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Traffic victims were represented by empty pairs of shoes at a 2016 World Day of Remembrance event in Portland.
(Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

Late Thursday night someone died while using 122nd Avenue. They were the 46th person whose life ended while traveling on a Portland road so far this year, putting us on the same grim pace as 2019 despite a major reduction in travel due to the pandemic.

There have been four fatal crashes in a one mile stretch of 122nd Avenue in the past year alone. In 2018 I attended a press conference marking the completion of new crossings and other updates to the notoriously deadly street. Standing just one block from one of this year’s deaths, Portland Bureau of Transportation Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, PBOT Director Chris Warner, and other transportation bigwigs gave glowing speeches about their dedication to Vision Zero. Eudaly said the recent changes they made were an example of “transportation done right” and how she wasn’t willing to accept the constant carnage on 122nd. [Read more…]

Group photo after proclamation was read at Portland City Council this morning.
Left to right: Commissioners Jo Ann Hardesty and Chloe Eudaly; Oregon/SW Washington Families for Safe Streets volunteers Michelle DuBarry, Darla Sturdy, Kim Stone, and David Sale; Commissioner Nick Fish; Mayor Ted Wheeler.

Mayor Ted Wheeler announced at today’s City Council meeting that Portland will join a global movement by marking November 17th as World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims. [Read more…]

Tiana Tozer at a PBOT event last Thursday.
(Photo: J. Maus/BikePortland)

Comments about transportation safety made on Twitter last week by Portlander Tiana Tozer have raised eyebrows. While her Twitter account is not an official ODOT communications channel (her profile says, “Opinions are my own”), Tozer is ODOT’s Region 1 transportation safety coordinator and she sits on the Portland Bureau of Transportation Vision Zero Task Force.

Here’s what happened:

Tiana Tozer attended a City of Portland event at Ventura Park Thursday morning. Later that day she replied to a tweet of a video we posted from the event. When someone questioned the effectiveness of holding signs and asking drivers to slow down, Tozer replied: “Ho hum another entitled American sitting back watching people die, but he himself has no solution. How easy it is to criticize. God forbid you should be part of the solution. Don’t strain yourself.” [Read more…]

“Portland’s streets are killing fields.”

That’s the opening salvo in a Willamette Week cover story that tries to make the case that the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s Vision Zero efforts are failing.

Blindsided is a photo essay and reporting effort that will likely have a big impact on local transportation discussions for weeks and months to come. It uses personal stories from a range of Portlanders to illustrate the vast problem of unsafe roads and to poke holes in the City’s effort to fix them. The focus of the piece isn’t a surprise given that so far this year 35 people have been killed in traffic-related incidents. That’s one more than we recorded for all of 2018.
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