Portland traffic safety officials held yet another press conference on Wednesday to highlight a disturbingly high number of fatal traffic crashes. And like similar events held recently, those officials pinned some of the blame for deadly streets on cultural issues and the erosion of behavioral norms that began in 2020 with the Covid pandemic and have hung around ever since.
“We’ve adopted this culture where folks feel like they can drive however they want.”
– Ty Engstrom, PPB Traffic Division Sergeant
The Portland Police Bureau (PPB) has tallied 67 deaths on Portland roads so far this year — a pace that puts us on on par with last year’s record-high number. PPB Traffic Division Sergeant Ty Engstrom offered historical context for that number to the group of media outlets assembled in a conference room inside a police facility in northeast Portland yesterday.
“I looked at numbers all the way back to 2000. And the last five years have all been higher than the prior 20 years before that,” Sgt. Engstrom said.
“This is a cultural issue that we need to address,” he continued. “We’ve adopted this culture where folks feel like they can drive however they want. That what is going on in their life is more important than the other people around them, and we need to have a culture change where we here in Portland — whether you live here, work here, commute through here, are visiting here — you respect the life and sanctity of life of everybody around you.”
Engstrom said the pandemic put Portlanders on a path of driving dysfunction. Here’s more of what he said:
“It created an atmosphere where people felt like they could get away with things. And it has not gone back to way it should be. I think that we have developed this culture where Portland is a playground and there’s no repercussions, and people get away with things here, and you can come here to drive fast speed, race, do donuts, weave in and out of traffic, whatever you choose to do, and there’s no repercussions…
We’re trying to do what we can to change the culture.”
These words felt hollow coming from Sgt. Engstrom, since he played a key role in perpetuating the dangerous behaviors he now laments. In 2021, Engstrom held a press conference with the specific intent to send a message that traffic laws weren’t being enforced in Portland. That dangerous gambit was exposed later as a political stunt to curry political support for a larger PPB budget.
Engstrom’s tactics worked, depending on which side of this cultural dysfunction you are on. Traffic behaviors grew much worse, but in 2023 the PPB was able to re-launch its Traffic Division. Now Engstrom says he’s hopeful police staffing will continue to grow beyond the seven-member team that currently patrols during an afternoon shift.
Engstrom shared at the press conference that PPB currently has a dedicated, seven-member Traffic Division team that patrols the streets seven days a week from 5:00 pm to 3:00 am (there are two teams total who share this shift). That timeframe was chosen because that’s when the PPB sees the vast majority of serious injury and fatal crashes, as well as when intoxicated and impaired drivers tend to be on the road. Engstrom said the current plan is to re-assemble a day shift traffic patrol team “in the future sometime” as bureau staffing levels rise.
Joining Engstrom behind the microphones was Portland Bureau of Transportation Public Information Officer Dylan Rivera. He said the multiple fatalities over the holiday weekend was, “Really shocking and should be alarming to everyone.”
Rivera said PBOT needs to do more, but he also repeated a new mantra that the issue of road safety transcends the transportation bureau. “This is bigger than PBOT. This is bigger than Portland police. This is about our community,” Rivera continued. “This is about public health, behavioral health, substance use disorders, many of the mental health and other behavioral health crises we saw emerging during the pandemic played out on our streets and contributed to traffic deaths that spiked in 2020 and continue to stay high.”
In an interview with BikePortland after the press conference, Rivera said that so far there are no specific proposals on the table for how other agencies like TriMet or Multnomah County can help PBOT achieve their goal of zero traffic deaths (a.k.a. Vision Zero).
How can PBOT and PPB encourage safer driving? Automated enforcement is one solution. Rivera said PBOT has installed 12 new speed and intersection cameras in the past year alone and that by early 2025 there will be 40 total cameras on the streets. While that is progress, Rivera made it clear more cameras are needed. “We need to do a lot more. We need more cameras on more high crash corridors, and so we are working to push our contractor to get more cameras on the streets.”
That view is shared by City Councilor-elect (and former PBOT commissioner) Steve Novick. At an event last month he said he’d support enforcement cameras on “every goddamn intersection in the city.” I shared that quote with Sgt. Engstrom and asked if PPB would support such a massive camera increase.
“That’s a lot of cameras,” Engstrom responded. “That’s a lot of intersections all over the city. And I do know that from behind the scenes, that’s a lot of personnel that it’s going to take in hours to because you have to review all those and you have to approve them, and so that’s a daunting task. But I absolutely support, you know, increased enforcement and education on streets.”
Camera enforcement will only reach its potential if drivers have legible license plates. The lack of visible plates and unpaid vehicle registration fees are symptoms of the sick state of driving culture. Engstrom and Rivera both said the lax enforcement since 2020 is over.
“I’m sure there are people out there that are avoiding putting their license plates on to try and get away from some of those tickets,” Engstrom said. “But that is absolutely illegal. You must have those license plates and registration, and our officers are absolutely able to issue citations for that type of behavior.”
And Rivera admitted that backing off enforcement during the pandemic (a decision that came from the state and federal level, due to pandemic-related issues) had a negative impact on safety and compliance. “What we learned is, when you give people an inch, they take a mile… now we need to get back to normal. We need everyone to understand that we need to get back to the culture of following the vehicle registration rules, displaying plates… It’s not okay to drive around with expired registration.”
Cameras are not a panacea and it will take a much more holistic approach to achieve Vision Zero.
To end deaths and serious injuries, PBOT’s Rivera said a lot more funding is needed. He says the agency needs “a major investment” from the Oregon Legislature in the 2025 transportation funding package. And lobbying for that effort will come from a new, 12-member Portland City Council. Rivera said PBOT believes the new councilors “understand the urgency and the funding crisis that all of transportation faces.”
That crisis has left PBOT in dire financial straits for years. Budget gaps last year led to the prospect of laying off 100 staffers and the coming budget doesn’t look much better. “We need to go from scarcity to bigger investment, and we believe the legislature, the governor and the city council understand this, understand the serious, seriousness of it, and will take action next year.
Moving the needle on road safety will take more than a larger budget or a culture change among road users. The agencies themselves need a culture change. PPB needs to do more with the budget they have, stop playing politics with their services, and rebuild community trust. And PBOT needs to communicate more urgency to the public about what’s at stake.
Last month, Rivera shared a controversial statement in an interview with a KPTV reporter who did an in-depth story on Vision Zero. Pressed on why deaths continue to rise nearly a decade after declaring a Vision Zero goal, Rivera said, “It’s taken generations to build the streets we have for speed instead of safety. It’s going to take decades, potentially generations, to redesign them.”
That framing frustrated some activists who felt it sent the wrong message to survivors of deadly traffic crashes and everyone who wants safer streets about how long the community should expect to wait to feel safer using Portland roads.
I asked Rivera to clarify what he meant by that statement. Here’s how he responded:
“It was in the context of the transportation funding crisis. That was in the context of facing layoffs among the people who could make our streets safer, and saying, ‘How come traffic safety investments aren’t working well?’ Traffic safety investments aren’t happening! Traffic safety personnel are facing layoffs. Instead of talking about what new projects we can do, we have a budget based on band-aids and borrowed cash.
We have had a rise in traffic deaths on our streets since the onset of the pandemic, we have had a flat to declining public investment in the things we know can reduce the severity of those crashes.”
While PBOT sees more funding as the most important tool to reduce crashes and deaths, PPB says its all about getting more officers on the streets.
Sgt. Engstrom said PPB staffing numbers are at “the bottom of the dip” and that in the next couple of years they’ll have more officers and will be able to increase Traffic Division officers.
One place PPB staffing issues have led to a tangible difference for Portlanders is in handling the growing number of hit-and-run cases. “We used to have full-time officers here and all they did is hit-and-run cases and follow ups. We lost those positions when we lost the Traffic Division and it hasn’t been able to come back yet.”
“There are, unfortunately, a large number of hit-and-run cases that don’t get the follow up that they deserve.”
Thanks for reading.
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I appreciate your reporting on this. There are so many concerning things that I don’t have time to address in my comment here. I will write a longer letter at some point that I hope someone will publish. Briefly, the Three Es approach to road safety is outdated and it’s an embarrassment that PPB and the PBOT spokesperson are either unaware that this approach has been shown to be ineffective or are falling back on it in an intentional way to shift blame and attention away from them and onto the very people they are employed to protect. The reasons for our road fatality crisis are complex. But it in no way is caused by people with substance abuse or mental health issues and to look to address our epidemic of road fatalities with a focus on underserved populations who desperately need care may ultimately help people who need more care and resources (good) but it will not get at the root causes of our fatality crisis. Cue the Safe Systems Approach which underpins Vision Zero so Dylan Rivera should know better. The Safe Systems Approach acknowledges people will make mistakes. For crying out loud, it should not be a death sentence to wander about a city under the influence of alcohol or drugs. To more clearly frame the issue it is most helpful to take an epidemiological approach. Think Malaria. We were only able to disrupt its spread by understanding with clarity what the agent is (the virus) and the vector that spreads it (mosquitoes). We then knew to protect people from contact with mosquitoes (nets etc) or disrupt the spread of mosquitos (pest control, eliminating standing water etc). With road traffic safety the agent is kinetic energy and the vector is almost always (with some exceptions and caveats that I won’t get into here) private cars, trucks, and SUVs. So we need to protect people from KE and this is most straightforward for people outside of vehicles (infrastructure). God save people inside of vehicles. Seat belts help but are far from a guarantee. More people are violently killed inside of vehicles than any other mode (I’m not talking rates I’m talking outright numbers). We can reduce the overall amount of KE on our roads in so many ways. Incentivize smaller vehicles, reduce speed limits, get vehicles off the road. Focusing on these upstream solutions is what our leaders should be doing. I am so very disappointed in PPB and also, again, PBOT
Fantastic well-written comment. One small suggestion, in case you want to use the same analogies in your letter. *malaria (the parasite).
Malaria is really a fantastic analogy, because the public health position for ages was to control malaria and not eradicate malaria. As a result the mortality and spread of malaria continued to rise. This position was justified, in part, by placing blame on the people who lived in malaria endemic countries for creating conditions that would make eradication impossible. However, after the Gates foundation targeted malaria eradication as a goal (similar to targeting zero traffic deaths) mortality began to fall rapidly and malaria has been eradicated from many nations.
Although PBOT and Portland have claimed to support Vision Zero, their actions have clearly been Vision Status Quo. Like with malaria, there may be minor improvements that are taking place that fly under the radar, but ultimately there are no results.
Thank you for the suggestion! It’s helpful
Malaria has nothing to do with PBOT there is no easy analogy to be made. Malaria has been cut down over a long period of time by using all sorts of approaches led mostly by “natives’ not people from Seattle with a knack for words.
Just looking at Wikipedia will show you that malaria was (mostly) eliminated in the United States long before the Gates Foundation, it was drastically reduced in India, long before the Gates Foundation and is still a thing, I got it in India.
Just changing the socio-political framing of Malaria has not had the effect you describe and the Gates Foundation, ignorant White saviors that they often are, have made several huge blunders like, for instance telling tribal farmers to switch to fertilizer and pesticides from Monsanto which they could not afford.
A “public health approach” is meaningless in this context. How are mission statements made in cozy Portland living rooms going to change the scary interactions people are having in the early morning hours on the road or the size of vehicles Detroit produces?
“made several huge blunders like, for instance telling tribal farmers to switch to fertilizer and pesticides from Monsanto which they could not afford.“
You are being more kind to them then they deserve saying it was a blunder. What’s the phrase again? “It’s not a bug it’s a feature”?
Sorry to hear about your malaria! Always good to hear from the rest of the world where flights of fancy comparisons are actually deadly realities to so many.
Sorry, but you clearly have no idea what has been done over the last two to three decades for malaria or the greater history of malaria eradication efforts. There are plenty of books that you could read to get started.
I think you missed the point about vision zero too.
I was expecting Donel to defend his embarrassing Dunning-Kruger statement but I guess he is just abrasively doubling down in other comments. In addition to bloviating on topics that he only superficially understands, stating that traffic deaths and injuries are not a public health concern or amenable to public health interventions further separates him from everyone who has spent a few minutes sincerely considering reducing traffic deaths. In his defense, the term “Public Health” may be beyond his grasp if he thinks it’s valid to use the example of malaria eradication in the US to describe the global burden and modern history of malaria.
For anyone interested, the WHO, has statements on both malaria eradication and road traffic deaths. There are also other good examples of infectious diseases that have been eliminated once the decision was made to eliminate them instead of manage them, just like there are examples of eliminating or drastically reducing road traffic deaths when serious commitments with that goal are undertaken.
Road Traffic deaths:
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffic-injuries
Malaria eradication:
https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/331795/9789240003675-eng.pdf?sequence=1
Wow, that’s some absurdity right there.
Portland 2023 traffic deaths soar: Homeless account for half of pedestrian deaths
causality is a difficult concept for many
They are the victims not the cause. You understand that and see the distinction, don’t you?
We can’t really make blanket statements like this.
Victims can cause their own deaths. Ask any of the MAX operators who have hit and killed pedestrians on the tracks. Are we going to shut down the MAX system because it kills people?
Several pedestrians have been killed on interstates this year, including the one I saw a few months ago on a dark morning. I don’t think you can fault a driver going the speed limit in the dark on a restricted access interstate.
That’s a concept many progressives can’t comprehend. People often suffer the consequences of their own poor judgement.
People often equate victim blaming with the idea that the “victim” deserved their outcome.
Someone can not deserve something but still be to blame
Truly. Making something far more complex than it really is.
Sarah, love the passion, but let’s pump the brakes here. You’re right that infrastructure matters, but claiming substance abuse and mental health play no role in road deaths is like saying mosquitoes don’t spread malaria. Sure, reduce kinetic energy—fewer cars, slower speeds, tiny vehicles—but are we really pretending wandering into traffic high as a kite isn’t dangerous?
Also, ditching enforcement? Bold move. Nothing says “safe streets” like letting everyone ignore the rules because infrastructure will magically save us. And “get cars off the road”? Great idea—for Utopia. Until Portland has teleporters, we’re stuck with reality.
Safe Systems means balancing better roads and better behavior. Let’s not throw the Three Es under the bus (or the KE vector, as you’d say).
Nobody said anything about ditching enforcement. There’s a place for education and enforcement. They just aren’t the most impactful interventions. As for your previous comment, yes, wandering into traffic will possibly end up getting one killed, because the road itself is so dangerous
If I go clay pigeon shooting with my 12 gauge shotgun and have a wonderful time with multiple other people there doing the same activity, then go home, consume 5 beers, and smoke some pot, then use the same shotgun to remove my hat, and in the process disassociate the left half of my cranium from the rest of my body. Is it the gun that is dangerous, or is it that removing your hat with a gun when intoxicated is just a terrible idea and there is a good reason any reasonable person doesn’t partake in the activity and isn’t surprised at all with the negative consequences.
It’s obvious the gun manufacturer is to blame because they didn’t sell the item with an alcohol sensor.
Apologies, but I don’t understand your analogy. Can you explain?
Things have intended uses, when deviating from that use, there may be consequences that are unintended.
I think I understand your perspective, but I would rather not put words in your mouth, so please correct me if I am changing your intention here. From your POV all roads have the same simple, intended purpose, i.e., allowing cars to move at a specific speed (often decided by the 85th percentile, which we can get into later).
When pedestrians or any other modes of travel deviate that rule by moving into car lanes, that is an unintended purpose and an unintended consequence results. As a result, it is neither the car’s fault (regardless of how large or vision impairing it may be), or drivers’s fault (regardless of his/her abilities, behavior while driving or speed), because roads are intended for cars. It is rather the person walking, biking or otherwise existing in the road space incorrectly. Does that sum it up? Thanks for clarifying.
If someone “wanders into traffic high as a kite” is a better outcome for society that they die, or that they don’t die? I’d say it’s better if they don’t die. That’s better for the person and for the driver.
Please highlight exactly where in the original comment ditching enforcement in mentioned. You can focus on upstream, systemic changes while also providing a framework for enforcing existing regulations.
Let’s start with the low hanging fruit.
It isn’t, it would appear there are inebriated people literally everywhere these days. Worse though is the unseriousness with how the alternative world is presented via this comment. The concept it is incumbent on literally everyone else to fund and construct a built environment that prevents an intoxicated person from wandering onto a highway in the middle of the night is the pinnacle of absurd.
To further the argument with the outright numbers of people killed inside motor vehicles is utterly pointless, the propensity for one to die in a vehicle today vs 50 years ago is right around half based on population and VMT. Disregarded data. The improvements to the safety of vehicles is truly astounding, but it doesn’t allow for much of a hyperbolic argument, so it is disregarded.
The concept that it is incumbent on literally everyone to fund and construct a built environment that [has so many high speed arterials and deadly stroads] that it is incredibly easy and common for an intoxicated person to wander onto a highway in the middle of the night is the pinnacle of absurdity.
Except it isn’t absurd, but this is just as unserious as Sarah’s comments. It is fascinating to realize that there are people who believe we should structure literally any distance of infrastructure for any mode use, with the safety of inebriated people in mind.
Surprise, we already do this. We could do a better job of it. Maybe when you are done insulting people, you could reflect for a second on how often vulnerable people have to encounter a hostile transportation environment. If you design for inebriated people you are designing for the disabled, children, pets, distracted, pedestrians and even people inside of cars. I feel like you are struggling a lot with a pretty simple idea.
Inebriated people will find ways of doing things non-inebrated people can’t think of.
The amount of effort and money it would take to prevent drunks from harming themselves through poor judgement is astronomical and quite honestly not worth it.
It seems like the imaginations of a few commenters are haunted by extreme examples that prevent them from supporting practical solutions aimed at common scenarios.
You mean practical solutions like disallowing camping in particularly dangerous locations?
Obviously the practical solution is to close the roads if they are adjacent to urban campers.
The more effective version of this would be both disallowing and creating places for people to go. Solving this small slice of the issue, which is obsessively discussed, would not have the global benefits that are suggested by Sarah’s approach.
Absolutely. The TASS site(s) seem to be very popular with both residents and neighbors. Seems like an excellent program, so far. We’ll see if it survives its transfer to the County.
Exactly SD. MotRG can’t imagine the idea that simple changes to the environment can have an effect on people. Designing for a variety of types of people (e.g., people with various cognitive disabilities, people who are blind, etc) is beneficial to everyone. The little bumps intended for blind people also help kids know where to stop.
The odd and somewhat unexpected result from this (Universal design) building separated bike lanes in NYC on the avenues was that EVERYONE benefitted. Drivers could move more predictably, pedestrians could wait at ped islands that made crossings shorter. People with wheelchairs could ride down the bike lane instead of the sidewalk. People on delivery bikes could stop take a break without obstructing others. Crashes across modes predictably drop because the environment is more predictable.
And unfortunately using hyperbole and examples near the 1st percentile to counter this is just MotRG’s unhelpful MO.
SD exactly! God I love your point. Comment of the month here.
This is a great example of the empathy required to understand how a transportation system works and is what is lacking in most people who think about transportations systems (and also in education and otherwise).
Analogy Education:
We design the education system to accommodate varying types of learning and varying types of abilities (that’s usually called scaffolding or Universal Design). Lessons are integrated in as many types of sensory and organizational means to reach different abilities, social differences and learning styles. Play areas are designed so some kids who have physical limitations are able to interact with others to some degree better than if we simply made everything for typically developing children (or budding olympic athletes).
So for transportation systems the status quo (including our self proclaimed MotRG) is often pointed out as natural and any rethinking of design as somehow overdesiged (forgetting that the road was already designed). You’ll see people like MotRG use hyperbole and empty phrases that persuade himself of his beliefs, but provide little substance or insight into understanding the underlying idea behind WHY people get hurt on roads.
So why do people in the US get hurt on roads in of orders of magnitude more than other developing countries? Why are we at the level of Pakistan and Bosnia in road safety?
Take a look at how MotRG frames his argument below. If we can’t prevent inebriated people from hurting themselves all the time, then the effort is fruitless. I imagine thinking bubble wrap plastered on all vehicles and buildings and a cadre of assistants to follow the poor inebriated person’s every move, catch him when he falls etc.
But that is simple logical fallacy (hyperbole). In the real world where we know how to mitigate traffic deaths based on research, we have examined how and why people get hurt. Cities use universal design just like in education. Cities that have redesigned streets that accommodate for different abilities, separated modes, installed speed cameras and lowered speed levels (in the event an unavoidable crash occurs) have essentially eliminated road deaths. That’s not a utopian wonderland. That’s just reality in a different place on Earth.
The point is we have intentionally designed urban stroads and continued policy systems to ignore dangerous behavior and encourage high speeds in urban environments, guaranteeing x amount of traffic death. That’s not “natural” it’s cultural. Most people including MotRG think that is somehow “natural”, unavoidable and can’t imagine any other scenario.
So if the question is not what to do (because we know at least one way a safer transportation system can be accomplished), how do we do it? Implementation isn’t just technical, it’s fiscal and political as well.
Given the status quo, how do we build the political coalitions to prioritize funding and drive change in our established government institutions that make the decisions that could lead to implementation (or not) on an accelerated timeline? Why have our past efforts failed, and what could we do differently now to have a renewed effort succeed?
Of course it’s all cultural. But culture can be pretty hard to shift.
Nah – didn’t say that.
Just saying you can’t prevent everything and the costs of trying to prevent the ever decreasing events gets more and more expensive.
Pretty much a Pareto situation.
And that is exactly the primarily problem with how MotRG presents his viewpoints. Presenting a basic simple argument with little enough substance to reinforce his feelings concerning his own viewpoint, and get a reaction because of the inherent ambiguity his statement presents, but not really offer enough substance to make any actual benefit to the reader.
Road safety:
Few if any policy makers, advocates or governments are trying to prevent every road death (even in the safest cities a person in a car can have a true “accident” e.g., heart attack and dies), but the basic principle behind road safety is mitigating those unintended consequences we can control.
Many cities have already mitigated those consequences and done so via basic principles of vision zero street design. We cannot mitigate EVERY accident, but we can mitigate crashes that are caused by poor road design and behavior. We know we can do this because Zero deaths per year often occurs in many cities across the world. Hoboken is one. This is not a utopia, it is simply applying basic engineering science and data based policy.
Most people understand that there is an economic cost benefit analysis with respect to specific street design projects. But to assume street safety is reliant on a Pareto efficient a gross misunderstanding of how street safety works.
Pareto:
“A situation is called Pareto efficient or Pareto optimal if all possible Pareto improvements have already been made; in other words, there are no longer any ways left to make one person better-off, without making some other person worse-off.”
If street safety were assumed to be a Pareto situation, we would never see cities with no road deaths. That is, it would be prohibitively expensive because we would need to predict the accident above due to a heart attack. And that is merely your use of hyperbole to undermine the true nature of practical and effective street safety.
Pointing to the Pareto optimality is an incredibly bizarre use of an ideology, because you are using an economic theory that supposes a zero sum game, and that is simply a fundamental misunderstanding of how streets safety works.
We know how to redesign streets safely, cheaply and quickly based on decades of research and advocacy. We can even point to the existence of current cities where road deaths/fatalities occur at a tiny fraction of the number in the US (The US is currently the 84th safest country in road deaths per capita).
Based on that robust research, we can choose to make policy decisions to redesign streets to dramatically limit the opportunity for unintended consequence leading to injury and death.
There’s also this definition, which is probably what MOTRG was referring to.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/paretoprinciple.asp
In short, it’s the 80/20 rule.
Not really trying to argue with anything here, much, eawriste, but the one thing I’d like to point out again is that Hoboken is smaller than Lents. Hoboken is smaller than downtown, old town and the pearl clumped together. Hoboken is incredibly tiny.
Definitely PTB. Point well taken. I love it. Hoboken is essentially 2 square miles of primarily narrow, two lane streets where consistent intersection daylighting and some separated paths have made it a somewhat decent place to bike. It’s not great by any means. Let’s look at another city, Helsinki, which I think is about 250 sq miles? Helsinki has had no traffic related deaths last year (not sure about this year yet). Here’s an interesting article on Washington State lawmakers traveling there to find out… something? SMH At least they try.
Ooh ooh! and it’s also the residence of Daniel Pinkwater who may still live in Hoboken???
If we want to ensure intoxicated people can safely roam our highways in the middle of the night, we’re probably going to need to eliminate nighttime driving altogether.
Dusk to dawn curfew… it’s the only way.
The tv series of “Portland, Dusk to Dawn-Empty Streets” practically writes itself.
Build a system that absolves antisocial individuals of personal accountability.
Yes, vehicles are too big and they need to slow down but your messaging needs some work because it sounds far left/idealistic and is gonna turn off everyone who is sick of the lack of consensus-building from those quarters.
Firstly Malaria is not a virus, don’t say that please, you don’t sound credible.
Probably the most crucial part in controlling it was the development of medications that kill the plasmodium so the next mosquito doesn’t ingest it and give it to someone else.
I struggle to see the relevance of Malaria to your argument so probably ditch it.
People with substance abuse ARE contributing to this; they don’t have good judgment in driving or walking, or maybe they just don’t care anymore.
Your goal is to slow cars down and shrink vehicles—get people on your side and try not to turn them off.
Use paragraphs, acknowledge the reality of drug users without putting them on a pedestal where they have no agency and are not accountable, and use less emotion.
Good luck to you.
Or we could just have more enforcement.
Sometimes we overcomplicate things and all that’s really going on here is the Portland Police Department simply doesn’t control speeding, and it’s also true that given the size of the department in relation to the square mile are of the city means controlling speeding is not easy. However, even here we have to remember that any crackdown on speeding quickly fans out to the community, causing the majority of drivers to slow down. So, what’s happened in Portland the last 10 years is the department has entirely given up on deterrence–which is basically how effective policing works.
Effective policing is a part of addressing our fatality crisis – arguably a small part but still, a part. Are we talking about reducing fatalities? Or ensuring the police uphold their relatively small role in addressing the crisis
“Even here we have to remember that any crackdown on speeding quickly fans out to the community, causing the majority of drivers to slow down.”
What is your evidence to support this claim? When has this happened in the past and what evidence do you have to show this occurring in any meaningful way?
“…those officials pinned some of the blame for deadly streets on cultural issues and the erosion of behavioral norms that began in 2020 with the Covid pandemic and have hung around ever since”
LOL. The COVID excuse is getting old. The traffic division was eliminated. Not a smart move. Then it was PBOT leaders such as Chloe Eudaly and Joanne Hardesty that helped augment the culture of lawlessness (de-emphasizing enforcement, eliminating consequences for those with unregistered cars and those without plates, pushing plastic traffic to stop gun violence, enabling unsanctioned camping with free tents from PSR). The city bureaus need to look at their own failures for once and how they have failed the citizens of Portland when it comes to traffic deaths.
If there is a concept that’s grown wearisomely old, it’s the fixation in your posts about the negative influence and legacy of Chloe Eudaly and Joanne Hardesty in our city. The singularity of your targets has always seemed puzzling, but on this topic it’s patently unfair.
Traffic deaths in Portland have increased during the tenures of the last five Bureau of Transportation commissioners: Novick; Saltzman; Eudaly; Hardesty; and Mapps. The narrow scope to single out 2 of the commissioners for particular disdain suggests an acute agenda.
According to the 2015 Portland Traffic Safety Report published by PBOT, the number of traffic fatalities between 2004 and 2015 in the city never exceeded 40, with a low of 20 in 2008, and a high of 37 in 2004 and 2015.
The Vison Zero Traffic Crash Report 2019 listed the following traffic fatalities in the city for 2016-2019:
2016 – 42; 2017 – 47; 2018 – 35; 2019 — 50
According to the Portland 2023 Deadly Traffic Crash Report published by PBOT, the number of traffic deaths in Portland since 2019 has continued to rise:
2019 – 48 [2 less than the 50 listed in the 2019 report]; 2020 – 54; 2021 – 64; 2022 – 63; 2023 – 69
In 2024, 67 have died in traffic fatalities this year.
In regard to your accusation that Eudaly and Hardesty “helped augment the culture of lawlessness” by “eliminating consequences for those with unregistered and those without plates,” an Oregonian article from July 2024 regarding vehicle registration noted that the bureau “issued nearly 21,000 citations for expired vehicle registration in the eight months between July 1, 2019, and February 28, 2020.” Eudaly led PBOT from August 2018 to December 2020.
“The number dipped to 24 during the same eight-month period a year later amid the pandemic before rising to 4,000 between July 1,2022 and Feb. 28, 2023, and nearly 13,000 between July 2, 2022, and Feb. 28, 2023,” the article adds. Hardesty was PBOT commissioner from January 2021 to January 2023, when Mapps took over. A notable increase in vehicle registration enforcement occurred during Hardesty’s tenure. I suppose if one is already inclined to besmirch a particular commissioner then statistics aren’t germane
In regard to your accusation that Eudaly and Hardesty “helped augment the culture of lawlessness” by “enabling unsanctioned camping with free tents from PSR,” Portland Street Response launched in February 2021, so the increase in traffic deaths in the city had already been trending upwards for 5 years before they handed out their first tent. This remark is, charitably, disingenuous, at best.
Again, why isolate Eudaly and Hardesty for your ire? The three other commissioners in charge of PBOT are notable by their absence. Why have they been lucky enough to be spared the wrath?
And, if you’d like to hand out blame, then why not include Ted Wheeler? He’s been the mayor during the majority of the past decade and has barely registered a serious response to the carnage on our streets while deaths on our roads continued to rise. He’s never been the head of PBOT, but dynamic mayors should set the tone and priorities for the city’s they lead. His absence as both a politician and policymaker on this issue has been mystifying.
Or you can continue to disparage your 2 scapegoats.
amazing response Matt!
Ah, Matt, nice try, but let’s cut through the smoke and mirrors.
You’re playing a classic game of “everyone’s equally guilty, so no one’s really to blame,” which is cute, but doesn’t change the facts. Yes, traffic deaths increased under several PBOT commissioners, but the policies under Eudaly and Hardesty really accelerated things. Shifting focus away from vehicle registration enforcement? That’s not just a minor oversight, it’s a direct policy choice.
You’re right about one thing: Wheeler’s been practically invisible, but that doesn’t absolve Eudaly and Hardesty. You can’t just bury the real critique by throwing a bunch of numbers and historical data at it. Their decisions were part of the problem—and pretending otherwise is just lazy deflection.
Stop dodging and admit it: some policies were reckless, and those decisions have real consequences on real lives. But sure, let’s keep pretending it’s all just some grand conspiracy.
Ah, Matt, nice try, but let’s cut through the smoke and mirrors.
You’re playing a classic game of “everyone’s equally guilty, so no one’s really to blame,” which is cute, but doesn’t change the facts. Yes, traffic deaths increased under several PBOT commissioners, but the policies under Eudaly and Hardesty really accelerated things. Shifting focus away from vehicle registration enforcement? That’s not just a minor oversight, it’s a direct policy choice.
You’re right about one thing: Wheeler’s been practically invisible, but that doesn’t absolve PBOT bureau heads Eudaly and Hardesty. You can’t just bury the real critique by throwing a bunch of numbers and historical data at it. Their decisions were part of the problem—and pretending otherwise is just lazy deflection.
Stop dodging and admit it: some policies were reckless, and those decisions have real consequences on real lives. But sure, let’s keep pretending it’s all just some grand conspiracy.
Thank you, Matt
“It’s taken generations to build the streets we have for speed instead of safety. It’s going to take decades, potentially generations, to redesign them.”
There are also generations of ambivalence built into folks in the transportation and enforcement world. They need to center the experience of people outside of cars and they need to consistently be in the face of ODOT, Metro and the Oregon Transportation Committee as frequently as the car and freight lobbyists. They need to call out the failure of the Governor to hold ODOT accountable.
Most of the PBOT safety timelines are talking about budgets, but what comes across is “after I retire.”
“It’s going to take decades, potentially generations, to redesign them.”
Fortunately, we do not need to use capital projects to redesign streets. We can simply narrow roadways with paint, and physical barrier such as boulders (as with first phase New York street redesigns). That’s really cheap relative to resurfacing and pouring concrete wherever possible. If the urgency is there, those projects can happen. It is very clear that the urgency does not exist.
Portland streets are deadly. Approximately 20 times deadlier than streets in Utrecht, Netherlands, where I am now. What’s the difference?
The difference isn’t pouring more money into a clearly failing system of ever-wider streets and expensive traffic signals. The Dutch are on a mission to shrink the size of their streets whenever possible (narrow streets mean less pavement to maintain as well as safety for people). The Dutch don’t tolerate multi-lane stroads through the center of communities. And Dutch traffic planners try to remove traffic signals in favor of narrowed crossings and roundabouts.
The difference isn’t more money for policing either — Dutch police don’t do random traffic stops or review public cameras on every corner. While every vehicle has to have a visible up-to-date license plate or be towed, there are virtually no public cameras, and no traffic stops. The main public cameras are on parking enforcement cars that cover the entire city frequently and efficiently as they read visible license plates. Police get involved only when there is a crash, and then they produce excellent reports that include details about possible infrastructure failures.
The Dutch aren’t trying to improve safety by telling people to be nicer to each other either. Transportation officials know, as do I, that plenty of people in the Netherlands are jerks behind the wheel of a car. People are always going to do what is most economical and efficient for their own lives. So streets have to channel those impulses.
So what is the difference? Why are 20 TIMES fewer people killed or injured on Utrecht streets? Streets are designed for people: People on bikes and walking, and transit first. What else? Dedicated transit lanes. Paid car parking everywhere. Universal license plates. Cars are guests, not the main purpose of government. Clear limits and rules that people driving cars know and follow. Every car cannot use every street. Every spot is not a potential car parking spot. Every major road upgrade starts by adding transit lanes and improving the experience of people walking, biking and living, not protecting car lanes (hello 82nd Ave in East Portland).
You said it best JM “PBOT and PPB are not making the kind of cultural shifts within their agencies they are asking the public to make.”
Hey Cathy, great post. I would add that enforcement in the Netherlands relies largely on speed cameras, particularly on highways, but exist throughout the transportation system.
Totally agree. It’s actually insulting to blame this failure to act on budget woes. The City is making choices and showing it’s priorities every day. The reason cars still threaten the lives of people walking and biking is the lack of political will, that’s all. PBOT and the City overall lack leadership. No one is willing to make difficult decisions that will make the car-brain basics mad. I hope that changes in the future. As an example, PBOT decided to remove concrete barriers on bikeways because they were too frequently hit by cars. Why not instead conclude that perhaps the barriers should be stronger, more visible, and more effective? Double down! Maybe just close those streets more fully to cars. The City should have a zero tolerance policy for speeding and failure to stop on greenways. Set speed traps. Work with mapping companies to remove them from driving map suggestions. Mark them with signs that let cars know their place, like the dutch do. Start closing intersections on greenways to cars at regular intervals so they’re forced to divert rather than ripping through when there are perfectly good car-hell multi-lane roads a few blocks away. ACT like this matters. Tell people about what you’re going to do differently to make us safe. Defer big capital projects (just an example – 42nd Ave Bridge has a $22M price tag – push it off five years and spend that money on the bare bones basics to force cars to slow the fuck down. The reality is there is currently no one in power who is willing to speak up against car violence and back it with action. I think drivers (and I am one) need to be treated like children and told that if they can’t follow the basic laws we have, they’re going to lose their toys (ie cars and access to the roads).
Cathy, please discuss how the transportation system in Utrecht (pop. density 9500/sq mi) can be compared to Portland. (pop density 4500/sq mile and surrounding areas around 200-2000/sq mile?)
Practicalities such as these are crucial. Walking, trains and bikes are much easier at those densities.
Why do people on this blog continually bring up the Netherlands, with population densities among the highest in the World as a useful comparator with Oregon, population density among the lowest in the World?
I want safety and transport like the Netherlands but I’m willing to accept incremental change which can only happen through consensus-building discussions grounded in reality.
Donel, while density is sometimes not an unimportant factor, it’s not as big a factor as you might think.
Oulu Finland has nearly the exact same population density of London, Canada. And yet one has a sizable population that cycles regularly throughout the year and the other has almost no winter cycling.
Weather is also not a good predictor of cycling. “In cities with cold winters there is almost no correlation between winter temperatures and the amount of winter cycling…. It is a complete myth that people do not cycle in the winter because of the cold.”
Because density is not the end all of a transportation system, neither is topography, or sex etc. The actual variables that affect the number of cyclists in the winter are:
1) “Is there a network of safe bicycle paths… Is it possible to regularly go where you want to go without regularly sharing the road or regularly cross paths with high speed motor traffic.”
2) Does the city maintain its cycling lanes in the winter?
What is the biggest predictor of cycling?
“A network of safe cycling lanes is the single biggest predictor for the level of cycling in any city in the world.”
Which way does causation run? Does having more cyclists result in better infrastructure, or does infrastructure cause more cyclists?
Both seem plausible, but in Portland, we know for certain that more cyclists led to better infrastructure, and that as we built that infrastructure, people quit riding.
Maybe there are other, more important factors at play (perhaps some that are not captured in simple “would you ride if…” surveys) and the relationship between infrastructure and riding is not as straightforward as you like to claim, especially in the specific case of Portland (which might differ from other cities in some way).
eawriste & Watts, transportation planning and infrastructure development has always been both incremental, pragmatic, political and interative. This as true about Portland bike network as its sidewalk, freeways, parking, etc. Interative in that each thing that is tried then influences the next thing that’s tried – success breeds success, failure breeds excuses and more studies and trips to Amsterdam – and when a bike lane is added, it tends to breed more bike lanes, whether they are needed or not. Pragmatic – facilities are more likely put in where there’s enough space for the, or in the case of painted bike lanes, where the local DOT wants to keep cars away from the curbs – as well as cheap. Political – spending public money (or misspending it) is always political – where is the project, who did it (what agency), when (how long was it delayed), who was most resistant (neighborhood associations, business organizations, councilors, neon green bike nazis) – it’s all politics. And incremental – it’s never done at once, on time, within budget – a bit here and a bit there, and never enough anywhere.
When Portland had its high rates of biking – a period when I personally happened to still live in Portland – Portland’s infrastructure was lousy: some painted bike lanes, most ironically in East Portland on stroads the Dutch would have never allowed – some off-street paths that have never since been added to – and numerous neighborhood signed routes with no diverters, just a bunch of sharrows. Barrier-protected bike lanes, buffered bike lanes with or without candlesticks, dedicated bike signals – that all came later, when the numbers were already on their way down. No one knew at the time why the numbers were so much higher in Portland than in other cities with just as good (or bad) bicycling infrastructure, nor do we really know why the numbers eventually dropped – it’s all speculation.
This is the critical point. I don’t know what those factors are, but I do suspect the rise and fall are related — something happened to cause the rise, and when it stopped happening rates fell back to a more “normal” level.
I’ve hypothesized that thing was “fashion” (there was a similar fad for “10-speed bikes” in the 1970s that came and went). That’s the best explanation I’ve heard.
I could argue a theory that Portland was simply the best and better than every other big American city at having a bike culture and so we rose quickly in ridership and it was a strong force (amplified by BikePortland!) that inspired the rest of the country… Then when we fell for reasons that are not speculation and that have been dissected at length on this site, our dipping tide impacted all the boats.
This isn’t an argument I would die on or anything, just saying. I also disagree that these rises and falls are “all speculation” or “fashion.” I don’t agree with the outlook that until we have a bulletproof research study that proves a very specific phenomenon it therefore is unprovable and must be “speculation”.
What would make Portland better at “having bike culture” than other places? Can we reproduce those conditions now?
It’s a long answer. Culture is a very broad term the way I use it around cycling. Back when it was stronger than any city in the world, it felt like cycling was woven through nearly every part of Portland life. I mean, we had a company called Soup Cycle that delivered hot soup by cargo bike! We had the largest framebuilding show here and it was so crowded at the convention center the Fire Marshall was called in and Robin Williams showed up, we had piles of bikes parked outside City Hall for inauguration party held by a mayor, it was just bonkers.
So no, we can’t reproduce that. It was a distinct cultural moment. In the same way Woodstock won’t ever happen again, that era of cycling in Portland won’t come back. But it can return in a new, different form that is just as powerful. And that’s what folks like me and you and a lot of others are doing every day. We are trying to build a great cycling culture. I never stopped! I just watched what we had go away and it took me a while to mourn and re-commit to building it back up to something better.
I agree that we can’t engineer culture; it was great while we had it, but now it’s (mostly) gone. (That spontaneous cultural awakening is essentially what I mean by “fashion” so I think we agree even if we’re using different words.)
What remains a very open question about whether we can get a big shift towards bikes without that cultural wind at our backs by relying on “technical” means like making streets safer (which, we would agree, we should do regardless of its impact on cycling). As you know, I’m skeptical.
culture never dies, it just changes. It’s at our backs now. We will not get more and better infrastructure without a strong culture. They are inseparable. Actually, part of the reason Portland bike culture went away is because it (And “portland cyclists” and “cycling in portland” in general) started getting a bad name as being nothing but rich white racist men. That was never fully true of course but it was a very powerful narrative many folks clung onto unfairly and it had a big negative impact on how many people biked because it scared away a lot of people (activists, politicians, fence-sitters, and so on) from being part of the culture. if that makes sense.
Absolutely. Without cultural/popular support, everything is a heavy lift. With it, progress becomes obvious.
Hey david. YES! Thank you for reiterating this. It’s a constant, tiresome and certainly redundant theme on BP where speculation leads to a weird reminiscing about a past that never existed. I think Bruce McCall (RIP) where we have gigantic scenes where people imagined a Portland in the past, only somewhat connected with actual Portland.
Yes, Chunk666 was cool, and soupcycle and exploring the abandoned places up near UP. But these are all anecdotes, which a lot of people seem to use as evidence for their theory of change, which is simply devoid of evidence.
I think you meant iterative? Yes, of course, certainly HOWEVER, big huge however here: how advocates, the city council, PBOT and other agencies prioritize projects can have enormous or little effect on goals, (e.g., decrease in crashes, increase in modal share), which I think we can assume should be at least a somewhat integral goal in transportation policy.
For some reason I cannot fathom, some people on BP, in Portland, and sometimes the public at large, in general hold onto an ideological assumption that because Portland built things in a lot of places for a lot of years, that must have had a measurable impact.
Personally, to me, this is like saying, “Looky everyone! We did a thing over on Barbur Blvd where people can cross the street better, and whoa that’s a nice median crosswalk on 82nd, and man that airport bike rack is snazzy.” But the cumulative effect on a specific measurable outcome (if there were any) is negligible at best.
I do not mean to detract from the importance of individual projects across the city, nor the effort that advocates and engineers have put into such projects, but if our goal is to increase modal share in Portland, those projects will likely have no effect.
So David that is why people involved in transportation decisions (e.g., advocates, council, PBOT, ODOT, Albina Vision Trust) must prioritize projects that have evidence to support the greatest possible increase in modal share. And that means (no big surprise) expanding the central city separated bike network. Otherwise, we’re just spinning our wheels… in a bad way 🙂
Let’s assume for a moment that we agreed this was the solution to increasing mode share. A complete, separated network of bike lanes would be expensive and controversial to retrofit onto the existing inner-city street network.
How do we build the social consensus, popular support, and political momentum to actually make it happen in an era when biking is no longer a political priority or part of the discussion or collective vision (if it ever was)? (Especially if we wouldn’t expect to see mode share respond until the project was more-or-less complete.)
“Both seem plausible, but in Portland, we know for certain that more cyclists led to better infrastructure, and that as we built that infrastructure, people quit riding.”
Repetition of the same point without evidence.
You seriously need Evidence that people are not riding bicycles in Portland at anywhere close to 10 years ago?
This last week has been glorious cycling weather and my bike is the only one at any major grocery store in NE Portland and I see hardly anyone cycling anywhere.
The Crash in cycling here is mind boggling.
E-bikes have changed nothing.
Hey BB. In a word, yes. Notice I did not say why people are riding more or less than 10 years ago, although the data does suggest a lower cycling mode now compared to 10 years ago.
Evidence is much more important than anecdote in terms of making policy decisions (I hope you agree on that). Here is a basic primer on how science typically looks at and digests different types of evidence. While our memories tend to think about the much more salient “wreckless guy who almost killed me” or “the horrific traffic on Friday,” as we almost always tie memories to emotions, what you are providing is anecdote. Anecdote is below the bottom of the pyramid linked.
Reread what I wrote please. I’m asking you to provide robust evidence that suggests why people cycle, particularly the “interested but concerned.” I would appreciate it and genuinely love to read it. If you want research from me, I am totally ok with sending you some. Best of luck.
A scientific survey of why People who used to cycle regularly and don’t anymore in Portland would be a pretty expensive undertaking.
Surveys asking people in general why they don’t (the interested but concerned) are done already and you probably can access those.
They are mostly worthless. Asking people why they don’t do something they really don’t attempt is fairly dumb.
Since you do agree cycling numbers are way down and you do agree that a lot more cycling infrastructure has been built in the last 10 years (never enough for you I am sure), then what would be an obvious explanation?
It simply can’t be that infrastructure and safety is the primary reason or the numbers would correlate somewhat. They don’t.
There are cultural reasons, lifestyle changes, work pattern changes, lots of reasons but building a bunch of unused infrastructure is not helping at all it is pretty clear.
Agreed. Or you can find general research on why people “including the interested but concerned” choose to cycle. If you think research/science is useless, we don’t really have much else to talk about.
Again, the underlying assumption that you and Watts appear to have is: Any and all cycling infrastructure is beneficial regardless of its design, quality, location, purpose etc. Since (based on this assumption) ANY cumulative infrastructure should have had an effect, infrastructure has has no effect. This is a meaningless, circular argument.
That is simply an assumption or ideology that has no research base. None of the projects that were built in Portland included any data on an increase in mode share, nor were they intended to be connected to other projects in a network, nor were they a part of any strategic design, nor did they have any data or research base that had as its core the purpose of an increase bike modal share.
Does that make sense?
“the underlying assumption that you and Watts appear to have is… ”
While I am not a paid bicyclist, I am a very experienced urban bike rider, and I know that a lot of our new infrastructure is at least reasonably good, and some of it is excellent. (You can consider me a primary source for that.)
But even if you assume that all our new infrastructure has zero value, and PBOT has been wasting our money by building it, there is still something driving bicycling rates down, hard. Promising that ridership will increase if only PBOT would build an idealized bike infrastructure that is totally unlike anything they’ve built in the past decade (because that’s worthless), without understanding the bigger picture, is dishonest at best.
COTW
I made two assertions: 1) that bike ridership has dropped sharply; and 2) we’ve built a lot of new infrastructure immediately prior to and during the decline.
Do you actually believe that these assertions are untrue or even questionable?
“Why do people on this blog continually bring up the Netherlands,“
Something to do with the ethnic makeup perhaps that Portland can’t seem to stop obsessing about? It’s never a good look when Nordic countries are espoused so strongly and other places like Bogota
https://bikeportland.org/2015/09/03/people-bikes-colombia-157923
and other places more like Portland in our own back yard are barely noticed.
Why people think Portland can be like any of the tiny Petro fueled Nordic cities is beyond me, but a little unsettling.
I just got back from a week in Amsterdam. It is so UNLIKE Portland in every way. Because they mostly ride bicycles and people on this forum want everyone to ride bicycles, people somehow think it is a comparable city to Portland which is laughable.
Dense, flat as a pancake, and the layout of the city core was never conducive to a lot of automobiles.
Its also the worse city for a pedestrian I have ever been in so there are trade offs to having thousands of people riding bicycles on every inch of pavement.
270 cyclists were killed in the Netherlands last year, many bike to bike accidents.
It’s a great city, unlike anywhere else. It won’t be reproduced here.
It’s definitely on my travel wish list. It’s nice to hear a more holistic view of the place.
Hey BB. Here are some of your assumptions:
1) The Netherlands is unlike Portland in every way. This is a subjective statement, and essentially meaningless.
2) Because most people in the Netherlands ride bikes, people on this forum want everyone to ride bikes. Again, a subjective generalization. Not really sure what you mean.
3) You are correct. Amsterdam had 270 cycling related deaths last year and that is a real and growling problem. Many cities across the world are experiencing an uptick in cycling related deaths. But with 490,000 cyclists on the road cycling around 2 million kilometres every day, that is a somewhat astronomical number. While road deaths are horrible and mostly preventable, those deaths are really high and need to be addressed. Many of the increase in deaths are elderly people, and the city/country needs to better address the problems related to this. For Perspective “The Netherlands has the best traffic safety in Europe, with 45 deaths per million inhabitants per year. In comparison, the US has 147 deaths per million inhabitants per year.”
4) “Density, topography and the city layout was never conducive the automobiles.” Here is the story of a canal in Utrecht that was turned into a freeway in 70s during the rush to urbanize like many countries did while idealizing the US in the ’60s. The freeway was somewhat recently turned back into a canal. Here is a series of images of Amsterdam in the 70s where there were nearly no bike lanes and cars and parking completely dominated the city. Portland downtown and Amsterdam downtown looked very similar during the 70s. If you’d like to see how Robert Moses and the US affected city planning in the Netherlands in the 60s, take a look at this. Amsterdam was what we would nearly recognize as very similar to an American city back then.
5) Here are the longitudinal pedestrian fatalities in the entire country of the Netherlands up to 2022. “Worst city for a pedestrian I have been in,” is again a subjective statement that is not borne out by data. It might be different and even uncomfortable for someone who visits infrequently, but I would suggest going to various other countries like those in S/SE Asia or a Medina in Morocco, where walking, mopeds and mode separation is a much more nebulous cultural experience. Incidentally Amsterdam and quite a few other cities including New York are grappling with the very real conflict between motorized (e.g., moped, ebike) and non motorized transportation devices in separated bike lanes. The size of cars are also starting to see limitations in urban environments in the EU due to their higher likelihood of injuring people. So I can see why you might feel uncomfortable. I too was sometimes uncomfortable with some mopeds while riding in the Netherlands (particularly with the exhaust).
6) Here are the typical cycling fallacies 101 that people tend to assume. Topography, density, weather etc. are all essentially factors that, while sometimes not unimportant, generally have little to no effect on mode share.
7) The “Can’t happen here argument.” If you think it can’t happen in Portland because the Portland or the US is just “too big” or something like that (I honestly can’t follow that argument), take a look at this vid.
Something I do likely agree with you on BB is the overuse of Netherlands as an example. It’s a great place but solutions to road safety across the globe can be surprising and do not necessarily reflect one particular culture. They do have things in common, and I think of some cities in Colombia (with the Ciclavia), and Montreal with its pedestrianization and separated bike lanes, or even sometimes Japan with its institutionalized lack of street parking and narrow streets as examples that can assist in our understanding of why people decide to bike more. Anyway, thanks for reading.
“The “Can’t happen here argument.”
A great many things can happen here (including building a completely separated network of bike routes). All we need is for the public to demand it.
You are certainly the Wiki of cycling data.
Just because you wish people took up your hobby in Portland will not make it so.
If you actually think my opinion that Portland Oregon and Amsterdam are completely Unlike cities is subjective, get help, there is no reasoning possible with someone like you.
They are not remotely comparable in any way.
I am truly sorry that cycling has died in Portland, I do my share as I ride everywhere every day. Your assumptions about why it died are completely subjective as NO data supports anything you state about cycling in Portland, Oregon.
Speaking of subjective assumptions, I’ll give you my opinion of why Portland grew to over 7% bike mode share then dropped to 3% (and is still falling).
Portland bike usage numbers grew in the 1990s because of three coincidental factors, the first being that the city was actively and aggressively reducing the number of traffic lanes all over the city through road diets, curb extensions, parking permit programs, and generally making driving a lot harder and less convenient; TriMet expanded public bus service and light rail, and PBOT responded by a massive media campaign to get people to bike, walk, and use transit more (Smart Trips), much of this long before smart phones were around; and finally, Portland somehow got a national reputation as THE place for twenty-something slackers to go to retire – over-educated Easterners and Californians with too much money (usually from family trust funds) who could afford to live in the Pearl District while working dead-end jobs as a barrista or bike shop mechanic – they already biked everywhere.
Eventually the twenty-something slackers aged, some got married (and later divorced), had kids, got serious jobs, and eventually moved on – out of Portland. Meanwhile, PBOT went broke, gutted any program that was innovative or progressive to cut costs (I was there, I saw it happen), so road diets became less common and less aggressive. And the numbers inevitably dropped.
My 2 cents.
You are not describing the 1990s that I lived through. Portland was improving bike infrastructure during that time, but very little of it could be described as “making driving hard.” That’s a much more recent phenomenon. Driving was delightfully easy in the ’90s.
It is possible that the people who moved here in that era wanted to ride bikes, and the people who have moved here since don’t. I don’t know why that would be but it does fit the pattern of facts we’re working with.
Again, your comment reflects a subjectivity and lack of understanding of the importance of the research behind why people choose to cycle in general.
I don’t know what “Cycling has died in Portland” means. If you read above, I gave no assumptions about why “cycling has died.”
I think we’ve come to an impasse. Anyway, thanks for reading.
What’s your theory for why cycling numbers have plummeted?
How Can Portland get back to 7% ride share and then explode to 20%? With all your data I’m sure it reveals the answer handily.
That’s a great question Jake9. Research does not give “answers” per se. But it tends to suggest the most reasonable and effective stuff based on critical thinking and the available evidence with limited “deviation,” which we don’t need to get into yet. Research is also very very tedious for most people unfortunately. Most of the time I offer research to people, they would rather simply agree with who they trust the most (politics, marketing work similarly). Because it’s work to read the stuff, and sometimes really confusing and more inaccessible to the public than I would prefer personally.
People tend to want a clear and simple means to solve a problem. I don’t have a clear answer for why cycling has plummeted, although I do think one reason cycling was and remains fairly popular in Portland is the somewhat ubiquitous residential, and generally car-lite streets across much of the city.
On the other hand there is robust and consistent evidence across the world in dozens of cities and in a lot of different contexts for how to increase bike mode share.
A lot of people don’t like to read research and if you point to a random control trial (RCTs, lit reviews or meta analyses are good because they tend to limit bias the most), they’ll get bored. Even if the research has has some really interesting suggestions vs their “gut feeling” a lot of folks are going to lean hard on that gut feeling. Having a general “feeling” about things based an anecdote is how our brains have been wired, and why the “near miss on Sandy” or the “dumb cyclist who jumped out of nowhere” carries a lot more weight than an academic paper. It’s how we evolved and survived and it’s not a bad thing necessarily. But it is a hard thing to resist.
But we do generally know what methods are most effective to increase modal share. Based on the hundreds of research papers across the world, from many cities (e.g., Montreal, Paris, New York, Bogota etc.) the easiest means for increasing bike mode share is simply to build a functional, separated bike network. That can look different based on the place (e.g., ciclovia on a sunday, a NYC style hard PBL on an avenue, superblocks in Madrid, or largely pedestrianized plaza, or even a bike bus, etc.). The reason we know this is because DOTs often measure the cycling rates prior to and after projects. They often measure “new riders,” sometimes called “interested but concerned”, which invariably are drawn to safe, separated and functional places where they can avoid unsafe conditions often associated with other objects traveling at high speed.
No single person can magically predict a specific number of increase in mode share (that’s not how research works), but we can easily use best practices and build infrastructure connecting important locations by a safe network, which will likely lead to similar results. That’s what other cities are currently doing while successfully increasing the number of people using bikes, scooters, wheelchairs and skateboards.
Let me know if you are interested in reading research on a specific topic, or if you have any questions about research methodologies. And let me know if you find research that contradicts what I say (I especially love to find that stuff). Thanks.
I appreciate the response and the time you took to do so. Thank you!
It didn’t really help though cause it didn’t address anything I asked to any degree and it makes it difficult to engage in a back and forth discussion. Even when I have a back and forth with people who disagree vehemently with me there is a chance to see how the other person thinks or where they are getting information that I might not have seen yet.
I don’t have a clear answer for why cycling has plummeted, although I do think one reason cycling was and remains fairly popular in Portland is the somewhat ubiquitous residential, and generally car-lite streets across much of the city.
the easiest means for increasing bike mode share is simply to build a functional, separated bike network.
I disagree with that. When I was young and had sold my car to cycle and bus exclusively there were no separated bike lanes. It was great to have a two foot bike lane at all (this was in Santa Cruz circa early 1990s). There were plenty of cyclists and skateboarders. When I was in China there were lots of bicycles as 95% of the population in the interior relied on them for transportation and there were no bike lanes. Being driven from the airport we had to stop because the student meeting us with the driver had to vomit as he was car sick from his first car ride. He was in his early 20s. Also we hit and knocked down a cyclist and didn’t stop. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t badly hurt.
I could go on, but regardless of the data you’ve collected I personally don’t see a correlation between a bike network and ride share.
Sometimes you don’t have to check your weather app to see if its raining or not, you just have to look out the window.
Portland will NEVER build a complete separated bike network so this research is just fantasy land.
Asking the interested but concerned if they would ride a bicycle on a dedicated bike path and getting positive responses is hardly surprising but has no basis in reality.
It is also possible (likely, in my view) that Portland simply cannot get people to make 20% of their trips on a bike. That’s not to say we shouldn’t keep striving — even impossible goals can be useful, but I don’t view that as something that can realistically be achieved.
I think it would be nearly impossible to build a bike network fully independent of streets where cars drive. Not physically impossible, but the resources it would require and the change of behavior it would entail for wide swaths of the population make it impossible to achieve unless a huge number of us signed on to the project.
Proponents of change are never willing to engage on the question of how we convince people that would be downright hostile to major change into supporters. We wouldn’t need to convince everyone, but you need a lot of people on board, including many “non-believers”.
The political side is probably the most important part of a project like building an independent set of bike infrastructure, but it’s much less fun to talk about than the engineering side or even the hand-wavy big picture stuff.
I agree that 20% is not really realistic anymore as things stand at the moment. Whether a separated cycle system is implemented or not there still needs to be people to use it and currently there clearly aren’t and with seemingly less people getting into biking at an early age then the numbers will continue to drop as people age and injure out of biking for the majority of their trips.
Where I saw near 95% cycle ride share was in a financially desperate area that had a government limit on obtaining a vehicle and also had control of any fuel. Right there is the only way in the real world that I know how or have seen to obtain numbers anywhere close to what is needed to keep up with the desired amount of people forgoing cars, ICE or EV.
Since I don’t think anyone on this site or Portland at large will volunteer to give up complete access to privately owned vehicles or to take large pay cuts and learn how to eat pigeon and other interesting things I believe the ride share percentages are simply goals that improve humanity as we attempt to reach them.
I also believe that once the electric grid starts to collapse and a few wildfires grow to thousands of acres in the close vicinity of urban areas we will see a new enthusiasm in human powered transportation.
Jake9 FWIW here are the “official” reasons why PBOT appears to believe the stagnation in bike mode share may have occurred. I personally don’t find the evidence in most of Geller’s arguments very compelling, but it’s worth consideration.
I think the most interpretable quote coming from that meeting was this:
But, the separated network has not grown for decades to any significant extent. I believe Geller genuinely thinks that residential streets AKA “greenways”, despite having very little diversion and evidence to support attracting the “interested but concerned,” should be magically considered part of a “network” despite their impracticality, disconnectedness etc.This is the Kool Aid PBOT and a lot of Portland residents have drunk.
Anyway, Hope that is a little more helpful to answer your question at least in part.
Better Naito opened in May 2022
https://bikeportland.org/2022/05/06/officials-and-activists-cut-the-ribbon-at-better-naito-celebration-353353
Hey Jake9, thanks for your understanding. I apologize if I wasn’t clear and I’ll try to address what you’re interested in better. All of the examples you gave were anecdotes. And anecdotes are really central to personal beliefs and building a framework for understanding the world.
I don’t mean to detract from or belittle the importance of these experiences to you (so please don’t take this personally). I do have to say here that anecdotes (personal experiences) are also pretty darn useless when it comes to understanding science objectively and looking at the world critically.
Think of it this way: everyone has personal experiences that have impacted their lives in meaningful ways. How do we try to critically look at the world and ignore those personal experiences that lead us toward personal bias?
I love your anecdote of visiting China so let’s look at that. Vietnam has a lot of cycling as well so we can touch on that if you want. There is a LOT of evidence to suggest that as the number of cyclists reach a certain x number, cycling increases and becomes safer. I saw this in Cuba where cars were quite rare compared to the janky and amazingly homemade contraptions that people use to get around.
I get that it seems obvious to you certain things are just common sense. But oddly enough science does not rely on common sense. It relies on objective data where a person tries to prove themselves wrong to the best of their ability.
I’m not sure if this will help but here is how scientists prioritize data. The more people who look at the data, the more that methodology is scrutinized, and the more that hypothesis is repeatable, the more we tend to suggest something is a meaningful result. Hope that helps.
It doesn’t really; a great many policy decisions are not conducive to scientific study on a timeline where a decision is needed (or at all), and making policy judgements very often involves future conditions which cannot be reliably tested without first committing to and implementing the policy.
Policy making will always involve a lot of educated guessing, extrapolation, and “common sense” (which I agree is often biased). An overreliance on weak data and unreproducible results can instill a false sense of confidence (such as claims that we “know” that building a complete network of separated bikeways will significantly improve bicycle mode share); that introduces its own form of bias.
Many policy decisions can be informed by data, but most meaningful ones will always be subject to the views and opinions and biases of the people we elect to make them. Many (most?) decisions are inherently political, even if they can be framed as technical.
By all means, we should rely on data and eliminate bias where we can, but we can never fully make decisions in a scientifically robust manner, and we need to understand the limitations of the data we do have.
Because it’s easy to fly directly from Portland to Amsterdam. Portlanders are no less lazy than any other people on the planet. For less than the purchase price of an ebike they can fly direct daily to Tokyo & London, with several flights per week to Iceland and Amsterdam. Once you get to Schipol Airport, there’s a large and busy train station within the terminal, not only tram lines into Amsterdam, but regular government-run inter-city trains every few minutes to Utrecht, Leiden, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, pretty much anywhere in the Netherlands. The famous commercial Thalys train also passes through, with fast connections to Paris & Berlin.
Exactly. A straight line from the center of Amsterdam to the very, very, very edge of Amsterdam is about 5 miles – the same as a straight line from Pioneer Square to I-205. As we all (hopefully) know, the urban area goes another 10 miles out from there… and it’s not like that’s going to shrink anytime soon.
Actually, Amsterdam is part of a much larger metropolitan area that includes The Hague and Rotterdam and numerous smaller cities (historic Leiden, Haarlem, Delft, and Gouda among them), an almost continuously urban mix of housing, industrial greenhouse farming, dense suburbs, nature preserves (swamp), sprawling airports (Schipol & Rotterdam), enormous port facilities (Rotterdam is the world’s biggest port and Amsterdam isn’t far behind) – something like 9 or 10 million people in the Randstad urban region. Lots of freeways too.
Utrecht also has six-lane boulevards to speed drivers through the city (but around neighborhoods) and multiple 10-lane freeways.
It’s not just that the Netherlands is a bicycle utopia. And it’s not engineering that’s solving problems, since people have just as many opportunities go wilding in their cars there. So what is it?
Here’s a quick glance at the google map of Utrecht. The boulevards or freeways you describe go around the city. The Netherlands has a great freeway system that circumnavigates cities. There is a very good reason for that.
Utrecht also has hundreds of miles of separated bike paths and lanes, fietstraats where cars are limited in both number and speed via modal filters and design, and direct, low stress access to most of the city. It is a fantastic place to ride a bike. I don’t even need to plan my route. I just go and nearly every street has mode separation and a direct connection to where I want to go.
7 officers and (eventually) 40 cameras won’t change behavior.
For enforcement to work it has to be ubiquitous. People have to believe they’ll be caught, and they don’t.
For good reason, the chances of a cop seeing an infraction and deciding to take action are so low as to be indistinguisable from zero.
Novick’s just about hit the nail on the head – a bloody camera at every intersection with decent AI to catch speeding, light running, failure to yield to pedestrians in cross walks, failure to clear an intersection and more with a dedicated staff to follow up on AI flagged incidents *MIGHT* just start to make a dent in the serious anti-social behavior exhibited by so many drivers. (yes, I believe the MK1 human eyeball should still be applied to each one).
That staff does not have to be sworn officers, they don’t need to carry a firearm as their job is in the safety of a building. They should be a lot easier to hire and train than the officers needed to man a sufficient traffic patrol (at least 100 for Portland – and they should still be hired and the traffic division fully staffed *ALONGSIDE* the automated stuff).
It’s been said about PPB (and US police in general) that they don’t stop crime, but clean up after it. Well enforcing traffic laws *WILL* stop deaths. Based on what other cities in other countries have accomplished, try 60+ a year with all the associated costs of investigating them (cleaning up the mess rather than preventing it).
EDIT – Alongside a matching investment in infrastructure changes of course.
I just believe that, ultimately, this is a cultural problem – America’s culture of “rugged individualism” (yeah, I say that with immense disdain) is antithetical to the changes necessary to save 10’s of thousands of lives a year that are lost on our roads.
“Grapple”
I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
Maybe “Portland officials call press conference to once again wring their hands over dangerous road culture and rising fatalities.”
ha yes maybe not. I often do that where I have words in my head and think I know what they mean only to find out I am thinking incorrectly.
Also, using the word “crisis” is not the same as acting like it’s a crisis.
Where are we at with non-officers reviewing citations? This needs to be like parking enforcement. The governor signed the law in 2022 and it’s been in effect for almost two years now. As far as I can tell and based on Engstrom’s response I’d say nothing has changed on this. They’ve had almost three years to get something in place and it’s not like this is a money issue.
Parking enforcement is at worst revenue neutral but in all likelihood it increases revenue because more people pay to park. Considering the number of people I see running red lights on 82nd on a daily basis this would easily pay for itself. Even if it didn’t for some abstract reason the reduction of crashes would save us a ton of money too not to mention ya know lives.
Let’s think about this Mr. Novick….do traffic cameras work when a car doesn’t have license plates? Oh and are traffic stops for those not displaying plates being done in Portalnd? Aren’t they considered biased and discriminatory? I see LOTS of cars without plates, and even more with expired tags…..some are from out of state and haven’t been registered in years, yet no one seems to do anything about it.
You have a couple valid points Marty J. In New York there has been a fairly strong trend of people using quite elaborate license plate covers etc to obscure them and a humorous incident that now many people refer to as “criminal mischief” (e.g., when people pull things like fake leaves off a license plate). There is a growing coalition between the NYPD and other agencies to identify scofflaws who intentionally cover plates, and with the imminent advent of congestion pricing Woot Woot! that will be even more effective.
As for traffic cams being discriminatory/biased, yes sometimes they can be. It’s a very complex topic, but not something to simply disregard the effectiveness of their usage. The evidence that they reduce seeding and crashes is… how do I say this without understatement, biblically overwhelming 🙂
But you’re right Marty J. The PPB along with other agencies have a role in identifying and removing cars without plates/expired tags. And Voila Portland has indeed made an effort by somewhat recently hiring staff to do just that. Exciting times we are living in.
Cops refuse to cite drivers who ignore stop signs and hit cyclists on Clinton Ave. Three times in the last 6 years I was there on scene. Each time I politely talked to the cop on the scene. I also helped the cyclist on the ground. I reminded the cops the cyclist did NOT have a stop sign and the driver had a STOP sign.
The most recent time was a driver with expired plates that were illegally covered. No ticket. Champagne Hyundai Sonata. I see it speeding in SE often near the New Seasons on Division. In all 3 cases the police refused to cite the driver. In all 3 cases the victims had significant injuries and had to be hauled away in an Ambulance. In the case of the Sonata officer Harper and Martiniuc said the Judge would need more evidence so he won’t write the ticket. I reminded Martiniuc by phone that is is not his job to be the role of the judge. He should cite the driver and let the judge do their job. Martiniuc refused to cite the driver. Case/call number is 24-218658. Plates are 435 HJK I talk to dozens of cyclists with the same story where a driver broke the law and the cyclist was within the law and has to deal with injuries and the injustice of no citation. In this case Ray Thomas is representing the victim. In all these cases I have sent the data to Johnathan Maus and asked him to expose the police bias. And in all these cases Jonathan has confirmation of no ticket being issued. Jonathan has even called the officers. There is a reason Johnathan and other bloggers and non profits do not report the truth. I will leave you to gess at those reasons or share them here.
We need a city council and state lawmakers that will pass laws to hold drivers accountable when they injure other people and police fail. We need civilian staff who can cite drivers when cops refuse their so called “protection” duties.
If you are still reading this we need you to start calling and visiting the 3 area reps for your district as soon as the phones are on and doors are open.
https://www.portland.gov/auditor/council-clerk
Joe, We elected the wrong people to City Council if you want more enforcement of our laws. Eric Zimmerman may listen to you if you’re in D4, otherwise you’re gonna strike out with the rest of ’em.
Traffic cameras at every corner are unnecessary. Roving police vans with traffic cameras in random and unannounced locations would soon reach the attention of drivers. The camera vans that frequented 99E in Milwaukie are gone, but their effects remain.
PBOT isn’t even trying to create safe infrastructure. They reconfigured Division Street into a place where you can still drive twice the speed limit. They could have created a winding road that prevents you from speeding but they didn’t. And they keep doing it. They don’t want to force people to drive safely. And why should they? The top authority in this country breaks the law, denies it, and gets off without punishment. That is the new order. If nobody is forcing you to play nice then it breeds the selfish competitive nature that we’ve all been taught we need to do to flourish.
Right?!? and the incoming administration is not much better.
***Comment deleted. Please be careful Matt and Jake9 and be sure we focus on issues and ideas, and let’s treat each other with utmost respect while doing so. Thanks. – Jonathan.***
***Comment deleted. Please be careful Matt and Jake9 and be sure we focus on issues and ideas, and let’s treat each other with utmost respect while doing so. Thanks. – Jonathan.***
Institutions create culture, but there’s a culture that created those institutions too.
Many people in the general public view deaths on our streets as just “the cost of doing business”. Which, in a twisted way, it is. The cost of unlimited car convenience is death.
Something I read here a while ago that really sticks with me is this; If you truly believe that a few dozen deaths a year are worth it to maintain car-based mobility, then which one of your loved ones are you willing to sacrifice to make sure driving stays easy?
Every day I hope and pray that I am not the next sacrifice.
This. So this. People don’t want to say this out loud, but actions speak louder than words: our society has decided that 40,000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of serious injuries annually (not to mention the deaths associated with cardiovascular health from car exhaust) is worth the convenience of a climate controlled, bun-warming car.
Like you, I hope it isn’t me and my kids who are sacrificed on the alter of automobility.
Americans have weird priorities.
Wait, who thinks 40,000 traffic fatalities per year is acceptable?
Everyone who opposes changes to reduce them?
I oppose proposals to close high crash corridors (unserious as Street Trust ideas like that are). Does it follow that I think 40,000 annual fatalities are acceptable?
Per my comment below: Of course completely closing arterials to cars is unserious. But changing them to single lanes in each direction, using design to slow speeds, and giving some of that space to alternatives like transit and bikes? I’d suggest that’s an example of taking safety seriously, or with regard to this conversation, not accepting the fatality/injury crisis. However, with a few exceptions (Foster, for example) I haven’t seen PBOT and ODOT do that with any sort of regularity. In fact, quite the opposite. They are investing billions in wider freeways and highways. And they aren’t the only part of society to have responsibility. Low density sprawling development that depends on cars driving far/fast and not pricing the full cost of driving (air pollution, ghg emissions, noise pollution, tire/brake pollution, etc) are other ways that our society accepts 40,000 deaths annually for the convenience of SOV travel.
In all these ways it appears our society thinks that tradeoff is worth it.
“But changing them to single lanes in each direction… ”
Sure, I generally support these types of redesigns, and PBOT has been implementing them on many of their rebuilds (not just Foster).
I didn’t think any of this tells us much about whether people generally think 40K deaths are acceptable or not. I think the issue is much more complex than that.
Would you share the list of places PBOT is implementing lane reduction/reallocation? I can think of a few, but perhaps there are more?
-outer Glisan
-outer Halsey
-parts of Division
-Foster
-parts of Burnside
I should know this and am alembarrassed I don’t. Where else am I missing?
Also, I agree that PBOT is much better in this department than, say, ODOT, who continues to invest billions in highway/freeway widening. ODOT’s actions only makes PBOT’s job more difficult bc it encourages more people to drive in general. PBOT could do more, but I certainly acknowledge they have demonstrated a willingness. I certainly want to know the full extent of their actions if I have blind spots
I didn’t track things like that myself, so I don’t have a comprehensive list, but several of the number streets in East Portland but have also had car lanes removed. I’m sure others can chime in with specifics. Most of what I know is covered by BikePortland.
ODOT has a very different focus than PBOT. They think about highways connecting cities, which is generally fine, except when those highways pass through urban areas, which ODOT is not skilled at dealing with.
One such facility, Powell Boulevard, moves a lot of traffic, but passes through a huge swath Portland and Gresham. ODOT periodically tries to make things better, but the end result speaks for itself.
If ODOT narrowed Powell to one lane in each direction, it would make Powell safer, but it would be a disaster for SE Portland. There is no easy answer. That said, a couple of years ago ODOT installed rapid flash crosswalks, and those have made it hugely safer to cross, day and night.
Why would it be “a disaster” for SE Portland if Powell was narrowed to one lane? I’m assuming you’ll cite the same reasons people cite for not reducing 82nd to one lane: congestion and diversion onto other streets. Or, is there more?
Because a lot of those vehicles would be on other streets and, as someone who bikes and walks there, that would suck worse than it already does. When I bike along 21st in the morning, for example, I need to worry about people using Brooklyn to bypass Powell blowing the stop signs (sometimes barely slowing) as happens from time to time.
When the city took over from the county areas in East Portland after 1993, they reduced numerous stroads from 6 lanes to 4 lanes and added onstreet parking, including on outer Division, 122nd, 148th, 162nd, outer Stark/Washington, and a few others (inner Sandy might be on this list too). Many of these stroads already had painted bike lanes but they were shifted from the curb to the parking door zone. More recently there have been road diets to one lane traffic in each direction plus a suicide turn lane on 148th, 162nd, 102nd (north of Halsey), outer Holgate, and parts of 112th/Cherry Blossom. Inner Glisan was very controversial, I remember the stiff opposition to it, lots of public meetings, ditto with inner Stark, Division & Hawthorne, in the early 2000s. I remember taking the bus on Hawthorne and how the driver had to slow down on the narrow double lanes on Hawthorne – now it’s all one lane in each direction. There’s a whole bunch in inner NE and N Portland too, plus a bunch in NW and SW as well.
Any street that has curb extension “protecting” the parking on a street likely had an extra traffic lane there back before 1990.
“I remember taking the bus on Hawthorne and how the driver had to slow down on the narrow double lanes on Hawthorne – now it’s all one lane in each direction.”
Weirdly, PBOT decided to leave the section of Hawthorne between about 22nd and 12th at 4 lanes, compromising safety through the fairly pedestrian heavy shipping district around SE 20th, and leaving the gargantuan intersection at 20th intact.
I know Buckman and HAND (the two adjacent neighborhood associations) lobbied to continue the road diet all the way to 12th, but PBOT no longer cares about community input.
Thanks David, super helpful context/history
Now you’re being absurd.
Next you’ll say I think those fatalities are acceptable because I don’t support spikes mounted on steering wheels.
Helsinki has managed an average of 6 fatalities a year without such measures. They design roads to male people drive slower.
We try very mild versions of that and the pushback is immense. Every one of those people is apparently fine with the cost. The police who played politics with our safety apparently think the body count is acceptable too.
“Next you’ll say I think those fatalities are acceptable because I don’t support spikes mounted on steering wheels.”
Actually, I won’t, because I agree that’s absurd and that’s exactly what I said in my comment.
We’re in full agreement that that line of logic is nonsensical.
Which is why it’s odd that you concluded your comment by saying every single person who doesn’t like some road redo or another is fine with mass casualties. Either that thinking is absurd or it’s not, and I thought we agreed it was.
I’m saying “our society” because it is happening annually and there are no indications of significant changes being made. Though, likely we could find some real humans who would make this claim.
I recently supplied written comments to a NHTSA (?) rule to make vehicles safer for people outside them in the event of a crash (story discussed a couple of months ago). That’s just one of many efforts to address safety. Another (now a couple of years old) is ODOT installing crash fences on a number of highways to prevent head-on crashes (you can see some on Hwy 26 heading up to Mt Hood). Or PBOT reducing speeds and rebuilding streets to be safer. I don’t track these things too closely, so there is lots going on that I’m unaware of.
Just because people haven’t stopped driving doesn’t mean they don’t find the death toll appalling.
You’re making a lot of leaps there, Watts. I really appreciate your comments on BP–they are insightful, critical, interesting–but here you seem to be stretching just to be argumentative. Perhaps I’m wrong?
The last sentence, for example: “Just because people haven’t stopped driving doesn’t meant they don’t find the death toll appalling.” Of course! However, you appear to be suggesting that no more driving is the only way we can be serious about reducing deaths/injuries. Of course not! Cars have a vital role in our transportation system. There is a lot of space between the status quo (our society accepting 40,000 deaths a year) and no more driving.
Things you listed–NHTSA rule making comments (I did as well!), installing some crash fences, reduced speeds (signage, not infrastructure)–are great, but they nibbling around the edges. There are lots of ways we could deprioritize cars in a way that would increase safety and reduce the harms of the various negative externalities that come with cars, while still affording SOVs a role in our system. Of course, you know all that.
I gave a real example–the future of lane allocation on 82nd Ave–on another comment in this section. I’d point to that as an example of a meaningful change in how we do transportation while not saying “no more cars ever again.”
PBOT is currently planning to leave 82nd with 2 travel lanes in each direction. Should traffic safety be the only thing PBOT considers? If so, they should close the road altogether, which you seem to agree isn’t reasonable.
So you implicitly agree that safety, while important, is only one of many factors to consider. You can probably make a reasonable argument that PBOT is getting the balance wrong, but there are lots of other people weighing in as well, including those who live near and use the facility daily, who may be willing to accept some risk to get a more functional street. You also are willing to accept some risk because you are not advocating for closing the street altogether.
It’s my opinion that those most impacted by a decision should have the loudest voice. What happens on 82nd has little impact on me, so I’m staying out of it.
The calculus that you laid you is spot on and what you’ve said EXACTLY supports why I asserted that our society accepts 40,000 deaths annually.
In America, it appears to me, more and faster car and freight movement is deemed more important than significantly lowering injuries/deaths. If we were more concerned (put more weight on safety as a deciding factor), making 82nd one lane would be the answer. But, it may be that Portlanders decide a few deaths a year on 82nd is worth it so that more cars and freight can move faster. And, if that’s the case, I’d suggest that supports my original assertion that our society accepts 40,000 deaths annually as the price of doing business as usual.
Dare I say, do we agree?
I think almost everyone agrees that there is some maximum amount of resources we’re willing to spend in order to make a street incrementally safer.
The cost of narrowing 82nd to one lane in each direction would be very high in terms of its impact on users. How many fatalities would such a design be expected to prevent? [rhetorical, not expecting you to know] Would the cost be worth the benefit?
So if you are arguing that there is a ceiling to the price we will pay to make 82nd safer, then yes I agree. I do not agree that the existence of such a ceiling means people are uncaring about others dying. We have such ceilings in almost every human endeavor.
[And of course, there’s also the question of what that ceiling should be, and that is a political question with a million potential answers.]
We’re totally in agreement in terms of the cost/benefit tradeoffs for choosing the size of the road. We’re also in agreement that there is a ceiling we are willing and able to pay (money, commute time, etc).
This does suggest, does it not, that there IS a number of serious injuries and deaths our society is willing to take in return for ease of movement? If not zero, then what is the number? Vision Zero–what we’ve adopted in Portland–says that number is zero. Is that realistic? If so, then we have large changes that are needed. If that’s not our goal, then let’s jettison Vision Zero and set goals and actually hit those goals, rather than operate in the realm of fantasy. It’s frustrating to hear the City say “we are a vision zero city” but not do the things it takes to get there.
On another note and if you’re willing, I’d be interested in hearing you unpack what you mean by “the cost of narrowing 82nd to one lane in each direction would be very high in terms of its impact on users.” Which users, in what way, etc?
“This does suggest, does it not, that there IS a number of serious injuries and deaths our society is willing to take in return for ease of movement?”
I suppose you could make that argument, but at some level it becomes fairly meaningless — you could apply the same logic to any endeavor that has the possibility of the loss of human life. We obviously value beer more than human life, for example. What does that really tell you?
I think there’s a lot going on to improve road safety and find ways to reduce the death toll at a lower cost. Figuring out how to eliminate cell phone usage in cars would be monumental, but I have no idea how to do that.
As for Portland calling itself a “Vision Zero” city, well… it’s not.
Since you asked about 82nd, unless people magically stopped driving, the increased difficulty of traveling north south would be significant, and would likely cause spillover effects on every parallel route (just as congestion on Powell causes traffic diversion onto low quality routes such as Brooklyn and Tibbetts for example). I’m as skeptical as anyone about the predictive power of travel forecasting (ie long term), but traffic modeling is pretty good, and I am quite sure that PBOT has looked at all the obvious scenarios and could tell you what the impacts of reducing lanes on 82nd would be. I would trust PBOT’s analysis of traffic impacts over that of a BikePortland pundit (including me) any day. It is even possible that diversion of vehicles from 82nd to other streets would cause more safety problems than keeping them on 82nd, so there could be an offsetting effect. You need to look at the whole corridor holistically to understand the ramifications of any big design change.
But at the end of the day, my views about 82nd don’t matter; I just want you to see that the situation is complicated and there are no obvious answers. If you get involved with the project and understand the bigger picture and still think one lane makes sense, I’d love to hear about why.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Re Vision Zero: I’m a big believer that goals should be realistic, attainable, and yet ambitious. Vision Zero is certainly ambitious, but at least in Portland of today, it appears not to be realistic or attainable based on the system we have. I think we’d do ourselves a service by having an honest conversation about what our goals are. I sure hope it isn’t 70+ deaths a year in Portland alone. Maybe it starts with bending the curve down and ultimately getting to Vision Zero. Right now it feels like no more than a joke.
Re 82nd: I outlined a few thoughts on the topic of 82nd in another comment on this thread. The basic thinking is this:
A. Line 72 is truly a workhorse–the highest ridership line in the entire state–and experiences some of the highest rates of delay due to congestion from single occupancy vehicles. This isn’t just giving space to transit out of some jihad against cars, rather, Line 72 is a massively popular route that I’d suggest we ought to honor by making it extremely reliable.
B. This likely isn’t popular with many, but some congestion on 82nd–at least certain sections like McDaniel, Montavilla, Jade–isn’t necessarily a bad thing. 82nd doesn’t need to be a highway anymore and people/organizations along the corridor are asking for it to be different.
C. The existence of I205. Unlike many routes where the conversation about lane reallocation takes place, if people want to go far and fast, they have an custom-built option 12 blocks to the east. Very few people living in the 82nd corridor benefit from a Happy Valley resident trying to drive through their 82nd neighborhood really fast. Those commuters have a more appropriate option in the freeway
That’s the gist!
Your vision for 82nd sounds good. Like I said, I don’t feel that I’ve got much of a stake in the project, so I’ll defer to those that do.
“people/organizations along the corridor are asking for it to be different.”
PBOT should be working with the community. If folks there really what a different type of facility, then PBOT should work with them to find a design that works.
If I lived there I’d want to see the street assume more of a Main Street character. That would require sustained effort over decades by many different parties, but it would be quite a transformation.
PS I would be shocked if there were many people driving the length of 82nd to get to Happy Valley.
Yep dw. Really great comment. The odd thing is that we have inadvertently created the most inefficient and congested type of transportation system by both largely limiting ourselves to one mode (without providing adequate separated infrastructure for other modes), and designing urban roads for speed.
But also–and this is really a important point–we have created a system where driving a car quickly through a highly populated and dense place necessitates expensive engineering such as traffic lights, which stop traffic and make a car even slower than if people were traveling at ~15 mph consistently. It also necessitates an increases the length of red light timing for traffic lights to make pauses for groups of cars who need to enter and exit a road and maybe most importantly, it kills and injures a lot of people.
It is a bizarre paradox where we think we are getting there faster when we travel faster for short periods, but for much of the time the speed is zero at a traffic light. In reality at a consistent slow speed, with fewer lights and signs, where people navigate safely simply by taking responsibility and humanely communicating with each other regardless of mode, most of that engineering, and mitigation for death/injury is entirely unnecessary.
Is anyone talking about crowdsourcing enforcement? If we really need cameras at “every goddamn intersection” then why not empower everyone to be able to submit video evidence of crimes? I think New York actually had such a program related to illegal parking and whoever reported the crime would actually be rewarded a percent of the citation amount.
I’m pretty sure there are so many residents in this city who are fed up with dangerous drivers, cars with no plates, expired tags… that the city would be raking in money with any kind of crowdsourced enforcement program. And that would get the message out quick that the days of tolerated lawlessness are over.
Yes, Tom I hear you. There are means to do this in various cities in the US, but it is tricky. I know that in Portland you can advocate for a speed bump on your street and crowdsource, but that gets into a tricky situation where richer neighborhoods then create their own saver designed streets.
A similar effect happens with voucher systems in education where richer neighborhoods are able to fund their private schools more creating a disparity in school funding.
One slightly different way is participatory budgeting, a sort of middle ground where citizens propose funding certain things and are allowed a percent of the budget to fund those projects.
Not any more. That program has been dead for years. The city doesn’t want anyone paying extra money to make the streets safer because somewhere else a street might still be dangerous.
“Equity” concerns have become a major roadblock to pragmatic improvements in Portland.
In the education world the way this is overcome is the following: If a school PTA, for example, raises $X, a certain percentage has to go into a pot that is redistributed out to other, more needy schools. Seems like an elegant solution to encourage giving. Feels pretty Orwellian that residents are willing to pay for safer streets and the government says no. I’ve led fudnraising efforts in my own neighborhood and had them shut down by PBOT. Incredibly frustrating barrier to progress.
I hear you Rufio. I’ve been trying to get my parents to advocate for speed bumps on their residential street for a couple decades with very little headway. It’s a difficult and complex topic for PBOT and the city in general to allow citizens to modify their environment with liability and equity concerns, but I do think there should be a better means for people to do so.
At the risk of bringing down a hail of disdain on my head, I’d like to suggest that a wave of anti-police protests across the country during the pandemic, and city governments cutting funds to law enforcement in response, did not help to increase safety on our roads.
I live a few miles from the site of most of the illegal street racing that has become a warm-weather tradition in Portland, and it continued because there weren’t enough officers available to do anything about it.
Without funding for a sufficient law enforcement presence, people will get away with whatever they like and know their chances of getting caught are slim to none.
Return to a level of law enforcement commensurate with a city’s population, and you have a chance of reducing scofflaw behavior.
That’s not going to solve everything that’s wrong with traffic, but it will definitely serve notice to those who have enjoyed carte blanche behind the wheel for the last few years, and return real consequences to those who insist on driving aggressively and dangerously. Bollards alone won’t make pedestrians and bicycle riders more safe.
Once again – PPB was not defunded.
They suffered a $15million shortfall *1* year. That year Portland as a whole suffered a $75 million shortfall.
Considering that PPB was getting 33% of the general fund at the time, the fact they only ate 20% of the deficit is telling.
WIth that shortfall they had only their 3rd highest *EVER* budget. They were forced to cut *VACANT* sworn officer positions. According to their budget request the following year that still left “dozens” of vacant, fully funded sworn officer positions.
The staffing issue repersnets multiple failures by PPB – not least of which was the very large group of officers hired in the 90’s were always going to be aging out around 2020.
Yes there were protests – people to whom we give immense power were abusing it.
But the PPB got all butthurt about it and decided to teach us a lesson – good ole Ty got up tand told everyone we weren’t enforcing traffic laws as a political gambit (he’s admitted it).
They (the officers of the PPB) are foresworn on their oaths. Full Stop.
Let’s get real—saying the PPB wasn’t defunded is like saying a broken leg is fine because the other one still works. Let’s dive in.
Yes, PPB lost $15 million in 2020—cuts explicitly tied to demands to defund the police, not just the city’s overall budget shortfall. These weren’t random trims; they gutted programs like the Gun Violence Reduction Team (great timing, huh?), school resource officers, and Transit Police. Sure, some of the cuts hit vacant positions, but when officers are fleeing faster than concertgoers at the first sign of a drum solo, that’s cold comfort.
Blaming PPB for the staffing crisis is a reach. Between political hostility, budget cuts, and retirements, the department was bleeding personnel. And Chief Lovell didn’t stop enforcing traffic laws as some petty “political gambit”; they didn’t have enough officers left to handle it. Funny how that works.
So no, the PPB wasn’t obliterated, but calling 2020 anything other than a political and logistical gut punch is just ignoring reality. Facts are stubborn things, even if they don’t fit the narrative.
PBOT/Rivera’s response is so frustrating! They are spending money removing safety features. They are not including vision zero design metrics in all PBOT projects. PBOT is basically saying they have to wait for dedicated money to do dedicated VZ projects, but that just shows how little they care. Every single project coming out of PBOT should be developed and reviewed through a VZ lens.
Why doesn’t anyone ever point out that traffic deaths in the US and in Oregon have been on the rise since 2014 after bottoming out in 2013 with about 300 a year
https://www.oregon.gov/odot/data/pages/crash-data-viewer.aspx
The pandemic absolutely exacerbated the issue but not at first since serious injuries across Oregon fell while deaths increased marginally year over year but then did increase by an in unprecedented year over year increase into 2021,.and then again in 2022 .
So much traffic safety research happens every year and yet the basic nominal numbers escape is all, why and how?
Traffic safety is complicated and it’s never one thing but the confluence of many things road design , vehicles design, culture, travel behavior,, etc so whenever someone points to ‘the reason’ for this or that you should get suspicious.
Probably ‘not at first’ because the country went on lock-down, so the initial drop masked the step-wise increase. That jump looks consistent starting in the summer of 2020.
Fatal traffic crashes rose 50% between 2013 and 2019 then increased 20% between 2019 and 2022.
People and leaders keep saying that deaths have doubled (or are highest in 20 years) and then pivot to only looking at last 3-5 years and claim it’s all COVID. If we want to better understand the causes we have to look longer term since deaths been on the rise longer than since COVID.
I’m not saying COVID conditions didn’t have an impact in fact we should very much include them but I suspect COVID conditions are also many things beyond some culture change – it’s empty roads, less police, EMS and hospitals staff being over tasked BY the pandemic, it’s many things not just people all got more mean which is how I read PPD take on it.
On wiki I’m seeing an increase between 2013-2019, but not anything close to 50% — what am I missing? Actually, it looks like it was coming down before the pandemic. Definitely seeing the COVID jump though.
Your looking at US statistics but you can review Oregon below
https://www.oregon.gov/odot/data/pages/crash-data-viewer.aspx
Still nationally traffic deaths were up 10% between 2013 and 2019 and then another 16% from 2019 to 2022. A significant portion of the ‘higheat in decades’ rise happened pre COVID is all I’m saying by the narrative increasing narrows on just post COVID. To me it’s a new way to delay systemic improvements and another way of saying the problem is just “the nut behind the wheel”.
In the coming months PBOT has an opportunity to put their money where their mouth is: 82nd Ave
Here’s the situation:
1. A long history of injuries and deaths
2. The highest ridership bus line in the entire state of Oregon
3. Assuming the transit project gets funded, there will be plenty of money (to Rivera’s claim that budgets stop then from doing safety work)
By putting transit dedicated lanes the length of 82nd, it could go from one of the most dangerous roads in Oregon to a transit-rich corridor that honors the fact that huge numbers of people use transit there every day.
For all the car bros out there: don’t worry, you’ll STILL have car primacy bc there will be a left turn lane, one through lane in each direction, and a right turn lane in each direction (cars can use the bus lane to turn right). I’m sorry we can’t bulldoze some buildings on either side of 82nd to build a few extra lanes for you.
If PBOT doesn’t do dedicated lanes on the highest bus ridership line in the entire state, we’ll know they don’t give two shits about safety and transit.
There’s lots of expertise and history in this comment section, anyone want to give odds on what decision they’ll make?
Hey Rufio. Yeah 82nd is a can of worms and I love/hate the place as much as anyone. It is certainly one of the worst stroads in Portland where sometimes even the sidewalk is a couple feet wide (I shit you not). Here’s the crash ranking data albeit a bit antiquated.
PBOT and the city council are historically well-known for not ruffling feathers or even understanding best practices when it comes to using data-based street design. Mapps’ infamous use of the word “data” in reference to a hotel owner asking him to remove a separated bike lane downtown is a pretty “exciting” example of this. In any case 82nd is a shitshow.
We (engineers/urban designers) know how to re-design 82nd for optimum safety, quality of life, and the movement of the most people (not SOVs), using separated modes. But we’ve historically had a fairly difficult time navigating the political dum dums who are in charge of making that happen.
I am not an expert on engineering, nor politics, nor do I have any political influence, but I do think 82nd is worth fighting for (although TBH I have a more personal interest in 122nd). PBOT has already 86ed the idea of PBLs outright. My hope for a center separated, dedicated 2-way separated rapid bus line is pretty filled with sighs, but it would be amazing.
One thing I can say is that 82nd is now technically split between three separate council districts, 1, 2 and 3 respectively. District 1 where I’m from has had some unfortunate candidates elected who appear to not give two shits about bike lanes or rapid transit. District 2 on the other hand has some fairly solid peeps who may tend to fight for those things. (District 2 only covers a very small part of 82nd near Lombard.)
The x-factor advent of a new governing body as well as a new governing system makes it very difficult to know how 82nd will play out. The “good” news is that ODOT handed over jurisdiction to PBOT in June, 2022.
Based on how PBOT past methodology on defining and evaluating corridors, if I were to guess how they decide to proceed (although much of this has already happened), it would be thus:
1) Take SOV traffic counts at intersections, and 85% speed data (disregard bike and ped counts) How can you count bikes riding on sidewalks anyway?
2) Identify places with the most fatalities based on crash data (that should be about everywhere on 82nd)
3) Offer multiple surveys and provide work groups on what people would prefer (this has already happened at APANO?)
4) Include the number and frequency of buses and delay of those buses (e.g., 72) on sections due to congestion
5) PBOT will propose parallel bike routes which zig zag through residential streets, claiming these will be adequate to provide access to 82nd (the past Hawthorne project is a good reflection of that decision)
5) Propose several options based on the above.
With this inherently flawed methodology that is entirely based on “reducing car congestion,” rather than, improving the quality of life in that space, the results are fairly predictable. Based on the massive number of cars passing through the corridor, it will delay cars to build separated bike lanes and/or bus lanes. Thus Sidewalks will likely get widened to some extent, PBOT will will add medians (some have already been introduced), bus stops may get some improvements and the status quo will remain. Big sigh. Baby steps.
After sleeping on this, I have a couple additional thoughts.
In no way do I believe that enforcement is the only way to start making headway on the rising carnage. Poor infrastructure (especially in East Portland) and the epidemic of drug addiction/homelessness are significant factors that put a lot of people in deadly situations. But I do think increased enforcement is the primary tool we have for changing the current driver culture. Stop the foot dragging on the speed cameras. The opposite should be happening – they should be advertised, celebrated, Hell, have a ribbon-cutting ceremony every time a new one goes operational. They should be in drivers faces all the time. Take the money that’s used to victim-blame pedestrians for not being more visible to drivers and use it to promote speed cameras.
And what if the mayor told the police chief his continued employment was performance-based? Reduce traffic deaths in Portland by, say, 1/3 in one year, or you’re fired. And if the number of fatalities exceeds the goal, fire him the next day, with a press conference that makes it clear why, and introduce the new chief.
Also, in reference to this press conference – did anyone say anything new? Did any of the agencies offer some solution to the road carnage that they haven’t already talked about? And if not, what was the reason for the press conference? I’m concerned that in a situation like this, Bike Portland becomes a tool; that by devoting column inches to a non-story, it legitimizes the illusion that something’s actually being done. What if, instead, the Bike Portland article simply said PBOT and PPB called a press conference to discuss traffic fatalities, but offered no new solutions, with links to previous articles?
I hear this Michael. And I agree in some respects. But I also think that them not saying anything new is worth us knowing too. I disagree that it is a non-story and think we learned a lot by what they said – and what they didn’t say.
I also don’t want us to become so skeptical and cynical that we thinkg “nothing is being done”. I understand that sentiment, but it’s untrue. Not enough is being done, but PBOT and PPB are certainly doing a lot to try and put their finger in holes of a dam that is bursting over. I am focused on trying to help them see that what they are doing isn’t enough to meet the moment, but I don’t think taking the stance of, “they aren’t doing anything” is productive or accurate.
Fair enough.
My point was not so much that they aren’t doing anything. It was the futility of calling ANOTHER press conference to get the press to repeat what they already said at the last press conference.
yes on that I hear you for sure. I’ve been to a lot of these press conferences over the years and it’s maddening that they aren’t really saying anything new or bold enough to meet the moment.
I think it’s a great point and much more telling “what is not said.” But at the bare minimum, PBOT and the city are admitting there is a problem, and have some, albeit extremely limited, attempts at measuring the data around street safety. What is consistently not stated is:
1) Concrete efforts to quickly use temporary materials to build and measure the effects of a separated bike/scooter/motorized wheelchair network that expands the current one, and propose an imminent budget and timeline for its continual but incremental expansion.
2) Concrete efforts to immediately investigate crashes and propose concrete data-based redesign using cheap materials to a street when a crash occurs, and give a timeline for its implementation.
3) Open source data on all projects implemented with respect to how they fared in their effects on modal share and crashes.
4) Most importantly: A change in the operation of street design, an inherently car-centric methodology that goes into implementing a redesign of a street. The purpose of a street is not to move the most cars, it is to increase quality of life, health and economic sustainability in the community. A redesign of a street should not be led by a PBOT engineer, but rather a group of organizers that understand the purpose of making that street a prosperous place, not merely a viaduct for counting the number and speed of cars that pass through the space.
The “culture we need to address” is the one in which the movement of motor vehicles through the city is prioritized over the well being and safety of humans who live, work, or visit the city. No cars! New culture!
And the common people keep voting for the same politicians, who hire the same sort of agency chiefs, who hire the usual folks who work there, who keep creating and perpetuating that culture, ad nauseam…
Yeah, it’s a mirror alright, but it shows the residents of Portland.
It’s going to be hard to get more funding for all the things that need more funding, unless we cut funding elsewhere. We are tapped out. I’m liberal and have always voted for schools, parks, roads, and more, but cannot afford any additional taxes or bonds given the skyrocketing cost of housing, taxes, insurance, utilities and food. If we want more money for ODOT and PBOT and PPB, we have to cut funding to other things. As a public education employee, I can’t vote for any additional taxes or bonds for transportation , roads and police unless we cut funding elsewhere. What should we cut? Good question.
Three words: Fast and Furious.