In remarks at last night’s Bicycle Advisory Committee meeting about what to do when cycling advocates and the City of Portland have “uncomfortable conversations,” transportation bureau Director Millicent Williams urged folks to be willing to compromise and see the big picture.
At the outset of her visit — where she touched on a wide range of issues speaking from both her own perspective and from pre-written statements prepared by PBOT staff — Williams said, “I’ll use the freight example: There are some routes that are just freight routes. And if in fact we are going to ensure that all users use the system safely, we have to be honest with ourselves when we say, ‘Hey, this is our freight route.’ Can cyclists choose this? Yes. Should we make that safe for them? Absolutely. But there may need to be a real conversation about where and what we do.”
“So I wanna share that because I can’t fail to see the whole community,” Williams continued. “And sometimes it’s an equal vision, sometimes it’s a preferential vision. But I have to make sure that you aren’t closing our eyes to the whole city and the whole set of solutions that are in front of us.” It’s unclear what specific project or policy prompted Williams to say that, or if it was just something she wanted to get off her chest.
Williams spent about thirty minutes at the monthly meeting where she was on the agenda to “share her vision about bicycling in Portland.” Williams gave an overview of major bike projects, then responded to questions collected from Bicycle Advisory Committee (BAC) members. The questions had been given to PBOT staff beforehand and Williams switched between personal comments and answers to the questions that had been pre-written by staff.
“Cycling in the city is something that is broadly supported. And people do not want to see that compromised upon.”
– Millicent Williams, PBOT
In addition to the comment about seeing the ‘whole city,’ Williams addressed many issues — from how PBOT is navigating the new form of city government, to how her agency has aided Mayor Keith Wilson’s drive to end unsheltered homelessness. And even though she wasn’t asked about it by the BAC, Williams addressed the controversial plan to remove traffic diverters on neighborhood greenways in Northwest Portland back in August.
Director Williams acknowledged that when PBOT was first told about the issue by the city’s administrative wing (specifically, a group known as Problem Solvers that was formed to address things like graffiti, homeless camps, and other related issues), the agency opposed the plan to remove the diverters. When Problem Solvers urged PBOT to reconsider and look at how the diverters impact a wider range of “nuisance behaviors” in the area, Williams said the agency once again demurred. Ultimately, Williams said PBOT agreed to “look more broadly” at the concerns and the agency came up with an alternative plan that, “would create an opportunity for cyclist safety, for pedestrians, and hopefully, be able to create the opportunity for some of the nuisance behaviors to be curbed.”
As for an update on the diverter removals (which are still in a state of pause), Williams said PBOT is continuing to gather data, “On whether or not some of the nuisance behaviors are continuing to happen in that space to determine whether or not we need to move down that path [of implementing an alternative plan].”
Williams clarified to the committee that when PBOT is asked about a proposal that has a transportation-related solution (as was the case with the diverter removal proposal), the agency will be happy to weigh in; but not without doing necessary outreach and gathering data first. “They may need to pay for us to do the outreach, but we will make sure that we do our part to bring forward the concerns and a series of responses that reflect the best thinking we can.”
She added that sometimes the bureau will need to act quickly (“sometimes extreme circumstances require extreme measures” is how she put it), but when that happens PBOT will communicate directly with BAC leadership. Her final comment on the topic made it clear the city heard community pushback around the diverter plan loud and clear: “Cycling in the city is something that is broadly supported,” she said. “And people do not want to see that compromised upon.”
Here are a few other updates and tidbits she mentioned at the meeting:
- Portland has a total of 463 miles of bikeways and PBOT has 36 more miles that are funded but not yet built.
- She spoke positively about the NE Broadway Pave and Paint and SW 4th Avenue bikeway projects, calling both examples, “what transformation looks like.”
- PBOT expects the SW 4th Ave protected bike lane to be completed next month. “I believe it’s going to be quite lovely,” she said.
- PBOT has implemented custom traffic signal timing on some bike bus routes to help the larger groups get through intersections together. I’ve asked for details and will share more soon.
- Daylighting intersections (a.k.a. “vision clearance”) is currently happening at nine public schools and they plan to complete nine more by July 2026.
- PBOT and City Councilor Olivia Clark (in her role as chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee) are currently in talks about a new transportation revenue source that would provide “sustainable funding”. Williams said they’re discussing strategy and a plan for moving forward on that right now.
- Williams said PBOT and the Mayor’s Office are now working together to keep streets cleaner. In the past, PBOT couldn’t maintain streets due to encampments, but Williams said there’s now a better understanding with the mayor that if camps are removed, PBOT can take care of right of way maintenance more easily.
- When it comes to the new government structure, Williams said, “We do have to make sure that everything that we’re being asked to do conforms with mayoral expectations and are aligned around the budget and his objectives,” and that, “It’s a carefully curated relationship that we continue to navigate on a daily basis.”
- Portland’s new city administrator is expected to be in place by the end of December.
Asked how the BAC can best support PBOT in reaching the goals outlined in the Bicycle Master Plan for 2030, Williams said she hopes advocates don’t lose perspective on how good Portland already has it. PBOT’s longtime Bicycle Coordinator Roger Geller often reminds us our existing bike network is better than it ever has been, Williams pointed out. “And I believe him. I think it’s rather impressive,” she said. “We are looking to encourage people to use the bike infrastructure that we have while continuing to invest in the system.” Then she encouraged BAC members to partner with PBOT in sharing the narrative that “cycling is a safe, convenient choice.”
What about responding to haters? The final question from the BAC was about how PBOT responds to pushback on bike-centric projects. “We always hear from people who are supportive, but we also hear from those who are not,” Williams responded. At this point she was speaking from her own voice and not reading a pre-written answer. “And it’s our opportunity, to not convince people, but demonstrate to people that you can have a project that serves many, many interests and often recognize…” And then she abruptly said: “I’m gonna stop.”
Williams then added: “We can serve many, many interests. Period.”
Thanks for reading.
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Has anyone at PBOT, other than Roger (who I have heard say it a number of times), talked about how easy it is to drive and park in our city? Driving here is absurdly easy, aside from a few congestion points.
Look, I’m all for better bike lanes — no one wants to be squeezed between a Ford F350 and a gutter. But some folks in the bike crowd act like driving needs to be punished for bikes to thrive. Bit dramatic, eh?
Truth is, Portland’s already one of the easiest places to drive and ride a bike. Why throw a spanner in the works for drivers just to make a point? Not everyone can chuck the car keys — think tradies, families, the odd grandparent doing the school run.
We don’t need to start a turf war between handlebars and steering wheels. Let’s just make it safer and saner for everyone to get around — whether you’re pedalling, pushing a pram, or hauling kids in a Subaru.
No need to turn it into Mad Max out there
Can you name a project that has “punished” drivers? And how would you design it differently to be “safer and saner”? Please be specific.
Right, because unless you’ve got a master’s in urban planning and a spare traffic model under your arm, you’re not allowed to say, “Oi, this isn’t working.”
It’s like telling your mechanic your brakes are shot and getting, “Well unless you can build the whole car, mate, zip it.”
Criticism isn’t sabotage. It’s how things should improve. But when public input gets filtered to just the voices that you cheerlead, you don’t get community engagement , one gets groupthink with bike racks.
If you only listen to the folks who agree with you, and write off everyone else as anti-bike or anti-progress, you’re not building consensus, you’re building silos. And funny enough, silos don’t make cities safer, smarter, or more livable.
You don’t have to like every opinion Pretending the critics don’t exist? That’s not activism, that’s just bad governance in stretchy jeans
Not punished. Simply disincentivized. Perhaps you too have heard that cars are heavier than bicycles, and therefore contribute to more wear and tear on the road; take up more space per traveling person, and therefore require more infrastructure; deteriorate the public space with noise, tire particles, and tailpipe emissions; and create disproportionate danger for all those who are not in the cabin of the car. All of this means that cars create more of a public health risk, and therefore drive up the costs of healthcare in addition to the costs of maintaining and building the roadways that cars demand. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect drivers and car owners to bear the appropriate costs.
I own and drive a car. Like anyone else, I want more money in my pocket. But I also want safe, livable communities with plenty of transit and cycling options. And if the way to get there is for gas to be $9/gallon and my vehicle registration fees to go up and to eliminate free parking and to charge a lot more than Parking Kitty currently does, then I’m happy to pay it.
I am sure those folks barely managing to get by agree with you on $9 a gallon fuel.
I’ll try sarcasm, too:
Automobiles are the best thing ever for impoverished people! Alternatives to an auto-centric culture could not possibly improve their lives.
Are you writing this with chat GPT? The tone and use of em dash mic drop sentence-enders reads like what you get from the default.
I’m pretty confident in saying that the vast majority of Portlanders think easy driving is a good thing, though I’d guess that many wouldn’t agree that it is actually that easy. A lot depends on where and when.
Driving space is like toilets at a stadium; there’s always plenty until there isn’t, then you really need more. The good thing about transportation is there’s more efficient alternatives that don’t involve people peeing their pants.
“more efficient alternatives that don’t involve people peeing their pants.”
Please don’t suggest TriMet!
When I moved to Portland in 1997, the city had a national reputation for the 5th worst air pollution and being one of the worst cities to drive in, major congestion on the freeways and on arterial streets. It’s cleaned up the air quite a bit since and apparently has become less congested (or maybe drivers complain less?) And naturally the bike and walk mode share dropped.
I’ve visited Atlanta twice. Everyone I’ve ever met who has been there complains about how scary it is to drive there, massive congestion, nasty drivers, etc. But they never comment on how easy it is to walk there, bike there, or use the Metra subway, bus, and streetcar systems there (and it is easy and convenient!) Why is that? Well, it’s because they never get out of their cars to use some other mode. It’s much the same thing with Washington DC – car drivers hate the city, too many one-way streets, long pedestrian leading-signals (up to 90 seconds!), expensive car parking, and so on – but nothing about the $1 shuttle buses in the tourist sections, nor the excellent and convenient subway, sidewalks everywhere, a huge and expanding protected bike network, etc…
If you want to make your city bike, walk, and transit friendly, you pretty much have to make it outright hostile to drive in, price all parking including in the suburbs, and eliminate traffic lanes as much as possible. Congestion, it’s a good thing.
The thing a lot of people don’t put explicitly is that a city that’s hostile to cars is, all else equal, great for people—including those who are currently driving everywhere.
Some people hate the term “car-brained” because it’s such a disconnect from the way most people think of cars and driving…but it’s discussions like these that prove the aptitude of the term.
That people don’t realize how ~literally~ the needs of people and cars are geometrically opposed is just a reflection of how deeply ingrained car dependency is. I think it’s a worthwhile effort to point it out—at every reasonable turn of a conversation, just to, ahem, raise awareness—but it definitely is a struggle
I enjoyed living in DC because of the Metro and cycling lanes.
It sounds like Williams believes the Mayor is pulling the strings at PBOT with the council’s role being relegated to voting on legislation and the occasional gadfly role.
She may be right, since that’s what we voted for.
The beatings will continue until morale improves with a side of Stockholm Syndrome, lovely.
I agree that PBOT has to serve many constituents. I think these groups could be less in conflict with each other. For example, I would be delighted to support freight-only roads and corridors for an equivalent number of square miles of car-free roads and corridors. We are begging for scraps when our lauded infrastructure is primarily composed of bike lanes created with paint and greenways where cars still rush past, or car-free paved stretches where pedestrians, scooters, bikes, ebikes, and joggers all vie for space for transportation and recreation.
Hard disagree.
If the city’s climate action plan and comprehensive plan were not performative toilet paper, Director Williams and PBOT would understand that they are morally and statutorily obligated to de-prioritize service to car-brained portlanders.
So let’s just admit they are performative and stop pretending we are going to do anything substantive.
It would be nice if Williams could acknowledge the huge structural power differential between drivers and everyone else in the city. It’s not “anti-car” or “uncompromising” to recognize that we aren’t negotiating on a level playing field among all of the ‘interests’ she describes.
I’ve recently moved to Seattle, and the things Portland has it good on (culture and easy neighborhood riding) exist almost entirely outside the he purview of PBOT. The greenways are nice, but a mixed bag, and are largely nice by virtue of Portland’s low key nature.
Portland has barely any great bike infrastructure that you may find in great urban places for biking. Not much in the way of trails, essentially no protected cycle tracks. Just extra wide bike lanes, sometimes with plastic posts.
It’s not all infrastructure that matters: I prefer Portland to ride my bike in over Seattle by a pretty wide margin, almost entirely on account of the way drivers treat cyclists. If you think it’s bad in Portland, it’s way worse in Seattle. But Seattle does have a lot of actually safe feeling infrastructure – especially downtown – and it makes a big difference. I’ve got a 3.5 mile ride to work that is at least 2/3rds concrete protected or trail. I never had anything close to that in Portland.
Maybe it’s true that Portland has more and better bike infrastructure than ever, but for most other places I go, they seem to have had less at one point, and seem to have more now.
Sincerely hope you’re enjoying Seattle and finding success and fulfillment there.
I broadly agree with you, especially in regard to the pace of building out central city bike infrastructure. I think that Seattle’s downtown network blows ours out of the water. Whenever I’m downtown in Portland I’m always flabbergasted by how difficult it is to put together a route that doesn’t involve any vehicular cycling. If I’m alone I’ll just pray to John Forrester and go for it, but if I’m with my partner or parents who aren’t so confident I’ll puzzle together a way from A to B. As the CCIM projects get built out, I think that will change, but that will take time and money that PBOT doesn’t really have.
In regard to easy neighborhood riding – I am not as cycical of greenways as others are. I think that upgrading the greenway network is our best option given the financial and economic situation of the city. I think they just need more diverters, which are super cheap and very effective.
A few responses:
“Every street in every neighborhood is now being dominated by huge delivery vehicles that park illegally, often forcing motorists as well as bicyclists to swerve into oncoming traffic in order to proceed down the street.”
I’m actually okay with “huge delivery vehicles that park illegally” on my neighborhood streets! They really are not “huge” but, being bigger than the typical SUV, they are large enough to cause both my neighbors and cut-through traffic to slow down. There is nothing like an on-coming vehicle in your lane to make you slow down. Besides, they are there for only a minute or two, the same delay you will encounter waiting on red at the traffic signals you will encounter or the pesky pedestrians you will have to wait for at that crosswalk.
Besides that, that Amazon truck is delivering ten packages in my neighborhood, keeping 9 vehicles off the road. I’m thinking the presence of delivery vehicles in my neighborhood is a good thing for transportation, though the effect on local businesses probably isn’t.
I was in Amsterdam in May for the first time. Among the things I noticed was that people simply accept vehicles being parked for a few minutes IN THE TRAVEL LANE even when it’s a single lane road. No one honks a horn or shows any upset at this inconvenience. It appears to simply be a fact of life in a dense urban city with extraordinarily high cycle and transit use. Amsterdam may be a place we should emulate with regard to sharing the streets.
I was in Copenhagen, and before that in Barcelona, and delivery vehicles are NEVER blocking traffic, whether it is pedestrian, bicycle, or motor vehicle. The expectation that delivery drivers or really their employers have a right to obstruct roads would be laughable if Americans had any sense of perspective. And the fact that you don’t mind someone stopping illegally on your street does not actually make it okay for them to do so. I know people who think it’s okay to break all sorts of laws, or for other people to break those laws, but that doesn’t mean it’s right.
From Momentum magazine:
A new study reveals that cycling traffic in Paris has increased by 240% between 2018 and 2023, while car traffic has steadily declined.
Interesting study. From what I can glean from it, the biggest factors for the growth was expanding the network, making bike parking safer and more convenient, and working hard on making the driving environment more hostile and even banning internal combustion engines in certain parts of the city (LEZ – Low Emission Zones) but allowing electric cars. Of course they didn’t discuss how it was all paid for nor the political push back (including the Mouvement des gilets jaunes or Yellow Vests riots of 2018-20).
I think these articles do their audience (especially policy makers) a disservice by omitting the political push back that proceeds wider acceptance. Painting an overly rosy picture only feeds the narrative that “it could never happen like that here”
You don’t make a great city by catering to freight at the expense of people walking and biking. Especially when that means inviting every SUV driver from the suburbs to cut through every neighborhood at speed. The amount of good money PBOT throws after bad drivers is ridiculous, particularly considering how few of those drivers vote here.
Here’s some perspective, 95% of the “bike network” is lines on a map, road signs, and sharrows. Any city with a functioning grid has it just as good, they just don’t pretend their non-arterial streets are somehow improved for cyclists.
I question your 95% figure. Are Neighborhood Greenways like Clinton and Lincoln (to name just a couple of examples) not somehow improved for cyclists?
A lot of commenters have lost track of the fact that biking here is actually pretty good.
It can obviously be improved, and should be, but it’s pretty good as it is, and is part of the reason we were able to achieve such high levels of ridership back in 2013.
A little context to this quote: “I’ll use the freight example: There are some routes that are just freight routes. And if in fact we are going to ensure that all users use the system safely, we have to be honest with ourselves when we say, ‘Hey, this is our freight route.’ Can cyclists choose this? Yes. Should we make that safe for them? Absolutely. But there may need to be a real conversation about where and what we do.”
Portland Metro Chamber has Williams’ ear. They are talking about dedicating some routes, basically, as fully for cars/freight. Think Powell, for example.
On its face I’m not interested at all. However, maybe it’s a good thing? Or, at least it could be viewed as an opportunity. What if, in return, we had PMC advocating for expansive deployment of modal filters every five blocks on the top 10 greenways (however we define “top 10”) and a protected bike lane down Sandy? So, they get to claim a win by “protecting” certain major streets for cars/freight and in return we get vastly improved greenways and a big win on Sandy. Just making up this give/take to illustrate the point.
I guess my question is this: If we had to “give up” cycling on some of the major roads but in return we received significant improvements in other places, would we take that trade? I know the answer depends on the person b/c I’ve had this conversation with many people. 🙂 More just wanted to make the point that Williams making this statement indicates she’s hearing and listening to PMC.
We need a PBOT leader with modern, progressive ideas on what a great transportation system looks like. There are many global examples of amazing transportation systems, but Williams never displays that she knows or cares about them.
Under Williams’s leadership, the deadly, inconvenient status quo will continue, and alternatives should be pushed for.