The Portland Police Bureau has released more information about the fatal crash that happened over the holiday. They say a person was driving a compact car southbound on Southeast Calle Cesar Chavez prior to striking the woman who was walking. As I reported the day before Thanksgiving, the woman was hit and killed somewhere near the intersection of of Cesar Chavez and SE Harrison.
We now know the victim was 87-year-old Grey Wolfe, a revered Portlander who was known by many in our community as a mental health counselor. On her business website, Wolfe said she spent the last 25 years of her life in that practice. Before that she was a school teacher in Baltimore and she was also a restauranteur who co-owned, cooked, and baked at two Portland restaurants — Genoa and Bread and Ink. She also raised three children.
One of her children posted about the tragedy on Bluesky on Friday. “My one-and-only mother was hit & killed by a car on Wednesday,” someone with the username “Ursula” shared. “I am all the adjectives you can imagine: shattered, devastated, bereft. And no hour has passed in the last 48 where I have not felt unbelievably lucky, overwhelmed with gratitude for all the time I got to be her daughter.”
BikePortland reader Lois Leveen lives in the area and knows the Wolfe family. She has learned that Wolfe was taking her daily walk up Mt. Tabor when she was hit. The collision happened a mere two blocks from her home on streets she knew well. Here’s more from Leveen:
“Grey was a therapist, an activist, and an inspiration and support to many Portlanders over the decades. She would post activist posters on fence outside her office so people passing by on the sidewalk could learn from their messages.”
Wolfe’s death should also send a message to city leaders: it’s long overdue for traffic to be calmed on Calle Cesar Chavez. Portland has lost too many people because of its car-centric design and tragedies like this will continue until people are forced to drive more slowly.
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Grey died seven blocks from where a driver killed Jeanie Diaz.
Kill a beloved children’s librarian, and you traumatize thousands of children and families.
Kill a therapist, and you leave her patients as well as her family and friends bereft and at a loss of their source of support.
Cesar E Chavez remains deadly, and PBOT has yet to do anything to change that, so I suppose more of my beloved neighbors can expect to be killed here.
I can share the email exchange I’ve had with PBOT Director Millicent Williams since Grey’s killing, if others want to see it without having to submit an Oregon Public Records Request.
Ursula Wolfe is Grey’s daughter, with whom Grey lived in a splendid multigenerational household. I knew Grey well, and first learned about her violent death from Grey’s extended family in Chicago, with whom I am close. They were already mourning the death of Grey’s late brother-in-law, also an amazing activist and a faith leader who died in late October. In that instance, there was a transition to hospice, with time for the family to gather and say farewell. But when vehicular violence strikes someone dead on our streets, the shock and grief are so very different — and avoidable, if only PBOT leadership would, well, lead. But here we are, same old Zero Vision that will never really get us to Vision Zero.
Please post your exchange with Director Williams.
From the updated police report:
Do we know yet if the driver was driving over the speed limit? And if so, how much over?
From the first report:
From this report:
JM, I don’t disagree with what you have written, but here’s a problem. If Oregon drivers, by state law, are allowed to drive 10-11 mph over the speed limit, doesn’t that effectively make the legal speed limit on Calle Cesar Chavez a more-deadly 40 mph? Even the 20 mph imposed on Portland residential streets is a bit false, isn’t it, as the legal limit is actually 30 mph? All those walkable 20 mph parts of Portland aren’t so walkable when the legal (but unposted) speed limit is actually 30 mph, isn’t it, which tends to give all pedestrians a very false sense of security, does it not? And this mess with legal speed limits, is it caused in large part by a state legislature that seems rather obsessed with being very car-centric?
Calle Cesar Chavez is listed by PBOT as a “high crash street” but near the bottom of the list, among the least bad, with zero high-crash intersections. It’s noted as being bad for pedestrians (near the middle) but not so bad for bicyclists and car drivers. Yes, it is car-centric in its design – so unfortunately is most of the rest of the city, and the state, and the entire country for that matter.
I agree with you, car drivers need to slow down. The city needs to lower all posted speed limits by 10 mph, which will probably cause the state legislature to allow 20 mph over the speed limit, and so on – in fact I can’t really tell the difference between the Republican-dominated legislature in Raleigh NC and the Democratic-controlled one in Salem OR – they seem to act exactly the same on speed. So your better option, IMO, is to put signals on as many intersections as you can afford and have the city time the signals to a safer speed than what is posted or legal.
What State law allows people to drive 10-11 mph over the speed limit?
Also, even if there is a State law, wouldn’t it be overridden by Portland’s traffic laws? I ask that because of past discussions about how Portland’s laws (or lack of laws) for things like parking close to a crosswalk override State law.
I certainly agree with your main point that more needs to be done to get people to slow down.
I’m sad, exhausted, frustrated, and angry.
We know that some streets are more dangerous than others. The data is clear.
We know that neither education nor enforcement will change dangerous streets into safe streets. The data is clear.
Engineering streets to be safer – to have reduced vehicle speeds and less cognitive load for drivers – is the only way to make safer streets. The data is crystal fucking clear on this.
So why do these horrors persist? Why do children and elderly folks and POC and everybody else have to gasp out their final breaths on the unforgiving asphalt of American streets in a pool of their own lifeblood?
There’s a long procession of loud, entitled, brainwashed suburban drivers who bray and bleat endlessly about their own convenience. These drivers scream at any politician they can find, parroting disproven claims about “traffic congestion”. These suburban carbrain zombies are backed up by slick political lobbyists who reassure the elected folks that the economy would grind to a halt without more asphalt for trucks.
Thanks to these assholes, American streets have multiple wide car lanes that encourage drivers to race each other: speeding and making rapid lane changes and sudden turns – in a complex environment full of hazards. Pedestrians are just another hazard to be avoided.
We could do better. We could take best practices from other, better transportation systems. We could slow down the cars. We could remove the extra lanes.
If we did that, politicians wouldn’t get re-elected.
“Sorry for your loss, maybe next year we’ll do something.”