Hello BikePortlanders, welcome to 2025. It’s great to have you here and I’m excited about getting started on our 20th year in business, but first let’s take a look back at 2024.
Before I get into some of the big stories, trends, and my thoughts for the future; here’s a bit about the output from BikePortland over the past 12 months.
It was another very productive year. We posted 621 stories here on the blog, published 21,460 of your comments, uploaded 62 videos to our YouTube channel and shared 52 podcast episodes. We also posted a ton of videos, photos, and updates on our social media channels.
Bike Happy Hour was another big part of our 2024. We kept the tradition going strong by establishing our event as one of the best and busiest weekly social gatherings in the city. We welcomed almost every city council member and Mayor Keith Wilson to the event and brought city politics directly to the urbanist and livable streets community.
The Shed (the BikePortland HQ) continued to be a place where important conversations take place. I welcomed folks into this space for interviews, brainstorm sessions, met folks virtually during my Friday Office Hours, and of course hung out with Eva Frazier every Friday for our In the Shed podcast. Thanks to support from financial contributors and monthly subscribers, I was able to invest in equipment that allows me to easily share many of these conversations via video on our YouTube channel.
On the news and editorial front, here’s what I’ll remember from 2024.
We lost too many really great people. The deaths of veteran activist Jim Howell, bicycling basketball legend Bill Walton, and community organizer Sukho Viboolsittiseri will echo far beyond last year.
And on our streets, we had yet another unacceptably high number of fatal traffic crashes. The Portland Police Bureau says 65 people died while using our roads. I’m still working to verify the exact numbers and victim details, but we know that five of those crashes involved someone riding a bike (one suffered an apparent medical event prior to the crash): David Bentley, 49; Johnathan Henderson, 40; Gad Alon, 74; Sergio D. Hunt, 38; and Damon M. Cousins, 32. I’ve made my thoughts on traffic deaths clear in a recent opinion piece so I won’t go much more into this now. Bottom line: something needs to change and I’ll be here to help build pressure so that it does.
An issue that’s related to deaths on our roads is the disturbing trend that strengthened last year of car drivers using off-street paths and even grassy space in public parks. This abuse of the driving privilege shows how eroded social norms around driving have become and illustrate the vast dysfunction that exists within our driving culture.
On a happier note, the bike bus phenomenon continued to spread far and wide. Even city agencies launched bike buses to help gets staff to work healthier and happier! Local bike bus advocate Sam Balto launched a nonprofit to further push the idea into the mainstream and ended his year dropping his new business card with friends made at the White House in Washington D.C.
While Balto shows us the impact a single activist can have, the continued maturation and growth of BikeLoud PDX demonstrates that there’s no substitute for good, old-fashioned community organizing. The nonprofit BikeLoud reached new heights in 2024 by remaining a steady and positive presence in the community and winning its first major grant that will allow the group to hire its first paid staffer in 2025.
BikeLoud has also emerged as an important platform in and of itself. Their Slack communications channel is the go-to spot for activists who want to learn and get things done. On that note, 2024 was the year some Portlanders officially stopped waiting for the Portland Bureau of Transportation to clean up the damn bike lanes. To a level I’ve never seen before, folks are organizing their own bike lane maintenance. They are modifying equipment, sharing DIY videos, and getting their hands dirty cleaning up leaves, gravel, snow, and whatever else comes our way.
Underlying that DIY trend is a rising dissatisfaction and frustration with PBOT — not just among the safe streets and bike advocacy crowd, but across wide swaths of Portland. PBOT, an agency beleaguered by years of budget cuts, also had a very rough year, PR-wise. They were called out by some candidates during election campaigns for making driving too inconvenient, one guy got so mad at their enforcement cameras he shot at them with a gun, and we even saw the emergence of “anti-PBOT extremists” in Rose City Park. BikeLoud’s lawsuits against PBOT moved forward in 2024, including lengthy depositions last month with top planning staff regarding implementation of the State of Oregon’s “bicycle bill.” Even a visiting bike blogger made a point to criticize PBOT’s progress on building a safe bike network.
And to top things off, PBOT posted an inappropriate and tone-deaf video to social media last month the morning after a 75-year old person was hit and killed by a driver while walking in a crosswalk. PBOT must realize that the gargantuan task of changing traffic culture on a limited budget will be impossible without strong internal morale and the community on their side.
One thing our community usually loves are big projects, and 2024 had its share. TriMet opened a new bike path to the Portland Airport and cut the ribbon on a new path and bridge for bikes into Gateway Green. PBOT made big progress on a coming reconfiguration of NE Broadway and the exciting N Willamette Blvd project came into focus. And while many folks are pleased to see 82nd Avenue finally changing into a more humane, city-run street, there are growing concerns that its lack of bike access and/or a compromised plan for bus service might not let it reach its full potential.
When it comes to potential, Biketown’s year was mixed. The quality and quantity of e-bikes and e-scoters in our bike share system went up, but the lack of bikes overall and the relative cost of rentals still kneecaps what could be a transformative transportation option.
There are reasons for optimism in 2025. Big projects, big funding, and big structural changes should make an impact.
We’ve got a new slate of leaders in Portland and a new form of government to empower them. PBOT no longer has to answer to one politician and should have a more stable trajectory as a result. Our new 12-member council will have some sort of transportation committee, and with a strong “Bike Happy Hour majority” in place we should expect strong awareness of our issues that (hopefully!) translates into priority and good policy.
2025 will be the year of funding for transportation. At the state level, lawmakers and lobbyists (aka advocates) will debate a multi-billion funding package for the Oregon Department of Transportation. Given the work of the Move Oregon Forward coalition (The Street Trust and Oregon Walks are steering committee members), we’re likely to see hundreds of millions dedicated toward biking, walking and transit. And if they try to leave our stuff at the side of the road, we’ve got the very transparent and comprehensive listening tour to fall back on as proof of what the majority of Oregonians want (hint: it’s not larger freeways and highways).
Locally, the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability will launch a long-awaited, $20 million e-bike rebate program in the summer of 2025 and we’ll see the first batch of an expected 6,000 new e-bikes that will hit the streets in the next five years as a result of this investment.
Bringing it back to PBOT… the bureau’s desperate need for new revenue and the new faces on city council tasked with coming up with ways to create it, will be one of the most intriguing things to watch in 2025.
- What new revenue source will PBOT (and ODOT for that matter) arrive at?
- What impact will the new e-bike rebate program have on our streets?
- What type of transit will 82nd Avenue get?
- Will Good Samaritans be ready to make a significant dent in bike lane maintenance before spring?
- What will the freeway industrial complex demand in compromises for raising fees on driving and funding biking, walking and transit at the state level?
- Will Portland City Council follow through on promises to make safer streets a priority?
These are just some of the questions I’ve got at the start of a new years. What are yours?
Thanks for reading.
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When will PBOT make a budget that measures progress toward modal shift, climate action and vision zero goals AND prioritizes safety over speed & community over convenience? When will the city have a budget making walking, bicycling and transit more attractive than driving? 25% of all trips by bicycle by 2030 !
A 7-fold increase in bike mode share in 5 years with a city council run by establishment democrats and a transportation bureau that is now further insulated from accountability?
Our new city council leader was Kate Browns top assistant…
Nothing says change or success like being the top assistant to the worst governor this state has ever had…
Care to sketch out how that’s even remotely possible?
https://www.portland.gov/sites/default/files/2020-04/portland_bicycle_plan_for_2030_as-adopted.pdf
And how’s that plan working in practice?
It hasn’t been put in practice. Portland didn’t build it.
We still have 5 years. How do we convince Council to make it happen? If we can’t do that, how would it be possible to achieve? If it’s not practically possible, why are we even discussing it as if it were an option?
There’s always talk about an upcoming recession. Let’s say there’s a major fiscal shortfall (which there already is for PBOT for the last 20+ years). A 7-vote majority declares an emergency and implements:
_ A citywide parking permit program, to raise revenue of course.
_ A ban on all on-street parking on any city arterial or collector, to make driving less convenient, and encourage commerce at strip malls and other places with off-street parking.
_ The number of travel lanes on any street shall be limited to one lane in each direction; excess lane width will be used as “bus only” lanes or as buffered bike lanes, depending on existing TriMet bus routes. (Buffered bike lanes could be later converted into barrier-protected bike lanes). This will reduce ongoing street maintenance costs.
_ Any project in the TSP that isn’t currently under construction will be chalked into the street with traffic cones until funding becomes available (which in some cases may take a decade or two.)
_ Raise the PCEF indirect sales tax to 5% and use the extra funding to implement delayed PBOT TSP projects and police enforcement of traffic around the temporary chalked projects.
_ To reduce street wear and tear and city pollution levels, and to promote public health, safety, and welfare, a citywide ban on all motor vehicles with even-numbered plates every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; a ban odd-numbered plates on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays; and all motor vehicles except transit and emergency vehicles every Sunday.
Underpants bikeloud gnome plan:
1. Census cycling mode-share 2023: ~4%.
.
2. ???
.
3. Census cycling mode share 2030: 25%
Maybe a plague or nuclear war in 2028 that wipes out everyone in Portland except for 4 people, one of whom gets around entirely by bicycle?
I mean, to meet expectations, most of the plan would have been built over the last fifteen years (most elements were never built, and those that were built were most often just paint or paint and post). Other assumptions were massive ongoing additional investments in regional transit, more housing production in Portland inner neighborhoods, and tolling/increased congestion on freeways. Pretty much all of the things that would have brought about increasing bicycle usage plateaued within ten years of plan adoption. Instead of densifying Portland’s core, development has flowed to the suburbs.
I really thought that we would have accomplished more meaningful and positive and transformational changes by now. Some cities used COVID to leap ahead decades in making gains on long-neglected biking and pedestrian-friendly infrastructure. We just added some street plazas and street dining, but even that is getting cut back in an attempt to generate permit revenue. We could transform our city streets in just a year with diverters and mini-parks and modal filters and more, but when will we actually do it?
What will it take to move the needle of progress here in Portland in 2025? It will be leadership that isn’t afraid to make big changes and shake things up. I see 82nd as a good test of this generational-change opportunity. Will we get more of the same old car-centric highway, but in a modernized-stroad package? Or, will we get a street that will actually helps transform the neighborhoods it passes through?
When the public demands it. Get your neighbors to lobby their new city council representatives.
Prediction: The Oregon legislature, with the Dem supermajority in both chambers (and therefore the ability to raise taxes), will pass a law that phases in (over five years) a first-in-the-nation road-user fee, which motorists will pay according to the size and weight of the vehicle.
The whole thing will be really controversial, and Repubs from rural Oregon will threaten to walk out, sit on the floor, and pee their pants in general. The really controversial part will be the requirement that *Washington* drivers who use Oregon roads also pay the user-fee when they are driving in Oregon, which is only fair and certainly better than putting tolls on the bridges.
You read it here first!
That would be fascinating indeed. However, I don’t see Washington drivers hit with the road user fee. The gas tax would likely be increased quite a bit for non-Oregon drivers.
Will the city bureaucracy be massively reorganized (as Randy Leonard once advocated for years ago) into an engineer-oriented Dept of Public Works (PBOT, BES, & Water) and all the planners thrown in together into one bureau rather than the current division between Planning, PBOT, BES, BDS, P&R, etc, eliminating numerous directors and upper management?
Will the city increase the current 1% PCEF rate to 5% and expand it to smaller businesses?
Will JM visit the Deep South (other than peripheral places in South Florida & North Virginia)?
Would love to see all the above happen re city bureaucracy!
I lived and worked in Knoxville, Tenn., and Lexington, Ky., and also biked around both for several years. I would be curious to know what you would like Bike Portland to take from a visit to the “deep south” other than communities have been hamstrung by the rich looking out for themselves by creating culture wars that divide the working class from each other, preventing real systemic change. Despite that, as you know, there are communities here and there (especially in Appalachia) that live pretty radically. After living/biking there, though, living in Portland has been an utter joy and relief. There are problems everywhere you go, but the ones here seem surmountable in this generation.
Anyway, feel free to call me naive or whatever, but I am curious about your commitment to comparing Portland to North Carolina. Cheers!
This applies to Portland OR too.
In the Deep South during the long period of segregation and later from the Red Lining period, civic leaders would create distinct white working-class neighborhoods and black working-class neighborhoods (and even a few black rich-persons neighborhoods). Most of these neighborhoods are still not integrated, and the newer suburbs often follow the same pattern, with super-low public investment in black areas. In other words, systemic inequalities, something that Portland had in the north-central part of the city, but not so much in say East Portland, where it’s more of systematic inequalities – disinvestment because the city wanted to stick-it to the rich white folks living in East County – which only much later became BIPOC.
Though the idea of combining could be a good thing, the fact that it came from Randy “do as I say, not as I do” Leonard makes it highly suspect.