East Multnomah County took a big step toward taming dangerous streets last week when the County Commission voted to adopt their Transportation Safety Action Plan, which comes with the goal of zero traffic deaths by 2035. “No loss of life is acceptable, and we must ensure our streets are safe for all community members to travel, including those who walk, use bicycles, take transit, or use mobility devices,” states the 67-page plan.
The new plan was a joint effort by the cities of Gresham, Fairview, Troutdale, and Wood Village. The City of Portland proclaimed the same goal in 2015, but as of last year we are still far short of the zero deaths goal. Hopefully these cities do better than we have. It will be no easy task, given the state of roads in east county and the fact that this plan comes with no dedicated funding to implement its recommendations.
Traffic crashes that result in death or serious injury are a “major public heath concern,” said Multnomah County Health Department Manager Brendon Haggerty at the Commission meeting last week. According to Multnomah County and Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) crash data, 104 people died in east County crashes and 473 people were seriously injured between 2013 and 2022. Haggerty said traffic crashes are a leading cause of death for folks who live in East Multnomah County and they are impacted at a disproportionate rate as folks closer to the central city. “For example, we found that the rate of years of potential life lost in East County was roughly double what it was in the central city,” Haggerty told commissioners.
It will come as no surprise that the big culprit for unsafe streets in east county are fast and wide arterial streets — which are where most of the deaths and serious injuries occur. The map of high injury corridors (above) criss-cross the entire region, so there’s really no escape. One local resident’s feedback shared in the plan stated, “All the busy roads make it hard to make my bus transfers. Sometimes there’s no crosswalk that gets there and I have to run.” When people can’t move through their community easily and safely, they can’t participate fully in its economy. That fact is top of mind for Commissioner Vince Jones Dixon, who represents East Multnomah County. In a speech at the Policymakers Ride in September, he said, “The thing that drove me to public office has been community safety and economic empowerment. And one of the main connectors is being able to travel safely throughout communities.”
Another important part of this new plan are the 10 “priority safety corridors” the county has identified (see below). Similar to the City of Portland’s “high crash network,” these intimidating corridors will become ground zero for safety interventions and investments:
- Corridor 1: Hogan Dr from Division St to Stark St
- Corridor 2: Hogan Rd from Powell Blvd to Springwater
- Corridor 3: 181st Ave from Sandy Blvd to Yamhill St
- Corridor 4: 182nd Ave from Yamhill St to Springwater
- Corridor 5: Burnside St from Cleveland St to Powell Blvd
- Corridor 6: Stark St from 162nd Ave to 223rd Ave
- Corridor 7: Halsey St from 162nd Ave to 257th Ave
- Corridor 8: 238th Dr from Sandy Blvd to Arata Rd
- Corridor 9: 223rd Ave from Halsey St to Glisan St
- Corridor 10: Stark St from 257th Ave to Troutdale Rd
For advocates and community leaders who want to improve road safety, this plan is an excellent informational resource. The detailed maps show where the problems are and the recommendations (based on the same “Safe Systems” approach used by the Portland Bureau of Transportation) provide a roadmap for how to implement them. Beyond the zero deaths goal, the new plan details several short, medium, and long-term actions. Short-term actions are defined as things that can happen in 1-3 years and include:
- Pursue grants and other funding sources that can be used for safety projects.
- Create program to fund and implement quick build and low-cost safety projects.
- Continue to gather public feedback and empower the public to share roadway safety concerns.
- Add speed feedback signs paired with enforcement along high injury corridors and in school zones.
- Develop a program to enforce speed limits and vehicles stopping at stop signals through automated speed safety cameras and movable ticket vans.
With this plan completed and adopted, there’s no excuse for the status quo to continue. It’s time for east county leaders to “prioritize safety over speed,” urged Metro Councilor (and former Executive Director of nonprofit Oregon Walks) Ashton Simpson at last week’s meeting. “Without real tangible action, the goal is only as strong as the paper it’s written on.”
— If you’re ready to get involved in making streets safer in east county, one of the best ways to engage is to follow the East Multnomah County Transportation Committee (EMCTC).
Thanks for reading.
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Santa Klaus lives at the North Pole.
A huge serpent lives in Loch Ness.
There is evidence of extraterrestrials at area 51.
Portland’s City Council will do something, anything, to help better the lives of all citizens.
I’m all for reducing/eliminating injury and death, but if Portland hasn’t succeeded, and these other places are adopting the same plan and mechanisms to achieve the plan, what makes them think that they’ll be successful?
The only things that come to mind are that smaller cities are a more nimble and have physically less infrastructure to modify, so the scope of changes will be smaller.
My hope is that not every city is stuck in Portland’s pattern of taking 6 years to make a PDF and then archiving that PDF on the web without allocating staff to implement its recommendations.
Portland seems to lack accountability. City Councilors don’t even know about adopted plans, and Vision Zero was partitioned off to its own little fiefdom within PBOT and their own projects. A smaller government might have more accountability just based on size alone- there are fewer people in the bureaucracy so they are compelled to work together more and be more aware of each other and common goals and projects. I think Vision Zero could/should be a metric applied to every City project within the ROW. For each project, identify opportunities to decrease risk, and notify the project manager of those opportunities and costs. They could decide it was within the budget, or seek additional funding. At the end of a year, even if nothing got built there would be a record of opportunities and costs that could direct reforms to future project scoping. It is likely that at least some improvements would be made, and a culture of considering safety would start to be developed. I have seen that happen with accessibility. Thanks to a few lawsuits, it is now considered for nearly every project; designers, project managers and department heads all consider it within the context of each project.
The City of Gresham at the very least has an excellent record going back decades of implementing progressive improvements long before Portland did in East Portland, including removing on-street parking to allow for buffered bike lanes on arterial stroads, upgrading the Springwater path, and so on, so I feel much more confident that they’ll carry out major suburban projects at least 5 years before Portland does.
Gresham doesn’t have any buffered bike lanes. They’re all 3-4 feet wide with a single strip of paint and sharrow right-turn lanes at intersections.
Gresham has buffered bike lanes on Division from 174th to 212th which were put in 2013, about 5 years before Portland upgraded theirs from basic 5′ paint to the current FX standard with some concrete curbs and plastic candlesticks. There’s also buffered bike lanes on Glisan put in long before Portland put in theirs. Many stroads in Gresham still have basic 5′ painted bike lanes, but that’s still very true about Portland too.
When Portland did it, it was a political stunt to garner voter support for future votes. They were never serious about doing what was needing to be done to make Zero Vision a reality.
Maybe these other smaller town see how pathetic Portland’s “attempt” was and will do better.
I remember when Vision Zero was first adopted by Portland City Council in 2016, with goals of eliminating serious injuries and deaths by 2025. This plan will unfortunately go the same way, like many of the cities goals, and be extended out forever and beyond.
I just hope when 2035 comes, they will have made progress in the right direction.
The plan was a pretty good beginning. The problem was that they had no intention of funding or implementing it.
Portland, the City that Performs.
Per capita they’re doing better than us at 7 fatalities per 100k vs our 9 per 100k, about 25% less. I wonder how much of that is because there are less pedestrians and other vulnerable road users in the suburbs. Almost half of our road deaths are VRUs.
The cynical side of me thinks that suggests the more people in cars the less road deaths we’d have. The practical side thinks that suggests separation is key to reducing VRU fatalities.
The more people in motor vehicles, the more climate crisis deaths, the more disease/deaths from lack of exercise, the more disease/deaths from pollution, etc. Bicycling makes me healthier, and makes me less of a threat to public health. It may also make me a ‘vulnerable road user’ but only because I live in a place that lets motor vehicles dominate and endanger on our roads.
Hi Lois: You are no doubt correct about the larger impacts, but VZ doesn’t measure them. Mr/Ms Bytes is unfortunately also correct: a city in which everyone drives cars probably has better VZ stats than one where 10-15% of the people bike and walk. VRUs present a special challenge to cities that want to fight climate change, obesity etc.
Comment of the week
Ya I’m not talking about what’s better overall. I’m acknowledging the fact that in our current system if you want to reduce road deaths tomorrow the reality is you probably need to get more people in cars. Unfortunately in our current environment that’s the safest place to be.
I don’t think we should do that but it’s pretty demoralizing that half of our road deaths are people outside of cars. That was the cynical side again.
Practically, we need more separation. It’s not safe to be around drivers in our current environment. Now who has the money or will to make that happen?
“Now who has the money or will to make that happen?”
Waymo.
The safest place for me to be is NOT GETTING HEART DISEASE OR CANCER, both of which I stave off by exercising, and both of which kill more Americans that motor vehicle collisions. Don’t believe the BS we are told about cars making us safer.
This is very great. Where is the road diet for Multnomah County’s section of SW Scholls Ferry Road between SW Thomas Street and SW Raab Road?
You mean the section of Scholls Ferry going up to Skyline from crash corner (though why you picked Thomas and not, say, Patton seems a tad mysterious).
The downhill section of SF Rd is already one lane, so you want the uphill section to be one lane also? I think that would be great, and there really is no reason for a climbing lane – it’s not like Scholls Ferry is an interstate with large, slow trucks.
Sorry to say that I’m about 98% certain it’ll never happen, but the moment it does I will believe that Portland and MultCo are actually serious about VZ.
Multnomah County owns it in that section. PBOT owns it from Hamilton Street to Thomas and then again from Raab to the freeway overpass and then returned again to Burnside for Skyline.
Washington County has one car lane in each way from Ari Diamonds to near Hamilton. There isn’t a legit need for two uphill car lanes on Scholls and it hasn’t been repaved since around 1995 and it currently has horrible potholes. Kids in that neighborhood go to Portland public schools (Lincoln high school in the inner city) and they need a safer way to use Scholls Ferry Road especially because Scholls is one of the only north / south roads anywhere around there and it also provides access to TriMet bus 58 which will be reconnecting to the Bus Rapid whatever project on TV Highway to Forest Grove (those old buses burnt down decades ago).
2035? Why not 2032?
If the goal is to discredit safety advocacy and identify its supporters as kooks, this bold announcement is a great idea.
If the idea is to actually improve safety, something ambitious but achievable might be a better way to go.
What is it about gov’ts in the Portland metro area that cause them to specialize in this kind of performative planning? It would be like me planning to play in the NBA one day. Sure – I’m 6 feet tall and over 40 and have no resources (coaching, access to gyms etc), but if I really tried hard enough I might have an infinestimal chance. That’s what planning for VZ is like around here.
How about instead we look at what we have to work with, decide what is possible to accomplish, and do that. Take reasonable, incremental actions and then evaluate. Unrealistic striving is insincere and saps people’s confidence in gov’t.
Because, we as the voters, don’t hold our politicians accountable.
Heck some on the Portland City Council are more concerned about stopping the consumption of goose livers for less than 1% of the population than getting PBOT to get out there and do something.
When we continue to elect performative and gaslighting representatives, we get what we vote for.
We shouldn’t confuse the lack of success in eliminating traffic deaths with what is possible.
I don’t follow you. You’re saying that the plan is a good one? Or are you saying that since it is possible to eliminate traffic deaths and they haven’t done so, the plan is bad?
I read the comment as saying that the fact that something has not happened yet (“eliminating traffic death”) does not mean that it can’t or won’t happen in the future.
Not commenting on the plan itself (which seems like a positive step) but even before I read the first word of the article, I read the “Cities in East Multnomah County say they’ll end road deaths by 2035” headline, followed immediately by a photo of bike riders using a narrow shoulder cut to half its width by vegetation, that’s only a hazard because whatever jurisdiction is responsible hasn’t been trimming it back.
Hopefully the “priority safety corridor” designation will trigger some trimming prior to 2035,
A few suggestions–terrifyingly expensive speeding tickets. In the thousands of dollars, not hundreds. Radar and cameras everywhere. Ignore car theft and vandalusm until VZ is reached–assume its always motorists’ fault and make them earn protection of their property by good behavior.
I talk to alot of people from England. They have many cameras and get ticketed frequently and ticketed for going 2 miles over the limit, which are on tight escalating fine schedules and the whole system sounds a bit nerve wracking.
There’s also alot of parking restrictions. Basically much of what people advocate for on this blog. I’m not sure I’d like the English system. They have trains and buses in the suburbs and towns where most of them live but they are expensive and the buses in particular are infrequent,
We need to try something. Yes, England’s sounds extreme for a first attempt, but the fact is, our local politicians and transportation departments don’t want to do even the bare minimum to make the streets safer for a wider swath of users.
Our politicians do a lot of talking, but action is very lacking. And yes, they hold the purse strings of the transportation departments so they can force those departments to get off their collective rear ends and do something, today, not tomorrow, not after a committee is formed, but today. Or quite frankly fire them.
And hard time for anyone citizens driving without a license or insurance.
Please pardon my long rant.
I live not far from 162nd and division and judging by what I see in this area vision zero will never be achieved. Pedestrians dressed in all dark clothes darting between cars not 30 feet from marked and lit crosswalk in the dark. Homeless people on bikes darting across the road, people on motorized scooters doing the same. Cars using turn lanes as passing lanes at lights, running lights, and speeding. I assume the way that some behave the driver is either under the influence or the car is stolen. Street improvements that make lighting worse not better. And people are still against necessary traffic policing and think they can fix homelessness with kind words, wishes, and other people’s money.
Most levels of government are broke. Spending multiple millions per mile for road “improvements” when we cannot maintain basic infrastructure and services without deficit spending is beyond irresponsible. We already have some of the highest gas prices in the country, property taxes in the east counties are out of line, and the homeless industrial complex is bleeding us dry. Data centers are moving in driving up utility prices and impacting water supplies. All while wages are stagnant and jobs cut happen at every opportunity.
In the mean time the fight over bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure rages on!
Government reforms, which include holding all levels fiscally responsible and merit-based hiring/ contracts, should be priority number one. Deficit spending should be limited to limited declared states of emergency, which should be strictly controlled and fully disclosed.
I was born in Frorest Grove and, other than some time in the military and a couple years at the southern end of the state, have lived in the metro area most of my 58 years. I have considered running for an elected position at some level a few times, but the obvious corruption, lack of common sense, and “DEI above all” convinced me otherwise.
TLDR: I will be moving out of the area as soon as I retire.
Lots of people will be joining you in moving away as soon as they retire. Portland ain’t what it used to be.