This column is edited by Bike Loud PDX volunteers Catie Gould and Emily Guise.
Our goal is to share experiences and insights gleaned by activists doing work “in the trenches” of Portland’s transportation reform movement. See the introduction post here.
On the evening of April 7th, Alex Hubert was crossing to the MAX platform to catch a northbound Yellow Line train back home when he was struck by a car. There was no police alert on Twitter. There were no news reports. But I was there.
This post is about my attempt to learn more about the safety issues at the intersection and find out why they haven’t been fixed.[Read more…]
It was hard not to feel a wave of optimism about biking in Portland after talking with so many people who wanted to support this project. (Photos: Armando Luna)
This is the latest installment of our Adventures in Activism column, written by Catie Gould and Emily Guise.
“Make Better Naito permanent! Sign a postcard!” [Read more…]
50 people showed up to our neighborhood park to talk with each other about the project. (Photos: Kiel Johnson)
This is the conclusion to Kiel Johnson’s grassroots effort to talk to more of his neighbors about a transportation project. Don’t miss part one and part two.
This is the second post by Kiel Johnson in a series about his effort to talk to his neighbors about the Lloyd to Woodlawn neighborhood greenway project.
This past week my wife Kate and I went door-to-door from NE 7th and Alberta to NE Thompson inviting people to an ice cream social to talk about the proposed Lloyd to Woodlawn Neighborhood Greenway. As I shared last week, the purpose of the event was to create a low-stress place for neighbors to meet each other and share their opinions about the proposal that would add diverters and create a new family-friendly bikeway between I-84 in the Lloyd to Dekum Street in Woodlawn.
For a 32-year-old, knocking on the doors of complete strangers is not the easiest thing to do. [Read more…]
My door-knocking partner, Kate Johnson. (Photo: Kiel Johnson)
This post is written by Kiel Johnson, a local business owner, transportation activist, and northeast Portland resident.
Over the next few weeks, in their downtown offices, city staff will determine the route for the Lloyd to Woodlawn Neighborhood Greenway using a combination of personal egos, local political winds, community feedback, and hopefully, reason. Whenever the city wants to make it a little harder to drive a car somewhere they are always faced with passionate opposition. Trying to do it in inner northeast Portland, an area that has undergone rapid gentrification and change, is even more difficult.
I recently moved to NE 7th so this process has gotten a lot closer to home. Over the next weeks I am going to share my attempt to navigate this complexity and advocate for the route greenway route to be on NE 7th. Our society has wronged a lot of groups and as a white male I have benefited from a lot of those policies. Is it possible to address this privilege while also advocating for something that will be a big change for a lot of people? My approach is to include as many people and viewpoints as possible and make sure everyone is heard, even if I disagree with them. [Read more…]
A panel answered questions about the benefits of the program at a workshop held at Metro in June. From Right to left: Jan Campbell, Chair of the Special Transportation Fund Advisory Committee; Adrian Pearmine, DKS Associates; Bob Stacey, Oregon Metro Councilor District 6; Brenda Durbin, Director of Clackamas County Social Services; Julie Wilkie, Executive Director of Ride Connection.
“Right now we have a second-class transportation system for folks that have accessibility issues and it just plain isn’t fair.” — Adrian Pearmine, DKS Associates.
Seniors and people living with a disability who need accessible transportation across the Portland region have dealt with a patchwork of inadequate services for years.
A new initiative called Mobility for All hopes to change that by creating a one-call, one-click regional transportation information system.
Today, many communities in the Portland Metro do not have accessible or frequent transit, requiring residents with special needs to reserve rides days in advance in order to get around. Service varies significantly in rural communities, and getting across the region through multiple service providers can be daunting. One of those options, TriMet’s privately operated LIFT paratransit service, was recently under fire at a Workers Rights Board hearing in May for inadequate scheduling systems and long wait times for riders among other complaints from employees and community members. [Read more…]
It’s a scenario familiar to anyone biking in a city: you’re riding down the bike lane, when suddenly you’re forced to brake and swerve around an unforeseen obstacle blocking your way. At best, this is annoying; at worst, it is deadly.
Reporting these issues can be extremely frustrating. In Portland, there is no way to send a photo to the Parking Enforcement number, and callers rarely know if a ticket was ever issued. Reports to the 823-SAFE hotline can take months to be reviewed and disappear into a database that is not publicly accessible. This leads people to resort to social media, which raises only temporary awareness.
A new website aims to fill the gap. Since Bike Lane Uprising launched in September 2017, it has received over 2200 bike lane obstructions reports. Christina Whitehouse, an industrial designer in Chicago, has been surprised by how quickly it has taken off. The site allows people to submit incidents of bike lane infractions which are posted online and entered into a database and mapped. As more people contribute, Whitehouse can create heatmaps to identify conflict zones, trends, and notify businesses that are repeat offenders. [Read more…]
This summer reading list was created by Catie Gould and Emily Guise, BikeLoud PDX volunteers and co-editors of our Adventures in Activism column.
Summer is a great time to relax by the pool (fountain, river, lake, sprinkler, or whatever) and still get nerdy about transportation and land-use. What could be better?
Here’s our list of favorite urbanist classics and a few newer ones for good measure… [Read more…]
Eighty crosswalks and 45 light-rail stations made safer. That’s how Darla Sturdy sums up her proudest accomplishment to date.
Sturdy, a Gresham mother and member of Families for Safe Streets Oregon and SW Washington, never imagined a second life as a transportation engineer, much less as a lobbyist. But this is the work she threw herself into after her boy was run over and killed by a MAX light rail train. [Read more…]
Throwing bales of hay onto one of Portland’s most dangerous, high-speed arterials is far from reasonable. And that’s probably why it was so effective. (Photo: Jonathan Maus)
There are not many professions where you introduce yourself and get a stream of complaints in response. I design office printers for a living, so this comes up a lot. On the plus side, years of complaints about ink prices and paper jams prepared me well to have an opinion about transportation issues, and be ready for other people’s advice on what is wrong with my perspective.
Just wearing a Sunday Parkways shirt once got me on the receiving end on a stream of complaints about PBOT, bike racks, and so on.
In general, I think transportation is a wonderful advocacy area because it is so accessible. Everyone experiences it — and therefore everyone is an expert. Well, not really. But everyone who calls City Hall about the lack of parking considers themselves experts, so you might as well think of yourself as one too. [Read more…]
