Dan Ryan

Dan Ryan earned a seat on Portland City Council by nabbing 51% of ballots cast in the race against Loretta Smith for position 2. Ryan has a lead of about 4,500 votes with just 3,474 uncounted ballots remaining. Ryan will fill Nick Fish’s seat when he moves into City Hall next month.

Ryan is a former Portland Public School board member, graduate of Roosevelt High School in St. Johns, member of many local advisory boards, and former executive director of education nonprofit All Hands Raised.

Before typing anything else, I want to say I dropped the ball on this race. I’m sorry. I regret not getting both candidates on record about cycling and transportation-related issues. In years past we could rely on those issues being part of the campaign dialogue and news cycle. But as transportation has fallen off the list of high-priority topics now dominated by police reform, homelessness, affordable housing, and other important issues; it’s our responsibility to raise the issue.

Now we have a new council member who’s gone largely unvetted when it comes to transportation policy. Ryan (like most candidates these days, unfortunately) doesn’t mention transportation on a list of “strategic priorities” on his website. At the transportation candidate forum held back in March, Ryan’s comments lacked substance and didn’t make it into our lengthy coverage. The only notable stance he’s taken publicly is to oppose ODOT’s I-5 Rose Quarter project, which he said is “Not OK” because it would lead to, “Spewing emissions on middle school kids,” and “Impinging on the Esplanade.”[Read more…]

The bill would change U.S. law so that transit agencies can more easily fund bikeshare systems.
(Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

When we interviewed U.S. Congressman Earl Blumenauer in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election he said, “If four years from now the places that can make the most advantage of transportation investments don’t get that help, that’s going to be not just a missed opportunity in terms of safety and economic benefits of transportation — it’s going to be a lost political opportunity as well.”

Yesterday, just four months before that four-year deadline, Rep. Blumenauer and his colleagues in the House of Representatives (led by fellow Oregon congressman Peter DeFazio) seized that political opportunity and successfully passed H.R. 2, the Moving Forward Act.

The bill invests $1.5 trillion in infrastructure projects and programs including $500 billion for transportation-related needs. The League of American Bicyclists has heaped praise on the legislation, saying, “This bill is transformative – it’s the first bill to approach real reform in almost 30 years… and will move the country forward in building a safer, cleaner, more equitable transportation system that better meets the needs of everyone.”

Among the highlights are several of Blumenauer’s top priorities that he’s been pushing for years including a stronger tax benefit for people who ride a bicycle to work, a policy tweak that would allow transit agencies to invest in bikeshare systems, and funding for Vision Zero plans. Blumenauer introduced a total of nine bills that were included in the Moving Forward Act and five of them are related to transportation:
[Read more…]

Left to right: Mingus Mapps, Chloe Eudaly, Seth Woolley, Sam Adams, Keith Wilson.
(Photos: Respective campaigns)

It’s been a tough pill for me to swallow, but the truth is cycling just doesn’t command the same attention in local political circles that it used to. With so many people struggling to put a roof over their head and all the systemic injustice and inequality that has become even more glaring in recent years, it’s understandable that personal mobility doesn’t merit as much attention as it did a decade ago.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t ask candidates for local office what they think about it! [Read more…]

Mingus Mapps
(Photo: Mapps campaign)

Locked in a heated race against incumbent City Commissioner Chloe Eudaly and former Portland Mayor Sam Adams, Mingus Mapps has jumped into the Covid-19 open streets discussion.

Eudaly, who’s in charge of the Portland Bureau of Transportation, doubled down on her decision to not adapt our streets to realities of the virus outbreak last week. Eudaly’s position thus far hasn’t changed for nearly a month now and puts Portland further and further outside the mainstream as big and small cities nationwide seize this moment to create healthier streets (see our Monday Roundup for the latest updates).

Mapps’ campaign announced this morning that he wants to “reclaim our streets” and has a “constructive compromise” to offer.

“Mingus Mapps calls on the City of Portland to publicly encourage neighborhoods to apply for block party permits to close down streets in their own neighborhoods,” the announcement reads. “Mingus supports this ‘bottom up’ approach that empowers Portlanders to build social capital and bring neighbors and children outside while also maintaining social distancing. He encourages the City to allow permits to last for up to one week.”[Read more…]

Sarah Iannarone at a rally for the 2030 Bike Plan in February.
(Photo: J. Maus/BikePortland)

If Sarah Iannarone gets elected to be Portland’s next mayor our streets will probably look and feel a lot different.

A strong transportation reform activist who gets around via e-bike and sits on the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s bicycle and budget advisory committees, Iannarone would very likely oversee PBOT if given the opportunity.

That might be why many of Portland’s grassroots transportation activists support her campaign. That might also be why her recently released Recovery and Resiliency Plan calls for things like more investments in bikeways, free transit, and an e-bike ownership incentive program. She’d also created “zero emissions thrive zones” and “pedestrian streets”.

I recently asked Iannarone to weigh in on the open streets debate. That is, what (if anything) should Portland do to take advantage of major changes in how people are getting around during the Covid-19 outbreak?[Read more…]

Mary Peveto.
(Photo: Peveto for Metro)

It’s hard to know what the future holds, but we’re operating under the assumption that we’ll still have local elections on May 19th.

One of the hottest races in town is for a seat on Metro Council. District 5 is up for grabs because Councilor Sam Chase (who’s held the seat since 2013) is running for Portland City Council. In the past month or so we’ve shared posts from two other candidates in this race: Portland Planning Commissioner and transportation reform activist Chris Smith, and civic and nonprofit leader Cameron Whitten.

Today we’ll hear from Mary Peveto. She answered five of my questions.

First, some background. Peveto is known for her work in air quality activism. She founded and still leads Neighbors for Clean Air, a nonprofit that forced a big steel company in northwest Portland to install air cleaning equipment at their plant. Her group has also successfully lobbied the legislature to reduce diesel pollution. Peveto told me she has experience not only in going after big corporations, “But also ineffective and sometimes intransigent government agencies to hold them accountable for doing their jobs of protecting people.”[Read more…]