If Portland by no means reaches Imaginative and prescient Zero, it received’t be for an absence of effort or evaluation. Now a brand new, impartial report by Metropolis Membership will add one other layer of analysis onto this vexing problem of preserving each life on the highway.
Since Metropolis Council adopted the Imaginative and prescient Zero decision in 2015, which referred to as on them to marshal the sources to attain zero highway deaths by this yr, they’ve constantly monitored and tracked progress through a collection of inside updates and reviews. In 2024 the Metropolis Auditor investigated this system and gave it a blended evaluate.
Now Portland Metropolis Membership will dedicate its appreciable analysis capability to the problem. Metropolis Membership is a nonprofit with a mission to, “inform the group in public issues and to arouse in them a realization of the obligations of citizenship.” “The [City Club research] committee will research the effectiveness of present methods and evidence-based options that might assist Portland transfer nearer to its security objectives,” reads an outline of the upcoming report. Metropolis Membership introduced the trouble in an e-mail on June twenty seventh.
They are going to assemble and impartial staff of Metropolis Membership members to assist their analysis committee. These chosen should decide to 12 months of service and be free from any conflicts of curiosity and/or monetary contracts associated to Imaginative and prescient Zero work.
Listed here are a number of of the questions Metropolis Membership hopes to reply:
How does the present implementation of the Imaginative and prescient Zero plan have an effect on visitors fatalities? Are these insurance policies efficient, adequate, and enforced?
What insurance policies would enhance Portland’s Imaginative and prescient Zero method, or hasten the outcomes? Are there extra aggressive or efficient insurance policies that may very well be adopted?
How ought to Imaginative and prescient Zero stability different transportation aims, equivalent to environmental issues, public security response occasions, and freight mobility?
The report will situation a set of suggestions and its discovering are prone to be intently thought-about by group and elected leaders. I nonetheless hear transportation bureau staffers check with Metropolis Membership’s 2013 report, No Turning Again: A Metropolis Membership Report on Bicycle Transportation in Portland. That report was greater than phrases on paper as Metropolis Membership fashioned an advocacy committee after it was revealed with an purpose of pushing ahead on its suggestions.
Metropolis Membership’s initiative comes at a time when Portland’s Imaginative and prescient Zero efforts are at an inflection level. The general narrative and statistical pattern suggests a brand new regular of annual highway fatalities which can be double the quantity town had within the early 2000s. However the startling rise in deaths between 2018 and 2021 has plateaued. After a downward pattern within the final three years, our present tracker reveals simply 15 folks have been killed on Portland roads to this point this yr —that’s lower than half the quantity on this identical date final yr and places us on observe for the bottom complete since 2012.
Political winds additionally counsel a brand new period is afoot in how roads are managed. Security advocates have a powerful champion in Portland Metropolis Councilor Tiffany Koyama Lane, who has made Imaginative and prescient Zero her prime precedence. Within the lately adopted metropolis price range, Koyama Lane fought for and saved $670,000 in Imaginative and prescient Zero security challenge funding that was on the chopping block. A price range be aware sponsored by Koyama Lane will transfer a prime Imaginative and prescient Zero staffer out of the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) and into the workplace of the Metropolis Administrator for Public Works, “to make sure they’ve full entry to vital cross-bureau collaboration and initiatives.”
PBOT additionally faces probably the most extreme price range disaster within the historical past of the company. That is forcing the company to think about daring concepts like a brand new native tax or charge to boost income, and even banning automotive use on some roads to scale back upkeep prices and enhance the group worth of our shared right-of-way.
Given this context, it’s a very good time for Metropolis Membership to embark on this challenge. Hopefully their closing report will grasp that Portland’s failure to perform its Imaginative and prescient Zero purpose is simply as a lot of a political drawback as it’s a technical one.
Like many transportation issues which can be characterised as intractable or unattainable, the answer to saving lives is straightforward: we have to dramatically cut back driving journeys and reduce human publicity to automobiles and their drivers. That’s how we repair congestion, clear the air, enhance our neighborhoods, strengthen the native financial system, construct a extra resilient, vibrant metropolis — and it’s how we obtain Imaginative and prescient Zero.
If it succeeds, Metropolis Membership’s analysis will present much more ammunition to advocates, company workers, and elected officers who’re working to bend the arc of political chance.
— For extra on this initiative view Metropolis Membership’s full recruitment message and/or apply to be on the analysis committee right here.
