Is there any place in Portland drivers won’t go? Seems like every week there’s another example of a person taking their car in a place cars aren’t allowed. Parks, paths, peoples’ living rooms — and now the Tilikum Crossing. We spent $130 million to make this one of the coolest carfree bridges in the country, and it’s been a big success for bus and rail ridership, in addition to being a lifeline for bicycling and walking. So when I heard about this incident of a man speeding across it, I was shocked; but unfortunately, not surprised.
It happened around 8:40 am on Friday, August 29th. The first reports I received were from people participating in Breakfast on the Bridges, a monthly event where folks hand out free coffee and donuts on downtown bridges to anyone who rolls by. My friend Shawne Martinez (who you can see biking with his young daughter as the driver flies past in the video below) was first to post about it on the Bike Loud Slack channel. “Did anyone catch that car driver going 80 mph over the Tilikum Crossing at Breakfast on the Bridges this morning?” he wrote. “My daughter and I had just crossed the carfree street at the light seconds before.”
Sometimes drivers get confused and make mistakes. That happens. This doesn’t look like that type of situation. It’s very obvious that cars aren’t allowed on this bridge, and judging by the way he was driving, it looks like he did this on purpose.
TriMet shared a statement with BikePortland after they released the video footage (which I obtained through a public records request):
“This was a dangerous and illegal act that could have had tragic consequences.
TriMet has about 9,000 cameras across our transit system. Using video from our cameras, we were able to identify the vehicle by make, model and license plate of the vehicle involved in this case. The Transit Police Division conducted an investigation, but unfortunately, the driver has not been cited. We understand there was a discrepancy with the title, and the vehicle may have been stolen. As a result, the driver could not be positively identified.
Anyone who breaks the law on TriMet property, including Tilikum Crossing, is subject to prosecution and may be held liable. We are committed to working with law enforcement to keep our transit system secure, so we can continue to provide safe, reliable and welcoming public transportation for all.”
Thousands of people use the Tilikum on transit and on the paths every day. We are very fortunate nothing tragic happened here. If you know someone who drives, please check in with them, ask them how they’re doing and make sure they get the help they need.
Watch the video below:
Thanks for reading.
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The sound from the car’s engine was SO LOUD as the driver smashed the accelerator and sped past us! The only vehicles that we choose to electronically geofence and speed regulate are bicycles and scooters. ♂️
Not sure what’s up with that symbol at the end of my comment?
It’s sociopathic to me that we electronically regulate the speed of new micromobility vehicles and do nothing of the kind for full size automobiles (ICE or EV) which are involved in tens of thousands of deaths per year.
Nothing actual bollards wouldn’t fix. Does the video from trimet have time stamps on it? 80mph seems like a wild exaggeration
Buses and trains have to be able to get through every few minutes, so bollards are impractical and would only serve to slow down already slow transit service.
They have retractable bollards that only take a few seconds to raise and lower.
Do they have ones that never break down? If so, maybe PBOT could use them to power the Bob Stacey elevators.
Reliability is a concern, obviously, but I think the bigger issue is just cost vs. benefit. This doesn’t seem to be a frequent occurrence so I doubt TriMet will be that interested in spending much money to solve it.
Good one!
The last line of your video is the apposite one: “The City [or in this case Trimet] needs to do everything it can to keep cars out of car-free spaces.”
I’ve said it many times before and I’ll say it again: Design AFFORDANCES rule – they dictate not just how something CAN be used but how it WILL be used.
If we make it POSSIBLE for someone to drive a car across the Tillikum Bridge, then someone WILL drive a car across the bridge.
How to keep cars off this bridge? I can’t see a way to do it unless Trimet were to install barriers (gates) that bus and MAX drivers could raise to allow them to pass through. But that would be expensive. Anyway, their design allows it so no one should be surprised when it happens. A lot of the “people are nice and law-abiding” assumptions in Portland’s public-space designs are proving not to work out very well.
One more thing: Wanna bet this guy filmed himself driving across the bridge and put it on social media to show how “fearless” he is? Trimet investigators should look for it.
Can’t say I’m surprised this happened. These days in Portland, there’s hardly any consequences for dodgy behaviour. Look no further than the cars and motorcycles frequently using our MUP’s.
Definitely seems like it was stolen.
I am outraged. This is so unacceptable. Autobollards please, Trimet. Now. Glad nobody was hurt.
Yikes! Coincidentally, the day before, I took one of my grandsons on a “transit adventure” loop (bus -> streetcar -> tram -> streetcar -> bus). When we walked over the Tilikum, I explained how cool it was that Portland had a bridge dedicated to active and public transit. I suppose I’m now glad we didn’t do our adventure one day later.
One possible solution would be a sump buster that would allow trains and buses through but not cars. It wouldn’t stop the oversized pick-up trucks you see today but it would have stopped the car in that video.
I think I like the idea of the old swiss granny with the sub machine gun at the gate in James Bond Goldfinger. She’d deter the lawless.
https://jamesbond.fandom.com/wiki/Swiss_Gatekeeper
A quart of oil may contaminate about a million gallons of water*. The oil from one motor vehicle could create a slick extending over several acres. That’s a reason not to break the oil pan of a car intruding on a bridge.
*The article I read had some contradictory numbers, but clearly this is not a good idea.
That’s a pretty easy issue to address; just make a depression for the oil to collect in. Both entrances to the no-car zone are over land anyway.
You don’t think the driver would continue on, leaking oil as he went, until the car died? I’m pretty sure you could make it across the bridge, and likely quite a bit further before your engine overheated and seized (in a hot engine, a lot of that oil is not in the pan, but up lubricating things).
Lots of opportunity to drain oil into the river.
MAX trains and streetcars don’t have enough ground clearance for that to work.
“Sump Buster” = bussluis = bus gate
See the 1938 bus gate photo as another example of possible low cost design “solutions” https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Bus_traps#mw-subcategories
…
TriMet just told every sociopathic driver looking to skirt freeway traffic “Hey! We won’t be able to see you through your tinted windows! Go ahead and drive across our transit-only bridge.”
The window tint issue was something I noticed immediately after I moved out here 5 years ago. I know the “eye-to-eye” theory of driver safety isn’t well substantiated–maybe just straight-up disproved?–but I know that whenever I’m out and about, behind the wheel or walking around, I always try to see what the other person in their car is doing. If I can’t see them, I have no way of knowing if they can see me. Not to mention that having deep-tinted windows all around just gives people that sense of being in a private space when they very simply are not; we don’t want people to feel like they can behave anti-socially just because we can’t “see” them.
“eye-to-eye”
Humans have hundreds of thousands of years of practice discerning the intent of others by making eye contact and using other subtle visual cues. It’s not foolproof, but making eye contact (or not) can communicate a lot.
Yeah and thankfully humans have also been in charge of multi-ton vehicles that can accelerate faster than we can comprehend for hundreds of thousands of years too.
I agree that driving is not something we are innately good at. I don’t see your point.
My point is that common human behavior cues – like eye contact – break down in the context of an activity like driving. Someone looking for other car traffic can easily be confused for eye contact with a pedestrian. Someone in a car traveling fast might make eye contact but not react. What eye contact means on the road is somewhat subjective, as some drivers take eye contact from people walking to mean “I see you so go ahead and keep driving”. The law is clear that the driver should yield, but in practice it doesn’t always shake out that way for a myriad of reasons.
I do think that eye contact is effective when vehicles are moving very slowly, but faster than about 10 mph I’m gonna be watching their front tires. They are holding a deadly weapon and eye contact doesn’t tell my monkey brain when their hand is about to swing a club at me.
Non-verbal communication is never foolproof, even in non-driving contexts. Ignore it if you wish, but I, and many others, find it useful.
And yes, absolutely, pay attention to other cues as well. No need to pick one thing or the other.
The rise of tinted windshields blows my mind and makes me pretty angry. This is not Phoenix, it’s Portland. There is no reason to black out all your windows in this climate.
I’ve walked and ridden my bike over some of our forbidden transit-only bridges and viaducts, so it’s not totally surprising that someone would do the same thing in a car.
Equivalence is not always a virtue.
Not an equivalence at all; just an observation about human nature.
There’s no telling what other sort of egregious behaviors this driver might engage in.
Crazy but not surprising to see a few comments on your Instagram post defending the driver (for doing it intentionally)–fortunately not many.
I’m sure they would respond differently if they learned that the driver was an auto thief.
If it wasn’t reported stolen then why wouldn’t they cite the driver?
Because they don’t know for sure who the driver was. It’s different than a parking ticket.
If it’s not reported as stolen, cite the owner. The owner was driving or the owners bro was and they can sort things out.
How do I “sort out” a moving violation with my friend? How do I get the points transferred from my insurance to his? And if the car really was stolen, what then?
The urge to punish someone, anyone, to make an example reminds me of period movies from the early 1940s.
I guess the owner can point the police in the direction of his buddy? If it was really stolen I’d assume a report had been filed and that would be easy enough to check. Just shrugging here, like we seem to do with so many problems in this city, is maybe the correct course to take.
I’m not sure why you have a hard time imagining someone not reporting a car solen, especially if it were low value and it wasn’t properly registered. Doubly especially if they were themselves trying to keep a low profile.
There is a legal process for getting people to divulge information, and if TriMet thinks it’s important enough, they can use it. If anyone is shrugging, it’s them. And given the severity of the crime, who can blame them?
I don’t think it was intended this way but this is genuinely one of the funniest things I have ever read on BikePortland
A stoned drunk once drove halfway into the westbound Robertson tunnel.
“We understand there was a discrepancy with the title, and the vehicle may have been stolen.”
What does this mean exactly? They can’t find the registered owner of the vehicle? Was it reported stolen? “may have” is a weirdly vague way of putting it.
it means the registered owner is a cop 🙂
I doubt it. Police officers probably keep track of their own vehicles because they spend a big part of their life sorting out problems with vehicles. Why take a cheap shot at cops with no evidence?
Yeah… where is the car now? Is the owner like “It was stolen for a day and I got it back?” Was it ever reported stolen? How does a discrepancy with the title indicate it was stolen?
Sometimes someone sells a car, but the buyer doesn’t update the title, so it becomes a bit unclear who the proper owner is by looking at DMV records, especially if the buyer then sold the car to someone else who also didn’t attend to the title. I understand this sometimes happens with low value vehicles (paid for in cash) and buyers who want to make themselves harder to track. And, additionally, the vehicle may have been stolen from that buyer who might prefer not to get the cops involved.
I’m not saying that’s what happened, but it could easily account for the statement.
I understand all of that, because I have had to deal with that to some extent before. But, I still don’t see where a title discrepancy, by itself, indicates that it is stolen. Not saying there is a conspiracy or anything- just feel like a piece of info is being left out.
“I still don’t see where a title discrepancy, by itself, indicates that it is stolen.”
It doesn’t. The quote says the title has issues, and, also, that the car may have been stolen. Not that the title issues meant that the car was stolen.
By this point, we are parsing the quote far more than it deserves. The important thing is that TriMet doesn’t think the owner according to DMV records was driving.
Maybe they looked up the title in the DMV records and noticed something fishy about it that got missed in the initial filing.
We shouldn’t jump to conclusions. I’ve heard that the driver was temporarily experiencing a circumstance of sub-optimal housedness
Well, why is an unattributed slur on people who neither own or rent a residence still up? If we don’t know who was driving the vehicle there’s no reason to talk shit about anybody’s housing situation.
Because its satire. Maybe not good satire but satire nothetheless coming from a default position of freedom of speech in the United States. This person has made a satire on their perceived political opponents in Portland’s usual supposed coddling of criminals who are homeless.
No one knows who the driver was so there is no slur. No particular person in the “unhoused” community was referred to, there was no defamation.
If you don’t agree with people, debate or ignore but don’t seek to silence them. Not everyone agrees with your interpretation of who should be allowed to speak and what they can say.
Absolutely nothing Robert said could possibly be construed as “seek[ing] to silence them”. He just called them out for using this incident to make a dig about a completely unrelated grievance. Come on.
He didn’t call them out, he asked for the comment to be taken down. (“why is…still up?). You said absolutely nothing he said could possibly be construed as “seeking to silence them”.
His first sentence asks for the person to be silenced. Are we looking at alternate facts?
And no its not unrelated because many, many, many things are stolen by homeless people because they need drugs which arent available at service providers and they dont work.
This includes many cars, like my own, which are driven recklessly and there is seemingly little appetite to punish people who are supposedly down on their luck for such crimes.
So it is, at least tangentially related.
I don’t think his comment was particularly “good” but nothing you wrote is true, yet you are convinced of your correctness.
You’re right. Stolen cars are never recovered at homeless camps.
Ok, satire, and I get it that it’s not great to silence people.
I specifically object to two things: the “I’ve heard…” statement when there is no reason or hint that it is true, and the implicit argument that all such people are alike and therefore all criminals.
At last report there’s no information about who was in the car except that it was not reported stolen.
I don’t know many homeless people, meaning people with no fixed address, but out of those few there are working people, custodial parents trying to make a life for their families (and get housing), students, artisans and at least one person committed to recovery from drug addiction.
Need some bollards
Miracle they didn’t take the pedestrian/bike path
This incident is completely unacceptable and dangerous. Motorists and bikers should learn to share the road, with motorists being mindful of the vulnerability of pedestrians and bikers. However, mistakes and poor judgement are on display on both sides. On Thursday this week, a massive number of bikers took over all the eastbound lanes of Burnside Bridge at 730pm as part of a weekly run bike ride. How was this safe? They did not stick to the designated bike lane. Instead, they occupied all lanes and brought motor traffic to a virtual stop. Where is the accountability for these violators? They weren’t a handful. Nearly 100 bikes were in the group.
Not surprising that someone finds a way to bothsides this incident.
It was perfectly safe as most motorists don’t lose their minds just because they have a minor inconvenience. Did it totally ruin your week?
If a group is going to ride across a bridge, 7:30 PM on a Thursday evening sounds like a pretty considerate time to do it.
A couple hours earlier that day, a massive number of drivers also “brought motor traffic to a virtual stop”–not just on Burnside, but on dozens of streets and bridges all over town. Same group does that every weekday all year round!
Imagine if it had been 100 cars instead of 100 bikes. They would’ve caused even more delay.