Steve Novick
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?
I have been to Copenhagen to see their bike lane network (It was a boondoggle financed by Big Bicycle!), but I’d look to cities that have had recent surges in bicycling, such as Paris and New York. Paris has invested heavily in protected bike lanes and established car-free zones. I know New York has invested in bike lanes too, but my impression from articles I have read is that their “bike boom” has been greater than one would expect from the bike lane investment alone. I’m interested in learning more. I suspect that one thing that helps fuel the New York bicycling boom is that there are factors other than bike lanes that make both biking and walking safer than it is here, and one possible factor is that New York has 3,000 speed and red light cameras.
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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?
A project that Portland is getting right is the 82nd Avenue improvements currently under construction. Trimet’s line 72 bus line is the busiest in the city, and it serves a very diverse community including working people, students, and families. The sidewalks and other improvements along 82nd will make the street safer for everyone, but especially for pedestrians and cyclists. And investing in bus rapid transit will make transit a much more realistic choice for the people who are living and working along 82nd. I joined others in successfully pushing the Portland Clean Energy Fund (PCEF) to invest in the bus rapid transit investments on 82nd. I think this investment is a model for how PCEF should be investing in transportation, and as we move into the next 5-year PCEF spending plan over the next couple of years, I’ll be advocating for PCEF to invest much more in transportation to meet our climate goals as well as the needs of PCEF priority populations.
I think Portland’s main failing in transportation has more to do with neglect than with individual projects. For decades, leadership in this city neglected our streets, and that shows in terms of the poor condition of our pavement and the high number of unsafe intersections. I think a big part of the reason for these failures lies with the commission form of government, which created silos rather than requiring city leaders to see the whole. The new Transportation Utility Fee led and passed by Councilor Clark in our new form of government will help to address the backlog of safety projects and prevent our major streets from going back to gravel – but we have a long way to go.
One specific thing I think Portland got wrong was allowing the original streetcar lines to die. I know it would have been fighting against the trend, but I wish leaders had found some way to preserve them.
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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?
The 2025 Bicycle Count report from the Portland Bureau of Transportation found that the number of people biking remained steady for the second year in a row (see https://www.portland.gov/transportation/walking-biking-transit-safety/bicycle-counts and https://bikeportland.org/2026/04/10/city-reports-steady-not-stagnant-bicycle-use-in-2025-count-report-399860). But before that, we had years of declining numbers.
I think a number of factors have driven declining and now steady numbers. The COVID pandemic really changed where and when people work, and many people who used to commute by bike are probably working remotely without any commute at all. Or, people who work hybrid schedules may only commute two or three days/week rather than five. And along with these different work schedules may come more complicated and less repetitive trip patterns that combine different patterns of errands and travel on different days, disrupting bicycling efforts. (At the same time, it makes sense to me that COVID may have increased recreational cycling, but this perhaps doesn’t translate into the same number of trips as bike commuting.) Infrastructure is also part of the problem - there are places in the city that lack basic infrastructure that makes bicycling easier and safer. However, it doesn’t really make sense that we have continued to make improvements in bicycling infrastructure while seeing a reduction in mode share from ten years ago.
I think one important factor is making the streets safer and thus more welcoming to people who want to ride bikes but are afraid to. I am proud that the Fixing Our Streets gas tax that I championed has helped strengthen Safe Routes to School and made a lot of specific intersections safer. But my impression is that driver behavior got worse during the pandemic and has not improved. One enforcement strategy we have to use more is red light and speed cameras – and one city that performs better than Portland on traffic fatality rates is New York City, which has ⅓ of the fatalities per capita that we do. There are a variety of reasons for that - but one important factor is that they have 3,000 speed and red light cameras, and we have something like 40, even though we have a third of the lane miles as New York City. I am constantly nagging PBOT about whether we can increase the number of speed and red light cameras that we have. PBOT hopes that with their new, hopefully more competent and efficient, contractor, it might be possible to add more cameras without costing the city any additional money. The courts are another possible barrier since they process the tickets given by cameras, and need the resources to do so, but I’ve talked to the Multnomah County court administrator and she thinks the Legislature should be willing to provide the courts with the staff needed for additional cameras. I need to check in with PBOT to see if we are in a position where we have a basis for asking the next Legislature for those resources. In fact I’ll send that email right now.
I’d note that I asked a similar question at a Bike Happy Hour in 2024, and I was really impressed by the thoughtful responses from BikePortland readers in the comment section of the article: https://bikeportland.org/2024/10/17/council-candidate-steve-novick-has-some-questions-for-the-bike-community-390690
As you know, Roger Geller thinks that part of our problem has been that bicycling has just kind of dropped out of the public discourse from where we were 10 years ago. I want to try Roger’’s multi-pronged proposal to restore mode share, including an organized framework of rides.
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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 take the MAX Orange Line downtown to City Hall whenever I can. This last week I rode it – two days? Three days? One of those two, I think. This is the first time in a life that has included lots of transit use (the #45 bus from Multnomah Village to City Hall during my 2013-16 term, the subway in D.C. and before than in NYC) that I have done the “park and ride” thing; I live in the southern end of the Woodstock neighborhood, and I park at the SE Tacoma/Johnson Creek station. I love taking the Max because I get some time on the train to check email and think – and I don’t have to pay for parking downtown. But depending on what’s happening in any given week I sometimes or often drive my car downtown. This is mainly due to schedule constraints or commitments that require getting somewhere else that isn’t easily accessible by transit. As a City Councilor I often don’t have a lot of control over my schedule, and sometimes that drives me to drive.
When I’m not commuting, I usually drive. That’s partly because for the first time in my adult life I don’t live within easy walking distance of restaurants and grocery stores. I needed a 1-story place with a yard, or access to one, for my corgi Barley - corgis really shouldn’t climb stairs much - and the only place I could find was a mile south of the Woodstock town center.
I don’t ride a bike myself. I tried learning when I was a kid, kept falling off, and gave up. I’d try to learn now but I am worried that if I fell and injured my right arm I would be totally incapacitated. But I am deeply committed to making it more possible for anyone who can ride to do so. The 2024 BikePortland article I referenced earlier includes a concise summary of some of my proudest pro-biking and pro-walking accomplishments from my term as City Commissioner (2013-2016): https://bikeportland.org/2024/10/17/council-candidate-steve-novick-has-some-questions-for-the-bike-community-390690. When I led the coalition to pass a ten cent gas tax to invest in transportation maintenance and safety, led the launch of Biketown, and supported the Better Naito project, I did so because biking is good for everyone. The individual cyclist gets exercise and saves money, and sometimes avoids getting stuck in traffic. We all benefit because there are fewer cars on the streets creating traffic, and our carbon emissions are lower. And bicyclists, by being healthier, drive down premium costs for anyone in the same health insurance network!