It’s that time again: There are so many important surveys piling up in my inbox, I need to round them all up here on the Front Page.
Set aside some time this weekend to go through each one of the surveys below and make sure these agencies hear your voice!
TriMet Safety
“How safe do you feel on TriMet? In the last few years, we’ve expanded our security and cleaning teams, introduced a convenient reporting hotline, and added emergency phones at MAX stations, among other security improvements. We want to know if you’re feeling these changes when you ride with us.”
TriMet Service Priorities (AKA cuts)
“TriMet must cut service by July 2028, to balance the costs of providing transit service with our revenues. Below are the options for ways to cut service and save money. What priorities do you feel are most important for our service?”
Multnomah County Transportation Safety Action Plan
“Multnomah County and the cities of Gresham, Fairview, Wood Village and Troutdale are asking for the community’s feedback on the East Multnomah County Transportation Safety Action Plan (TSAP). Your voice matters! Review the plan and take the survey by Nov. 4. You’ll be automatically entered to win a $50 grocery store gift card! The TSAP identifies safety improvements, programs and actions that agencies and partners can take to improve transportation safety for everyone.”
PBOT Sunday Parkways Season Recap
“We’d love your feedback as we evaluate the 2025 Sunday Parkways season! Please take our post-season survey to help us make next year’s events even more fun. As a thank-you, you can enter to win Sunday Parkways merchandise at the end of the survey. Survey closes at 5 p.m. on October 31.”
PBOT Bike Bus and Greenways
“This survey is for adults who can help us identify current challenges on the greenways. PBOT will use this information to propose improvements this fall. Following that, we’ll reach out again to the public to refine and prioritize the work to come. PBOT will have $400,000 to construct the highest priority projects beginning in summer 2026.”
Thanks for reading.
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Appreciate these roundups. I try my best to keep track but several fall through the cracks (or I need a reminder for others…).
Can you check the trimet safety survey link? Looks like it’s directing to a bike Portland article
The same day I got the email from TriMet asking me to take the safety survey — including my thoughts on more armed law enforcement presence on buses and trains — I saw OPB reporting that TriMet has already decided to do so.
“Now, TriMet has signed a new contract with the Portland Police Bureau to bring five officers and a sergeant to the Transit Police Division. The transit police have also added three more officers from the Port of Portland Police Department and a lieutenant from the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office.” https://www.opb.org/article/2025/10/21/portland-police-trimet-transit-police/
Why is TriMet asking people to complete a survey if they’ve already decided what to do?
You now have the opportunity to tell them you want even more.
There have been quite a few shootings and stabbings on MAX over the years. Have the PPB ever shot anyone on a MAX train?
Ah yeah, classic move, ask for “feedback” after the decision’s already made. These surveys always feel a bit performative, like they’re just fishing for pre-approval on something already rubber-stamped. Still, at least this time they’ve landed on the right call. After they scrapped the transport officers post-Floyd, things went pear-shaped pretty quick, chaos on the trains and ridership in freefall. If we actually want people back on transit, it’s gotta be safe, frequent, and reliable. Bit hard to convince anyone to hop on when the vibe’s more Mad Max than mass transit.
Jonathan,
I’ve completed many of these government surveys since moving to Portland about 15 years ago. Over that time—and especially in the last 8 to 10 years—it feels like County, City, and Metro services have steadily declined. I’m curious: do public agencies genuinely use this feedback to make improvements, or does the data only get considered when it happens to support their existing decisions or inaction?
Mary P.,
Surveys are what they are. I don’t think anyone expects them to lead to binding policy. They are simply a gauge of public opinion and what’s much more important is who’s in charge of carrying out the policies/programs/projects related to the survey. In my opinion, the only thing that matters is the politics. That is, elected officials at the end of the day can veto or support any policy and in the end game, surveys don’t mean shit unless the people in power know how to use them/are willing to use them.
Here’s another perspective for Mary, which is that in Portland, there is a very healthy, well-funded public-involvement industry. Every gov’t agency employs people to conduct surveys (or contracts with companies), so that the agency can check the “public involvement” box, which inoculates them from having to consider dissenting views. If you have dissenting views, they get lost or sanitized or watered down via the surveying process.
What surveys really do for gov’t agencies in Portland is allow them to say they take people’s opinions into account, even when they very obviously do not.
Surveys offer political cover when they support the direction the agency wants to go. They do not offer a sound basis for any form of decision making.
They are utterly unscientific, and tell you nothing beyond the sentiment of those who chose to respond, who are often highly motivated one way or the other. People who quote them often seem to forget that (especially when the surveys support the desired point-of-view).
Just read this in another recent article on Bike Portland….I guess I’m not alone in questioning these surveys…..
That guy then went on to say that he talked to dozens of people and none of them like the shared bus lanes on 82nd as if that is somehow better than a survey of hundreds if not thousands of people that live in the area and ride the 72. His vibes survey is even worse than the surveys we already knew were not representative of everyone.
His vibe survey is exactly as accurate as TriMet’s as a way of capturing what the public wants. Neither tells you much of anything.
Lack of enagement is a strategy. Look at what’s happening to 82nd right now, do you think the people who drive on it every day filled out a survey in support of the project? Of course not, it was distributed to a bunch of PBOT employees and selected activists who were coached, directly or otherwise, to respond as the authors preferred. This is what passes for public process in Portland, aka the Land of Zero Accountability.
I do wish the rest of the city would wake up and realize what’s going on behind closed doors.
Please, I can only roll my eyes so hard. Why don’t you send the survey to the “silent majority” who drive on 82nd then?
The only “behind closed doors” fuckery is that some TriMet staff capitulated to a few whiny business owners.
It was emailed to me because I signed up for updates on the projects that are happening around me. My wife and neighbors got the email too.
The idea that PBOT/Trimet doesn’t engage people in the area is laughable. They chose that PCC campus because of its proximity to the neighborhood. I’ve been to more than one community meeting in that very room.
Jon Isaacs can send these surveys to his PMC friends and his supposed “silent majority” that wants 82nd to stay car hell too.
The only thing less credible than these survey results is a PSU research project, lol.
Time and time again, they’re promoted only to audiences that will complete them favorably and produce the intended results. Here, no doubt also on the BikeLoud discord, etc.
If it feels slimy, it’s because it is slimy. But that’s how the progressive machine operates in Portland. They really don’t want the average citizen to be part of the process, because it’ll undermine their pet projects.
Then promote them to an audience that you think represents the “average citizen”. The guy who runs a bike website is posting about engagement for people who ride bikes to weigh in on bike stuff. If that’s “slimy” then wait until you find out about all the truly disgusting shit the government does.
I disagree Kendall. What you are saying here is totally off-base and unfair. Notice how you refer to “average citizen”. Like, what the heck even is that? Also, this is a website that shares community information. Folks need to know about a survey before filling it out, hence I post about them. This is just average citizens (to use your phrase) taking part in civic/democratic process.
Would you rather have government just making decisions in a vacuum?
Folks also need to understand that literally no gov’t is going to rely on a survey to make a decision. That ain’t how things work! It’s just one element of a broader process and it’s a way for gov’t to check a box and an excuse to connect with the community so folks can feel heard. I think surveys like this are good and important! I also know that there are many gov’t staff who read this and take the feedback to heart.
Everybody is so damn cynical! Check your lens people!!
I don’t know if that’s true, but what’s worse to me is how survey results will be used to justify certain actions that decisionmakers already had in mind, but if survey results go against what decisionmakers want, they will simply ignore those results. At least have the cojones to say why you are going against what people said they want. But it never happens.
I think that if 95% of people say they don’t want BAT lanes, yet BAT lanes are better for the commonweal, decisionmakers should go for BAT lanes and explain why.
2% modeshare acting as if they’re the 98%
Literally anyone can fill out these surveys regardless of political affiliation. Anyone can share these with like minded folks, like for example a facebook group against the bus lanes on 82nd.
If they choose not to or don’t engage with the survey that is on them but then don’t go complain that that their voice wasn’t heard if they never spoke up.
It’s like the 1/3 of eligible voters who didn’t vote in the last presidential election and then complained it didn’t turn out they way they wanted.
Fair go, these local surveys are about as representative as a kangaroo at a dog show. The agencies send ‘em out, and before you can say “public engagement,” every special interest group in town is blasting the link to their mailing list faster than a mozzie at a BBQ. Suddenly the “community feedback” looks an awful lot like one club’s group chat.
By the time the results roll in, they can claim “overwhelming support” for whatever idea they’d already penciled in — shocker, right? It’s less about listening to the public and more about collecting enough friendly clicks to wave around as proof.
Wouldn’t mind so much if they just admitted it: “We’ve already decided, but please fill out our survey so we can pretend it was your idea.” Now that’s some fair dinkum honesty I could respect.
“kangaroo at a dog show”
Like an echidna in the chookhouse, mate.
I feel plenty safe riding the bus but I will say it’s really dumb how the “tell us how safe you feel” stickers block your view out the window. One of my favorite things to do when I’m riding the bus is just space out and watch the city go by.
I agree. I feel sorry for all of the people with their faces in their phones (always 90-95% of the people), when there is so much amazing stuff to see out the window. You can’t look at it when you’re driving or even cycling, so why deny yourself on the bus?
Thanks, took them all in about 15 minutes. Be warned that the progress bars aren’t accurate and they go faster than it would appear.
Please consider commenting on the proposed service cut resulting in 24-35 minute frequencies after 7PM on the FX2 line starting November. Especially given all the debate about BRT on 82nd Ave, it’s important we make it clear that BRT needs to actually be “rapid” when accounting for bus wait times. ~30 minute frequencies, on a BRT, in a major city starting at 7PM is truly comical. Can you imagine the reaction if they attempted that in any major East Coast city…
#TrimetTheNewMARTA
Trimet has the right to levy income and revenue taxes so their decision to decrease level of service is a choice* not some hands-tied necessity. I would gladly support a large progressive income tax that would enable expansions of service and electrification.
https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors_267.370
*trimet board serves at the pleasure of the corporatist governor who has publicly opposed new tax increases
Then she signed one into law. She was against tax increases before she was for them.
And she wonders why she’s the least popular governor in America.