Transportation politics in Vancouver, Washington got a little more interesting earlier this month when a group of grassroots activists turned in enough signatures to move their “Save our Streets” petition forward. Volunteers gathered 6,572 signatures (2,300 more than they needed) to support their goal to amend Vancouver Municipal Code to state that an election of the people must take place before the city can move forward on any project that reduces driving lanes and converts them to other uses.
“If passed, any changes to traffic lanes that result in the loss of a lane for vehicle travel will have to be approved by a majority of voters in Vancouver,” reports The Columbian.
The signatures are a huge victory for “Save Our Streets,” the group behind the petition, but they haven’t accomplished their goal just yet. In an interview with BikePortland today, Vancouver City Council Member Ty Stober explained how the initiative must still be validated by the city clerk. Whether it ultimately passes or not, Stober said the entire episode illustrates how difficult it can be to accept change.
Save our Streets has pushed back on the City of Vancouver’s Complete Streets Program, which includes major road redesign projects that look to improve safety and add protected “mobility lanes” (how Vancouver smartly refers to bike lanes), reduce speeds, and improve safety. One subject of the group’s ire is a project on SE McGillivray Boulevard set to begin next year. The preferred design (above) would change the street from its current profile of six lanes for car users (four for driving, two for parking) and one narrow, unprotected bike lane; to two lanes for drivers, fewer parking spaces, and a 10-foot wide mobility lane buffered from traffic by a parking lane buffer.
That more modern, safer design is what “Save Our Streets” and their supporters want to save Vancouverites from.
One of the chief petitioners, Laurie Arndt, who’s lived a few blocks off McGillivray for 46 years, told me today she’s worried that the city’s design will lead to more dangerous driving. Not less. She says having only one lane for drivers isn’t enough. “People are very frustrated when they can’t go fast and it’s just going to cause a lot of congestion and frustration, and people will veer out of the areas that they are supposed to drive in, and they will create hazards.” Arndt also worries that when school buses let students out in the travel lane, frustrated drivers will veer into the bike lane and hit them.
The way Arndt puts it, filing the petition was a last ditch effort to get the City of Vancouver to listen to them. And she said her and her husband (who helped gather signatures with her) don’t want to take the bus and are too old to ride bikes.
Here’s the language Arndt and Save Our Streets want added to city code (and that was attached to the signature-gathering initiative form):
The City of Vancouver shall not construct or contract for the construction of any project which results in the conversion of a lane or lanes of vehicle travel on any existing principal arterial, minor arterial, collector, industrial or access street to pedestrian, bicycling, mobility, or transit use without approval by a majority of voters in the City of Vancouver in an election for the project.
This provision will apply to any applicable project approved after its enactment or to any applicable project previously approved for construction by the City in which:
1. the contract has not been awarded pursuant to a competitive bidding process or
2. funding has not been appropriated.
The Save Our Streets website offers a litany of concerns and questions about the project and states, “This is not anti bike, pedestrian or mobility lanes.” Instead of eliminating two driving lanes, they say the city should find space by narrowing the center median, and put the mobility lane on just one side of the street. Stober said he’s also aware that many Save Our Streets supporters believe increased police enforcement would accomplish the city’s goals.
The group’s main charge is a claim that changes planned for McGillivray and other streets, “are being done without community involvement.” That claim doesn’t stand up to scrutiny however, because the project spent two years in development and went through a wide range of community outreach. The City of Vancouver received 1,300 survey responses, held walk and bike audits, hosted an open house attended by 120 people (including some folks from Save Our Streets), and mailed three project flyers to over 8,000 households.
Those facts aside, Arndt says the outreach process was a sham, with city officials sharing surveys with predetermined outcomes. Ultimately, Arndt feels like the city’s plan just won’t work in her neighborhood. “Vancouver was designed as a suburb,” she said. “We understand and support busses in the city, downtown, and those kind of things. But it’s different out here in the suburbs. It just wasn’t built like that.”
Stober, a veteran of transportation project controversies now in his third term on council, is sanguine.
He chalks up the controversy to tension in the community that has built up over time. “We all want great things for our city and change is stressful,” he shared with me today. Stober also says now that the City of Vancouver’s major transportation projects are moving out of the older, more progressive-leaning, closer-in neighborhoods and into the suburbs, they are being met with stiffer opposition. He says many people who live in the Cascade Park and neighborhoods surrounding McGillivray are former Portlanders who moved to the area specifically for its suburban appeal when Interstate 205 was built in the 1980s.
“One of the messages we hear is, ‘I don’t want to live in Portland. I don’t want this to feel like Portland.'”
Vancouver City Council doesn’t want their city to feel like Portland either. Stober said they’re just trying to achieve the vision laid out in their adopted plans. “We want to create a transportation infrastructure that promotes community. We want transportation infrastructure that supports some of our more vulnerable people,” he continued. “Our elderly seniors who no longer have the ability to drive or to go outside and feel shut-in, giving our kids the opportunity to be able to play outside. We’re making decisions not just for today. We’re making decisions for generations to come.”
The next big decision the city will make will come on January 6th. That’s when the Vancouver city auditor will issue a final report on the validity of the signatures and the initiative language. If the auditor finds both are valid, the vote to enact the code changes would be in November 2025. If the initiative language is ruled to be illegal or otherwise invalid, the petitioners could sue the city. Another avenue might be a court stepping in and letting the vote happen. Then if it passes, Vancouver City Council could file suit against the petitioners to block it.
Either way, the legal process will take a while to work itself out. Meanwhile, the City of Vancouver is moving forward with the SE McGillivray project and plans to break ground this coming spring.
Thanks for reading.
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Here we go. The Ontario/Doug Ford virus is spreading.
The timing of this is really interesting because the tone and tenor around PBOT and their projects in east Portland (further from more progressive city center similar to Vancouver situation) is really heated right now. Folks are pissed about the changes — especially because deaths keep happening and the new bike lanes aren’t getting used much. Anyone else see this letter in The O today? https://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/2024/12/readers-respond-time-to-hold-pbot-accountable.html
I get the vibe that “addressing traffic congestion” for the writer is not based in any research, rather just simply the more car lanes=less congestion fallacy.
The tl;dr version of the letter is:
“We need to reduce deaths by speeding up cars and trucks.”
Or maybe, PBOT ought to do it’s job and due diligence 30+ years after the city annexed East Portland and finally create a transportation plan like they do for the Central City (downtown), but specific to East Portland? Something East Portland neighborhood leaders have demanded for decades?
Y’all regularly (and rightly) bitch about how the Bicycle Master Plan 2030 isn’t being properly implemented, but the reality is the plan was botched from the get go, and PBOT staff know this, since they did a crappy job dealing with the environmental issues in Southwest and East Portland, but primarily they never addressed how exactly any parts of the plan would be paid for, implemented, or the impact it would actually have (both positive and negative). Basically what they created was an elaborate Christmas wish list of projects, without the needed analysis. And this wasn’t an isolated case, they do it with nearly all their plans.
We tried to do a a “transparent, community-driven plan that addresses traffic congestion, road maintenance and pedestrian safety” in 2010-12, but PBOT did the EPIM instead, a set of temporary projects so they could avoid the more difficult task of a full master plan (or avoid looking incompetent). Now they do it again and again with their In-Motion plans, avoiding what they should be doing, in any district that gives them grief, which is pretty much everywhere.
david I agree. The 2030 bike plan was substantive, but had no teeth. Normally, you need teeth behind legislation (e.g., measurable goals with timelines and legal requirements for x number of miles of PBLs). But even with those requirements a mayor/city council can essentially ignore the law.
That is exactly what happened in NYC when Mayor Adams took office after the NYC Streets Plan took effect. While Transalt, advocates, the city council all assumed a legally binding plan would be an effective way to finally get a separated bike and separated bus network, Adams simply ignored it. While speaker Adams (different person) threatened to sue Mayor Adams, nothing has happened.
I guess I don’t know the answer to legally require a city government to comply with existing law including the Oregon Bike Bil, which theoretically is ignored frequently.
Sometimes it’s not necessarily the transportation plan or even the law that is effective. Money and power are most often the catalysts that make change, unfortunately or not. That’s why Transalt has been so successful at changing streets in NYC, and Portland clearly has a power vacuum when it comes to street safety.
We all know a law is only as effective as our willingness to enforce it. Without that, it’s just a request.
Also, I’m talking to one of the petitioners on the phone right now… And will be updating the story soon.
The issue in Portland is that we spend A LOT of money (> $8 BILLION/year) but not enough of it is used for basic essential city services (and for me that should include building PBL’s and providing bike lane maintenance). Many people (like the guy in the opinion article) are pissed about this lack of value received by taxpayers. I saw this post on PDX real yesterday about the very high amounts of $/person Portland spends. It seems we don’t have much to show for it.
yes it’s true that a lot of people are mad about taxes and mad at gov’t these days. I follow PDX Real too so I know what they post. And I don’t know a lot about Denver so I can’t really say much about comparing per capita spending. And I’m not sure that’s a really helpful way to compare things anyways. Portland is not Denver!
It isn’t intriguing to you at all? The juices of journalistic inquiry don’t start flowing when you see that a city of similar size, population, demographics, etc. delivers government services for 50% less than what our city does? You don’t think at all about what private citizens and businesses could do with an extra $4B per year within the city of Portland? Denver also runs a county for that expense and have to remove snow, isn’t it just sort of interesting a little bit how they pull that off and we were looking down the barrel of having to leave landslides in place, LOL?
Oh it’s definitely intriguing to me! I just don’t typically get into city-to-city comparisons because I find they are just so much apples-to-oranges that it isn’t valuable.
To be clear: I’m all for understanding why PBOT doesn’t get more for our money! Thanks.
This doesn’t seem to be a comparison about transportation but rather to the whole budget. Portland has some massive and unique expenses: the new reservoir and water treatment projects are a couple that come to mind immediately. I’m not sure if Denver has been replacing their old water and sewer pipes like we have. I know there’s stuff I’m missing but these are mega expenses that make a difference.
Every city in the USA built before 1920, is in the very costly process of fixing or rebuilding their water and sewer systems right now, often with substantial federal subsidies, Denver and Portland included, often raising water and sewer charges in the process. Most systems were built for an 80-100 year horizon, and guess what? It’s now been over that period already in most places.
That’s true. But, not all cities had open reservoirs that had to be rebuilt or a Bull Run system that needed major construction projects to the tune of hundreds of millions.
An argument to combine CoP and MultCo gov’ts?? Why are we paying for two gov’t organizations when neither is very good at delivering services?
100%, and eliminate Metro in the process.
Good luck with that. Metro exists under a federal mandate that applies to any city over 50,000 people; it was created by the State of Oregon. If it somehow went away, something similar would be created overnight.
Denver and nearby Bloomington Colorado are unique cities, their city boundaries are by definition the same as the county boundaries, and as each city expands through annexation, that boundary keeps adjusting itself accordingly, at the expense of adjacent counties and cities.
San Francisco is also a city-county, but it has an unchanging static boundary. NYC is made up of the totality of 5 New York counties – New York (Manhattan), Richmond (Staten Island), Queens, Bronx, and Kings (Brooklyn). There’s a few other city-counties out there, but Virginia broke the mold with their 38 “independent cities” that are no longer part of the counties that surround them.
What I like is the Canadian system of “unified cities” whereby (not unlike NYC in 1898) the core city annexes adjacent incorporated cities throughout the region so that even rural areas (as well as all the suburbs) are part of a much larger, stronger, and more centralized city-metro government. Thunder Bay Ontario I think was the first, followed by Winnipeg Manitoba, then Calgary Alberta, and most recently Toronto.
The feds absolutely do not require what Metro has morphed into, so fine, we keep the MPO aspect and move on.
Broomfield, Colorado? No Bloomington….
My bad. Thanks.
Well, sure david, but that also has its drawbacks, (e.g., the Doug Ford effect for Toronto).
See my comment in reply above, but the reasons are almost entirely due to accounting. That “extra $4B” is entirely existing resources and intracity transfers. Total taxes collected in the City of Portland were less than $1B in 2023-24.
Jonathan, benchmarking against other cities like Denver isn’t about trying to turn Portland into a carbon copy—it’s about understanding whether we’re getting value for money. If Denver can provide similar (or better) services for half the cost, it begs the question: Why is Portland spending so much more without much to show for it? Per capita comparisons can help identify inefficiencies and highlight opportunities to reallocate funds to critical priorities, like bike lane maintenance and other essential services. Portland doesn’t have to be Denver, but taxpayers deserve accountability and results that justify the price tag.
They cannot, because the actual working budgets of both cities are fairly close to each other (compare Denver page 80 to Portland page 47 minus transfers minus starting balance). If you hired an accountant to look at the discrepancies between these budgets, you would be laughed out of the room.
Oh god, a department of efficiency… reminds me when I used to work in corporate and we would occasionally have meetings about needing to have less meetings.
And don’t forget that there’s always money for executive compensation and perks. You can be efficient elsewhere, but not there.
“a department of efficiency”
Is there some entity that gets billions of dollars in contracts from the City of Portland? With multiple companies with heavily unionized workforces as direct competitors?
The person who controls that company would clearly be the best person to decide how to dole out those contracts and which industries to get regulated out of existence.
Per capita city budget is entirely meaningless without further context as to what is actually being accounted for in that budget. There are huge variances across cities and states on this stuff. Nearly $2B of Portland’s budget is intracity transfers (see page 47), so those really shouldn’t be counted in this kind of analysis. Another $2B is the starting balance (same page), also not directly relevant here. Total taxes in the City of Portland budget are on the order of $1B, while fees and permits are about $1.5B. We have $1B of bond/note proceeds, and the final $0.5B is from miscellaneous sources and intergovernmental sources (state, fed).
So the amount of money that Portland budgets that is actual funds being taken in is ~$4B, while Denver is $3.3B (page 80 – there are no weird accounting things in this budget). So there’s still a difference, but it’s not twice as much. And Denver took in $1.2B in taxes in 2023, while Portland took in $800M. Denver has 715k people to Portland’s 650k, so per capita Portlanders pay $1,230 to Denver’s $1,720. Of course, the amount of taxes a municipality takes can vary a lot by source, so this isn’t entirely accurate but still. You get the idea.
And this isn’t even touching on how comparisons across cities are generally not useful to begin with. Cities have wildly different boundaries relative to their metro areas, and provide generally different services. Seattle has an actual budget of something like $8B (p. 37) without any accounting shenanigans, but something like half of it is just to run Seattle City Light, which basically operates revenue neutral. I’d rather have a quality public utility with strong protections like Seattle than be subjected to the constant rate hikes at PGE.
Maus, hire this guy. Great summary and comparison. I realize the comparison between cities can be fraught, but this is illuminating.
The only aspect that I’d wager makes the difference a bit more is if you added some aspects of Multnomah county to Portland to make it a bit more apples to apples for the Portland to Denver comparison.
Yeah, that’s a fair point. I think the relevant item to compare is usually overall tax burden since that should incorporate the various different sources of taxes in an all encompassing way. This report prepared by DC is really useful for that (to demonstrate DC’s low overall tax rates). Going back to Portland vs. Denver and we’ll find that Portland’s tax burden is 11.7% (family earning 75k, about the median) while Denver is 8.1% (page 19). Portland in the top-middle range for each income bracket (outside of $25k or less), while Denver is in the middle-bottom range.
I still maintain that city level analyses are flawed, but this is a far superior way to understand tax burden than city budgets
I love reading that after the suggestion that cyclists can make 45 cumbersome detours to access the length of 82nd on the janky ass ladder PBOT is proposing as an alternative to bike lanes. Apparently making a u-turn is too difficult for drivers but going a mile out of the way, zig-zagging through neighborhoods and crossing over a dozen arterials with sub-standard crossings is perfectly reasonable for cyclists.
Also that person clearly doesn’t understand how road funding works. PBOTs redesigns are what get them the money to do the repaving because they’re capital projects then not maintenance so they get funds from the state and feds.
Excellent point
COTW!
I just rode to McDaniel High School (on 82nd) from 102nd and Burnside. To do it I took the bike route which goes all the way west to 72nd drive, instead of risking riding on 82nd across the freeway – this Google Maps recommended route is 3.5 miles – https://maps.app.goo.gl/9TbGgkieDb9FKzLB7
While the driving directions are only 2.5 miles
This same choice confronts the 1/3 of McDaniel High School students who live south of the school and would need to take this route if riding bikes. Very few of them do.
People understandably want public funding to address them directly, and the way they are currently living their lives. They are frustrated with (often) progressive people from higher positions of privilege and economic class trying to force their versions of social and civic virtues on them, when their primary concerns are material. This was always going to be an issue and it’s a shame. This is why the ideal scenario would have been to provide the alternative (adequate, abundant public transit) before replacing the current mode, but I understand the critique that this would have been too expensive. I just think that if you want communities on board you have to somehow get them to deliberate and really consider what they want for themselves, and then you have to give them what they want. People want to feel like they’re in control of their own lives, individually and communally, instead of the opposite.
My first apartment in the mid 90s was in downtown Vancouver on 19th and Columbia. I worked at Hewlett Packard in what was the eastern hinterlands of Vancouver in those years, damn near Camas. I would often bike to work and part of the route was McGillivray. I think it’s safe to say that traffic on McGillivray in those years wasn’t too bad. Vancouver just wasn’t that big then. Because of the nature of McGillivray it did, and still does, feel like a street you could drive very fast on if you’re the type of jerk that likes to drive fast (in the wrong setting, to be clear). Surely in ’95 there were those jerks but I think in ’24 since traffic enforcement is a shadow of what it was (because hurt feelings post 2020?) there are more speeding jerks. My dad and brother, still in Vancouver, tell me that enforcement there seems pretty light. I don’t know for sure, I don’t drive over there very often. Anyway, my brother and his lady own a home on McGillivray now. They have a kid. My brother says people definitely fly on that street. McGillivray, long with gentle curves and widely spaced stops, it’s just inviting to drive way too fast. Again, I don’t drive in Vancouver much these days, but anytime I’ve been to my brothers there simply is never enough traffic to warrant double lanes.
The ratio of officers to population has been low in Vancouver as compared to other similar Washington cities has been the case for a number of years now.
2013 – https://www.columbian.com/news/2013/jun/15/police-stretched-thin-clark-county-compared/
2022 – https://www.columbian.com/news/2022/jul/20/report-finds-more-crime-fewer-officers-in-washington/
2024 – https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2024/11/vancouver-voters-reject-property-tax-increase-to-fund-more-police-what-could-it-mean-for-portland.html
Then they also buy expensive equipment/trucks. https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouverwa/comments/1ehylo9/vpd_wastes_120k_on_recruitment_vehicle/?rdt=47375
So I get the attitudes towards police. So lets not need them by not crashing into each other?
Would we need as much police budget if the roads discouraged speeding, and we wouldn’t need as much spending on healthcare/insurance? Likely that is a better ROI than Police, Ambulances and Insurance Deductibles/Premiums.
Yep. Its cheaper: Reference USDOT.
https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/road_diets/resources/fhwasa16100/
For example the last analysis (i found) for a road death cost on society for Washington was $2.9mln in 2010, is now about $4.2mln (accounting for inflation). Reference: https://highways.dot.gov/sites/fhwa.dot.gov/files/2022-09/fhwasa17071.pdf
I wasn’t trying to make a case for more or less cops, or bigger or smaller police budgets. I would like to see really basic enforcement of traffic laws because it’s gonna be a while until we ever have roads that really, truly disrupt the ability to drive like a shithead. I’m skeptical I’ll see that in any meaningful way in my lifetime.
This is another case of idealism (revamping our road network with all human safety in mind (which I do support!)) vs. pragmatism (just give some people that deserve it a goddamn speeding ticket that really stings/impound a car with no plates/ticket for bike lane parking without me having to navigate that fucking automated menu on the phone number I have to call, I shouldn’t have to call, just enforce the fucking laws). I’m growing a little weary of the endless idealism we live with in Portland.
Yes, McGillvray and many other City of Vancouver roadways (often annexed from Clark County) were designed with the expectation of handling more driving [often by by larger families]…before the two oil crisis or at a time when the regional highway network did not exist, operated less efficiently (SR500 & SR014 had stop lights etc) or the other arterials did not connect yet (city has relied on developer paid projects to buildout network). Based on my past local work: Traffic volumes generally peaked on the west side in the 90’s / early 00’s on the west side and about 10 years later on the east side…except for the growing fringe or with acute traffic events cause the highway system to fail.
It takes just north of 4000 signatures to change city code??
Aren’t there more than 4000 parents and others who would sign a petition to prohibit stroads?
I think that just gets it on the ballot. After that, a majority of voters have to approve it.
But I’ll sign that anti stroad ballot initiative. Let’s do it!
The issue here is that the group seems to want something akin to direct democracy, specifically for road-related decisions. This approach is unrealistic because we don’t apply it to other critical infrastructure like water, electricity, or utilities. We elect city representatives to work alongside city staff to address the community’s needs and make informed decisions.
If that community truly wants complete control over what happens to the road, their best option would be to purchase it from the city, take on the associated property taxes, and turn it into a private, closed community.
What is further perplexing is that the city electorate also voted down a police funding measure to add things like traffic enforcement. We already have the least amount of sworn officers for the given population compared to other similar cities in Washington.
From community members concerned with McGillivray, they do agree that speeding is an issue, and they simply want to post a police officer there to hand out tickets. Honestly, that’s not a reasonable solution. That road is too darn wide not to drive faster than the posted speed.
Lastly, the group has expressed frustration about being ignored by the city or county, but it’s important to understand that the city’s role isn’t to help them achieve their specific agenda. If they want progress, they’ll need to consult their own legal counsel. City staff are not there to provide that kind of guidance.
Iz spot on. COTW
If you leave it up to most drivers they’d vote for 60mph neighborhood streets
*except THEIR neighborhood street.
Exactly. People often have an inherent bias toward being comfortable speeding throughout the city, but want the opposite for their specific street. It’s the “sacrifice” we should pay for having freeways, for example, bisecting neighborhoods, unless you are living next to one.
This is actually the point that, theoretically, *could* backfire on their plan. If the city has to vote for removing travel lanes, it will amount to most people voting on improving (right sizing / road dieting) someone else’s roads (not theirs). I could see that potentially diluting the voice of the minority that want any particular road to be faster.
That’s wishful thinking, but at least seems like a possible outcome. Otherwise, I think the hurdle of literally requiring a vote to make road changes is going to prevent it from ever happening again (their actual goal).
Did you edit out whatever dog-related idiom you were explaining? I can’t seem to find it in the rest of the article or in the Columbian piece?
Argh. Yes. Sorry will go edit that now.
Jonathan, your editor here. Beginning of the 4th paragraph: “(the “dog” in Stober’s idiom)”. I found no reference to this..? Did I just miss it or did you edit something out?
Good piece. I’m always amazed at people who live on a street where something like this is proposed and aren’t delighted, if only to have auto traffic moving more slowly in front of their residence. Strange, the things people find to like and dislike.
Calling it a “mobility lane” is actually pretty accurate because there are NO freaking sidewalks on this high speed 12k ADT street. Seems criminal not to address that. Just the thought that you can’t leave your dwelling by any (safe) means other than by driving makes me feel claustrophobic and panicky. Surely there must be some people on this street that are going to fight for this project?
There are people who did show up to the Transportation Mobility Commission meetings in support of the project from the project area.
There were an even number pro and con who spoke to the TMC, however the written comments were 3:1 against
It is always more difficult (and often more compelling) for those to attend meetings to share their opinions and listen to others’ opinions/ insights versus only writing a digital message.
Not true. Project area is approx. 116th to 164th. Sidewalk on south side runs from 132nd to 164th. On north side, from 136th to 164th.
thanks for the correction, 360 – I rashly assumed that since 116-132 had no sidewalks, the rest didn’t either. But that still leaves nearly a mile without sidewalks at all, and almost all the rest with (what appears to be) a parsimonious 5′ on one side only. That’s the absolute lowest bar for pedestrian access.
Good for the city of Vancouver for implementing traffic calming infrastructure and prioritizing safety and access For All Users. I have zero sympathy for drivers – especially suburban Clark County drivers in their Single Occupancy hulking Black Ops SUVs, who are inconvenienced by having to slow down and share the public roads with transit and bikes. We should all support intensified efforts to make driving more difficult. Car Brain will push back. But they’re on the wrong side of history here. I hope this initiative goes down in flames. “We’re not anti-bike.” I’m calling bullshit.
It seems likely that every project will be voted against, not because the projects are bad in any way, but because the projects are not City-wide but the voters are.
Even if a project was seen as wonderful by the neighborhood it was in, why would someone in another neighborhood vote to spend money on that neighborhood? I think a “What’s in it for me?” attitude would prevail.
It seems like the only way around that would be to group all the projects into one City-wide project, so the vote becomes more similar to say, a library or parks measure. Imagine if Portland put each individual library, park, or school project to an individual vote–they’d always fail.
Really before it goes to the ballot, they should just pop-up a whole bike network across the entire city, like they did in Paris, Seville, Jersey City, … Amsterdam. Haven’t we seen it done enough times now to know how it works?
As written it would stall all sorts of emergency repairs. What if a road need a week to be closed for repairs. Would that need a vote?
IMHO the language is discriminatory, is it of a protected class? Arguable. Still stinks.
Many years ago Josephine County did something arguably similar by voting in a local ordinance that required a vote on all county capital purchases. The process nearly crippled the county’s ability to operate because voters rarely can get enough information to make intelligent ballit decisions at this level. I don’t know what eventually happened in the region, but I reckon it was short-lived. Perhaps the same will apply here and eventually reason will prevail.
It was not short lived, it continues on the books. Recently the county tried to rewrite their code and it failed. Reference https://oregoneagle.com/josephine-county-ballot-measures-explanations-and-recommendations/
Sigh…, well maybe reason won’t prevail. That’s unfortunate.
I play an unhealthy amount of Cities: Skylines and have a save game going right now called “Laneston” (working title). It’s a satirical car-hell city modeled after the worst parts of Florida, Houston, Arizona, and even much of our own homegrown PNW sprawl. Think 26-lane mega freeways, seas of parking, a comprehensive network of stroads, and zero walking infrastructure (I have a mod to disable crosswalks).
While I’m playing the game, I like to come up with head cannon policies that explain how the city got to be how it is, such as;
-overkill parking minimums for new developments
– city code that requires any redevelopment to double the amount of parking provided
– a bill, like the bike bill, that is triggered when any roadway is reconstructed, only the condition is that at least one additional lane must be added
– a bill that makes sure roads include ALL modes in the design process – cars, trucks, and most importantly, SUVs
– strict prohibition on any structures over 1 story (except McMansions with large lot size requirements)
– speed limits set by raising the limit until 0 drivers exceed it
Etc.
As they say, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. So thank you, Save Our Stroads, for providing me with inspiration going into the weekend.
Actually, you’ve just modeled the sprawling state of North Carolina.
No, my city has “world-class bike infrastructure” aka a bike path that circles a little pond in a park in the middle of a freeway interchange. Of course there’s plenty of parking so that all residents can enjoy the vibrant greenspaces generously provided by
our benefactorsthe DOT.In Durham NC there is the American Tobacco Trail, a very nice rail-trail that goes from nowhere to nowhere, but it has lots of nice bridges. Raleigh has some very nice long boardwalk paths through swamp lands, very scenic, but again doesn’t connect anything. Charlotte has several world-class pathways, but they don’t actually connect to each other. They are developing a separate and apparently unrelated system of curb-protected bike lanes, but they have huge gaps covered by painted lanes with little magic wands. Much the same in Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and Chapel Hill.
34th between 164th and 192nd in Vancouver recently got a similar road diet and other than a bit of a backup at rush hour in the motor vehicle lane to turn left onto 164th to get onto the freeway there is no noticeable change to the amount of traffic, however vehicles do seem to be going slower which is nice and on 34th previously there was no bike lane at all so the new buffered bike lane is an excellent improvement.
I avoided 34th like the plague prior to the new configuration – way too much aggressive/dangerous driving there for my tastes. Now, I intentionally find a way to take my routes there, the improvement for bikes is amazing.
I ride on McGillivray all the time, both commuting and recreationally. The speed limit is 25 mph. Very few drivers travel under 30-35, many going 40-45 mph. If there was more enforcement of the limit (there used to be, but I have rarely seen it since Covid), safety would be vastly improved. It is always nice to have a curbside mobility lane, but there are so many much more dangerous places to ride a bike in Vancouver, I was surprised McGillivray is being addressed now. Other should be addressed first.
It may not be the top priority for cyclists, but there are no sidewalks on this street.
That is only true in a very short section where the bike lane is open. The vast majority of the road does have sidewalks and the bike lane runs all 2.5 miles of the residential street.
Objectively, about two-thirds has sidewalk. (“Vast” is subjective.)
Not true. Project area is approx. 116th to 164th. Sidewalk on south side runs from 132nd to 164th. On north side, from 136th to 164th.
In my experience, the dicey thing about McGillivray within the project area is the intersections: only stop signs where four motor lanes and median cross two motor lanes, and where sidewalks and bike lanes also are present. Sadly, the new config would likely hide people walking and biking even further out from where people driving are paying attention. Fertile habitat for right hook/left cross.
Could just keep four lanes but upgrade intersections to signals. But that would be way more expensive and wouldn’t land state “Complete Streets” funding. (Not sure why the city doesn’t just own up to doing it this way (paint and markers) to help fund a repaving project that would have to be done anyway, thus likely saving money. That could defuse at least some of the NIMBYs’ rationale.)
That is, upgrade intersections _that have four-way stop signs_ to signals.
I think this is the real benefit of the redesign, from my experience on 34th motor vehicles are going much slower. Still over the speed limit often but not like it was before with 2 travel lanes and a 40mph speed limit meaning people were often going 50+. Now with one travel lane and a 30mph speed limit most of the time cars are actually keeping it under 40. McGillivray has similar speeding issues even though it has a lower speed limit, it feels like a divided highway and people drive it at the speed they expect a divided highway to have.
If the discussed measure or similar is passed then one of the last “legal” solutions for safer – than current – streets would be to add diverters (with bike only access) on arterials and for two lane stroads would be to add frequent speed cushions (~150ft spacing, and with one at the start and end of a block) in the curbside lane to create a “multimodal slow lane” with high enough friction to allow all to share the lane safely. It would be like an attached frontage / local circulation lane. [Something I have been looking for a pilot project site for 20 years to do.]
Literal city ROW typically goes more than a mobility lane’s width into the “private” street frontage property of a home “owner.” Easy solution: develop all new transportation blacktop & concrete in that virgin territory in order to preserve the existing roadway. If the agency can’t afford to repave that crusty old street while they’re putting in the new stuff…well there’s only so much money.
Thanks to Jeff S for pointing out that this street actually lacks sidewalks now. I’d skipped over that part in the picture.
Not true. Project area is approx. 116th to 164th. Sidewalk on south side runs from 132nd to 164th. On north side, from 136th to 164th.
Thats sounds right. It means there are no sidewalks from 116th to 132nd.
Interesting that the Option 1 diagram posted above in this article does not appear to show any sidewalks (please correct me if I am missing something here). Does that mean the pedestrians and bikes would share the same turf? If so, that doesn’t seem like a good idea.
10ft is as wide as parts of springwater corridor, works out decently well and that’s 10ft for both directions.
While I totally agree with the design decisions being made for this road, I do wonder if an emissions analysis was completed…
No it was not done. The only vehicle study was a total count
I hope it fails, but who knows.
Interestingly, they didn’t mention replacing parking with bike lanes. Would be cool to just scrub all the parking from a road to make way for new protected mobility lanes, then see if the city wants to vote to remove an automobile lane for parking.
The difficulty with that is that the road is 100% residential and the road is used for parking.
No, not 100%. Within the project area, it’s commercial east of Village Loop to 164th.
But because the rest is residential, people have both garages and driveways. Except the people in the apartments, who have off-street lots. You’re correct that “the road is used for parking,” but storing private property on the public right-of-way likely should _not_ be allowed in these particular conditions. (For one thing, it could attract car camping — which is _very_ Portland.)
I don’t know, complaining about “not enough outreach” when you don’t get your way on traffic calming projects feels an awful lot like Portland right now. Councilor Stober, maybe this is an opportunity for you to make a point of difference between Vancouver and Portland and actually create meaningful safety improvements despite the vocal opposition.
Regarding the community discussion on street projects of recent years at the CoV…it will be interesting if this angst generating a petition (a rare event here) was a product of the evolution of public meetings (project & neighborhood associations) post pandemic AND the death of focused citizen committees like the city’s bike ped advisory group & the Neighborhood Traffic Safety Alliance (NTSA) which allowed more ‘citizen to citizen’ dialogue on many ‘disruptive’ projects. Both of these committees were absorbed by the generally more efficient Transportation Mobility Commission (TMC). [My understanding from afar.] One of these efficiencies was that council shifted their voting power on mobility projects to the TMC…for a less political and more technical evaluation and vote on projects.
In hindsight, after 20+ years the NTSA had shown that much of their success – each voting member was an elected neighborhood association leader that would then study each neighborhood submitted capital project (traffic calming, ADA, bike lanes), visit sites, and prioritize the annual awards using staff provided design, budget and traffic safety review guidance materials.
What this led to overtime was that each neighborhood representative shifted from the POV that “their project” or “their street” had the worst conditions or highest need to a more holistic understanding of the needs of the city as a whole and its transportation network…within the project budget.
http://www.neighborhoodlink.com/NTSA
https://www.clarkcountytoday.com/news/vancouvers-neighborhood-traffic-calming-program-application-process-now-open/
This is some trumpian logic if I have ever heard it.
“This is not anti bike, pedestrian or mobility lanes”
Yet that’s exactly what it is. What if a petition were taken up to remove all funding for school lunch or schools at all? Would that not be anti children or anti poverty?
This has to be the saddest thing I have heard in a while from someone who believes they are “helping”.
This is exactly what Portland drivers should do – pass a law reigning in PBOT and its “road diet” program. Somehow I was not surprised to hear PBOT PIO Dylan Rivera blame the failed results of Vision Zero on drivers with “mental health” and “substance use disorders” at a December 4, 2024 news conference. The guy sounds like a fundamentalist preacher.
I might be willing to get behind slower speed limits if they took out the ubiquitous speed bumps and stopped removing traffic lanes. I work in Tigard and live in inner NE and it already takes me over an hour to get home, without those PDOT whack jobs making it take longer. (For example, PBOT has now convinced ODOT to reduce the speed limit on Lombard St, both east and west of MLK Blvd, a street which I use every day.)
It looks to me like the lack of police traffic enforcement has pushed the City of Portland to allow PBOT to do things that were usually the things cops do – enforce the speed limits and the traffic laws. Now PBOT mainly focuses on impeding car traffic and ignores its core function, road maintenance. On some streets, there are potholes in the speedbumps!
PBOT pisses me off.
I presume Vancouver’s bike modeshare is below even 2%.
Weird how the biggest threat to this stuff is always democracy.
FYI: the agenda and council packet for this item came out. In reading the staff report the standard ‘NO’ has come up again: No more than 1 item / action for the initiative plus No regarding what can be addressed by the initiative process. The Save Our Streets legal council should have known how to avoid item 1. And for #2 No, it will be interesting to know why their legal council did not revise the initiative language based on feedback given upon review. The SoS met the deadline and did very well in collecting extra signatures, so there should have been time to correct any missed flaws. Otherwise – it would seem – they wasted a lot of volunteer time and energy (and staff time / tax dollars) to meet this public accountability step without taking heed, etc. If the former then it was just a tantrum?
See attached for the staff report.
Ok, let us think of the “other scenario”…spit balling here, so hold on … if the existing initiative passes court review AND is approved by the majority of voters…then three scenarios could occur for any urban corridor retrofit project (reconstructing existing arterials etc.):
1) the project scope for paving or other reconstruction would not include any bike lanes [outcome: would score very poorly compared to other competing projects, so no state or federal funds awarded, only general funds and tax dollars to pay for road work];
2) the project scope adds bike lanes [to be competitive for grants] but needs to widen streets and buy right of way (aka peoples front yards) to not remove lanes; or
3) only parking lanes are removed to become mobility lanes on any arterials [folks would need to park in their garages or driveways].