(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
“To me these highway expansions represent an old way of doing business.”
— Juan Carlos González, Metro Council
Juan Carlos González.
A popular mantra in Portland these days, chalked outside Tubman Middle School at a rally in April.
(Photo: J. Maus/BikePortland)
Two freeway expansion projects that were due to be approved by Metro Council at a meeting today (7/29) have been taken off the agenda and will be given their own meeting next week. The change is notable because, as we shared last week in an opinion from transportation and climate change activist Chris Smith, the items were previously on a consent agenda which meant there would be no formal vote or discussion.
The newly scheduled meeting on Tuesday at 2:00 pm (8/3) takes the controversial resolutions out of a consent agenda and they will now be discussed and voted on by Metro Council members separately. It’s not a public hearing, and public comment will still only be taken at the start of the meeting, but the move is a small win for activists who’ve flooded Metro Council with concerns about the projects.
[Read more…]
(Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
40-Mile Loop volunteer Jim Sjulin at the Quarterly Trails Forum last week.
A retired Portland Parks and Recreation planner has just gifted the transportation community something very, very special.
If you’ve ever tried to secure funding for a trail or path project, or advocate for one, you can relate to the dizzying array of acronyms and information that comes with it. What starts as an exciting idea to create a new bike path, can end up leading you down a rabbit-hole of application deadlines, funding parameters, and clunky government websites. It’s enough to cause premature burnout in even the most hardened advocrat.
Jim Sjulin knows this feeling well. As a retired Parks employee and current volunteer with 40-Mile Loop Land Trust, he’s ferreted his share of funding pots. I was impressed with Sjulin’s excellent work to fund remaining gaps on the Marine Drive bike path, but his latest effort is on a whole nother level.
At the Quarterly Trails Forum hosted by Metro on July 14th, Sjulin shared a spreadsheet with information on every government funding source available for trail projects in Oregon. To the uninitiated, that might not sound like a big deal. But once you browse the document, it’s scope and value become apparent. [Read more…]
Inset: New sign just installed by PBOT.
Bike lane on SE Foster Road.
(Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
Sample of Replica analysis.
A data project billed as the “next generation urban planning tool” that involved over two years of negotiations between Metro, TriMet, the City of Portland, and Google-owner Alphabet has crashed-and-burned.
On Saturday, Red Tail Media reported that a contract between Metro and Sidewalk Labs to develop the Replica tool for regional use been officially terminated. “A city tech project in Portland with the Sidewalk Labs spin-off leads to accusations, data disputes and ‘damaged trust'” reads the headline, which was then picked up by the BBC on Tuesday. [Read more…]
Blumenauer at this morning’s JPACT meeting (lower right).
Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer dropped into a meeting of the Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation (JPACT) Thursday morning to share an overview of what to expect from the Biden Administration.[Read more…]
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