A tragic collision between a driver and someone walking on SE Cesar Chavez Blvd over the weekend has re-ignited discussions about how to make the street safer. It also might be the first test of how Portland’s new form of government responds to high profile road fatalities.
Thiet Nguyen, a well-known figure among people who frequent the Reed and Woodstock neighborhoods, was killed after being struck by a car driver near the intersection of SE Cesar Chavez and SE Cora on Sunday. Details of how it happened are still unknown, but the dangerous history of this stretch of Cesar Chavez Blvd is not. Nguyen is the fourth non-driver to be killed within a two-mile section of the street since 2015.
The death of another person on this four-lane road caught the attention of Portland City Councilor Angelita Morillo. Morillo, who represents the district where this fatality occurred (District 3) left a comment on a BikePortland Instagram post yesterday:
“Thiet and their family deserve better. I saw that news story last week and I plan to work with PBOT to bring this to the Transportation and Infrastructure committee to see what safety changes can be made to the entire strip. Thank you for continuing to highlight these issues and honoring the lives taken from us too soon.”
The committee Morillo referred to is one of eight new committees that were just established two weeks ago. The City of Portland has published a new website for the Transportation and Infrastructure (T & I) Committee, but it’s light on process details. Given Councilor Morillo’s comment, we’re curious what we can expect in terms of getting specific topics on the agendas. What we do know is that a lot of substantive city policy will originate in these committees. Councilor Morillo is vice chair of the T & I Committee, so she will have some influence to set the agenda. But only the chair, Councilor Olivia Clark, has final say on what becomes an agenda item.
We still don’t know if public testimony will be allowed at committee meetings or when they’ll be scheduled. According to Oregon public meetings law, if three out of five committee members discuss a topic, a public meeting would automatically be triggered. It’s clear Councilor Morillo is talking about it, but so far we haven’t heard if or when SE Cesar Chavez Blvd will make it onto the agenda.
In the past, advocates would contact the commissioner-in-charge of the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) directly and urge them to take action in coordination with the bureau. Now that PBOT answers to an administrator, and the administrator implements policy crafted by City Council, we’ll have to wait and see how specific issues make their way through the process.
Councilors are currently still drafting official committee rules for procedures, decorum, community engagement, and so on. Meetings could begin the second week of February. I’ve reached out to Councilor Clark’s office but haven’t heard back yet. Stay tuned to learn more. And if you have more information about the committee process, please share in the comments.
Thanks for reading.
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“According to Oregon public meetings law, if three out of five committee members discuss a topic, a public meeting would automatically be triggered.”
I’m curious about this. What might be the nature of the discussion that triggers the public meeting? Mentioning it to each in the hallway? In email?
I took non-profit board training a million years ago. As I remember, we could all be at a party together, purely social was fine. But discussion of the non-profit’s business would trigger sunshine laws if more than two of us were involved. (We were going to be receiving large amounts of state money, NY)
Government email is considered public. I think of it this way, if it’s something that would make the minutes of a meeting, motions, votes, decisions, and there are enough board members present, it’s a meeting.
I’m not entirely sure about this… It probably depends on whether these committees can take formal actions on their own. If their only power is to tell the rest of council “here’s what we think”, then public meetings law might not apply — three council members can clearly discuss business outside the committee structure, so some magic must transform committees into governing bodies in their own right, which I suspect that is the power to make decisions that carry real weight.
It would be nice to see if the Transportation Committee favors (car) traffic throughput versus vulnerable user safety, what their actual priorities are in terms of policy versus rhetoric and PR. (Relatively less dangerous) 39th/Chaves would be a good test case for the much more dangerous stroads all over Portland.
I think we need to realize that the Bureaus are now under professional management and the whims (albeit often well-intentioned) of council members no longer hold sway. They are now a legislative body and do not have implementation authority. The sooner council member realize this and stay off social media for a few minutes, they can get to work on their responsibilities.
Y’all discover within 2 years if not sooner that your new “professional management” can’t control each bureau’s personnel and conflicting policies any more effectively than each bureau director could in the old system – which was nil or nada – and that in such a large complex (and unionized) civil service that Portland has developed since 1851, it’s often community volunteers and elected officials who get the various cliques and sub-agencies within the bureaucracy to do business with each other, such as it is.
The City Council still controls the budget. A Bureau that doesn’t toe the line and do the bidding of the majority of Council members will find their budget asks voted down and vastly changed.
You may think individual Council members have no sway, well all it takes is for one to perceive some insult from a Bureau to get other Council members to side with them on voting.
Yes, gone are the days that a single Council member controlling a Bureau. Now all of them have sway to make a Bureau’s life miserable.
Well it’s not like they’re going to cut the fire, police and PBOT enforcement budgets…I think even far left Portlanders now realize the problems defunding and “de-emphasizing” enforcement caused.
They don’t have to cut these budgets but they can and will control their line items.
The mayor controls the line items. Council says yay or nay.
The Oregonian had an article on Sunday describing attempts by Council to get involved in the administrative decision to approve permits for Zenith. So it’s a nice theory you have, but is unlikely to play out in practice. Council will be exactly as involved as they want to be (at least on issues where there is majority support for doing so) and since many of the new folks are professional activists, I suspect they will want to plenty.
The neighborhood in which she was killed is Creston-Kenilworth (where I live)
I appreciate the passion for safety on Cesar Chavez. I want to see this street improved too. I understand this fatality evoked a particularly strong response due to some combination of proximity to lots of Bike Portland readers and the demographic of past victims. I support Morillo taking this to the transportation committee and will follow closely how all of this plays out. These are some (not all for reasons I won’t go into here) other fatalities that occurred in District 3 last year. Clarification, 82nd is the border between districts 1 and 3. I want to be sure Morillo is aware of the other deadly areas in the district she represents.
NE Sandy Blvd near NE 65th Ave – Pedestrian
Intersection SE 82nd & SE Flavel – Pedestrian
SE 82nd and SE Mitchell [NORTH OF FOSTER RD] – Motorcycle
NE 85th Ave & NE Fremont – Pedestrian
SE 55th Ave & East Burnside – Motorcycle
SE Ogden and SE 72nd Ave – Scooter
I used to live in that neighborhood, and I still travel through on occasion. 39th is the worst!
If you’re on a bike, it’s a dangerous impediment to east west travel on many otherwise convenient bikeways.
If you’re on foot, it’s a noisy road with tiny sidewalks. If there’s a lot of water on the road, you’re almost guaranteed to get splashed by gutter water when cars fly by.
If you’re trying to get north or south in a car, the lack of better north-south through-routes all but guarantees that you’ll have to take Chavez, with its confusing lane shifts at the Glissn intersection, the insane lack of protected left turns, bus/pedestrian crossing backups, and unpredictable, fast lane changing by people trying to avoid getting stuck behind said buses, etc.
This is one where I do not blame drivers for being mad at the status quo. The lack of other suitable north-south options between MLK and 82nd is an artifact of a historical downtown-centric development pattern that is poorly suited to today’s needs.
It is quite literally path dependency in concrete form.
I live in a pleasantly mediocre industrial city in North Carolina of 300,000. Our 9-person city council, like Portland’s, is non-partisan (very unlike our local school board and county commission), but nearly everyone on it are registered Democrats. Nevertheless, when each member makes media posts, they tend to be bland and always in praise of this or that organization and/or city agency, including our local gestapo police department – they simple never ever criticize anyone at all. Over time I expect Portland’s newest council members to be much the same. (And yeah, we have the same record high of drive-by shootings, property crime, pedestrian fatalities, etc., more or less the same rate as Portland.)
From what I remember of the most recent Portland City Council election last November, to stagger the 12 terms, 4 of the electeds were given 6-year terms, 4 were given 4-year terms, and 4 were given 2-year terms (I think all 3 of the District 1 electeds got 6-year terms). So I expect that you’ll see more media postings from the 2-year members as they are still effectively in campaign mode trying to get donations and more votes for 2026, then they’ll be more quiet until their 2nd terms expire in 2032.
Half got 4 year terms (D1, D2), half got 2 year terms (D3, D4), because D3 and D4 are deemed to have more reliable voters.
Good to see the new councilor jumping on this issue. However, the response should not be of the type we saw in the old commissioner system, where the commissioner would order PBOT to do something performative like put up a sign-board or barrels.
Instead the response should be something like a citywide ordinance that *requires* PBOT to prioritize safety in high-crash corridors. Tie PBOT’s hands so they don’t have discretion to ignore streets (or “stroads”) where POOCs continue to be killed and injured (POOC = persons outside of cars).
I’m thinking PBOT would actually be grateful to have the cover of the political process in this new system. When drivers whine and complain about no longer being able to go 45-50 mph down Cesar Chavez, PBOT can shrug and say “Sorry – we are required to follow the city ordinance and if you don’t like it you can complain to your city councilors, who passed the ordinance.” No longer will PBOT be consumed by endless public review and involvement processes that take months and years with no resolution. They will respond quickly and effectively when data show that a street is unsafe.
LOL. That will never go away and they will never be quick.
I got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell if you really believe that.
It’s amazing how people seem to be convinced that the new council structure will fix everything. Check back in two years and my money is on everything being about the same, except now we have more councilors and more staff overhead to pay. Did I hear something about a budget hole this year? Shocking.
The Council is dead! Long live the Council!
Let’s hope. It’s too bad I don’t have a picture of that time I slid down the sidewalk backwards in my power chair.
That’s a nice dream.
About time! Cesar Chavez is a horrible street.
It was much better when it was just 39th.
I’ve always found it odd that people name the shitty streets after those we want to honor.
A couple of speed camera/ radar trailers placed randomly along 39th then relocated randomly along that corridor would quickly train drivers to slow down and hopefully be better drivers.
Knowing Portland, a convocation of influencers will be rallied for a design charrette to provide visionary renderings of forward thinking solutions.
Where would they park?
Temporary easements on private property. Many adjacent properties have paved parking right up to those narrow sidewalks. Some properties along 39th are demolished derelicts and empty lots. Locating the speed camera trailers is a solvable problem, even for Portland
That’s a good idea. It might provide property owners with some passive income, though the city is basically broke at the moment.
Easiest thing to do with Chavez to make it safer would be to remove the outer lanes and make it on-street parking. Boom, road diet, no restriping needed. Drop the parking temporarily at crossing to put in islands, and at busy intersections to add turn lanes.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
Parking? For automobiles? Egads!
Clearly we need another “Better Naito” for Portland’s dozens of bike commuters.
Expecting great things from one of Emerge Oregon’s finest graduates!
I may be mistaken, but I thought 39th was up for a 4 to 3 conversion south of Powell. Was that put on hold?
No that is still ongoing and a possibility. More info on that here – https://bikeportland.org/2025/02/03/woman-killed-on-se-cesar-chavez-was-tuyen-nguyen-and-shes-not-latest-victim-392727