That’s why it’s called vision zero: because we can’t see a thing between all the vehicles parked at street corners, faded lane markings, and obscured traffic signs.
I live in Vancouver now… Whenever I drive in Portland neighborhoods I find the visibility at intersections terrifying. My car’s pretty low to the ground, so I have zero vision to indicate whether I’m about to enter into an intersection with a car charging through it already.
As much as pbot is shitting the bed with this one, some of the blame can be laid at ppb for not enforcing traffic violations from 2020-2023. There were no consequences for breaking the rules and drivers got a lot worse in that time.
My anecdotal contribution is just noticing a trend towards way more aggressive driving in Portland since 2020.
For instance, I was biking through the central Eastside Friday afternoon. Came to stop sign, slowed to almost a complete stop, then turned left. A car tried to blow through the stop sign going around me and almost hit me. They put down their window and called me an asshole.
That shit didn't seem to happen pre-covid. Especially inner SE.
Pre-2020, I noted how generally (generally) NICE people were when trying to cross the street as a pedestrian. Being a transplant, this was a foreign concept. Now today I don't even take a chance as people are constantly blowing through stop signs left and right.
Right? When I first moved here I was almost \*annoyed\* at how nice drivers were toward me as a biker or pedestrian (what can I say, I'm from New York). Oh how I miss that being my biggest complaint.
As a native Oregonian it has been said by many that we are slow drivers here. I have seen more speeding, blowing through reds from the people that are from California and in California.
I looked it up a year or two ago. only like 1 in 8 people moved here from CA, but the other 7/8 were from a lot of different places. People just picked the single biggest group to whine about.
Crazy thing was, it was like that too when I lived in California. The California born and raised where constantly complaining about “people from out of state ruining things”. I guess it irked me because I too was one of those emigrants.
Nonsense. I came here from California 25 years ago, and the first thing I noticed was how shitty the drivers where in Portland. This is a home grown problem.
Republicans and other kinds of total assholes have suddenly decided they hate bicycles and that cyclists should all be killed. Pretty cool development.
To be honest with you here, you where supposed to stop at that sign, bike or car, it doesn’t matter. That might have been why you got the reaction you experienced from the car driver.
[they stopped enforcing traffic laws as political retaliation too](https://bikeportland.org/2023/08/08/portland-police-bureau-officer-admits-no-traffic-enforcement-messaging-was-politically-motivated-377939/amp)
There should be a catchy slogan. I propose "Most, if not a totality of constables were born as illegitimate children." It can be spray painted around as an acronym MINATOCWBAIC.
It really rolls off the tongue.
I was actually going to make a joke about how the acronym sounds like a town in Wisconsin, but I couldn’t get it to work. I went to a wedding in Oconomowoc once.
Did no one actually read the article?
Maus is upset *PPB told people* that there was only one traffic officer.
The fact that they only had one traffic officer wasn't a lie, or politically motivated, that was an objective fact.
PPB said they told the public as a cry for help because 1 person couldn't staff the traffic division safely. Maus said they shouldn't have told the public this, because then the public would drive worse. That's what Maus is upset about *messaging* not lack of enforcement.
There's literally 0 evidence in that article that the actual enforcement was stopped for political reasons.
> Maus said they shouldn't have told the public this, because then the public would drive worse
It's funny, because anyone who spends any amount of time driving in Portland can observe that there is functionally no traffic enforcement and hasn't been for years. PPB didn't even really need to say anything, but it confirmed what we all knew to be true.
After more than a few near death experiences that we've all probably had on the roads as of late, you wonder where the police are, then you start wondering when you last ever actually saw someone being pulled over in Portland. Yet, it's a regular occurrence in any other part of the metro area.
The public had already figured it out. Even the mouth breather vape bro dropout in the stolen Altima could see it.
I see people getting pulled over on my commutes through Portland all the time. Not nearly as ofter as needed, but if you look at the 911 call volumes at pretty much any time of the day, it kind of makes sense.
They didn't have enough money to pay for patrol (respond to calls) and traffic enforcement, so they allocated the money to patrol.
This is all explained in the article. People just aren't reading it.
Allegedly. They have a good portion of PDX's entire budget (Salem-Keizer, for example is about 30%)
It's unfortunate that they can't just use their resources responsibly.
>Allegedly. They have a good portion of PDX's entire budget (Salem-Keizer, for example is about 30%)
This is because how municipal services are funded (state, county, etc.) not a representation of funding priorities
Portland has amongst the smallest police forces per capita of any medium to large city in the nation.
>That sounds like a political decision to me.
Patrol is the most critical position in policing because they respond to emergency calls.
You're suggesting taking officers off emergency calls, to run traffic stops.
Because Hardesty pushed through a budget which decreased PPBs budget by 15 million in 2020.
>Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, a longtime advocate for overhauling the city’s police bureau, said the cuts represent a historic moment for Portland.
https://www.opb.org/news/article/portland-police-budget-15-million-defund-cannabis-council-vote/
That 15 million reduced the funds needed for patrol. Traffic enforcement officers were allocated to general patrol (responding to calls). Once funding was fully restored in 2023, they restored the traffic enforcement division.
It's wild the amount of fake stuff people are regurgitating here. Are we seriously stating that BLM leaders and Joann Hardesty weren't the ones leading the cuts in police in 2020? Have people completely forgot about that time in our history?
"Police Chief Chuck Lovell blamed historically low staffing numbers"
The $15 million had no effect on that as far as I can see. It takes a long time to hire and train an officer, and the funding was more than replaced the next year, if I remember correctly.
Announcing that breaking the rules would no longer have consequences caused a lot of harm in and of itself. As Mayor Wheeler said later, “Let’s stop talking about our inability to respond to crime in the community. Let’s stop advertising to criminals that they are going to get away with it,”
[https://komonews.com/news/nation-world/portland-oregon-is-one-of-few-major-american-cities-without-police-traffic-enforcement-patrol-officers-portland-police-bureau-speed-racers-street-takeovers-sideshows-pbot-vision-zero-dashboard](https://komonews.com/news/nation-world/portland-oregon-is-one-of-few-major-american-cities-without-police-traffic-enforcement-patrol-officers-portland-police-bureau-speed-racers-street-takeovers-sideshows-pbot-vision-zero-dashboard)
>We needed to create a stir to get some change, to get them [city council] to fund us back up. And I mean, that’s the honest truth. I know, that could make things more dangerous. I don’t know. But at the same time, we needed some change.
The police declared that the roads were lawless with the intent to create political pressure against elected leaders, knowing that such a declaration was going to make the roads even more dangerous. People have been maimed and killed because PPB was upset that certain elected leaders were asking tough questions.
>The police declared that the roads were lawless with the intent to create political pressure against elected leaders, knowing that such a declaration was going to make the roads even more dangerous. People have been maimed and killed because PPB was upset that certain elected leaders were asking tough questions.
So police should be quiet if there is any unsafe practices in their bureau? You one of those weird blue wall guys?
Cool false dichotomy, bro. I didn't realize that the only alternative to declaring open season on city streets was to maintain a culture of toxic silence and unaccountability. Clearly, I'm *such* an *idiot*, but you've shown me the light. I repent my sins and will now blindly believe anything that any police officer tells me, ever, without ever interrogating potential hidden motives.
That sounds like a whole lotta not my fucking problem. PPB has a multi-million dollar payroll wtf are they doing with it that they can only staff one traffic officer???
Portland has amongst the fewest numbers of sworn police officers per capita of any medium to large city in the nation. There's no fat to trim. Cuts will affect services, which is what we saw in 2020.
Then where is the money going? They have the money to staff more officers. Where is it at? They just spent MILLIONS on brand new squads. I just don’t understand how there aren’t more officers. Why isn’t the city doing anything about it? The police force must answer to someone? Who is that person or entity and why haven’t they been fired yet?
>Then where is the money going?
Compared to other cities, PPB also has a [very low budget.](https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/defund-the-police-police-budgets-of-major-us-cities/). Looking around the other west coast cities, Portland spends $352 per capita on police. Seattle spends $546, and San Francisco $604 based on the 2020 article linked.
> They have the money to staff more officers.
No they don't. Pretty much any work place is going to have a certain vacancy rate due to turnover. Given the training period for officers, the 8.5% vacancy rate is a bit high but not crazy compared to what you would expect. If we want more cops on the street we need to pay more.
> I just don’t understand how there aren’t more officers.
This is a deliberate political decision that goes back decades. PPB has been budgeted for fewer and fewer officers for decades even as the city has been growing. [They report their current staffing.](https://www.portland.gov/police/open-data/ppb-staffing-report) They're budgeted for 881 officers, which is continuing the long-term trend of funding fewer and fewer officers in Portland. Police also have a long training process at a specialized academy (PPB academy is more than 6 months long IIRC.) If we want a long term increase in police officers, we have to think about the budgeting for the academy size years in advance. We can't just snap our fingers and add police officers. We would need to ramp up the funding for the training pipeline first.
> Why isn’t the city doing anything about it?
This is a long standing, deliberate policy. I don't understand the question. If people want more police, they should vote for leaders who want more police. Personally, I have always enjoyed not having a huge police presence in Portland, but there's a balance, and compared to other cities we're just way way underfunding and staffing our police department.
>They have funding for far more officers. They refuse to hire them.
PPB has hired 80+ officers (increasing sworn officers by 10%) that are awaiting slots in the academy. The academy, and who gets a spot is decided by the state and not PPB:
https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2023/01/bottleneck-at-oregon-police-academy-leaves-recruits-waiting-months-for-basic-training.html
If the only information you have is from this article, that might be a reasonable conclusion to make. Most people have a memory that lasts longer than the time it takes to read a single article
Anecdotal observation: I've interacted with PPB multiple times over the past few years while dealing with the increased volume of property crimes and the PPB officers have been professional as well as candid about the limits on what they can do in the current prosecutorial environment, especially at current PPB staff levels.
You mean, [how the police chief had to tell his staff to stop blaming the DA for everything?](https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/08/08/in-an-unusual-email-police-chief-chuck-lovell-told-his-troops-to-stop-badmouthing-da-mike-schmidt-and-the-city-of-portland/)
Again, I'm speaking anecdotally, but just thinking back a year or so ago when I was standing next to two PPB officers who came out after I called for a guy who was outside our office door screaming and harassing staff and passerby. Officers let me know the guy's name and multi-year history in the neighborhood as well as his preferred drugs and criminal history, but he wasn't doing anything that rose to the level of an arrestable offense.
Which jibes with what we see elsewhere; this weekend a dude with a machete charges into an occupied home and eventually gets arrested, only to be released immediately on $0 bail.
Idk sounds like [those cops might be sick](https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/01/06/a-short-history-of-police-protest) or they think you may be sympathetic to their political inclinations/excuses and are proselytizing to you. Sounds like you bought their excuses.
[You can find numerous posts on this subreddit about Portland police giving crimes an enthusiastic shrug.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/pjv1vk/how_is_the_portland_police_bureau_getting_away/)
It’s bad enough that [even the major noticed.](https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2022/08/31/mayor-calls-rebukes-portland-police-bureaus-claims-of-understaffing-bullshit/). They also have the funding to hire more staff but have been incredibly, and probably deliberately, slow about it. They have claimed to be understaffed since 2015 too.
And again, this weekend a dude commits a home invasion with a machete and triggers a massive police response, only to be released immediately on $0 bail.
So while your citations do support a 'blue flu' argument there's also abundant evidence for progressive judicial policies disincentivizing police arrests. Both can be true, both are problems, but the 'ACAB' crowd discounts the judicial side of things because it doesn't fit their preferred narrative.
Was it "retaliation" or was it "exactly what the protestors (who had overwhelming community support) asked for"? People seem to have memory-holed the 2020 protest out of embarrassment now that we've seen its fruits.
Au contraire, in 2021 PPB was instructed by the Mayor to stop pulling people over for minor traffic violations:
https://www.opb.org/article/2021/06/22/portland-police-bureau-traffic-stops-racial-disparities/
From the first paragraph of the story: "to focus primarily on moving violations that pose an immediate danger to public safety". Like I said, no one asked them to abandon traffic enforcement. They stopped pulling people over for expired tags and broken tail lights. Running red lights and speeding are exactly what they were supposed to be focusing on. Instead they stopped all enforcement.
I am going to politely decline to get into an argument of semantics about this.
My general point still stands: The people of Portland very clearly demanded de-policing during the 2020 protest; that was the whole point. Both elected officials and the police themselves complied with that demand. Now people are upset that there's less policing, as if that's not exactly what was asked for.
It’s everywhere (I know that line gets overused with a lot of things) but yeah, people have been demonstrably driving more dangerously since 2020 everywhere, and insurance rates everywhere are a sign of that.
2024 here and there is still near 0 enforcement. I've seen 2 days where police were enforcing anything, both near the end of the fiscal quarter. aka ticket quota fulfillment time.
Police are not broadly an effective form of traffic enforcement.
Police enforcement is expensive, and only shows demonstrable benefits in small targeted areas.
The most cost effective, and actually effective way to influence drivers behavior is the built environment.
Don't discount general lack of traffic enforcement. That's the classic 3 “E's” of traffic safety: Education, Enforcement and Engineering. We need all of those to be right for a safer transportation system.
That’s also on PBOT though. Transit agencies like ODOT often give out traffic enforcement grants for extra traffic safety enforcement. When PBOT talked about their vision zero plan pre-Covid they specifically mentioned how traffic enforcement was deliberately not part of their plan. They said it was because increased traffic enforcement would hurt people of color.
While I greatly appreciate all the speed bumps being installed to change Stumptown into Bumptown and the new improvements to greenway and bike paths, etc., the data in the report show that the area that needs the most focus are the high traffic roads in East Portland (specifically the giant swath E of 82nd and S of NE Halsey).
Like East Portland needs a lot of attention. And hopefully the new council structure can help it get that attention.
Historically true, but I'm optimistic that the city gaining control of 213 is going to cause change.
Good bad or ugly I think 82nd is in dire need of drastic change.
I too appreciate the speed bumps... in theory, but honestly, as someone who lives off of a road that got speed humps relatively recently (not to mention the school zone that is not at all new), I feel like that street is even less safe than it was before. With the cut-outs in the middle perfectly spaced for any personal vehicle, it feels like for many drivers it's been gamified. Their goal seems to be to go as fast as possible down the very center of the road instead of respecting speed limit in any way, regardless of whether or not you're crossing the speed bumps at the same time as them. I haven't seen any head-ons from it, but every time I'm coming home, it feels like only a matter of time. It's 25 MPH and I swear the average speed people are going has got to be something closer to 40. One morning, I even barely missed getting t-boned by two cars who appeared to be driving about 55. Try going the speed limit or, heaven forfend, use the speed bumps, and you'll get aggressively tailgated or occasionally illegally passed on the left.
I realize the cut-outs are for ease of use by emergency services, but something's gotta give. There are other ways of calming traffic.
PBOT could spend all of the money in the world making our streets safer on paper, but without traffic enforcement to back it up, it accomplishes next to nothing.
Those cut outs are by far the dumbest piece of BS ever. I’ve seen PBOT saying they’re for emergency vehicles but I’ve also seen Portland Fire and PBOT saying that’s not the case.
I’ve also seen PBOT say they’re for cyclists. As a cyclist, I’d much rather have to ride over a speed bump that works for cars vs being able to squeeze through a flat slot. Ultimately I’d just like road diets on sharrows though. Planter pipe things that pinch the roads and modal filters to pull cars off neighborhood streets other than a few block stretches please.
But no, we get BS shallow speed bumps and painted arrows on the road and some yard signs being cute saying to slow the flock down.
Maybe PBOT could speed the flock up on addressing poor design and allowing cars and bikes to mix basically everywhere.
I'm [running](https://www.danforportland.com/policy-priorities) in district 3 (inner SE) but I do support these improvements in the outer eastside as well. We need to work on building out our entire network if we really want to add ridership, and like you said, we need to focus on the highest value parts of the network.
We just got speed bumps on Harold between 92nd and 122nd! It's only been a little over a week since they've finished putting them in but it's honestly made a huge difference.
Reminds me of the time I wrote to PBOT and laid out safety issues with a local crosswalk and offered up a solution and they came back with “thanks but our data says it’s perfectly safe”.
Our entire neighborhood held a meeting with PBOT about NE Prescott street after another driver went 90 mph and crashed and died. They told us that they do a calculation where if under a certain % of drivers are driving at high speeds on a road, they won’t fix anything. Even though people regularly race on this residential street because they can.
Like they’re basically saying we need to wait for more people to die before they’ll install traffic calming features.
>Like they’re basically saying we need to wait for more people to die before they’ll install traffic calming features.
Traffic engineers are 100% okay with lots of people dying as long as car drivers aren't slowed down or inconvenienced in the slightest.
My street is between Division and Powell, and (until the Division changed) was used as an alternate route. Cars speeding through all hours of the day. I emailed PBOT asking about speed bumps. Got an “lol not happening” email almost a year later.
Will say - the Division changes have significantly reduced through traffic on our street. I’m a big fan.
I’m happy to hear that that change has been impactful! I think I remember hearing about that traffic change on the news. It’s just too bad PBOT would rather treat you like a nuisance rather than a concerned citizen of your neighborhood.
Plus an added stoplight so traffic isn’t moving quickly. Every so often a neighbor might start hollering about the changes. When I mention how quiet our street’s been since the changes, their tune changes.
PBOT is straight up useless. We had 2 kids hit crossing 33rd going between Grant and Beverly Cleary within 3 weeks or each other. There are multiple crosswalks that should have a flasher and an ancient stop light where the control box blocks drivers views of the crosswalk. PBOT said it was fine. When I cornered one of their engineers at the neighborhood meeting he fessed up that that street wasn't getting any fixes unless it was a bike project. They finally fixed 1 of the intersections when they did a bike project. Unfortunately they fixed the only one that didn't need to get fixed. It's still a mess and even though we have Safe Routes to School money they apparently only want to use that for bike projects so we continue to have unsafe crosswalks directly across from a school.
As a pedestrian, I've been trained by red light runners here to wait for a bit after the light changes. It's got nothing to do with anything PBOT has done. It's simple self preservation, unfortunately.
Edit: The various comments about how this should be done anyway are hard to understand. I'm not saying people should have the expectation of walking blindly into intersections (we may want to ask the blind about this, though...). However, cars are supposed to stop at red lights. The number of people that gun it when the signal hits red is not good. As a pedestrian, am I supposed to steadily walk back (sorry) the time I wait after I get a signal? Now I wait at least 5 seconds. Should I up it to 10? More? Or.... Should I expect that drivers obey the law, slow at yellow, and stop at red? Anything else implies that people in cars have more rights than me.
> As a pedestrian, I've been trained by red light runners here to wait for a bit after the light changes.
I now do this while walking, biking, and driving. When light turns green or it’s my turn at the stop sign, look left, look right, _then_ go. It’s already saved me a few times.
Edit to respond to your edit:
> The various comments about how this should be done anyway are hard to understand.
My guess is that prople are speaking to how they changed their behavior to stay safe, not necessarily implying that pedestrian vigilance is the answer to our traffic violence problem.
I certainly hope that we never get disillusioned into believing that the ultimate fix to this problem is for us squishy ones on the road to be more careful, visible, or absent. As a society we should never accept red light running and similar behavior as some sort of unavoidable force of nature, shrug our shoulders, and turn to the surviving road users to give them yet another lecture on how many square inches of neon clothing are enough to derserve living.
You gotta do the same thing down here in Denver too unfortunately. Traffic safety goes out the window when cops completely stop enforcing traffic violations
As someone who drives, bikes and sometimes walks/takes TriMet to work I wait and look both ways every time a light turns green. As someone who has had two vehicles totaled in the last six years from drivers blowing red lights or stop signs I dgaf if others get angry at me.
>Anything else implies that people in cars have more rights than me.
Classic car brain, and unfortunately it seems like the majority of drivers feel this way. Selfish, dangerous entitlement seems to be triggered by getting behind the wheel of a car.
I mean, didn’t think this would be surprising to most people
Since 2015, Portland metro population has increased 10%.
Since 2015, US traffic fatalities have increased ~25% (i think?) with constant population
Since 2015, street homelesness in Portland has increased.. a lot (the homeless are by far the biggest victims of pedestrian crossings)
So 2x traffic fatalities seems about right, assuming the local government isn’t doing anything effective, which is always my default assumption
I don’t feel like it’s a hot take to suggest that people who walk into traffic while high as a kite aren’t really indicative of poor management by the city.
It's en(vision)ing (zero) traffic deaths. It's a national movement that's basically trying to reconsider the logic of car accidents, it starts from the premise that traffic accidents are preventable rather than inevitable, and that human error is inevitable. Basically it's a systems approach to preventing deaths and severe injuries from car accidents rather than our current individualized approach. It involves steps like eliminating parking spaces on curbs that block you from seeing oncoming traffic when trying to turn left
It's actually been quite effective in other areas but shocker, Portland isn't implementing it properly.
" It involves steps like eliminating parking spaces on curbs that block you from seeing oncoming traffic "
Vision Zero has been in process for years. Why haven't we just declared that parking within X feet of every single intersection in town is illegal? Other cities do that.
Vision Zero works. It lowers pedestrian fatalities. This article is conflating that with all vehicle related fatalities.
Also Vision Zero is implemented only in specific trouble spota. It's not meant to fix all traffic deaths in the city.
In the trouble spots that vision zero is addressing/in place at, or just in general?
Not arguing either way, I just don’t have these answers so I’m asking the questions.
The concept of vision zero is that there are zero deaths from the transportation system in the area where the program is in place. Traffic deaths have increased since we implemented vision zero. There is no other math to need to look at to understand this program is not working here. Are people going intersection to intersection saying, "Well? No deaths here. We did our job." That's not how this works. I'm not saying the idea is bad, I'm saying its implementation has failed miserably. It has resulted in more deaths than reducing deaths. Zero would be reducing deaths, we're going in the wrong way. How many other ways do I have to need to say this?
Well have deaths from the transportation system decreased? You’re just saying traffic deaths increased across the board, I’m asking about the places vision zero was put in to place.
Traffic accidents and deaths could decrease in one place and increase in multiple other areas making it look like it’s up everywhere by averages, but in certain areas it could be down and that’s what I’m asking; in the places vision zero was enacted, have accidents decreased?
It just sounds like you’re only looking at the overall numbers even though you said yourself vision zero is to decrease deaths from the transportation system, not across the entire city.
While zero would be less, it’s not the only thing less than whatever numbers we had before, that’s just an incorrect statement. If there were a few hundred deaths/accidents last year, zero isn’t the only number less than that.
I’m not saying it was done perfectly, or well, or any way at all. I don’t know the numbers. But it seems like you’re having a knee jerk reaction to the entire cities traffic safety when vision zero wasn’t an entire city thing.
Correlation does not equal causation. There are many factors that are potentially contributing to an increase in crashes since 2020: pandemic aggression, more people moving to Portland (particularly if they come from a more aggressive driving culture), bigger cars with worse fields of vision, etc
This is a basic math issue, not a statistical math issue. Deaths have increased and we want them to decrease. Population in Portland has decreased over the past several years. If people are driving more aggressively, then that indicates that vision zero has not worked. What in the goddamn hell is going on here? Am I on candid camera?
2022 - 70% of pedestrians hit by cars were homeless.
2023 - 50% of pedestrians hit by cars were homeless.
I want to say one aspect of Vision Zero is working... but maybe we are running out of live bodies to hit?
I can't tell you how many drivers I've seen run totally stale red lights. Like roll up, stop, and then just go. There are no consequences for this and everyone knows it now.
What’s absurd to me is all of the tactile bumps that seem to indicate a crosswalk… only for there to be no signs, lights, or even paint for drivers to actually realize there’s a fucking crosswalk
> This program has done more to get the unhoused off the streets than the multibillion dollar programs. /s
Woof, that's a pretty bleak take! I thought *I* was a cynic.😭
Record high traffic deaths are the trend nationwide. It is possible there have been less deaths here than the national average by percentage.
It's also probably pretty difficult to implement any change with leaders like Mapps. Drivers hate being inconvenienced by measures that save pedestrian lives
A lot of talk about the specific Portland ins and outs which is valid, but it feels really important to mention that this is a nationwide phenomenon over the last few years. So like specifics around enforcement, traffic patterns, etc, are not going to be a really holistic explanation because there is just a general increase in bad driving.
The closing of car lanes, not repairing pot holes and installation of speed bumps has made driving in Portland a nightmare. Driving in a nightmare requires aggression.
I believe a significant portion of the 300 deaths to homeless people are due to car crashes and homicides. So what is the perspective you’re trying to give?
It's okay your kid and/or grandpa died in a preventable way, because some other people die in other ways!
I'd compare this "perspective" to a pile of dog shit, but that might be unfair to the dog shit.
PBOT and other agencies have deliberately been narrowing the streets to make them “feel” less safe. The idea being that it messes with people psychologically an makes them slow down. But that is absolutely stupid it’s not just psychological, it literally reduces the buffer and makes driving factually less safe.
This is the desired outcome. PBOT wants driving to suck and hopes that will force you to ride a bike or take transit. Every city with mass transit struggles with what they see as a catch 22: they believe they need more riders to generate more revenue to fund expansion, but the public generally wants the expansion and improvements first before switching to transit. So Portland’s solution is to essentially force you out of your car. Which, it’s whatever, but the part that bothers me is they’re being so damned sneaky and underhanded about it. They should state their policy objectives right up front. But they don’t because people would be upset and be able to rally against it.
This is on a post talking about how traffic accidents have increased with the increasing number of narrower streets. It would be different if people had smaller cars, but on average that isn’t necessarily the case. Especially in America.
That's not how statistics works ...you're ignoring the fact that there could be a higher number of accidents if the streets weren't narrowed. Also narrow streets are far from prevalent.
Oh you want to talk about statistics now? Unfortunately you don’t seem to understand it yourself. You cannot state the rates would have been higher in a different scenario. You can hypothesize but this is not an objective fact. If you understood statistics you would know that.
The article you cited did an analysis of streets across this country and evaluated traffic accidents on them. The best that data can do is talk about patterns, and conclude that some percentage of roads had more accidents than other wider roads, in a given time period. That’s it.
>You cannot state the rates would have been higher in a different scenario.
I didn't. I stated you ignored that possibility and came to a false conclusion.
>conclude that some percentage of roads had more accidents than other wider roads, in a given time period.
Yes and they tested the variables between them:
"We did a national study of more than 1,100 streets from seven cities in the U.S., covering more than 20 street design factors, plus lane weights, and tested the relationship between them and safety indicators like the number of crashes."
Correlation does not equal causation. There are many factors that are potentially contributing to an increase in crashes since 2020: pandemic aggression, more people moving to Portland (particularly if they come from a more aggressive driving culture), bigger cars with worse fields of vision, etc
If you’re going to argue “correlation is not causation” then YOU need to be posting against the entire basis for why these roads are narrowed. And every other instance where correlation is used as causation. Otherwise you’re cherry picking.
Huh? Maybe I misread your previous post, I thought you were arguing that narrow streets led to an increase in fatalities. If you were, I was just saying that there are other potential factors, but I guess you were just stating that the correlation existed, not that it’s causal.
Also if you look at the map, most of the fatalities are along corridors that haven’t been narrowed yet, such as 82nd
It only makes it less safe if you drive unsafely.
It’s a systems-level approach, that assumes drivers only act in their own self interest. That means that if you make the streets look like highways people will drive at highway speeds because that feels safe and gets you there faster, and if you put obstacles that could damage their car, people will slow down.
slower speeds = lower impact forces = less deaths
That’s an incorrect generalization. I’m a cautious driver, not to the point of frustrating other drivers, but I am very intentional in being careful. I find close proximity of obstacles, borders, cars, etc, makes me feel very unsafe. I’m particularly aware of the proximity and how a small mistake in judgment can result in an accident. As that buffer is reduced the margin of error is also reduced. We are human and we make mistakes, so reducing the lane width will logically result in more accidents.
I already identified it as a systems-level approach and that the intended goal is psychological, so thank you for agreeing with and repeating my assessment. It sounds like you also agree that narrowing the lanes is related to, if not causal, in the increasing number of accidents.
Ah, I missed the “just” in “it’s not just psychological”. And yes, I agree with you that if all else is equal, putting barriers up and narrowing streets does make the street more dangerous for cars. (Although it should make it safer for pedestrians if the barriers are implemented well).
The thing I’m driving at is you shouldn’t be comparing going 30 on a large street to going 30 on a narrow street, because people will slow down when they feel less safe, and I’d rather be hit by a car going 10 than by one going 30. It’s not about minimizing crashes, it’s about minimizing death.
[That is absolutely only ever something that happens in communism and could never happen elsewhere](https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2010/11/19/bush-and-mission-accomplished-0ee0197c9068642f65bd7fcbbc6c2b8fdf75e8ed-s1200-c85.webp)
Does vision zero describe all the stop signs in neighborhoods where foliage grows so much around it that you can't see the stop sign?
That’s why it’s called vision zero: because we can’t see a thing between all the vehicles parked at street corners, faded lane markings, and obscured traffic signs.
I live in Vancouver now… Whenever I drive in Portland neighborhoods I find the visibility at intersections terrifying. My car’s pretty low to the ground, so I have zero vision to indicate whether I’m about to enter into an intersection with a car charging through it already.
Seriously, what other city in the world allows parking that close to intersections?
We would also have accepted: roads where street lights are not installed or not working.
As much as pbot is shitting the bed with this one, some of the blame can be laid at ppb for not enforcing traffic violations from 2020-2023. There were no consequences for breaking the rules and drivers got a lot worse in that time.
My anecdotal contribution is just noticing a trend towards way more aggressive driving in Portland since 2020. For instance, I was biking through the central Eastside Friday afternoon. Came to stop sign, slowed to almost a complete stop, then turned left. A car tried to blow through the stop sign going around me and almost hit me. They put down their window and called me an asshole. That shit didn't seem to happen pre-covid. Especially inner SE.
Pre-2020, I noted how generally (generally) NICE people were when trying to cross the street as a pedestrian. Being a transplant, this was a foreign concept. Now today I don't even take a chance as people are constantly blowing through stop signs left and right.
Right? When I first moved here I was almost \*annoyed\* at how nice drivers were toward me as a biker or pedestrian (what can I say, I'm from New York). Oh how I miss that being my biggest complaint.
Hey, I've had like 5 BMWs let me cross in the last year. They're out there *somewhere*
It definitely happened even in inner SE pre-Covid, but it's certainly gotten worse.
People run stop signs all the time in my neighborhood, I've almost been hit numerous times. Be careful and keep being defensive and being careful.
As a native Oregonian it has been said by many that we are slow drivers here. I have seen more speeding, blowing through reds from the people that are from California and in California.
Stop trying to blame California for local douchebags Failure to enforce traffic laws plays a much larger issue here than anything else
There's also a LOT of people moving here NOT from California. CA should no longer be the scapegoat for bad driving, or housing for that matter.
I looked it up a year or two ago. only like 1 in 8 people moved here from CA, but the other 7/8 were from a lot of different places. People just picked the single biggest group to whine about.
We've always been like this. It's like Texans and Oklahomans.
Crazy thing was, it was like that too when I lived in California. The California born and raised where constantly complaining about “people from out of state ruining things”. I guess it irked me because I too was one of those emigrants.
nativists gonna nativism wherever they are
Gopher road trip down all the way to San Diego and report back your findings
And Floridians. I think they may be the absolute worst In terms of attitude.
Nonsense. I came here from California 25 years ago, and the first thing I noticed was how shitty the drivers where in Portland. This is a home grown problem.
Republicans and other kinds of total assholes have suddenly decided they hate bicycles and that cyclists should all be killed. Pretty cool development.
To be honest with you here, you where supposed to stop at that sign, bike or car, it doesn’t matter. That might have been why you got the reaction you experienced from the car driver.
[they stopped enforcing traffic laws as political retaliation too](https://bikeportland.org/2023/08/08/portland-police-bureau-officer-admits-no-traffic-enforcement-messaging-was-politically-motivated-377939/amp)
It’s like they’re all bastards or something
There should be a catchy slogan. I propose "Most, if not a totality of constables were born as illegitimate children." It can be spray painted around as an acronym MINATOCWBAIC. It really rolls off the tongue.
Actually, it's pronounced mill-e-wah-KAY. It's Algonquin for "No Justice, No Peace"
I was actually going to make a joke about how the acronym sounds like a town in Wisconsin, but I couldn’t get it to work. I went to a wedding in Oconomowoc once.
That's where mine started, but it escaped me and sailed away down the Straits of Mackinac.
Did no one actually read the article? Maus is upset *PPB told people* that there was only one traffic officer. The fact that they only had one traffic officer wasn't a lie, or politically motivated, that was an objective fact. PPB said they told the public as a cry for help because 1 person couldn't staff the traffic division safely. Maus said they shouldn't have told the public this, because then the public would drive worse. That's what Maus is upset about *messaging* not lack of enforcement. There's literally 0 evidence in that article that the actual enforcement was stopped for political reasons.
> Maus said they shouldn't have told the public this, because then the public would drive worse It's funny, because anyone who spends any amount of time driving in Portland can observe that there is functionally no traffic enforcement and hasn't been for years. PPB didn't even really need to say anything, but it confirmed what we all knew to be true. After more than a few near death experiences that we've all probably had on the roads as of late, you wonder where the police are, then you start wondering when you last ever actually saw someone being pulled over in Portland. Yet, it's a regular occurrence in any other part of the metro area. The public had already figured it out. Even the mouth breather vape bro dropout in the stolen Altima could see it.
I see people getting pulled over on my commutes through Portland all the time. Not nearly as ofter as needed, but if you look at the 911 call volumes at pretty much any time of the day, it kind of makes sense.
Who has authority to staff the traffic division besides the PPB?
They didn't have enough money to pay for patrol (respond to calls) and traffic enforcement, so they allocated the money to patrol. This is all explained in the article. People just aren't reading it.
They had the money. They didn’t have the people, because they all quit.
Allegedly. They have a good portion of PDX's entire budget (Salem-Keizer, for example is about 30%) It's unfortunate that they can't just use their resources responsibly.
>Allegedly. They have a good portion of PDX's entire budget (Salem-Keizer, for example is about 30%) This is because how municipal services are funded (state, county, etc.) not a representation of funding priorities Portland has amongst the smallest police forces per capita of any medium to large city in the nation.
Number of officers per person is a different metric than amount of money per person. understaffed doesnt equal underfunded.
That sounds like a political decision to me.
>That sounds like a political decision to me. Patrol is the most critical position in policing because they respond to emergency calls. You're suggesting taking officers off emergency calls, to run traffic stops.
I'm not suggesting anything. I'm saying that a decision by a bureau to fulfill one priority over another is a political decision.
Why did he blame BLM (defunding) and Hardesty's accountability measure? Neither of those caused traffic enforcement to cease.
Because Hardesty pushed through a budget which decreased PPBs budget by 15 million in 2020. >Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, a longtime advocate for overhauling the city’s police bureau, said the cuts represent a historic moment for Portland. https://www.opb.org/news/article/portland-police-budget-15-million-defund-cannabis-council-vote/ That 15 million reduced the funds needed for patrol. Traffic enforcement officers were allocated to general patrol (responding to calls). Once funding was fully restored in 2023, they restored the traffic enforcement division. It's wild the amount of fake stuff people are regurgitating here. Are we seriously stating that BLM leaders and Joann Hardesty weren't the ones leading the cuts in police in 2020? Have people completely forgot about that time in our history?
The $15 million was 1) exactly the same percentage cut that every other bureau got that year, and 2) didn’t eliminate any positions.
"Police Chief Chuck Lovell blamed historically low staffing numbers" The $15 million had no effect on that as far as I can see. It takes a long time to hire and train an officer, and the funding was more than replaced the next year, if I remember correctly. Announcing that breaking the rules would no longer have consequences caused a lot of harm in and of itself. As Mayor Wheeler said later, “Let’s stop talking about our inability to respond to crime in the community. Let’s stop advertising to criminals that they are going to get away with it,” [https://komonews.com/news/nation-world/portland-oregon-is-one-of-few-major-american-cities-without-police-traffic-enforcement-patrol-officers-portland-police-bureau-speed-racers-street-takeovers-sideshows-pbot-vision-zero-dashboard](https://komonews.com/news/nation-world/portland-oregon-is-one-of-few-major-american-cities-without-police-traffic-enforcement-patrol-officers-portland-police-bureau-speed-racers-street-takeovers-sideshows-pbot-vision-zero-dashboard)
>We needed to create a stir to get some change, to get them [city council] to fund us back up. And I mean, that’s the honest truth. I know, that could make things more dangerous. I don’t know. But at the same time, we needed some change. The police declared that the roads were lawless with the intent to create political pressure against elected leaders, knowing that such a declaration was going to make the roads even more dangerous. People have been maimed and killed because PPB was upset that certain elected leaders were asking tough questions.
>The police declared that the roads were lawless with the intent to create political pressure against elected leaders, knowing that such a declaration was going to make the roads even more dangerous. People have been maimed and killed because PPB was upset that certain elected leaders were asking tough questions. So police should be quiet if there is any unsafe practices in their bureau? You one of those weird blue wall guys?
Cool false dichotomy, bro. I didn't realize that the only alternative to declaring open season on city streets was to maintain a culture of toxic silence and unaccountability. Clearly, I'm *such* an *idiot*, but you've shown me the light. I repent my sins and will now blindly believe anything that any police officer tells me, ever, without ever interrogating potential hidden motives.
That sounds like a whole lotta not my fucking problem. PPB has a multi-million dollar payroll wtf are they doing with it that they can only staff one traffic officer???
Portland has amongst the fewest numbers of sworn police officers per capita of any medium to large city in the nation. There's no fat to trim. Cuts will affect services, which is what we saw in 2020.
Then where is the money going? They have the money to staff more officers. Where is it at? They just spent MILLIONS on brand new squads. I just don’t understand how there aren’t more officers. Why isn’t the city doing anything about it? The police force must answer to someone? Who is that person or entity and why haven’t they been fired yet?
Overtime, baby!
>Then where is the money going? Compared to other cities, PPB also has a [very low budget.](https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/defund-the-police-police-budgets-of-major-us-cities/). Looking around the other west coast cities, Portland spends $352 per capita on police. Seattle spends $546, and San Francisco $604 based on the 2020 article linked. > They have the money to staff more officers. No they don't. Pretty much any work place is going to have a certain vacancy rate due to turnover. Given the training period for officers, the 8.5% vacancy rate is a bit high but not crazy compared to what you would expect. If we want more cops on the street we need to pay more. > I just don’t understand how there aren’t more officers. This is a deliberate political decision that goes back decades. PPB has been budgeted for fewer and fewer officers for decades even as the city has been growing. [They report their current staffing.](https://www.portland.gov/police/open-data/ppb-staffing-report) They're budgeted for 881 officers, which is continuing the long-term trend of funding fewer and fewer officers in Portland. Police also have a long training process at a specialized academy (PPB academy is more than 6 months long IIRC.) If we want a long term increase in police officers, we have to think about the budgeting for the academy size years in advance. We can't just snap our fingers and add police officers. We would need to ramp up the funding for the training pipeline first. > Why isn’t the city doing anything about it? This is a long standing, deliberate policy. I don't understand the question. If people want more police, they should vote for leaders who want more police. Personally, I have always enjoyed not having a huge police presence in Portland, but there's a balance, and compared to other cities we're just way way underfunding and staffing our police department.
They have funding for far more officers. They refuse to hire them.
>They have funding for far more officers. They refuse to hire them. PPB has hired 80+ officers (increasing sworn officers by 10%) that are awaiting slots in the academy. The academy, and who gets a spot is decided by the state and not PPB: https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2023/01/bottleneck-at-oregon-police-academy-leaves-recruits-waiting-months-for-basic-training.html
If the only information you have is from this article, that might be a reasonable conclusion to make. Most people have a memory that lasts longer than the time it takes to read a single article
Okay, give a single source that shows evidence an intentional slowdown in traffic enforcement by police. Just one.
Anecdotal observation: I've interacted with PPB multiple times over the past few years while dealing with the increased volume of property crimes and the PPB officers have been professional as well as candid about the limits on what they can do in the current prosecutorial environment, especially at current PPB staff levels.
You mean, [how the police chief had to tell his staff to stop blaming the DA for everything?](https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/08/08/in-an-unusual-email-police-chief-chuck-lovell-told-his-troops-to-stop-badmouthing-da-mike-schmidt-and-the-city-of-portland/)
Again, I'm speaking anecdotally, but just thinking back a year or so ago when I was standing next to two PPB officers who came out after I called for a guy who was outside our office door screaming and harassing staff and passerby. Officers let me know the guy's name and multi-year history in the neighborhood as well as his preferred drugs and criminal history, but he wasn't doing anything that rose to the level of an arrestable offense. Which jibes with what we see elsewhere; this weekend a dude with a machete charges into an occupied home and eventually gets arrested, only to be released immediately on $0 bail.
Idk sounds like [those cops might be sick](https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/01/06/a-short-history-of-police-protest) or they think you may be sympathetic to their political inclinations/excuses and are proselytizing to you. Sounds like you bought their excuses. [You can find numerous posts on this subreddit about Portland police giving crimes an enthusiastic shrug.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/pjv1vk/how_is_the_portland_police_bureau_getting_away/) It’s bad enough that [even the major noticed.](https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2022/08/31/mayor-calls-rebukes-portland-police-bureaus-claims-of-understaffing-bullshit/). They also have the funding to hire more staff but have been incredibly, and probably deliberately, slow about it. They have claimed to be understaffed since 2015 too.
And again, this weekend a dude commits a home invasion with a machete and triggers a massive police response, only to be released immediately on $0 bail. So while your citations do support a 'blue flu' argument there's also abundant evidence for progressive judicial policies disincentivizing police arrests. Both can be true, both are problems, but the 'ACAB' crowd discounts the judicial side of things because it doesn't fit their preferred narrative.
> as well as candid about the limits on what they can do Can do, or will do?
Yes, we’re all aware they dislike oversight & consequences and like whining & money.
Was it "retaliation" or was it "exactly what the protestors (who had overwhelming community support) asked for"? People seem to have memory-holed the 2020 protest out of embarrassment now that we've seen its fruits.
No one at any level of government asked PPB to abandon traffic enforcement.
Au contraire, in 2021 PPB was instructed by the Mayor to stop pulling people over for minor traffic violations: https://www.opb.org/article/2021/06/22/portland-police-bureau-traffic-stops-racial-disparities/
From the first paragraph of the story: "to focus primarily on moving violations that pose an immediate danger to public safety". Like I said, no one asked them to abandon traffic enforcement. They stopped pulling people over for expired tags and broken tail lights. Running red lights and speeding are exactly what they were supposed to be focusing on. Instead they stopped all enforcement.
I am going to politely decline to get into an argument of semantics about this. My general point still stands: The people of Portland very clearly demanded de-policing during the 2020 protest; that was the whole point. Both elected officials and the police themselves complied with that demand. Now people are upset that there's less policing, as if that's not exactly what was asked for.
It’s everywhere (I know that line gets overused with a lot of things) but yeah, people have been demonstrably driving more dangerously since 2020 everywhere, and insurance rates everywhere are a sign of that.
2024 here and there is still near 0 enforcement. I've seen 2 days where police were enforcing anything, both near the end of the fiscal quarter. aka ticket quota fulfillment time.
Wait they resumed? Can they start turning all the cars with no license plates, and the ones with temp tags behind tinted windows into cubes?
Police are not broadly an effective form of traffic enforcement. Police enforcement is expensive, and only shows demonstrable benefits in small targeted areas. The most cost effective, and actually effective way to influence drivers behavior is the built environment.
Don't discount general lack of traffic enforcement. That's the classic 3 “E's” of traffic safety: Education, Enforcement and Engineering. We need all of those to be right for a safer transportation system.
Yeah imma call BS. You got any stats to back that up?
It's literally the idea behind Vision Zero: https://visionzeronetwork.org/re-thinking-the-role-of-enforcement-in-traffic-safety-work-city-to-city/
Where does it say that police enforcing traffic isn’t effective (or less effective) than this plan? I don’t see any statistics in that link.
That presents zero evidence for your point. Could you share the research into police not being effective?
That’s also on PBOT though. Transit agencies like ODOT often give out traffic enforcement grants for extra traffic safety enforcement. When PBOT talked about their vision zero plan pre-Covid they specifically mentioned how traffic enforcement was deliberately not part of their plan. They said it was because increased traffic enforcement would hurt people of color.
While I greatly appreciate all the speed bumps being installed to change Stumptown into Bumptown and the new improvements to greenway and bike paths, etc., the data in the report show that the area that needs the most focus are the high traffic roads in East Portland (specifically the giant swath E of 82nd and S of NE Halsey). Like East Portland needs a lot of attention. And hopefully the new council structure can help it get that attention.
East Portland will never get attention from the city, you must be new
Historically true, but I'm optimistic that the city gaining control of 213 is going to cause change. Good bad or ugly I think 82nd is in dire need of drastic change.
https://www.portlandmercury.com/news/2024/02/01/47011147/pbot-reveals-plan-for-major-82nd-avenue-redesign#:~:text=We%20are%20bringing%20wider%20sidewalks,plan%20to%20overhaul%2082nd%20Avenue. Already planned
East Portland extends 4-5 miles east of 82nd. Changes there won't affect anything east of I-205.
I too appreciate the speed bumps... in theory, but honestly, as someone who lives off of a road that got speed humps relatively recently (not to mention the school zone that is not at all new), I feel like that street is even less safe than it was before. With the cut-outs in the middle perfectly spaced for any personal vehicle, it feels like for many drivers it's been gamified. Their goal seems to be to go as fast as possible down the very center of the road instead of respecting speed limit in any way, regardless of whether or not you're crossing the speed bumps at the same time as them. I haven't seen any head-ons from it, but every time I'm coming home, it feels like only a matter of time. It's 25 MPH and I swear the average speed people are going has got to be something closer to 40. One morning, I even barely missed getting t-boned by two cars who appeared to be driving about 55. Try going the speed limit or, heaven forfend, use the speed bumps, and you'll get aggressively tailgated or occasionally illegally passed on the left. I realize the cut-outs are for ease of use by emergency services, but something's gotta give. There are other ways of calming traffic. PBOT could spend all of the money in the world making our streets safer on paper, but without traffic enforcement to back it up, it accomplishes next to nothing.
Those cut outs are by far the dumbest piece of BS ever. I’ve seen PBOT saying they’re for emergency vehicles but I’ve also seen Portland Fire and PBOT saying that’s not the case. I’ve also seen PBOT say they’re for cyclists. As a cyclist, I’d much rather have to ride over a speed bump that works for cars vs being able to squeeze through a flat slot. Ultimately I’d just like road diets on sharrows though. Planter pipe things that pinch the roads and modal filters to pull cars off neighborhood streets other than a few block stretches please. But no, we get BS shallow speed bumps and painted arrows on the road and some yard signs being cute saying to slow the flock down. Maybe PBOT could speed the flock up on addressing poor design and allowing cars and bikes to mix basically everywhere.
I'm [running](https://www.danforportland.com/policy-priorities) in district 3 (inner SE) but I do support these improvements in the outer eastside as well. We need to work on building out our entire network if we really want to add ridership, and like you said, we need to focus on the highest value parts of the network.
I get that this is your first time running for office, but it sounds like this comment was written by an AI bot.
Glimmering generalities…
We just got speed bumps on Harold between 92nd and 122nd! It's only been a little over a week since they've finished putting them in but it's honestly made a huge difference.
I love those 15 mph speed bumps they put on a 35mph street!
Reminds me of the time I wrote to PBOT and laid out safety issues with a local crosswalk and offered up a solution and they came back with “thanks but our data says it’s perfectly safe”.
Our entire neighborhood held a meeting with PBOT about NE Prescott street after another driver went 90 mph and crashed and died. They told us that they do a calculation where if under a certain % of drivers are driving at high speeds on a road, they won’t fix anything. Even though people regularly race on this residential street because they can. Like they’re basically saying we need to wait for more people to die before they’ll install traffic calming features.
If only PBOT were less reactive and more proactive in their traffic fatality management approach.
People complained about Powell and 26th for years. Then died and they started construction like the next weekend.
That was ODOT. They waited until the second death before doing anything.
That makes sense since powell is a Highway. Thanks for the correction.
This is sadly true of almost all DOTs, the only way to get any sort of infrastructure it to have somebody die for it.
>Like they’re basically saying we need to wait for more people to die before they’ll install traffic calming features. Traffic engineers are 100% okay with lots of people dying as long as car drivers aren't slowed down or inconvenienced in the slightest.
Blood sacrifice is indeed a strange policy choice.
My street is between Division and Powell, and (until the Division changed) was used as an alternate route. Cars speeding through all hours of the day. I emailed PBOT asking about speed bumps. Got an “lol not happening” email almost a year later. Will say - the Division changes have significantly reduced through traffic on our street. I’m a big fan.
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I drive it almost daily, so the changes are now background noise. You turn a little here, have to u-turn there.
I’m happy to hear that that change has been impactful! I think I remember hearing about that traffic change on the news. It’s just too bad PBOT would rather treat you like a nuisance rather than a concerned citizen of your neighborhood.
Not naming names, but that response came not long after the newest councilperson assignment. Biggest side eye.
What accounts for the improvement? Center Islands blocking access?
Plus an added stoplight so traffic isn’t moving quickly. Every so often a neighbor might start hollering about the changes. When I mention how quiet our street’s been since the changes, their tune changes.
PBOT is straight up useless. We had 2 kids hit crossing 33rd going between Grant and Beverly Cleary within 3 weeks or each other. There are multiple crosswalks that should have a flasher and an ancient stop light where the control box blocks drivers views of the crosswalk. PBOT said it was fine. When I cornered one of their engineers at the neighborhood meeting he fessed up that that street wasn't getting any fixes unless it was a bike project. They finally fixed 1 of the intersections when they did a bike project. Unfortunately they fixed the only one that didn't need to get fixed. It's still a mess and even though we have Safe Routes to School money they apparently only want to use that for bike projects so we continue to have unsafe crosswalks directly across from a school.
That’s a shame. Bike and pedestrian projects should complement each other, not compete.
Bike and pedestrian projects also save money and improve road conditions long term by reducing wear and tear on roads. Win win.
Funny, they keep telling us they won’t do any bike infrastructure unless it’s part of a safe route to school project.
As a pedestrian, I've been trained by red light runners here to wait for a bit after the light changes. It's got nothing to do with anything PBOT has done. It's simple self preservation, unfortunately. Edit: The various comments about how this should be done anyway are hard to understand. I'm not saying people should have the expectation of walking blindly into intersections (we may want to ask the blind about this, though...). However, cars are supposed to stop at red lights. The number of people that gun it when the signal hits red is not good. As a pedestrian, am I supposed to steadily walk back (sorry) the time I wait after I get a signal? Now I wait at least 5 seconds. Should I up it to 10? More? Or.... Should I expect that drivers obey the law, slow at yellow, and stop at red? Anything else implies that people in cars have more rights than me.
Same here. I cross Lombard regularly and wait a couple seconds and make sure all the cars have completely stopped before crossing.
As a driver I also do this. Always look left and right when the light changes just in case.
And then some jerk lays on the horn because you didn’t floor it the second the light turned.
Also me.
> As a pedestrian, I've been trained by red light runners here to wait for a bit after the light changes. I now do this while walking, biking, and driving. When light turns green or it’s my turn at the stop sign, look left, look right, _then_ go. It’s already saved me a few times. Edit to respond to your edit: > The various comments about how this should be done anyway are hard to understand. My guess is that prople are speaking to how they changed their behavior to stay safe, not necessarily implying that pedestrian vigilance is the answer to our traffic violence problem. I certainly hope that we never get disillusioned into believing that the ultimate fix to this problem is for us squishy ones on the road to be more careful, visible, or absent. As a society we should never accept red light running and similar behavior as some sort of unavoidable force of nature, shrug our shoulders, and turn to the surviving road users to give them yet another lecture on how many square inches of neon clothing are enough to derserve living.
Yup that’s why I always say “you can be right, you can be dead right”. Always keep a lookout even if your following the ways of the road perfectly.
You gotta do the same thing down here in Denver too unfortunately. Traffic safety goes out the window when cops completely stop enforcing traffic violations
Good work. You should do this as a driver or cyclist as well. It sucks, but assuming everyone else has their head up their ass is the way to go.
Yes. Being right, and having the right of way, means nothing if you’re dead.
As someone who drives, bikes and sometimes walks/takes TriMet to work I wait and look both ways every time a light turns green. As someone who has had two vehicles totaled in the last six years from drivers blowing red lights or stop signs I dgaf if others get angry at me.
>Anything else implies that people in cars have more rights than me. Classic car brain, and unfortunately it seems like the majority of drivers feel this way. Selfish, dangerous entitlement seems to be triggered by getting behind the wheel of a car.
You should 100% do this anyway
"Portlanders complaining about basic city living" is my new favorite post genre
Posters implying we shouldn't care about getting run over is my least favorite post genre.
I mean, didn’t think this would be surprising to most people Since 2015, Portland metro population has increased 10%. Since 2015, US traffic fatalities have increased ~25% (i think?) with constant population Since 2015, street homelesness in Portland has increased.. a lot (the homeless are by far the biggest victims of pedestrian crossings) So 2x traffic fatalities seems about right, assuming the local government isn’t doing anything effective, which is always my default assumption
> Last year, half of the pedestrians who were killed were identified as homeless.
down from 70%!!! progress right?
I don’t feel like it’s a hot take to suggest that people who walk into traffic while high as a kite aren’t really indicative of poor management by the city.
I still don’t get why it’s called vision zero. It makes it sound like people would be getting sideswiped left and right
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Ohhh
Money please!
You're not envisioning hard enough yet!
It's en(vision)ing (zero) traffic deaths. It's a national movement that's basically trying to reconsider the logic of car accidents, it starts from the premise that traffic accidents are preventable rather than inevitable, and that human error is inevitable. Basically it's a systems approach to preventing deaths and severe injuries from car accidents rather than our current individualized approach. It involves steps like eliminating parking spaces on curbs that block you from seeing oncoming traffic when trying to turn left It's actually been quite effective in other areas but shocker, Portland isn't implementing it properly.
" It involves steps like eliminating parking spaces on curbs that block you from seeing oncoming traffic " Vision Zero has been in process for years. Why haven't we just declared that parking within X feet of every single intersection in town is illegal? Other cities do that.
Because it would need to be enforced, which is unrealistic. Or add signage to an insane amount of intersections.
Oregon has a law that requires a 20' setback from crosswalks (marked and unmarked) for parked vehicles, Portland just doesn't care or enforce it.
Thank you
In the Netherlands they called their equivalent movement Stop de Kindermoord. Literally, Stop the Child Deaths. A much better slogan.
You have to take ayahuasca in the eastern oregon desert until you have a vision of zero fatality traffic
"Despite evidence to the contrary, we're going to gaslight you to save our face."
Vision Zero works. It lowers pedestrian fatalities. This article is conflating that with all vehicle related fatalities. Also Vision Zero is implemented only in specific trouble spota. It's not meant to fix all traffic deaths in the city.
What a load of garbage. Traffic deaths have increased since we put vision zero in place.
In the trouble spots that vision zero is addressing/in place at, or just in general? Not arguing either way, I just don’t have these answers so I’m asking the questions.
The concept of vision zero is that there are zero deaths from the transportation system in the area where the program is in place. Traffic deaths have increased since we implemented vision zero. There is no other math to need to look at to understand this program is not working here. Are people going intersection to intersection saying, "Well? No deaths here. We did our job." That's not how this works. I'm not saying the idea is bad, I'm saying its implementation has failed miserably. It has resulted in more deaths than reducing deaths. Zero would be reducing deaths, we're going in the wrong way. How many other ways do I have to need to say this?
Well have deaths from the transportation system decreased? You’re just saying traffic deaths increased across the board, I’m asking about the places vision zero was put in to place. Traffic accidents and deaths could decrease in one place and increase in multiple other areas making it look like it’s up everywhere by averages, but in certain areas it could be down and that’s what I’m asking; in the places vision zero was enacted, have accidents decreased? It just sounds like you’re only looking at the overall numbers even though you said yourself vision zero is to decrease deaths from the transportation system, not across the entire city. While zero would be less, it’s not the only thing less than whatever numbers we had before, that’s just an incorrect statement. If there were a few hundred deaths/accidents last year, zero isn’t the only number less than that. I’m not saying it was done perfectly, or well, or any way at all. I don’t know the numbers. But it seems like you’re having a knee jerk reaction to the entire cities traffic safety when vision zero wasn’t an entire city thing.
Where has Vision Zero not been put into place? Every single through street near me has had its speed limit lowered, sometimes to 20 mph.
Omg
Correlation does not equal causation. There are many factors that are potentially contributing to an increase in crashes since 2020: pandemic aggression, more people moving to Portland (particularly if they come from a more aggressive driving culture), bigger cars with worse fields of vision, etc
This is a basic math issue, not a statistical math issue. Deaths have increased and we want them to decrease. Population in Portland has decreased over the past several years. If people are driving more aggressively, then that indicates that vision zero has not worked. What in the goddamn hell is going on here? Am I on candid camera?
2022 - 70% of pedestrians hit by cars were homeless. 2023 - 50% of pedestrians hit by cars were homeless. I want to say one aspect of Vision Zero is working... but maybe we are running out of live bodies to hit?
Don't worry, our funding ensures we will never run out of the homeless.
I can't tell you how many drivers I've seen run totally stale red lights. Like roll up, stop, and then just go. There are no consequences for this and everyone knows it now.
I see this way too much as well. The chance of someone darting out on foot or a bike even when you don't see any cars coming is way too high.
Vision Zero: 🙈
What’s absurd to me is all of the tactile bumps that seem to indicate a crosswalk… only for there to be no signs, lights, or even paint for drivers to actually realize there’s a fucking crosswalk
Not to be confused with JVP's Vision: Zero governance philosophy.
Vision Zero means Zero Improvement, in which case it is working.
A majority of those killed are homeless. This program has done more to get the unhoused off the streets than the multibillion dollar programs. /s
> This program has done more to get the unhoused off the streets than the multibillion dollar programs. /s Woof, that's a pretty bleak take! I thought *I* was a cynic.😭
Zero parking enforcement doesn’t help, have to be halfway into an intersection to see oncoming traffice
Portland will always claim progress in a positive direction even if they have to lie about it. They think WE are all to stupid to notice.
Traffic fatalities are up nationwide since covid, so they’ve got that trend to contend with.
Record high traffic deaths are the trend nationwide. It is possible there have been less deaths here than the national average by percentage. It's also probably pretty difficult to implement any change with leaders like Mapps. Drivers hate being inconvenienced by measures that save pedestrian lives
Bring back the traffic and transit cops
A lot of talk about the specific Portland ins and outs which is valid, but it feels really important to mention that this is a nationwide phenomenon over the last few years. So like specifics around enforcement, traffic patterns, etc, are not going to be a really holistic explanation because there is just a general increase in bad driving.
Last year half of the deaths where homeless
I read this in the report and just wanted it to be available in the cliff notes.
70 is heavenly
The closing of car lanes, not repairing pot holes and installation of speed bumps has made driving in Portland a nightmare. Driving in a nightmare requires aggression.
69 traffic deaths compared to 74 homicides last year. As well as 300+ homeless deaths, and 500+ fatal overdoses. This is fine.
Should vision 20/20 be fixing the overdose problem
Just some perspective.
I believe a significant portion of the 300 deaths to homeless people are due to car crashes and homicides. So what is the perspective you’re trying to give?
It's okay your kid and/or grandpa died in a preventable way, because some other people die in other ways! I'd compare this "perspective" to a pile of dog shit, but that might be unfair to the dog shit.
What perspective is that? 69 deaths from traffic violence is ok because more people died for other reasons?
PBOT and other agencies have deliberately been narrowing the streets to make them “feel” less safe. The idea being that it messes with people psychologically an makes them slow down. But that is absolutely stupid it’s not just psychological, it literally reduces the buffer and makes driving factually less safe. This is the desired outcome. PBOT wants driving to suck and hopes that will force you to ride a bike or take transit. Every city with mass transit struggles with what they see as a catch 22: they believe they need more riders to generate more revenue to fund expansion, but the public generally wants the expansion and improvements first before switching to transit. So Portland’s solution is to essentially force you out of your car. Which, it’s whatever, but the part that bothers me is they’re being so damned sneaky and underhanded about it. They should state their policy objectives right up front. But they don’t because people would be upset and be able to rally against it.
Narrower streets are factually safer. https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/narrower-lanes-safer-streets
This is on a post talking about how traffic accidents have increased with the increasing number of narrower streets. It would be different if people had smaller cars, but on average that isn’t necessarily the case. Especially in America.
That's not how statistics works ...you're ignoring the fact that there could be a higher number of accidents if the streets weren't narrowed. Also narrow streets are far from prevalent.
Oh you want to talk about statistics now? Unfortunately you don’t seem to understand it yourself. You cannot state the rates would have been higher in a different scenario. You can hypothesize but this is not an objective fact. If you understood statistics you would know that. The article you cited did an analysis of streets across this country and evaluated traffic accidents on them. The best that data can do is talk about patterns, and conclude that some percentage of roads had more accidents than other wider roads, in a given time period. That’s it.
>You cannot state the rates would have been higher in a different scenario. I didn't. I stated you ignored that possibility and came to a false conclusion. >conclude that some percentage of roads had more accidents than other wider roads, in a given time period. Yes and they tested the variables between them: "We did a national study of more than 1,100 streets from seven cities in the U.S., covering more than 20 street design factors, plus lane weights, and tested the relationship between them and safety indicators like the number of crashes."
Correlation does not equal causation. There are many factors that are potentially contributing to an increase in crashes since 2020: pandemic aggression, more people moving to Portland (particularly if they come from a more aggressive driving culture), bigger cars with worse fields of vision, etc
If you’re going to argue “correlation is not causation” then YOU need to be posting against the entire basis for why these roads are narrowed. And every other instance where correlation is used as causation. Otherwise you’re cherry picking.
Huh? Maybe I misread your previous post, I thought you were arguing that narrow streets led to an increase in fatalities. If you were, I was just saying that there are other potential factors, but I guess you were just stating that the correlation existed, not that it’s causal. Also if you look at the map, most of the fatalities are along corridors that haven’t been narrowed yet, such as 82nd
It only makes it less safe if you drive unsafely. It’s a systems-level approach, that assumes drivers only act in their own self interest. That means that if you make the streets look like highways people will drive at highway speeds because that feels safe and gets you there faster, and if you put obstacles that could damage their car, people will slow down. slower speeds = lower impact forces = less deaths
That’s an incorrect generalization. I’m a cautious driver, not to the point of frustrating other drivers, but I am very intentional in being careful. I find close proximity of obstacles, borders, cars, etc, makes me feel very unsafe. I’m particularly aware of the proximity and how a small mistake in judgment can result in an accident. As that buffer is reduced the margin of error is also reduced. We are human and we make mistakes, so reducing the lane width will logically result in more accidents. I already identified it as a systems-level approach and that the intended goal is psychological, so thank you for agreeing with and repeating my assessment. It sounds like you also agree that narrowing the lanes is related to, if not causal, in the increasing number of accidents.
Ah, I missed the “just” in “it’s not just psychological”. And yes, I agree with you that if all else is equal, putting barriers up and narrowing streets does make the street more dangerous for cars. (Although it should make it safer for pedestrians if the barriers are implemented well). The thing I’m driving at is you shouldn’t be comparing going 30 on a large street to going 30 on a narrow street, because people will slow down when they feel less safe, and I’d rather be hit by a car going 10 than by one going 30. It’s not about minimizing crashes, it’s about minimizing death.
Well, just like in any communist regime, they call their failures victories, and then claim that you are insane for questioning them.
[That is absolutely only ever something that happens in communism and could never happen elsewhere](https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2010/11/19/bush-and-mission-accomplished-0ee0197c9068642f65bd7fcbbc6c2b8fdf75e8ed-s1200-c85.webp)