How Oregon can improve pedestrian safety

This week, the Portland Bureau of Transportation released its annual report on traffic deaths. It found that 63 people died in traffic crashes in 2022. The Street Trust, a Portland-based advocacy group focused on transportation, recently issued six recommendations to reduce pedestrian fatalities in Oregon. Sarah Iannarone is the executive director of the organization. She joins us with more on the trust’s vision for a safer Oregon.

The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. 63 people were killed on Portland’s streets last year. That tied a record set the previous year. 28 of those people were on foot, four were on bicycles. When it put out this data, the Portland Bureau of Transportation urged drivers to slow down, and said that its Vision Zero projects show signs of progress in making the kinds of improvements that national studies show will make our streets safer. Sarah Iannarone, the executive director of the Street Trust, says more needs to be done. Her advocacy organization has put out a six point statewide plan to improve pedestrian safety. Sarah, welcome back.

Sarah Iannarone: Thanks for having us, Dave. Good to see you.

Miller: I want to start with some of the specific details from Portland. PBOT pointed out that the 30 busy multi lane streets that they’ve identified as high crash corridors comprise less than 10% of city streets, but accounted for 70% of the traffic deaths last year. What does that tell you?

Iannarone: Well, it tells me that we need to do better on those corridors. We need to concentrate investments there, and align our spending in those areas to make sure that people stop dying on them. It seems like a pretty easy fix if you could do that.

Part of the problem is not all of those roadways are in our control, and that’s one of the reasons that the Street Trust takes a regional and even statewide approach to this. The so-called orphan highways, as you know, cross many jurisdictions. 82nd Avenue is a good example, it goes from the Columbia River all the way to Clackamas. And you’ve got different entities involved including the Oregon Department of Transportation. TriMet, PBOT. got Clackamas County at one end and Multnomah County at the other end. So how do you bring all these jurisdictions together to bring these “streets” (that’s a generous word for them too, they’re basically highways) running through urban areas, up to a state of good repair, and then even retrofit them so that they can be usable for people who aren’t in a private automobile?

Miller: “Orphan highways”, it is a state highway that is in a city, that’s the easiest way to think about it. You are calling for a statewide orphan highway improvement strategy and plan. What exactly would you like to see? And we’re not just talking about roads in Portland, these exist all across the state.

Iannarone: But it would help in Portland because those are Portland’s deadliest roads, and they’re not controlled by PBOT right now. Powell Boulevard where Sarah Pliner was killed last October is a very good example where the city of Portland crosses it, but doesn’t control it. And so even PBOT wanted to bring it up to a state of good repair, they wouldn’t be able to.

Our plan is really about having the state leadership at the executive level, because ODOT is an executive agency, and the legislative level think about this problem for all Oregonians. If we have Senator Taylor and Rep Nosse and Rep Gamba and Rep Pham, who are advocating on inner Powell, asking for 50 or 60 million to fix that, and then we’ve got Rep Bowman on Hall Boulevard, we’ve got people who want to fix all of these. Is an ad hoc administration of resources actually very fair? Or should we be thinking of a concerted pot of money to bring these orphan highways in our most dangerous arterials up to a state of safety, and look at it through an equity lens, and make sure that everybody in our state is taken care of?

And also it’s a good investment, because as you know, when these places are walkable and likable and have good transit access, the small businesses thrive and the communities thrive. So it’s really an investment strategy.

Miller: The last time you were on was in 2021 after there had been some pedestrian or bicyclist deaths on 82nd Avenue. Since then, that’s one of the streets, or highways whatever you wanna call it, that ceased to become, at least in Portland, an orphan highway. It’s now in city control. Have you seen a difference?

Iannarone: Well, they’re just getting underway. And so as you see small investments being put in, whether it’s a crosswalk or a rapid flash beacon, which is that “pay attention motorists, someone’s crossing here” flashing light, we do see improvements, and we see improvements to safety. You think about how expensive it is to retrofit that whole corridor, but then you also want to have an investment strategy where we’re thinking about what are the transportation modes here? What is it going to look like if we put bus rapid transit? Or even what would it mean to think about housing and other commercial investments, jobs, training schools, and making sure that we’re making investments in mobility that go in hand with some of the other investments that we need to make in our communities.

So I think that’s why you need a strategy and a plan. If everything’s ad hoc, we’re not being efficient with our very precious public resources.

Miller: Commissioner Mingus Mapps, who oversees the Portland Bureau of Transportation, he called on Portlanders to slow down and to not drive impaired, this was in a recent release that accompanied the report that they just put out. And he said he also wanted to invest in safety improvements on Portland’s high crash corridors and explore an increased role for enforcement. What role should traffic enforcement play in what we’re talking about?

Iannarone: We think traffic enforcement plays a significant role. But there are qualities of traffic enforcement, and that’s what we really want to tease out. I think what Commissioner Mapps is calling for is an enhanced police presence in this activity. And what the Street Trust is calling for is a little bit more technologically innovative, and something that we’re seeing a lot of places around the country doing, which is increasingly investing in automated traffic enforcement.

Miller: Why is that better?

Iannarone: Well, for us, it’s not necessarily that it’s better at the moment. There’s still a lot of innovation that needs to be done. But if we get it right, and we involve the community in shaping the policy and implementation, it could be better for many reasons. Traffic cams are one time capital investment, probably with some maintenance. You install it and it’s ready to go.

Miller: So like a red light camera, example?

Iannarone: A red light camera, speed cam, things like that. You can install them strategically, buy the technology, and then civilians can review the citations and we can think about how we can administer that very equitably. As opposed to when you look at policing in Portland in particular, it’s very expensive, it’s very fraught with conflict. We still have a long way to go when it comes to like, anti-racist and anti-bias training for Portland police. It really reduces the likelihood of escalation in a traffic stop. And also, traffic stops are really dangerous for law enforcement officers too because they’re injured every year when they step into traffic, even to administer the stop. So they’re not really safe for anyone. And if we can come up with something better, I think that’s the way that we should go.

Miller: I’m sure you noted that just this week the Oregonian reported that according to a memo in the DA’s office, an “alarming number” of DUI cases cannot be prosecuted because Portland police didn’t do a breath test, breathalyzer, or a blood draw. I’m curious what you made of that news?

Iannarone: You know, I’m not really in a position to speak on that because it’s not my area of expertise. But I think it speaks to the fact that we need to do something different when it comes to the driving while intoxicated problem. One of the things that the Street Trust is calling for right now is a public health approach to this. When you think about substance abuse and its impact on public health, there are many things that we can talk about. We talk about telling people to slow down, well, I don’t know that that’s gonna work. Let’s educate the community, both on the motorist side and the people administering alcohol. Really, what are we doing to make sure that people aren’t driving while intoxicated? I do believe that there are other policies that we could put in place with regard to reducing that. But if we administer it through a public health lens, as opposed to a law enforcement or carceral lens, I think we’ll probably have better impacts in terms of public health outcomes.

Miller: PBOT wrote that three quarters of the traffic deaths last year occurred at dusk, at nighttime, or at dawn, the implication being that darkness was a factor, something that I don’t think they’d highlighted in previous reports in previous years. What are we supposed to do with that finding?

Iannarone: The Street trust actually presented to the Oregon Legislature on this exact topic of night safety earlier this year. And there are a lot of investments that we can make, actually. The go-to answer often is people who are walking at night should probably dress brighter. That’s not the solution that the Street Trust forwards necessarily, because from our perspective, what we need are structural solutions that will keep everyone safe. So there are innovations around pedestrian scale lighting that we would advise for.

When you think about some of our widest streets, they have these big overhead arching lights that are really intended to make the through lines clear for motorists. It actually increases the speeds that they’re going at night. Pedestrian scale lighting is much smaller, much lower, and actually makes it safer for people walking and biking to move through the space. When we’re designing our environment, it needs to be designed to promote the safety of the most vulnerable road user through everything that we can put in there, the lighting, the signage, the speeds, and making sure that we’re not designing roadways that are frictionless. Because at night, there’s less congestion. And so as we saw through the pandemic, when you see less congestion, the streets have less friction, and motorists actually speed faster. So we need to engineer some friction, actually, into our system, so motorists are just cruising through, because their stopping times are much longer when they’re going at much higher speeds.

Miller: How do you plan to deal with the potential blowback from that? If I’m a dyed in the wool motorist, and I hear someone like you say, “we need to engineer some friction in for motorists,” I think all I would hear is you’re asking me to slow down, but I need to get to work. I need to go to the grocery store. How do you, in a political or social or messaging way, make that friction palatable?

Iannarone: Well, it’s kind of like friction for whom? 30% of Oregonians don’t even drive, an estimated amount, we don’t even know that number for certain, but we estimate that.

Miller: Well, I can answer that, friction for politically powerful motorists.

Iannarone: But my goal and my job is to actually amplify and elevate and grow the power of that 30%. If you had a system that failed for 30% of users, we would call that failing. That’s a failing grade. So that’s one thing, it’s just really talking about the other system users who don’t drive.

Then, I don’t think anyone, no matter whether you are never going to get out of your automobile, ever wants to kill people in the course of their day. I mean, that operator of that freight truck that killed Sara Pliner, devastated, career permanently impacted. What I hear from that industry is that oftentimes after that, that person leaves the industry and leaves a good paying job. So we don’t want to be killing our neighbors.

What we really need to do is create that empathy, and create that sense that we’re all in these streets together. But that doesn’t happen automatically, that takes a lot of concerted alignment across governments, messaging at every level that’s hitting on that single note. These streets, we are all in them together and we need to make them safe regardless of the mode. I’m not saying that motorists are bad. Most of us are motorists at some point. I don’t even own a car, and sometimes I drive. So this whole sense that your identity comes from what mode you use is false. People are choosing the mode that gets them where they need to go as safely and comfortably as possible. Many people would choose to go without having to drive if they had a safer, faster, cheaper alternative too. And we just haven’t made that an option either.

Miller: I want to turn to money, because your very first recommendation in the six that you outlined Is that the state redirect resources from driving alone, toward different kinds of active transportation, like walking or biking or public transit. What’s the current funding split right now approximately? And what would you like to see?

Iannarone: I wish I knew off the top of my head what that funding split is. I know that the state budget for the last biennium was about $5 billion dollars, and I know that people walking, biking, rolling, and riding transit don’t get a very large share of that. It can be hard to parse out what that number actually is, and one of the things that we talk about is when projects like the Rose Quarter expansion project are tagged as a safety project, but people aren’t actually dying or being seriously injured there, does that affect how we even understand what we’re spending on safety? So how can we even define safety, and align the resources better to solve for the right x? The Oregon Transportation Plan update, which we’re working on right now at the state level and we’re participating in, is gonna set VMT reduction, which [trying] to reduce the amount that households drive every year. We’re going to try to reduce that, but you can’t just set that aspiration and not spend money to get there.

It’s very similar with the traffic fatalities. If you’re going to address that, then you need to direct the resources to it, and be very clear and discerning about what you’re spending your money on and why.

Miller: Who’s doing all this well in the United States? And the US, as you’ve also pointed out, is doing way worse in terms of road safety for pedestrians and bicyclists than a bunch of other rich developed countries. But in the US, who can we look to as a leader, or at least a potentially good model?

Iannarone: Ourselves, 20 years ago.

Miller: Okay, so for you, it’s actually more helpful to look at what we did in the past?

Iannarone: We used to be the leader. We used to be a very outstanding leader in this. But what we failed to think about was the equity piece. And so what we did was we created small pieces of a system that worked for a small subset of Portlanders. They didn’t extend to the edges of our city, it didn’t extend to the edges of our region, and it certainly didn’t extend to residents across Oregon. We haven’t thought about “what did we know when we did well in creating compact walkable neighborhoods, connected by robust public and active transportation networks?” We were esteemed around the globe, thousands of people would come here every year just to kick the tires on our investments, take them home and try to replicate them. And now we’re getting leapfrogged because other places like New York City with regard to bicycling infrastructure. We watch the mayor of Paris where she creates this whole car free districts and now there’s this vibrancy, that’s something that would probably be stolen from Portland 20 years ago, when we were an innovative leader. But the failure to make sure that everybody had access to that type of life equitably is I think why we’ve stalled. And we really need to think about our investment strategy so that we can get these very livable neighborhoods to the people all over our state who need to have access to them.

And affordable housing is one big piece. We have to look beyond the silos. That’s why I call for an interagency approach, we can’t be locating our affordable housing. Many of the affordable housing developments that we’re putting in now, we’re about to put 200-some odd units right on Powell, the most deadly stretch of Powell. It’s under construction right now, along with 4000 PPS students in that stretch. So schools, housing, transportation, public health agencies, all need to be aligned if we’re going to address this.

Miller: Sarah Iannarone, thanks so much.

Iannarone: Thanks for having us. Stay safe out there.

Miller: Sarah Iannarone is the executive director of the Street Trust.

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