It’s official: Keith Wilson is Portland’s next mayor. A relative political newcomer who received just 5% of the vote when he ran for a seat on Portland City Council in 2020, he walloped his incumbent competition and will finish with about 62% of the votes.
Many Portlanders know Wilson for his plan to end unsheltered homelessness and as the CEO of a trucking company. But Wilson also has arguably the strongest transportation background of any mayor in Portland history. He speaks clearly about the need for a cleaner, safer system with less driving and more cycling, he’s a frequent (fair weather) bike rider, and his words and actions demonstrate that he’s a transportation reform activist who’s passionate about issues like safety and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector. And he’s a policy wonk when it comes to high speed rail, road usage charges, trucking and freight movement, shifting mode share away from driving, and using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve driver behaviors.
Wilson doesn’t just talk about these things, he’s been actively pursuing them in his personal and professional life. He’s an executive board member of the nonprofit U.S. High Speed Rail Association and has traveled the globe to observe and learn about how rail can reduce car use and give people more mobility options. Earlier this year, Wilson co-presented an update on the Cascadia Rail HSR project with Barack Obama’s Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood (whom Wilson calls a “friend”) at the Oregon Legislature. And at a City of Portland Freight Advisory Committee meeting back in February, he shared an update on the Cascadia project and said he planned to ask the legislature for $10 million in the forthcoming session that would unlock $90 in federal rail program funds. In his role as a director with the International Road Federation, Wilson traveled to Dubai in 2022 to deliver a speech on reducing GHG at his trucking company.
After the tragic collision with a truck driver that killed Sarah Pliner as she biked to work on SE 26th and Powell in October 2022, Wilson swung into action. He spoke candidly with me about the role the truck and its driver played in the crash and said bluntly that trucks like the 53-foot rig that rolled over Pliner should not even use SE 26th Avenue in its current state. Before our conversation, Wilson visited the site so he’d understand the issues better. He then joined the Powell Blvd Safety Working Group and created a slide presentation about the intersection. It was detailed and specific. He’d measured lane widths with a tape measure, researched City of Portland transportation plans to include applicable stats and policies, explained National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) guidelines, and he even coordinated to have three of his Titan freight trucks on at the site so he and his staff could do real, detailed observations about potential lane configurations that would allow truck drivers to continue to use the street, but make it safer when they do so.
If you’re familiar with how Wilson speaks about ending unsheltered homelessness, the above example is just one illustration of how he approaches other issues with similar intensity, earnestness, and infectious optimism that he — and we — can succeed.
At Bike Happy Hour back in February of this year, Wilson said his campaign staff urged him to stay on message and not talk about high speed rail, but he couldn’t resist. “The biggest issue today is unsheltered homelessness, but [high speed rail] is my passion,” he shared during a speech and Q & A to a crowd of several dozen folks at Ankeny Tap & Table. Then he shared his vision: “This [high speed rail] is what we’re going to deliver to our kids, and as soon as the federal government agrees to our statement of work, they’re going to give us $90 million to begin the planning process. We’re on our way… but that just means it’s still 15-20 years away that’s why my advisors don’t want me to talk about it. But that’s my dream and I want that to be your dream too.”
Then Wilson added, “Because that’s how we get rid of cars.” And I think he realized how that sounded, so he pivoted. “We don’t get rid of them. We make high speed rail so attractive…,” then he went into a comparison with Italy where he learned about how a rail line between Rome to Milan now has an 80% share of trips between the two cities. “Imagine [high speed rail] from Portland to Seattle. All those cars go away because nobody wants to drive anymore. Now they’re biking down to the terminal, they’re taking transit. Nobody wants to drive at that point, right? That’s called the transformation.”
That “transformation” includes a city where fewer people drive and more people ride bikes.
“Imagine [high speed rail] from Portland to Seattle. All those cars go away because nobody wants to drive anymore. Now they’re biking down to the terminal, they’re taking transit. Nobody wants to drive at that point, right? That’s called the transformation.”
During his 2020 city council campaign, I asked Wilson why it’s important for cycling to remain a high priority issue in City Hall. “My two core values are livability and mobility,” he said. “And biking is key to improving both… we need to value our biking community, our pedestrian community much higher, because it reduces congestion and emissions. And and it improves livability dramatically.”
We were in the throes of the pandemic at that time, and Wilson strongly supported making some resident streets carfree so that more people could walk and bike safely. “We should reduce and remove traffic from neighborhood greenways,” he shared with me. “These bike and pedestrian-centric roads need to be a priority to encourage safe mobility and our community’s health is our top priority right now. Closing some roads signals that we are in this together and safety is our top priority,” he added.
Wilson has also studied various forms of road pricing like weight-mile taxes for trucks and vehicle miles traveled taxes. On a trip to Amsterdam he observed their low-emission zone. “They limit who comes in,” he explained excitedly at Bike Happy Hour earlier this year. “And if you’re going to come in, you’re gonna pay a higher rate… because they really value pedestrian, they value transit, and they value bicyclists. And that’s what we should be doing as well.”
As mayor, Wilson will have many pricing options to choose from and plenty of advocates just waiting to bend his ear about them. Or he could just dust off Portland’s already adopted Pricing Options for Equitable Mobility plan. One thing is for sure: Wilson likes to push his visions, often over the status quo or current practice. I’ve heard he pushed his Powell Blvd safety idea over what some advocates in that space wanted. And back in 2020 he told me that spending millions on road infrastructure to reach vision zero was “not working as evidenced by our growing fatality rate.” Instead, he wanted use an AI to help drivers be less distracted — and he’d already lined up a supplier in Australia that could provide a device he wanted to implement in Portland.
If you care about transportation in Portland, Wilson is a very intriguing new leader.
At a meeting of the city’s Freight Advisory Committee this morning, veteran Portland Bureau of Transportation staffer Mark Lear sounded optimistic about Wilson. During an exchange about whether or not PBOT staff is able to analyze complicated trucking projects (a person on the committee said outside freight experts should do the work), Lear said, “I’m really looking forward to our new mayor. He’s helped describe safety challenges related to trucks and the experience of a truck driver to the community. We have a massive opportunity to make our teams better and understand these issues in really productive ways.”
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Do we know anything about Wilson’s positions on the Rose Quarter interstate expansion project or the I5 bridge replacement project?
Keith Wilson might just be the wildcard we need, though I can’t help but keep my expectations in check. Sure, he talks a good game on cleaning up Portland’s mess, but handling those in the homeless community who flat-out refuse help or shelter? That’s like wrestling a greased-up kangaroo—good luck, Keith!
And he’s not exactly set up for smooth sailing with that council stacked so far to the left, they’re practically sitting in the Pacific. They’re likely to block him every time he so much as suggests making a tough call. Add in the little fact that Portland’s budget is tighter than a tick on a sheepdog, and that Jessica Vega Pederson over at the county is clutching the purse strings like they’re made of gold.
She’s got her own idea of “helping” by de-emphasizing shelter in favor of supporting tent cities and building apartments. Meanwhile, she’s just gained two loyal foot soldiers on the Multnomah Commission—Singleton and Moyer—who seem ready to follow her lead. So yeah, color me skeptical. Let’s hope Wilson doesn’t end up just another flash in the pan in this busted Portland skillet, or we’ll be right back here in four years saying, “Same circus, different clown.”
Yeah, I really like Keith and am optimistic about his mayoralty, but that’s very much tempered by the fact that Portland’s mayor is very weak, in some ways even weaker than in the previous charter. The council will set the ordinances and the budget, and the city administrator will administrate. The mayor can only work within those bounds to set a vision and priorities (and perhaps a bit of community organizing and bully pulpiting). Still, if any of the candidates were going to be the visionary Portland needs, I think it’s Keith.
This seems promising:
“We should reduce and remove traffic from neighborhood greenways,” he shared with me. “These bike and pedestrian-centric roads need to be a priority to encourage safe mobility and our community’s health is our top priority right now.…”
One consequence of many Portland greenway designs is that it makes the routes MORE attractive to drivers. I commute by bike on the Clinton Greenway daily and almost get clobbered several times each way by car drivers speeding, passing recklessly, ignoring diverters, ignoring stop signs, being distracted, etc. It’s exhausting, frightening, dangerous, and entirely preventable.
I should note that it is an unmitigated joy joining up with the bike school bus on Wednesday mornings, and not just because it is the safest passage I’ll ever enjoy on Clinton.