Portland Mayor Keith Wilson has thrown down a gauntlet. At an event to celebrate the opening of the Southwest 4th Avenue Improvement Project last week, Wilson told a crowd of business owners and tourism officials that, “We are and have to be the biggest bike mode city in the nation. Our multimodal focus has got to be at the center of every decision we make.”
Wilson called the SW 4th Avenue project — which includes one of Portland’s most high-profile protected bike lanes and less space for driving — “a physical manifestation of the change we wanna see in our city.”
I wasn’t at the event, which was held at the Hoxton Hotel on SW 4th, but someone who was in attendance shared a clip of Wilson’s speech with me. These are very positive and exciting words for anyone who cares about making biking and transit better in Portland.
Below is an edited version of Wilson’s remarks at the event.
“You can see the green shoots all around and the green shoot that is the 4th Avenue project.
There were a lot of headwinds. Thank you [to PBOT Director Millicent Williams and Deputy City Administrator for Public Works Priya Dhanapal] for your absolute clear focus on our bike infrastructure.
Our multimodal focus has got to be at the center of every decision we make. TriMet has to be at the center of every decision we make. They [TriMet] set a very aggressive goal for 2030. They want 80 million riders on their network. So do I. So do you. The more we focus on a multimodal transportation system where a travel-shed is focused on safety and pedestrians and bikes and bus, we have a more vibrant community that’s focused on community health and safety.
I love working with TriMet. I love working with our PBOT partners because you understand transportation is the intersection of every healthy life.
Now, I wanna talk about just two goals, clean streets and safe places. It’s back to basics. We are focused on budgeting street sweeping, making sure that when you ride a bike that there’s not leaves on the ground creating a slippery, dangerous circumstance. We have to invest in safety, which means we invest in maintenance. At the same time, invest in safe places. When you go somewhere, you have to make sure you’re going to arrive safe, that you’re comfortable, knowing that we as your leaders are caring for you.
The 4th Avenue project is our future. We are and have to be the biggest bike mode city in the nation. It is my absolute goal that I want to deliver with these partners along with this city to show the world how a community comes together that really lives, breathes, and is successful through our transportation system. The Renaissance is real, but it has to be created and sustained by us.”
Watch his comments and my commentary in the video above.
Thanks for reading.
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Hmmm, didn’t the City do that in regards to DEI? Seemed like they were a success at making decisions (good and bad) around someone’s skin color.
So why can’t they do the same with multimodal transportation to server many different methods of getting around and not just cars in our “car supremacy” world?
I’m not going to hold my breath that anything meaningful will happen in my lifetime.
I’m still waiting on our bike commuter % to reach 2012 numbers again….
Outlier here. 4th Street project fine, whatever. But to my mind, an unnecessary expenditure. You’ve got a northbound downhill arterial. Biking effectively the pace of traffic. Sharrows and/or a painted bike lane would have more than achieved the same result. More, because now both drivers and bikers are twitchy and halting because of light sequencing and turns. Realize funding is not necessarily fungible, but I’d take way more smooth asphalt and paint over these over engineered, allegedly safer projects. They’re not, in my view. They also serve to diminish a vernacular between drivers and bikers in Portland that has developed over the last three decades or so. There are places for separated bike lanes; this isn’t one of them. Bikeways, asphalt, and paint would take a dollar a lot further, and biking would be net, more safe.