This guest post is written by SE Uplift Neighborhood Coalition Co-Chair Terry Dublinski-Milton and Mt. Scott-Arleta Neighborhood Land Use & Transportation Chair Matchu Williams.
We have Southwest in Motion, Central City in Motion, Northwest in Motion and East Portland in Motion. It’s time for Southeast in Motion, or what we call Southeast in Active Motion, or SEAM.
Southeast Uplift, an official City of Portland neighborhood coalition group that represents 20 neighborhoods, has thrown their weight behind opposition to the Portland Bureau of Transportation and the Oregon Department of Transportation’s negotiated settlement to remove bike lanes on SE 26th Avenue approaching Powell Blvd.
As we’ve been reporting for nearly three years now, the nearly unprecedented removal of bike lanes on a city street is the result of a squabble between PBOT and ODOT. As final word came down from ODOT in February that they planned to cash in an agreement wrung out of PBOT over the lanes, there’s been a ratcheting up of activism to keep them.
Southeast Uplift joins a loud chorus speaking up against ODOT’s inexplicable demands for the removal of these bike lanes. Activists rallied during a snowstorm in February where the director of The Street Trust, Jillian Detweiler, said removing the lanes is “completely unnecessary.”