(Photo: Committee to Elect Ashton Simpson)

“Climate change is not going to wait on any of us and we have to transform our system in a way that can meet our climate goals… I would love to take a billion dollars and put it into a community, rather than a freeway expansion.
— Ashton Simpson, Metro Council candidate

[Read more…]

[Read more…]

Michael Trimble on the Eastbank Esplanade, July 31st 2021.
(Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

We told you so. [Read more…]

Tom Miller at a PBOT event in August 2012.
(Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

The latest shakeup to Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler’s staff includes another name that will be familiar to many of you: Tom Miller. After adding former mayor Sam Adams to his team back in January, Wheeler has now brought on Adams’ former chief of staff. Miller was Adams’ most trusted advisor during his ascent in local politics until Miller was named Bureau of Transportation director in 2011.

Now Miller, the former skateboarding activist and major fan of bicycling, is back to work at City Hall as director of sustainability and livability. He takes over a role left vacant when Amanda Watson departed from Wheeler’s office back in July. [Read more…]

US DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg speaking in Eugene yesterday.

These are wild times for climate change in America. We have floods and droughts and fires and heat waves — scary, deadly, catastrophic events — unfolding in front of our eyes as policymakers scramble to satisfy an anxious public and activists increase the volume of their pleas.

Yesterday in Eugene, the Biden Administration’s top transportation leader, US Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg appeared at a press conference with U.S. Congressmen and Chair of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, Peter DeFazio. They and other officials spent the day viewing safety challenges on Highway 99 in Corvallis and driving an all-electric bus. The high-profile visit was part of a tour to tout Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework.

As the climate issue heats up, so too are calls to use transportation policy as a way to address it.[Read more…]

For whom the bills toll.
(Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

Like dreaded vegetables on a dinner plate, the powerful Joint Transportation Committee of the Oregon legislature has left the hardest stuff to swallow until the very end. At their last meeting of the session Thursday morning, committee members are likely to vote on consequential legislation that would set funding levels for three freeway projects and a plan to allow the state to borrow up to $600 million in tolling-backed bonds.

Months of debate have focused on two bills in the House: 3055 and 3065. Both are omnibus bills (meaning they deal with many issues) and look to tweak House Bill 2017, the landmark $5.2 billion package of project earmarks and new taxes the legislature passed in 2017. Among other things, HB 2017 set aside $30 million per year for the I-5 Rose Quarter project (to begin January 2022) and it directed the Oregon Transportation Commission (the governor-appointed body that manages the Oregon Department of Transportation) to study and implement tolls on sections of I-5 and I-205 in the Portland region.[Read more…]

A bill that would have increased spending on bicycling and walking infrastructure on the 50th anniversary of Oregon’s legendary “Bike Bill” has died in committee.[Read more…]