Esther León
Council - District 3
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Q1 A city to learn from
What city has an approach to transportation that Portland should learn from? What specific policies, funding, design, etc., could be adopted to work here?
Montréal is a city that I think Portland ought to model itself after in terms of its overall transportation policy, funding, and design scope. The amount of high quality bike and transit infrastructure being added to their network is astonishing in contrast to the comparatively glacial pace of Portland. Montréal just seems to deal with less bottlenecks, particularly around negotiating "right-of-ways," that allow stated their visions to become reality more quickly with fewer cost overruns.
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Q2 Got it right, got it wrong
What is one specific Portland transportation project (built, abandoned, under construction, or proposed) that you think Portland got right, and one that Portland got wrong?
The amount of social and economic damage that our freeways have caused makes i5 the obvious answer. As bad as i405 is in terms of slicing the city, it is at least more thoughtful in stitching the urban fabric together through many bridges (with the new Flanders crossing being a particularly positive highlight).
The city got the MAX Yellow Line right in its design, giving Interstate Ave. a road diet while building the transit infrastructure the corridor needed to develop high density housing. Extending the MAX into Vancouver would allow the Yellow Line to live up to its full potential.
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Q3 Progress on biking, walking & safety
Is Portland making progress on getting more people biking and walking, and on making streets safer? What do you think is behind that trajectory?
I think we have unfortunately fallen far behind on this. Portland used to lead with bold vision, yet we now seem to be stuck in a malaise. Part of this is cultural, with gentrification and COVID leading to an increase in driving culture, while the other is political will. Sadly, the City of Portland seems resigned to decline rather than seizing it as a motivating call to action.
While I think PBOT generally does a solid job when it actually builds bike and pedestrian infrastructure, the implementation is too slow and doesn't seem to follow a strong, cohesive vision. Our bike network is still too fragmented and piecemeal. A good example of this would be the bikeway on Washington starting at 76th Ave and going up to 82nd. It starts off as solid infrastructure and then suddenly drops off. It makes me wonder who would actually use it when it feels like more of a demo of an idea rather than something applicable to someone's day-to-day reality. You can find examples like this all over the city, great ideas that unfortunately manifest as half-measures in their implementation. We have incredibly talented people at PBOT that unfortunately seem held back by a lack of political will to do the bold thing. The current City Council has a role in this too, with little in the way of bike legislation passed or even proposed since they took the oath in 2025.
It would be easy for the Council to say, "we just don't have the money," but I think it is more of a limitation of imagination than anything else. Look at "Better Naito" as an example and what Better Block was able to accomplish in 2015. What started off as safety cones eventually became solid infrastructure. We can implement pilot projects all over the city to demonstrate their value with little to no expense. We can alleviate the fears of drivers by pointing to a project's temporary "pilot" status while tracking 'real-world' (rather than theoretical) traffic data.
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Q4 How they get around
How do you actually get around Portland day-to-day? Commuting, errands, evening plans, etc. What is the last trip you took by bike or transit, and what's stopping you from doing more of your trips that way?
I bike, walk, use transit, and drive. My jobs (I work in both Wilsonville and Gresham while living in the Brooklyn neighborhood of District 3) make it difficult not to drive for work, but I do my best to never default to driving in my day-to-day. I am always prioritizing biking or transit whenever possible. My experience informs me of just how much our regional transit network falls short of being able to connect people effectively to job centers outside of driving.