at class warfare.
Try harder.
There has been class war for many generations and the “new middle” upper-class has been winning it.
You need to spend more time around people who are dealing with the homeless. People may be generally sympathetic, but a lot of impatience and callousness comes out in the particular.
I’ve experienced this myself. When someone is making your life hell, and no one seems willing/able to help, it’s hard to maintain a sympathetic outlook.
I’m continuously frustrated by this city’s aversion to the use of bollards. I’m talking about the kind that will immobilize a fully-laden box truck without so much as flinching.
The concrete is better than nothing, but it’s too low, if even smaller cars can mount it (even if it does cause damage or send them flying).
With that said, even heavy-duty bollards would likely be nothing but a band-aid on a street like Glisan, unfortunately.
Bollard The World. But like, real, vehicle destroying/stopping bollards.
Well, the problem with that is you’re creating something that may potentially kill people in cars, particularly passengers.
I don’t think that’s the tradeoff we want, is it?
I totally get that there are a lot of terrible drivers out there that are killing and injuring dozens of people on foot and bike every month. But “vehicle destroying” measures seem a bit…much.
I don’t want anyone dying out there, just getting from point A to point B. But if you’re asking me if I’d trade the needless deaths of peds, cyclists and drivers in autos that are following traffic laws for the equally needless deaths of people speeding or driving so inattentively that hitting a bollard might kill them or the occupants travelling in their car, yes, I’m choosing to spare the lives of the people OUTSIDE that car. Both scenarios suck and are avoidable. But *I* don’t want to die by getting hit by some dipshit kid in a slammed Japanese import trying to drift through an intersection. If someone in that scenario is going to get hurt, I don’t want it to be me. Or you. Or Watts. Or MOTRG. Or David H. Or Blumdrew. Etc. I don’t want people dying because cars! Cities all over the world use bollards to keep reckless autos/drivers in check. It’s really eye opening to visit cities, particularly those outside the US (because let’s be serious here), where they’ve placed a higher priority on the safety of the community rather than the ease and convenience of people driving. It really makes our efforts here look pathetically weak and it sucks. I’m tired of it.
https://x.com/WorldBollard
I value any human life over any vehicle. Yes to bollards
“I value any human life over any vehicle. Yes to bollards”
Does that include the life of the people inside the vehicle?
Has anyone in Portland died while driving because they hit a bollard while going at or under the speed limit?
Extreme speeding is dangerous behavior. We shouldn’t let concerns about the well being of these sociopaths dictate our infrastructure.
“Has anyone in Portland died while driving because they hit a bollard while going at or under the speed limit?”
Probably not, because we don’t use bollards on high speed streets, nor does anyone else that I’m aware of.
Does the 30mph posted speed limit on Glisan classify it as a high speed street?
Steel/Concrete bollards are used in cities all over the world, even next to “high speed” streets.
https://abc7ny.com/bike-lanes-protective-bollards-for-nyc-bicycle-lane-protection-safety/2850594/
The bollards pictured (along with literally every other example I have seen) are up on the sidewalk, which is not going to help cyclists much.
Though of course there isn’t any conceivable bollard arrangement, regardless of safety considerations, that would have helped with any of the recent crashes we’ve been discussing.
Should we cut down trees on medians and on the edges of streets to protect drivers too?
No, but then I’m also the fanatic who doesn’t want to cut down our remaining large trees to make high end housing easier to develop either. If it were up to me, we’d have policies that actually treated trees as important urban amenities, rather than making it easier to remove them while wringing our hands about our dwindling tree canopy.
If trees present a hazard to drivers, reduce the speed limit.
That Portland doesn’t/hasn’t and won’t prioritize a seemingly simple thing such as maintaining a vibrant canopy or planting more trees tells me all I or anybody needs to know about their belief in the ongoing climate crisis. As usual the government’s actions tell the truth about their beliefs over their goals much as their statements on “Vision Zero” do not match their actions.
https://greenblue.com/na/urban-trees-is-there-an-roi/
https://www.arborday.org/urban-forestry-economic/
https://treeboston.org/tree-equity-maps/benefits-of-urban-trees/
https://www.deeproot.com/blog/blog-entries/why-investing-in-mature-tree-growth-is-beneficial-for-cities-a-financial-and-environmental-case/
https://safe.menlosecurity.com/doc/docview/viewer/docN3653A942BBAC47d0afc9df58e4386ccc2ced4d8de7f2485bd4f12bf61d49b886cdc392583641
Good point SW2WheelCommuter. This is, in fact, what many traffic engineers are trained to recommend. It is called expanding the “clear zone.” And it works quite well to prevent deaths for people in cars on highways.
Translating this to the city is where this logic goes awry. This is why we have things like break away bolts, wide lanes, and so many considerations for designs that limit deaths for people in cars, but traditionally very few considerations for people walking and biking.
Oddly enough, the stuff traffic engineers have learned to make highways safer, are exactly the opposite of what makes streets in an urban environment safer. Adding trees to a street by obscuring views, for example, creating curves, and narrowing lanes tends to slow people in cars down. Adding bollards to streets has a similar effect.
One of the biggest components that is missing on Glisan is traffic cameras. In NY, traffic cameras were installed near school zones and had an enormous effect in slowing people in cars. PBOT did a great job with the road diet, but it can only do so much. I hope PBOT chooses to prioritize school zones such as Glisan and 128th when considering where the next camera will go.
The point, exactly! There are far, far too many streets in and around Portland that aren’t highways, but are designed to easily accommodate people driving >55mph, even if that is totally out of scale with the environment. That is what needs to be change, before anything else.
I knew I could count on you to both-sides this (or are you whatabout’ing?). You’re nothin’ if not reliable.
Just making the point that simplistic solutions to complex problems rarely work as intended, or even get implemented by those who understand the underlying issues.
You know, my usual fare.
The person in the car is surrounded by a cage of steel and belted in. The poor sap outside is just a meat bag wating to be splattered.
You err on the side of stopping the multi-ton missile and depend on the internal safety features to protect the (A) operator who caused the wreck and (B) passenger who’s not screaming at them to slow the f*** down.
Like those in DC?
https://www.google.com/maps/@38.8920319,-77.0059851,3a,75y,43.63h,85.1t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s4DN2hv5Ku50tXAQNIKns1Q!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D4.903524233133524%26panoid%3D4DN2hv5Ku50tXAQNIKns1Q%26yaw%3D43.62931793089241!7i16384!8i8192!5m1!1e3?coh=205410&entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MTAyNy4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
Yes
“vehicle destroying/stopping bollards”
Vision Zero is dead.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say
At the heart of Vision Zero is the idea that crashes are inevitable, but should not be fatal. When folks advocate making crashes more dangerous in the name of “safety,” that’s a sign that the Vision Zero philosophy has not been widely accepted.
Fatalities during crashes obviously happen but due to modern car safety standards you’re probably as safe as you’ve ever been inside a car. I bet you could die if you were driving and hit a bollard on Glisan, but odds are you won’t. Even in my early 90s Toyota truck, no safety features to speak of, I’d probably be ok (long term at least) if I hit a bollard (I also drive like a grandpa, proudly never speeding). Don’t speed, don’t look at your phone, pay attention, you’re probably not hitting the bollard. But if you hit a bollard, you tear your front axle out of place, transmission destroyed and inoperable and your vehicle is stopped in its tracks and you don’t kill someone at a median crossing the street, a cyclist in the bike lane, some kids waiting for the 19, that’s a win IMO even if you think that’s a violation of the Vision Zero spirit. JFC, why do you do this with everything??
Bollards, boulders, whatever it takes to STOP/destroy a vehicle and make drivers actually think about maybe slowing down. One year ago a pedestrian was killed at 82nd and Burnside by a drunk, speeding driver. The driver hit the pedestrian, and then hit a newer metal utility pole which destroyed the vehicle and stopped it with enough force to send its engine flying. Thats the kind of immovable object we need to protect people walking and hiking.
https://eastpdxnews.com/general-news-features/drunk-driver-mows-down-pedestrian-mangles-car-in-montavilla/
*walking and biking. Fortunately most hikers are protected from vehicles by trees and terrain when they’re out in the woods.
It’s good to see that David Ashton is still writing, I knew him when I was a community advocate in East Portland a decade ago.
This may sound like a broken record but:
NO TRAFFIC ENFORCEMENT = TRAFFIC DEATHS
Allowing mayhem until we “infrastructure” our way out of this crisis of traffic violence will kill many.
More cops is not the solution, they don’t prevent crime, they (sometimes) respond after the fact.
So if you see a cop parked by the side of the road, do you speed up to drive by?
If you see one walking the streets do you commonly see people breaking the law in front of the police?
To suggest the presence of cops doesn’t prevent crime is beyond stupid.
iF your statement is true then Zero police would be the ideal.
We don’t need any.
I can’t remember the last time I “saw one walking the streets”, and I regularly see cops do nothing when someone is violating traffic laws in front of them. Stupidity is affirming the consequent to try to make a point.
Personal anecdotes are so informative…..
Stupidity is not recognizing facts.
How many police should we have?
Portland has 1.2 per thousand.
Should we have less?
Would crime be more or less if we did?
Give me a better Slogan to promote your big ideas.
“How many police should we have?”
At least enough to respond to all 911 calls.
Next question – how do we get them? Is PPD still running well below their funded establishment? They were in 21 and 22 (the last years I looked).
Next question – how do we get them to (A) do their job and (B) not be part of the problem (Clackamas County Sheriff’s deputy who ignored me in a crosswalk and passed inches from my (STOPPED) front wheel – I’m looking at you).
Yes, I was going walking speed as I moved to cross the *MARKED* crosswalk from the 205 MUP to the pedestrian island on the southwest side of the 205/Sunnyside intersection.
Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to stop when I saw that he wasn’t going to.
I’ve seen police officers frequently ignore other people behaving dangerously and behave dangerously themselves. Anecdotal? Sure, but enough anecdotes start to become data.
You’re leaving out something crucial: Is PPB still failing to fully comply with the federal DOJ to fix its unconstitutional use of force problem, as has been the case for more than a decade? Because that ongoing scrutiny is likely to hamper recruitment regardless of funding.
You have forgotten, the current Mayor has still NOT rescinded his edict from the early days of Covid for police to not enforce traffic laws. I thought he would have done that well before now, but at least he’s consistent at not caring about the citizens of Portland even up to the end of his term.
“the current Mayor has still NOT rescinded his edict”
Maybe you missed this?
https://www.opb.org/article/2023/05/09/portland-oregon-police-reinstating-traffic-safety-division/
Didn’t we see what happened in Seattle when that section of town no longer had a police presence and how terrible it became with their self-enforcement of rules? Yeah, that turned out so well.
Yes . . .
Police need better training.
Police need to be held more accountable for their actions.
But we still need them.
Jeremy,
While it’s true that police often respond after a crime has been committed, evidence shows that a visible and proactive police presence can indeed have a deterrent effect. For example, hot spot policing—where officers focus on areas with high crime rates—has been shown to reduce incidents by targeting places where crime is most likely to occur. A well-known study in Kansas City found that increasing police presence in crime hotspots led to a notable reduction in crime without displacing it to other areas.
Another example is New York City’s CompStat program, which uses data-driven policing strategies to target high-crime areas and trends. Over the years, CompStat has been credited with contributing to significant reductions in crime in New York City, especially violent crime. The model has since been adopted by cities across the U.S. and has shown similar results.
Moreover, studies have shown that police visibility plays a role in crime prevention. When communities know there are more officers patrolling, it can deter potential offenders. A recent analysis in Chicago also indicated that increased foot patrols in certain neighborhoods correlated with reductions in shootings and violent crimes.
Can you please post the studies you’re referring to?
Here you go:
1) Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment
Kelling, G. L., Pate, T., Dieckman, D., & Brown, C. E. (1974). The Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment: A Summary Report. Washington, DC: Police Foundation.
Summary: This study assessed the effect of increased police presence in designated “hot spots” on crime rates. It found that higher visibility of police led to a reduction in crime in these areas without simply displacing crime to neighboring areas.
2)CompStat Program in New York City
Bratton, W., & Knobler, P. (1998). Turnaround: How America’s Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic. Random House.
Silverman, E. B. (1999). NYPD Battles Crime: Innovative Strategies in Policing. Northeastern University Press.
Summary: CompStat, launched in the 1990s, uses data analytics to track crime patterns and allocate police resources to high-crime areas. Studies have shown that it contributed to substantial declines in crime, especially violent crime, in New York City.
3) Chicago Foot Patrol Study
Papachristos, A. V., & Fagan, J. (2012). “Why Do Criminals Obey the Law? The Influence of Legitimacy and Social Networks on Active Gun Offenders.” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 102(2), 397-440.
Ariel, B., Weinborn, C., & Sherman, L. W. (2016). “‘Soft’ Policing at Hot Spots—Do Police Community Support Officers Work? A Randomized Controlled Trial.” Journal of Experimental Criminology, 12(3), 277-317.
Summary: Studies analyzing Chicago’s increased foot patrols found that high police visibility in certain neighborhoods correlated with declines in shootings and violent crimes, supporting the notion that visible policing deters crime.
Much appreciated 🙂
This section is a one car lane road that looks like a two car lane road and is preceded by a fast two lane road. The human brain cannot adapt to this easily unless it is strongly preconditioned to do so.
The distance from the end of the merge lane to the first incidence of concrete on the road is 1140ft (380 yards), with no change in the posted speed limit. At the speed limit of 30mph, that’s about 26 seconds. More than three times the recommended microwave time for reheating a Krispy Kreme donut. The problem is reckless behavior by drivers. Not the inherent degree of difficulty of navigating the roadway.
Maybe I read it wrong and your point is that we should extend the road diet all the way down Glisan, in which case I agree.
Yeah. It’s a bell curve. A significant number of driver’s can’t handle this design. Primarily because they can’t resist reckless driving. So the road should be “dumbed down.”
Maybe add Krispy Kreme donut roundabouts and diverters?
If you’re driving SLOWLY enough, your brain will have time to adjust!
I agree. But it takes a lot of prefrontal cortex to go 20-30 mph on a wide open road that looks like it is built for 50-60+ mph. Most people can do it most of the time, but we still give driver’s licenses to all the people who can’t/ don’t.
I agree this is part of the problem. It’s clearly a two lane road. All they did is put down some fading paint to say this section (I think the north side) is for parking. Driving along at night (especially in the rain) I can see it being very easy to continue on in the wrong lane (the bike lane).
The thing I’m taking away from looking at the satellite and street views, is it makes no sense at all to have a parking protected bike lane there. There is nobody parking there! Parking protected lanes only make sense in busy places where a lot of people park. The north side of the street has no destinations near much of the parking. They should take it out, put in curbs (jersey barriers imo), and make the area actually feel like a one lane street.
Did any of the people in this video face consequences for their poor driving other than the crash itself? Oregon’s guidelines are to restrict a license for 30 whole days if you’ve caused three preventable crashes in a two year period. If you cause five it’s a 30 day suspension. That’s ridiculously lax. It should only take one for a restriction and at a minimum that should be 90 days.
The people that left the scene face a whopping 90 day suspension. Of course that would require the police to find them. Considering the number of crashes that occur here there should be a camera recording 24-7 to aid the police in finding these people. It would pay for itself if we require the drivers to pay for the infrastructure they damaged. Drivers cost us $621k a year in signal and light damage alone if you add in all the other damage they cause they really need to start paying a lot more to drive.
The self reporting threshold for crashes in Oregon $2500 property damage (basically any bumper or body damage at all at current prices), a vehicle that has to be towed from scene, or an injury to a person. I imagine getting a PBOT crew out hits $2500 pretty quick too. It’s a shame PBOT and ODOT don’t seem to make any significant effort at cost recovery and/or triggering investigations of negligent vehicle operators.
https://www.oregon.gov/odot/dmv/pages/driverid/accidentreport.aspx
I think Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns has a great point. We could achieve Vision Zero with zero infrastructure changes. Just strap a metal spike onto every steering wheel instead of a airbag.
People would drive really slow then.
I disagree that properly funded and complete projects are what we need. I have seen many properly funded and complete projects that will still kill people. It’s cars going over 20 mph without any consequences. If you can prevent that, we will achieve all of our goals and more. Flexible posts, 6 inch curbs, center turn lanes do nothing but remove consequences for behavior we should not be allowing.
Or in other words: BOLLARDS
I noticed again in the recent rain storm and decreased visibility that came along with it the distinct lack of reflective paint or stickers in Portland. Not to condone the reckless driving captured on video in this story, but I almost hit a concrete median down near Sellwood because it was dark and rainy, and there was nothing visible about the median. I was going the speed limit in a part of town I’m less familiar about, but PBOT infrastructure can be difficult to see and lane lines can be virtually non-existent when it’s dark and wet. Not sure why PBOT doesn’t use reflective paint on the roads…?
When I was a little kid, before I didn’t know how to drive, I was told that whenever the weather got bad – rain, dark, blizzards, whatever – that you were supposed to slow down to 10 mph under the posted speed limit, that street engineers deliberately designed streets that way.
Isn’t that the maximum legal speed in ideal circumstances. Driving the posted speed limit when it’s “dark and wet” is probably negligence because visibility and traction are less than optimal.
Yes, but then I might be late. If I can’t see inanimate objects or people in the street, it’s their fault for not being lit up like a Christmas tree, not my own for going too fast for conditions.
I thought this was a forum for discussing topics, and different from typical social media posts where people regularly attack others to try and make themselves feel superior?
I was talking about myself.
I think people are pointing out that you actually weren’t driving as responsibly as you think if you were going the maximum legal limit when you knew conditions were causing poor visibility and increased stopping distance. Would it be ideal to have reflectors on obstacles adjacent to lane? Sure, but that doesn’t excuse your behavior and you seem to be blaming external factors instead of engaging in some self-reflection.
Consider that adding those reflectors in that scenario might have just made you feel more comfortable driving the maximum legal speed when you should have been driving slower, creating a false feeling of safety for you and increased risk for everyone around you.
Long ago (when I still drove – I think in 1987) I was NB on I-5 (around Terwilliger) in a driving rainstorm. I was 10mph under the limit as I crept past an Arco tanker (I was in the far left lane, he was in the far right).
Soon after clearing his wash I realized the headlights I saw in front of me were on *MY* side of the median. I took evasive action (moved for the middle lane) and spun out in the standing water in the ruts.
I ended up drifting backward in front of the tanker and getting slammed.
The headlights I saw belonged to a CRX that had spun out shortly before we came through and ended up facing the wrong way in my lane.
After my crash, while the driver of the tanker and I were waiting for the cops to show, a dodge dart tailgating a van came through. Van driver hits the brakes, dart driver hits his brakes, loses control and slams into the median.
This entire time the woman driving the CRX was frozen at her wheel. The vehicle was driveable – as the firefighter who moved it to the far side of the road demonstrated.
Results – 1 CRX, badly damaged on the passenger side. 1 Ford Courier – totaled (never found the right front wheel). On semi-tractor with $10k of damage to the undercarriage (where he climbed over my right front). One Dodge dart – smashed on the driver side.
No injuries (!)
I ended up with a portion of the responsibility – no matter that I was 10mph under the limit, I still wasn’t driving to the conditions.
In OR if you crash because you couldn’t see well enough, you were supposed to slow down until you weren’t overdriving your vision.
This is, in some places, a ticketable offense. “Outdriving your headlights”: another variable condition of driving that people so often just don’t take into account.
i wonder if there’s a median who could be interviewed to tell the other medians what they can do to protect themselves from being hit by drivers..
As an avid median, who has medianed in Portland for decades, I have a list of rules that have kept me in one piece. First….
Yes, but was that median wearing a helmet???
And bright reflective clothing!!
What was Median doing out there after hours anyway? Shouldn’t they be at home with the spouse and kids? Or hanging out somewhere with their good friends Diverter, Chicane, Suicide Lane, and Speed Pillow?
The rest of the civilized world uses roundabouts. These High-crash corridors in East Portland are used as raceways, continually, day and night, and people are getting slaughtered on them on a regular basis.
I’ll say it again; it’s nearly impossible to speed on a road that has regular roundabouts, and Glisan (unlike 82nd) has plenty of room to put them in. It already has one at Caesar Chavez.
Michael,
Look, I’m all for roundabouts—they’re great for slowing things down and keeping traffic moving. But let’s be real: Portland isn’t going to “infrastructure” its way out of our traffic deaths crisis any time soon, especially with the budget mess we’re in. Wheeler’s talking about a 5% across-the-board cut, but thanks to pressure from special interests—non-profits, unions, and the like—these cuts probably won’t touch underperforming programs outside of core city services.
What we need here is a smart, multi-pronged approach. That means actually investing in traffic safety with more officers, non-police enforcement, more cameras, and dealing with dangerously parked, stolen, or junk vehicles clogging up our streets. Quick fixes alone aren’t going to cut it. It’s time to get strategic if we’re serious about making our streets safer.
Mary,
I’m fully aware that roundabouts are a heavy lift. And can’t be the only solution.
My point is that they’re a proven solution to speeding on straightaways. And people are being killed. Lots of people. Regularly. Seems like solving this crisis with proven solutions would be a higher priority.
Actually, the feds I think still subsidize roundabouts, the auto insurance companies love them as there’s half as many points to have crashes as a traditional signal, and apparently in Minnesota a municipality has to prove why they can’t put in a roundabout before they’ll get state funding for signals.
We can only build roundabouts in places that have sufficient space.
Michael,
Mate, I hear you—roundabouts are effective for slowing things down on those risky stretches, no doubt about it. But here’s the hard truth: roundabouts alone aren’t going to solve the mess we’re in with traffic fatalities. It’s not just about speed; it’s about holes in enforcement, neglected infrastructure, and the fact that we’re working with a tight budget.
Roundabouts are just one piece of the puzzle. We also need to think about enforcement that actually deters reckless driving—whether it’s more cameras, better tech, or getting more officers on the street. And don’t get me started on all the abandoned and illegally parked cars clogging things up and making our roads less safe.
If we’re serious about cutting down these deaths, then we can’t just throw in a few roundabouts and call it a day. With the budget constraints we’ve got, we need to use every strategy we can get, from smarter infrastructure to real consequences for dangerous driving. So yeah, roundabouts are a start—but we need to go a lot further
Angus
I said the same in my above comment.
I reject binary thinking.
Yes enforcement.
Yes infrastructure that slows traffic.
Maybe PBOT can move all those abandoned cars to those empty parking spots along Glisan and on 162nd?
I enjoyed seeing the “instant karma”-style damage to these drivers’ cars. But that joy is tempered by the fact that…
– we are forced to spend billions of dollars over-engineering our roads, trying to prevent and ameliorate the effects of bad drivers
– we are forced to pay for repairs to these roads that bad drivers cause
– we pay higher insurance premiums because bad drivers run into people, road infrastructure, buildings, etc.
– we drive, ride, and walk in the constant knowledge that a bad driver could cream us, in spite of our best efforts
– and finally, in spite of all the public and personal money, time, and care put into keeping people safe on our roads, bad drivers kill thousands of people a year
So, when you see someone destroy their own bumper, remember that you’re paying for it ultimately.