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My vision for transportation in Portland
My vision is building 50 miles of protected bicycles lanes per year in Portland. We are currently building about four per year. I want to bring back Mayor Vera Katz’s Car Free Portland Day last held 20 years ago in September 2004. I would like to create car-free streets. Imagine N Williams and N Vancouver as car-free streets every Saturday Night! I would like the BikeTown for All program available to everyone in Portland. I would love to see transit helpers welcoming throngs of people moving without cars up and down N Interstate and across Lombard.
I'm proud to be endorsed by The Street Trust Action Fund.
How do you think the City of Portland should pay for its transportation system?
PBOT’s financial woes are legendary. For years, multiple city leaders have put forth proposals and failed to solve the problem. This is a gigantic problem we need to deal with by bringing people together outside of City Hall with people-powered democracy. I will bring people together, with other pro-multi-modal transit city council members, to create a proposal that we get over the finish line.
28% of PBOT’s budget ($142 million) is general transportation revenue which can be used for system operations and maintenance, of which 60% is from the State Highway Fund and 40% from parking revenue. $142 million is insufficient to care for $18 billion in PBOT’s assets. We know parking revenue is likely to decline for a variety of reasons. That said, we need to consider fee and investment proposals in the Pricing Options for Equitable Mobility (POEM) Final Report, adopted by the Portland City Council in 2021.
Pricing strategies explored through the POEM project include:
Prices on parking
Prices on vehicle-based commercial services (e.g. private for-hire trips and urban delivery)
Highway tolling
Cordons or area pricing
Road usage or per-mile charges
We can try to increase private-public partnerships to stabilize and increase funding for Portland Streetcar, BIKETOWN Bikeshare, Portland Aerial Tram, Multnomah County’s ACCESS shuttle, Explore Washington Park shuttle, and RideAbout shuttle.
How will you reduce the number of traffic fatalities and serious injuries in Portland?
Car violence is real and deserves as much attention and focus as gun violence. Pedestrians, cyclists, and innocent victims are not to blame. We must respectfully listen to victims of car violence. We need to implement our plans instead of making more plans. That means addressing the backlog in safety improvements projects and with proper funding do more. Specifically, we can install traffic-calming infrastructure and speed enforcement cameras on streets where people choose to speed down wide roads.
I support The Street Trust’s approach to focus on infrastructure and driver behavior with an added focus on swift post-crash care with lower 911 and ambulance wait times.
We must address the backlog in safety improvements projects, and secure proper funding to do more. For example, we can install traffic-calming infrastructure and speed enforcement cameras on streets where people choose to speed down wide roads.
Complete Streets is a design model, a planning process, that promotes the kind of city building I support. We need the funding to engage in these design processes in District 2, to induce more walking, rolling, start-and-stop, slow driving, and biking.
I will lobby on the state level alongside advocates and experts to reduce legal blood alcohol level from .08 to .05.
I will help more people living unsheltered live inside. I support the building of infrastructure (built and workforce) that address severe behavioral and mental health needs. Teens racing, unsheltered people struck near their tents along freeways, people driving impaired at high speeds are some of the transportation planning failures. They are also failures of public health and public services.
I support density and walkable housing/transportation planning.
I am a supporter of Portland Neighbors Welcome Inner Eastside For All. I am also endorsed by Portland Neighbors Welcome.
We need to increase our infrastructure for electrified vehicles.
We should consider proposing legislation to require private companies to use electric vehicles while doing business in Portland. We need to work with TriMet and other governmental partners to expand welcoming, safe mass transit, and support regional high speed rail. I am an enthusiastic supporter of electric ferry service on the Willamette River, and am proud to be endorsed by Susan Bladholm of Frog Ferry.n
I believe we need to reduce demand for driving.
It is not enough to solely encourage more decarbonized transportation.
I support Portland’s goal of achieving 25% of trips by bike by 2030.
We need more diverters on Neighborhood Greenways and more physically protected bike lanes. My vision is building 50 miles of protected bicycles lanes per year in Portland. We are currently building about four per year. I support programs subsidizing e-bike use and purchase.
We need to make bicycling the obvious choice for trips that are less than 20 minutes away by bike. We can do this with more separated and direct infrastructure. NE Sandy Boulevard is the perfect street for this. When we create separated bicycling infrastructure, we can slow down car speeds and also make it safer for pedestrians. Instead of crossing five big car lanes on Sandy, you would have to cross two to three.
I am working with older Portlanders to support a safer sidewalk campaign.
As a person with a disability, I know first hand how hard it can be to navigate sidewalks that are broken up by tree roots and neglect.
How will you increase EQUITY by leading with race in the City of Portland?
I believe that institutional racism is real and can only be dismantled by anti-racist policy, anti-racist planning, anti-racist infrastructure, and anti-racist law enforcement. I also agree that we should not criminalize poverty.
As an elected official, I will help increase equity by stepping up to empower leaders within our community who can precisely identify the practices that have led to inequities, and who can present and execute on plans to erase inequities. Our city is achieving that now in District 2 projects like Albina Vision Trust and George Park. In George Park, organizers do lead with race and our racial justice-oriented elected officials have chosen to listen and invest. When there is a properly-invested-in park within 5-10 minutes walk or bike for people, surrounded by complete streets that center pedestrians, they will walk. They will consider biking. They will create a demand for transportation infrastructure beyond the automobiles driving by the park.
Recently Albina Vision Trust organized testimonies and presentations to the City Council in a way that led with race. The Mayor responded in part by saying that as a multi-generational Oregonian it was hard to hear some of the things that were said. When I met with an AVT leader, she described how the planning systems had been inverted due to race-first planning: before the city secures funds to move forward, AVT signs off. In the past, we were leading with race, the white race, which said, “this project will move forward when we determine that it will benefit Black people.” That orientation has been flipped, and is now being celebrated. And that project directly intervenes on race-first transportation planning (white supremacist transportation planning), directly intervenes on an area that is built for a highway first, and whatever else second.
I am on the record that I will follow the example and lead of these kinds of race-forward, equity-driven projects currently underway in D2.
During a previous tenure as an elected Dixie School District Board Trustee, I listened to Black residents in my liberal, wealthy area who said, “We need to change the name of the school district from Dixie, which was named after the Confederacy in the Civil War.” I agreed, and I led a successful fight which required 14 votes to pass over 12 months, and which exposed me and my family to attacks and backlash. We persevered and celebrated our victory in 2019. I later moved back to Portland as soon as I won full custody of my child, Calliope, in 2021.
How will you work with Portland's business leaders - as an ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT strategy - to ensure they understand the benefits of and support investments in safe, complete networks for walking, rolling, bicycling and riding public transit?
I will work strategically, energetically, and persistently with our business leaders to move wisely toward a future that benefits the entire community. It is critical that elected leaders act as ambassadors for the economic development of the City of Portland by putting forth a public vision for complete networks of transportation. Certain sectors of our business community express concern with population decline and revenue decline, along with lack of housing. I will be an elected leader who intervenes in this conversation to build business support for complete-system or complete-street approaches to building the future we want. Now is not the time to pull back, but to commit together. We have many of the fundamentals and practices in place to take positive steps together, but we have many pitfalls approaching if we fail to properly plan and execute together.
When major Business summits are being planned, I will be someone willing to plan and advocate for transportation pitches alongside business leaders.