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Portland should focus on building a transportation system that is reliable, affordable, and practical for how people move around the city. We have invested heavily in transportation, but residents still experience poor road conditions, unreliable transit, congestion, and gaps in pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure. One example is our system was built with a focus of moving folks to downtown and as our economy has shifted, we need to change the pattern of moving people around.

My approach would start with maintenance and accountability. Before committing to expensive new projects, the City should establish clear priorities for maintaining roads, bridges, sidewalks, traffic signals, and existing transit infrastructure. Every major transportation investment should have a transparent budget, timeline, measurable outcomes, and regular public reporting.

For pedestrians and cyclists, we should continue investing in safe connections between neighborhoods, schools, business districts, and transit, with particular attention to areas that currently lack basic infrastructure. Transportation design should reflect the needs of the specific neighborhood and corridor rather than applying the same solution everywhere.

Finally, transportation policy should be connected to housing and economic development. New housing, small businesses, schools, and employment centers need reliable transportation access. We should use transportation investments to strengthen neighborhood business districts and make it easier for residents to reach jobs and essential services.

Denmark and Amsterdam are international cities that provide great models for Portland to learn from, but within the United States, I would look to Chicago. The City of Chicago is now seeing the benefits of its Building a New Chicago program started in 2012, a focused, strategic initiative that coupled improving transportation infrastructure, expanding parks and recreation, and improving water, sewer, and other public works infrastructure together.

All three cities demonstrate that the most effective way for cities to improve transportation over the long term is through a balanced, strategic approach that rests on four core pillars: improving public transit; enhancing active mobility and pedestrian infrastructure equitably; providing an integrated, seamless experience for users across transportation modes; and environmental protections and sustainability.

In Chicago especially, the city has spent the past decade modernizing the Chicago Transit Authority and expanding services; improving and resurfacing over two thousand miles of sidewalks (while replacing hundreds of miles of water and sewer lines at the same time); and adding over 200 miles of bike lanes (esp. protected and buffered bike lanes) and several thousand bike racks. This effort has revitalized the city and completely transformed its waterfront.

I think Portland could learn quite a bit from such an integrated approach.

It’s been said many times over the years, but I think Amsterdam, Netherlands, is a great city for Portland to learn from when it comes to transportation. Portland has already adopted many of the ideas that have made Amsterdam successful, including prioritizing designing streets for safe bicycle travel and creating connected bike networks that can make biking just as fast, or even faster than driving.

I think we should continue investing in infrastructure that separates bicycle traffic from cars on busy streets, while also creating more bike and pedestrian only streets. Hopefully, someday, we can even create entire bike and pedestrian only districts. I believe these investments can help make biking and walking the preferred options for more people making local trips.

It’s difficult to overstate how transformative Paris’ transportation policies have been over the past decade. Paris has redefined “livability” in its city, not by the convenience of a car commute, but rather by public health, street vibrancy, and advancing its pollution reduction and climate action goals.

Instead of widening car infrastructure without any hope of being able to pay for its ongoing maintenance, Paris has planted street trees and developed local pocket parks. Instead of being satisfied with peek-a-boo bike lanes, Paris has invested in protected cycling infrastructure. Political leaders have withstood the backlash from business groups and local drivers, and it has paid off. As reported by NPR after Paris’ spring 2025 elections, “...66% of Parisians voted to convert 500 more streets into pedestrian zones, marking one of the biggest shifts in how the city moves.”

Many other cities have success stories to share, but few cities have, within the last decade, demonstrated the level of commitment and political courage that has resulted in such a significant transformation.

Dublin Ireland. hop on hop off service. streets wide enough to accommodate pedestrians buses and trains and I do not remember where the bikes were but I was never afraid of being run over by them. I don't remember private cars either

Seattle offers an approach Portland can learn from because it treats transportation as an interconnected system rather than focusing on one mode of travel.

I support that balanced approach. Portland should continue improving bicycle and pedestrian safety, but those investments should be considered alongside maintaining our streets and bridges, improving transit, reducing dangerous intersections, and keeping people and goods moving efficiently.

I also believe transportation projects should be evaluated individually. A protected bike lane may be the right solution on one street, while a neighborhood greenway, safer crossing, improved signal or other design may work better somewhere else. The goal should be a safe, well-maintained transportation system that works for everyone, regardless of how they choose to get around.

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.

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.

Seville, Spain. What stands out to me is not simply that Seville built good bicycle infrastructure, but that it treated a connected network as something to complete. The city built an initial 80-kilometer network in about two years and expanded it to 120 kilometers within four years. Cycling went from roughly 0.5% to 6% of trips between 2007 and 2011.

Portland already has an ambitious vision. The Bicycle Plan for 2030 calls for a 962-mile “World-Class” network, and Portland has made substantial progress. But the city’s most recent comprehensive progress report found that only 28% of the full World-Class Network was complete or funded at that time.

I think the lesson from Seville is to turn that remaining vision into a completion program: identify the critical missing links and dangerous intersections, establish a realistic timeline, dedicate multi-year funding, and incorporate those improvements whenever streets are paved or reconstructed. A world-class network should mean that someone can travel on a low-stress route across Portland without the safe infrastructure disappearing when they reach a major arterial or intersection. Portland does not need another bicycle vision. We need to finish the ambitious one we already adopted.

Barcelona. Portland could learn from Barcelona’s superblock model of using street hierarchy, traffic diversion, and speed management to reduce through-traffic on neighborhood streets while maintaining access for residents, deliveries, emergency services, and transit. I would adapt that incrementally through Portland’s neighborhood greenways and Metro’s Community Quick-Build Guide, using diverters, chicanes, curb extensions, safer crossings, and other low-cost treatments. With budget constraints, I would pursue coordinated funding through Metro, TriMet, Multnomah County and the State and empower neighborhood associations to help identify and support projects. Projects should be evaluated using speed, crash, traffic-volume, and mode-share data before scaling.

New York City has made significant progress by giving people more practical options for getting around without a car. Portland is obviously a different city, but we can learn from its investments in protected bike infrastructure, safer intersections, pedestrian improvements, and transit priority.

Portland already has a strong foundation for biking, but too many routes are disconnected or become uncomfortable at exactly the places where people need protection most. We should prioritize closing those gaps, building protected infrastructure on major corridors, improving neighborhood greenways, and creating safe connections to schools, businesses, parks, and transit. We also need to make sure our transportation funding reflects the goals we’ve already adopted. If we want more Portlanders to bike, it needs to be a safe, convenient and realistic option for everyday trips.

venice, they have rivers through all their streets, i think we should start building rivers through our city all the way from like the sandy river and just have water roads to the willamete that would be awesome, everyone get around by jet ski

One project I think Portland got right is the 70s Greenway: Cully Connector. The project is creating a safer connection through Cully and Roseway, with new sidewalks and bicycle facilities, safer crossings, traffic calming, and connections to neighborhood schools, parks, and businesses. It is also being coordinated with the larger Cully Public Works project so that the neighborhood can address multiple infrastructure needs at the same time.

I like this approach because it focuses on practical neighborhood improvements rather than one large transportation project. It addresses basic infrastructure, pedestrian safety, biking, traffic speeds, and access to local destinations at the same time. Importantly, the Cully project also prioritizes streets based on factors such as equity and connections to parks, schools, and transit.

Portland certainly got the Frequent Express (FX) bus line on Division right. While not quite the bus rapid transit system we need, it has proven to be a good model for similar blended bus routes across the city.

The Springwater Corridor continues to be a struggling boondoggle of a project. I think it represents one of those transportation projects that had (and still has) great goals, but poor planning. We failed to plan for human impacts and worst case scenarios. But I still haven’t given up on the idea of continuing to improve the Corridor, and I think the problems still plaguing it can be fixed.

I think Tilikum Crossing was a bold project that Portland got right. It’s a beautiful design, and when you’re riding or walking across it, you really notice how quiet and peaceful a bridge can be without cars.

I think the riverside path on the west side of the river, south of downtown, could have been better. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad it’s there, but it doesn’t have a natural flow and has too many twists and turns, which makes it less enjoyable for biking. It also doesn’t seem very well integrated into the neighborhoods it runs alongside.

I think a great trail system should safely bring you into the surrounding neighborhoods so you can discover them and comfortably ride through them as well. This path often feels like you’re being forced to stay on it because getting off the trail and into the surrounding neighborhoods isn’t convenient or intuitive.

Right: For decades, 82nd Avenue has been one of the most dangerous corridors within Portland’s borders, and this was primarily because the legacy highway was on the wrong agency’s list of assets. Given that 82nd Avenue is the host of the most-used bus line in the State of Oregon, it makes sense to shift from a car-centric corridor to a transit-first corridor. There is a lot of work yet to be done to make this corridor everything that it can be; but every median, every street tree that is placed along 82nd Ave is a step in the right direction.

Wrong: Free parking.

Max redline to the airport. Bioswales on main roads, takes away parking , bus stops, and creates unnecessary hazards

One project I think Portland got right is the SE Hawthorne redesign. The city chose a design that balanced pedestrian safety, transit, vehicle traffic and bicycle connectivity. The results are significant reductions in speeding, improved bus travel times and reliability, and relatively small impacts on vehicle travel times.

Portland got the Barbur access to transit project wrong. Four access projects were originally planned, but because of cost overruns, two were ultimately removed from the project, while the remaining work still finished way over the original bid for four.

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.

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.

One project I think Portland is getting right is 82nd Avenue. Taking ownership of 82nd from the state and committing substantial investment to safety, paving, crossings, accessibility, transit access and the public realm matters not only because the corridor needed repair, but because it is a question of geographic equity. East Portland has historically had fewer complete streets and has experienced some of the city’s highest traffic-safety risks. We should be willing to put major capital investment into parts of Portland that went too long without the basic infrastructure other neighborhoods take for granted.

Powell Boulevard represents what we got wrong. For decades we allowed a state highway to function as a major neighborhood street while many parts of the corridor lacked basic pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure. Important improvements are now underway, particularly on Outer Powell, but residents should not have had to wait this long for sidewalks, safe crossings and protected bicycle facilities.

To me, the lesson from 82nd and Powell is that transportation equity is geographic. A person’s ability to walk, bike, take transit or simply cross the street safely should not depend on which part of Portland they live in. I want us to invest in the places where the gaps and safety risks are greatest, rather than continuing to reproduce the uneven infrastructure patterns we inherited.

I think Portland got the NE Glisan Paving and Safety Project right because it combines paving, ADA improvements, safer crossings, a neighborhood greenway crossing, and buffered bike lanes into one project. With transportation dollars getting tighter, this is the kind of approach I want to see more of. When we are already investing in a street, we should look for opportunities to address multiple safety and mobility needs at the same time.

I think we got the NE Broadway Pave & Paint project wrong. Delivery and service vehicles routinely stop in the bike lane, forcing people biking around them and into traffic. That defeats the purpose of having a dedicated lane. We need to think about bike lanes, parking, loading and enforcement together when we design these projects.

Portland got the Blumenauer Bridge right. It created a dedicated connection for people walking and biking across I-84 and closed a major gap in the central city transportation network. Projects like that demonstrate how infrastructure can make biking and walking safer and more practical.

Where Portland has fallen short is on 82nd Avenue. For too long, one of Portland’s most important corridors was also one of its most dangerous. I’m encouraged that the City has taken ownership of 82nd and is now making significant safety investments there, but Portlanders shouldn’t have to wait decades for safer crossings, sidewalks and bicycle connections on streets where we know people are being seriously injured or killed.

i feel like the light rail is built to close too freeways in some places makes it difficult to expand lanes, i feel like if we built on top of the freight train on i-84.

I would challenge the premise that Portland is making enough progress in getting people to bike and walk. We have made some meaningful improvements to street safety, but we have not done enough to get more Portlanders choosing to bike or walk for everyday trips.

Portland's own 2025 bicycle count found that the number of people biking remained essentially flat for the second consecutive year. BIKETOWN ridership also declined in 2025, despite the expansion of the e-bike fleet. That tells me that simply building more bike infrastructure does not automatically mean more people will use it.

I do think there are examples where Portland's street redesigns are making a measurable difference. For example, the SE Hawthorne improvements reduced speeding, improved bus travel times, and created better conditions for people walking and biking. The city has also reported meaningful safety improvements on several high-crash corridors.

The bigger question is why aren't more people choosing these modes? I think convenience, safety, connectivity, and reliability all matter. A bike lane that ends unexpectedly, a dangerous intersection, poor lighting, or a long gap between safe crossings can make an entire trip feel inaccessible. Walking has a similar challenge: Portland needs more continuous sidewalks, safer crossings, better lighting, and better connections between neighborhoods, transit, schools, and business districts.

I would focus less on simply counting how many miles of bike lanes we build and more on whether people are actually changing how they travel. We should set measurable goals for walking, biking, and transit use, track them by neighborhood, and invest where the infrastructure is most likely to change behavior.

Portland should absolutely continue making streets safer, but the goal should be bigger than infrastructure. We need to make walking and biking safe, convenient, and practical enough that more people actually choose them.

Portland has made modest progress on street safety, but we need more convincing progress on getting more people biking and walking.

I’m encouraged that traffic deaths fell from 69 in 2023 to 39 in 2025. This is a significant improvement, and the people doing safety work deserve credit. But 39 deaths are still 39 too many, and more than half of the people killed in 2025 were pedestrians. Meanwhile, the city’s bicycle counts were essentially flat for a second year. I would not call that the growth Portland says it wants.

The trajectories we’re seeing represent both piecemeal success and systemic inertia. Safer crossings, lower speeds, and better bikeways help. But a person deciding whether to bike or walk a routine trip experiences the whole route: the uncomfortable crossing, the gap in a bike lane, the missing sidewalk, or the facility that is poorly maintained. One good project cannot overcome several places along the trip that feel unsafe.

If elected, I would do everything I could to help Councilors Loretta Smith and Mitch Green obtain funding for their Sidewalk Improvement and Paving Program (SIPP) initiative and push it through to the success it deserves. SIPP is one of the few, comprehensive transportation-related strategies that the “new” City Council worked on, but it has stalled out for too long.

No. I think we are regressing, continuing a sad trend that I’ve watched unfold over the past 10 years. When I moved to Portland, I was so excited to live in a city that took biking seriously as a mode of transportation. Seeing all the bikes parked outside the bars on a Saturday night was such a thrill. I bought a bike and went without a car for more than 10 years. I was committed to it.

I think some of that came from the nostalgic feelings I had about biking as a child. I was a kid in the 1980s and ’90s, and biking was how I got around and experienced freedom. I explored everywhere on my bike, even though there was virtually no biking infrastructure where I grew up, and no adult told me I couldn’t.

I worry that the younger generations haven’t always had that same experience. Between more protective parenting, social media, and changing childhood habits, many kids that are now adults may never have experienced a bicycle as a real form of transportation and independence. If you don’t grow up with that experience, getting on a bike as an adult may not have the same appeal or spark the same sense of joy and freedom that it did for me.

I also think the smartphone era has made biking feel more precarious. I don’t ride nearly as much as I once did because I’m increasingly concerned about distracted drivers not seeing me. That’s an unfortunate trend that even great bike infrastructure may not be able to fully address.

Infrastructure is important, but so is rebuilding a culture around biking. Encouraging children to start biking when they’re young, giving them the freedom to ride independently and explore their world on their terms, and supporting biking as a family activity could help make bicycles an important part of daily life in Portland again, not just as recreation, but as transportation and a healthy source of independence and freedom.

One of my signature pieces of legislation from my short first term was recommitting the city to ending traffic deaths and serious injuries on our streets, after years of rising, senseless deaths. This process, which I was able to organize as a unanimous vote, secured significant administrative and fiscal resources for street design improvements and safety measures. I also was able to direct the implementation of some nimble, low-cost safety measures like curb daylighting and ending right turns on red at our most dangerous intersections. I can say that at the city level there is progress, but it’s not enough and the work is not done. Just this week I spoke to the mother of a middle school student who was struck and injured on her bike by a driver making a turn at a low-visibility intersection. We have continued to see traffic fatalities, including in my district. I am confident that the trajectory is changing, but this is not an issue when you can say it’s “good enough,” when people are still being hurt and killed on our streets.

yes. i like the stop lights / crosswalks and the timing on the changing. more People less parking.

Portland is making some progress on street safety, but bicycle commuting is down and remains is below pre-pandemic levels.

There are likely several reasons. More people are working remotely since the pandemic is certainly a big part of it. I also think we should look at whether public safety, street homelessness, and reduced activity in parts of downtown have discouraged some people from biking and walking.

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.

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.

https://bikeportland.org/2024/11/15/roger-geller-has-a-plan-to-spur-portlands-cycling-renaissance-391332

I think the trajectory is mixed. Portland continues to build safer bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, and recent traffic-safety data are encouraging, but one of the key performance indicators has to be whether more people are actually walking and biking.

On bicycling, we have not yet reversed the decline. Portland’s bicycle counts rose through the mid-2010s, declined substantially afterward, and have only recently begun to stabilize. At locations counted in both 2024 and 2025, bicycle volumes increased just 1%. That is better than continued decline, but it is not yet the growth we need.

I think that matters because infrastructure mileage alone cannot be our measure of success. Portland’s own Bicycle Plan treats bicycle mode share, network completion, connectivity, safety, and access to low-stress routes as performance measures. We should be asking not only “how many miles did we build?” but “did more people use the system, did they feel safe using it, and can they actually reach everyday destinations?”

I think the current trajectory reflects several things: remote work changed commute patterns, but the decline in bicycling began before the pandemic; parts of the network are still disconnected or stressful; and cost and availability have affected BIKETOWN. Portland has made substantial infrastructure investments, but we have not yet translated those investments into sustained ridership growth.

For me, the next phase is about outcomes. Complete the low-stress network, maintain it well, make it useful for ordinary trips, and then measure whether more Portlanders are actually choosing to walk and bike.

We are not doing enough to make Portland’s streets safe, and that needs to remain the starting point for Vision Zero. Recent deaths have reinforced the need to focus on the conditions that make streets dangerous, particularly for people walking and biking. The City has made meaningful investments in traffic calming, safer crossings, speed management and bike buses, but we need to turn those efforts into a connected system that prevents serious crashes. We also need better ways to measure how people are traveling as trips have become more distributed since COVID. I want to focus limited resources on the High Crash Network, measure whether projects actually reduce speeds and crashes, and build on what works.

We’re making progress on street safety, but we aren’t making enough progress on getting more people to bike. Traffic deaths declined from 69 in 2023 to 56 in 2024 and 39 in 2025, which is encouraging. But bicycle counts remained essentially flat last year, increasing just 1% at locations counted in both 2024 and 2025.

Portland has set a goal of having 25% of trips made by bicycle by 2030, and we are clearly not on track to meet it. I think one reason is that our bicycle network still has too many gaps. A protected bike lane is only as useful as the connections on either end of it. If we want more Portlanders to choose biking, particularly people who aren’t already confident cyclists, we need connected routes, safer intersections and crossings, and infrastructure that makes biking a practical and comfortable choice from the beginning of a trip to the end.

i mean there is more and more homeless every year, so they usually bike and walk, there is always a silver lining to every tragedy

Day to day, I use a mix of walking, transit, and driving depending on what I need to accomplish.

I live in Montavilla, so I walk quite a bit within my neighborhood to local businesses, meetings, and other nearby activities. I also take the bus, including for trips into other parts of Portland. In fact, I’m taking the bus today.

For errands that take me outside my neighborhood, particularly grocery shopping and other tasks where I need to carry things or make multiple stops, I generally drive. That is the reality for many Portlanders: our transportation choices depend on where we are going, how much time we have, what we are carrying, and whether there is a convenient alternative.

My most recent transit trip was a bus trip, and I would like to see transit become a more practical option for more of my daily trips. The biggest barriers are reliability, travel time, and convenience. If taking transit requires significantly more time or multiple transfers compared with driving, people are going to choose their car.

I also think Portland should focus on making walking and biking

more useful for everyday trips not just recreational trips.

I usually walk or take the bus when commuting downtown or running errands, but I also drive quite a bit (a Hyundai Ioniq 5 EV that I’ve grown to love). I take care of my mom, and since she stopped driving a few years ago, I chauffeur her around to wherever she needs to go.

I would like to get back to biking and skateboarding more often, but I still need to get in better shape for that.

I used to ride my bike almost exclusively until I injured my foot in 2017. I couldn’t walk for a few months, and afterward I stopped riding because I was afraid of re-injuring it. Before that, I rode my bike from Kerns to my job in Lake Oswego every day! Eventually, I got a car, and since then biking has become mostly a recreational activity for me.

Today, I commute by car, although I’ve been saying for the past year that I’m going to start biking to work again. I only work about five miles from home. The problem is that I’ve gotten used to the convenience of driving and being able to get places more quickly. I’m also still fearful of distracted drivers on their phones.

Another factor is that I see so few people riding bikes on many streets now that I worry drivers are less accustomed to looking out for them than they were years ago, when cyclists seemed to be everywhere. I’m also more hesitant to lock my bike outside a business when mine is the only bike there.

I need to get over some of these fears and start riding again. I know I won’t regret it. In fact, this Q&A might have been just the push I needed to get back on the road.

I ride the 14 bus to and from work multiple times a week. I ride my bike to get around the neighborhood with my kids, and I am lucky to live in a neighborhood where I can easily walk to the grocery store, library, and other essential places. My boys ride their bikes to and from school, and I want more kids to be able to do that. And honestly, I want to feel more secure about how safe they are while they are making that short trip.

By car. I work in wilsonville and care for my mother in Happy Valley. I plan my errands around those commutes. Last bus ride was to pick up my car from the shop. I prefer to walk. But bus bike and walking all take too long. My life won't be this way for ever.

I drive an old ’97 pickup to work. I've been remodeling my house, so the truck has been practical, and frankly, it's what I can afford right now. Around my neighborhood, I walk quite a bit, and when my wife and I go out for the evening, we use Uber.

I sometimes ride my bike for fun along the river, but biking isn't practical for my daily commute because my work is about 30 miles away.

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.

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!

I use a mix of transit, walking, biking, and driving. I usually take the bus or MAX to work, and I genuinely enjoy it—I find transit relaxing and a good way to decompress. I also walk almost every day to do errands around my neighborhood, usually with my dog.

I used to bike much more regularly. After 2020, I worked from home for about four years, my commute disappeared, and my bike gradually fell into disrepair. I have not fully rebuilt that habit yet.

The biking infrastructure around my home is actually pretty good. I live close to the Springwater Corridor, MAX, and neighborhood greenways, so I can bike locally or bring my bike onto transit pretty easily. The trips I still rely most on a car for are trips to Vancouver to help care for my mom.

For me, the biggest barrier to biking more right now is honestly just getting my bike back into working order and rebuilding the habit.

I live in the inner Eastside, close to most of what I need day-to-day, so I usually walk first when a trip is practical. I ride my bike several times a week when the distance makes sense, and use the bus and MAX as well. My last transit trip was taking the MAX from Hollywood to the Lloyd District during an Oregon Walks Promenade walk from the Grotto toward downtown. I had detoured for a political town hall and used the MAX to catch back up with the group before walking home. I tend to use transit as a last resort because irregular service means I have to strategically time my trips. I prefer biking when I can because I can leave when I want. I also recognize that my ability to rely primarily on walking is not an option for many Portlanders, which is why reliable transit and safe, convenient alternatives to driving matter.

I primarily drive to work at City Hall, walk for many trips in my neighborhood, and use TriMet when it works for my schedule and destination. My most recent transit trip was a couple of weeks ago to run errands before meeting with my campaign team.

For me, the biggest factors are time, convenience, and having a safe and practical route to where I’m going. If we want more Portlanders to bike, walk, or take transit, those options need to work for people’s everyday lives. That means reliable transit and safe, connected routes that make it easier to choose something other than driving.

i usually walk on water. i haven't been on on public transit or bike in a while which is sad. i got a car so it made me lazy, i also have health issues so its not as fun, if i had a wife she might be able to convince me to go biking. i plan on making trimet free, so that will help people use it more maybe a little, tourists and elderly will be to use it more, its always the worst as tourist getting off a plane and then having to figure out how to pay for a train ticket, like stepping in dog shit when you just got a new pair of nikes

Tokyo, or japan in the effect that you can get anywhere in the country and everyone from non profits to commercial groups to regions are paying for it with subsidies given so smaller stops can be added, and the majority of the system is handicap friendly.

Post pandemic with work patterns changing, I’m not sure if there is one city we can emulate but I’m open to learning more from advocates and experts. There are specific policies here and there that we should consider such as congestion pricing and alternative ways to fund transit. We are already closing and repurposing streets. We were once a leader in alternative modes for cities our size with bike routes and a radial transit system (most routes going into Portland); we need to re-evaluate and update these policies as well as transit finance. Last I heard, we are at a 2% bike mode split and need to focus on how we re-invigorate bike travel.

Portland should get serious about moving toward a transportation system that does not automatically build car-focused roads as the venue for sharing public space with cyclists and pedestrians. Cities like Barcelona have used superblocks to route through-traffic to the perimeter and reclaim interior streets as plazas and slow local space. Filtered permeability, using modal filters so bikes and pedestrians pass through but cars take the long way around, does something similar at a smaller, cheaper scale. We should learn where in Portland's complete neighborhoods this could work, particularly in areas we're upzoning, so density and street design are being planned together rather than treating the road network as fixed.

Portland can learn from New York City, its DOT and the MTA’s Central Business District congestion pricing program that launched in January 2025. This program has demonstrated the kind of transformation that’s possible when a good policy is studied for years reaches implementation and is allowed to flourish when leaders are committed to its success rather than abandoning it after some criticism. NYC’s congestion pricing program is the first of its kind in the nation, generating $50 million in its first month and more than $550 million net revenue in its first year. Its also fighting off President Donald Trump’s attacks on the program, calling it “unlawful,” while the courts eventually struck this down. The program remains operational.

The program’s early results include decreases in vehicular traffic and car-related crashes and injuries, with increases in pedestrian traffic, business activity, and transit ridership in the district. With lowered vehicle volumes on some corridors, the DOT has also been able to redesign and reconfigure streets to install permanent and protected bicycle infrastructure, making it possible to expand their bike network. Getting cars of the road is a good thing.

Revenue from congestion pricing has also funded complementary innovative programs like small business incentives to shift their delivery schedules to off-peak hours for reducing daytime traffic while also investing in public health prevention and case management programs to address childhood asthma in boroughs with populations most adversely impacted by health inequities and air pollution.

Amsterdam. It's a walkable city, but it's also accessible for people with disabilities. They prioritize public transit, bike, walking and car pooling. I believe we should prioritize public transit and use PCEF to help fund free public transit for all Portlanders. Once that is implemented, I would advocate for neighboring cities to create city connection transportation systems that lower the cost and make it more affordable to travel around our region. I also would advocate for reduction in costs to carry, transport and bring your bike when you travel.

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

More water taxis, turning streets into pedestrian only walkways for special events, designated scooter stations, light rail with fully grade-separated tracks and gates on all stations.

I'll admit that for the questions here I did not have answers at the ready. I needed to do some research, which was fun, actually. My understanding, now, is that Paris, starting in 2015, decided what kind of transit-oriented city they wanted to have and began a major expansion of protected bike routes, and then, in 2020, began a large-scale rollout of a schools streets project. This resulted in 300 pedestrianized streets around schools by September 2025. This thinking - decide what kind of city you want first, then decide what that'll take, is my approach. Everything is connected. One of my goals as a councilor will be to complete the Safe Routes priority network around every District 4 elementary school within one Council term.

I’d say two: Washington, D.C. and Copenhagen, but for different reasons.

When I worked on the Silver Line metro extension project in D.C., I really came to appreciate their public transportation system. More than 20% of D.C. residents use public transit to get to work, compared to under 4% nationally. It works because it’s accessible, fast, comprehensive, and extremely convenient. In most cases, the best option is to take the metro, so why drive?

When I visited Copenhagen, I saw the same idea applied to biking. The city feels designed around biking, so the infrastructure and connections make it really easy and safe to get around that way. Portland is pretty good in this area for an American city, but traveling to Europe makes it apparent there is a lot more we can do.

Some of those improvements would take significant funding and time, but there are also smaller changes we can make now. One funding source I want to explore is a mileage-based charge on large commercial delivery companies, so some of the money generated by all those delivery trips goes back into improving the transportation system they rely on.

I think the for all the good for our transit, the fact we had to make a lot of cuts because of how separated the transit systems and the city were were just means people are going to be using their cars more to get around. I would call that what we got wrong. I would say one they could do is bring back fareless square so people can go downtown easier and get back

Having raised funds for light rail and obtained funding for the Tilikum bridge, I feel we did the right thing there. The Tilikum was the first of its kind with no cars (but access for emergency vehicles when necessary). The wrong idea was the Westside by-pass which we killed but may re-surface. I’d like to explore the idea of an elevated transit/freight corridor from the end of the Green line over to the Red/Blue line to avoid Clackamas County residents having to go through downtown Portland to get to jobs in Washington County. There are current transportation assets that were ok for their day (farm to market roads) that need to be reassessed.

As the lead developer of the Rose Lane Project, I think that is one we got right. We used a root cause analysis to demonstrate that Black commuters spend an annual average of a week longer in traffic than the average white commuter so we built the citywide plan to address that instead of using traffic patterns and traffic congestion data to determine which bus lines to prioritize. The transportation project I think PBOT got wrong is the bike lane on Williams Ave. I believe it contributed to the gentrification of the neighborhood. I know this is controversial, but when I worked in PBOT, I created an anti-displacement toolkit for planning and the bike lane in Williams fits into the category of projects that are on the higher end of the risk scale because it was built for outsiders to move through the neighborhood instead of being built for people who live within the neighborhood to connect to their resources of health, wealth, and education.

I’m a big fan of Central City in Motion’s NW/SW Broadway Bike Lanes. PBOT has transformed a high-crash corridor to become a safer, more comfortable parking-protected bike lane for people biking south through the Pearl District through Downtown and to PSU. More recently, PBOT and Parks have added streetscaping to enhance the design with planters between the parked cars and the bike lane.

What makes the Broadway Bike Lanes especially worth celebrating today is its history, which includes the successful efforts from bike advocates and local independent journalism from Bike Portland to create pressure on City officials to back off from removing the bike lanes. This episode showed us all that our modal plans for biking and walking need to be implemented and defended, and transparency matters when it comes to dealings between then commissioners, bureau leadership, and influential actors like the business lobby and hotel owners who have played a role in demanding the removal of valuable infrastructure that’s been planned or constructed. City Council has a role to play when it comes to conducting oversight on these matters and to ensure the funding and implementation of plans we’ve adopted, instead of going backwards on them. We can’t compromise safety and our vision for sustainability and a bikeable and walkable city just because some business interests want a few more street parking spaces or convenience. In this new form of government, we’re still in a transition period where old processes and power structures co-exist with new dynamics among constituents, councilors, bureaus, and the administration. We got a taste of how power operates when our northwest traffic diverters were facing removal until advocates and my office worked together to create urgency for saving them and questioned the reason for their removal and the cost of removal.

On the other hand, it’s disappointing to see how the State has handled the Rose Quarter I-5 Improvement Project. I don’t need to say much on this one. From the outrageous project cost escalation to ignoring expert research and cases from across the country for poor results from freeway expansions (e.g., induced demand), the Rose Quarter project shows how transportation officials and elected leaders have completely lost the plot. Megaprojects are not the way. We need to invest in a just transition now, and we could still support the local and regional economy with transit and active transportation projects.

Portland Got Right: Bike lanes on the bridges going from Oregon to Washington on I5 and I205.

Portland Got Wrong:Tilikum Crossing Bridge. I've been disappointed by the relatively small footprint for people and bikes. I wish that the project team had included more space for benches, and bike parking to enjoy the view.

The Tilikum Bridge was a big win. It is a prime example of the city's commitment to all forms of movement. Failing to modernize Burnside Street on the westside (proper road resurfacing that goes beyond merely filling potholes, ADA sidewalk and crosswalk access, lane re-evaluations) is a missed opportunity.

Success: SW Capitol Highway. Again, after I did a little research, the SW Capitol Highway project seems like a success. Took a road with no sidewalks or bike paths/lanes and then built a pretty extraordinary system of sidewalks, protected bike lanes, multi-use paths, etc., and also looks like crossings, water infrastructure, fire hydrants and stormwater improvements. This is a whole-systems approach, which is the approach I try to take with everything I do. Everything connects!

Not a success: The Southwest Corridor project. The 2020 regional tax package failed, and the proposed MAX line was attached to it, along with 150 or so other projects. Six years later, TriMet kept the federal eligibility, and has it in a new long-range vision plan, so the project hasn’t disappeared, but it seems like attaching it to such a huge package, with no Plan B, was a strategic error.

I love Portland’s neighborhood greenways. They’re one of those things I notice and appreciate all the time when I’m biking around the city. They make cycling safer and more accessible for me and my family, but also for everyday commuters who don’t want to spend their morning dodging cars. I feel similarly about Tilikum Crossing. It’s a really intelligently designed bridge that makes crossing the Willamette without a car surprisingly stress-free.

For what Portland got wrong, I think about all the streetcar infrastructure we used to have through the mid-20th century. A lot of people, even lifelong Portlanders, don’t know about the old streetcars until a construction crew digs up tracks that were paved over decades ago. Looking at maps of the historic lines is honestly impressive; they connected neighborhoods across every part of Portland and shaped the way much of the city looks even today. They were privately owned, so as cars took over, the system disappeared and most of the infrastructure was buried. If Portland had gone in the other direction and municipalized the system instead, we could’ve had a much stronger foundation for public transit than what we have today.

No. Currently I would say for crash deaths we are going to match or have more then last year, on top of of response times being stretched for emergency response, we make it difficult for victims to get help in a timely manner and until we can do that we will continue to have problems. We need to make it clear if you drive you need to be aware in the city limits.

It is primarily through grassroots, citizen action (like Bike Loud, Safe Routes to Schools or Oregon Walks) that we will encourage biking and walking. Since the pandemic and the loss of a better funded traffic division in the Police Bureau, we have created a lot of driving scofflaws that continue to speed and make the streets unsafe. We need more actions like citizens holding up signs in dangerous corridors during commute hours accompanied by police bureau traffic stings (which I’ve found immensely satisfying)!

I'll speak to biking specifically since I am not sure about walking and streets. The number of Portlanders riding bikes is mostly flat. I attribute that to our current bike plan that prioritizes the bike commuter who travels along an interconnected cross-city system. That leaves out the vast majority of people like me who are middle aged out-of-shape parents who just want to get to the local taquería. It also presumes that people who bike will choose that mode for every distance, but we can do a much better job of connecting bike infrastructure to transit infrastructure. So we should redesign the plan so it connects people within their own neighborhoods to their own local resources and so that it helps solve the first mile, last mile problem for transit.

Portland is making progress for active transportation and safety, but we can still do more, and we can’t get too comfortable with these incremental wins in some areas. We’re still seeing East Portland and SW Portland disproportionately impacted by traffic crashes, injuries and deaths and poor infrastructure like missing sidewalks and high-speed roads with dangerous intersections. We’re making progress with new revenue streams but still need to address fairness instead of regressiveness with the Transportation Utility Fee. The state legislature failed to pass a comprehensive transportation package to address even the most basic maintenance and operations needs and failed to stabilize our transit system in the Portland Metro area. We can’t celebrate progress until the legislature prioritizes walking, biking and transit instead of megaprojects and freeway expansions. I’m raising this issue at every chance I get, and submitted these items as my top priorities for Salem to work on for Portland. We also have to protect the Portland Clean Energy Fund from being raided for the Moda Center renovations, for police, or other uses that are not even remotely aligned with the voters intent for PCEF.

We need to create more walking or bike only community spaces and increase the requirement of bike parking inside and outside of new construction and high value remodeling.

I would work more closely with banks in Oregon and request that they create a non-credit banking product to fund more bike, safety, and riding equipment purchases. Getting a bike, is just part of the issue. Bikers need helmets, bags, lights and pumps for safety and maintenance.

I would also advocate for the parks bureau to address biking activities and create a city map of bike paths.

It's getting better. Closing some of the Max stations downtown helps get people walking more. Promoting the Springwater Corridor is always a good idea. Keeping bike paths clear of homeless camps is very important.

Based on the data I can find, there seems to be progress made on safety as measured by traffic and pedestrian deaths, but bicycle counts have been flat for a few years. Of course, that is just documentation of a trajectory, not an explanation. I would want to find out what is preventing non-bikers from taking it up, and if regular bikers are reducing their trips, why.

I think Portland is absolutely making progress, especially when it comes to safety and accessibility, even if we still have a long way to go.

In addition to the greenways, I really like the city’s protected bike lanes and sidewalk bump-outs that make travel safer. Safe Routes to School is another program I’m very supportive of, because parents should always feel comfortable letting their children bike or walk to school. It’s good to get kids used to healthy, safe, and emission-free transportation, because those habits can last a lifetime. I also support Vision Zero and its focus on making our most dangerous streets safer.

A lot of this progress comes from sustained public pressure on the local government. We still have major gaps in sidewalks and safe crossings, especially in East Portland, and those neighborhoods deserve the same level of investment. The next step is making sure that progress reaches every part of the city, and I think it’s City Council’s job to listen to the people who use these streets every day and respond to what they need.

Only because I have been ill it was walking to psu on friday for a school event, generally i average between 4-6 trips on transit and another 4 just walking weekly

I primarily drive due to my tightly packed schedule throughout D4. I rode my bike in the recent Sunday Parkways in downtown and ride mostly for pleasure. I can take the bus and streetcar when I don’t have many weekday meetings; on the weekends I take transit with my family shopping or to downtown events.

I have been a car-free transit rider for the last nine years. I take the bus and train everywhere I go, every single day. I would like to get on a bike more, but I am a little intimidated, tbh. Would love a bike buddy!

I’m a transit user and someone who bikes whenever I can. Working at City Hall along the transit mall makes it easier to catch connections by bus or train, but service in my neighborhood in deep southwest has been unreliable since the massive cuts in August. My household is “car light” and we can do better. My team in City Hall and I frequently use a mix of Biketown, scooters, and buses to our district activities. Lately, it’s been hard to have back-to-back appointments around town exclusively on bikes or transit because I have to haul things or offer rides to people. The schedule can be unforgiving with little flexibility. For a Week Without Driving, it’s easy to see how transit cuts for people who are transit-dependent are threatening people’s stability and reliability to get to work and keep their jobs or keep medical appointments. More elected officials need to experience transit on a regular basis.

I walk and ride my bike. I also drive a hybrid Prius. I would walk or ride my bike to city hall. I drive and walk to grocery shop. I buy potatoes in bulk, so it's not convenient to have a 50lb bag of potatoes on my handlebar. Nothing is stopping me from riding my bike. Let's go!

I live in a one car household. I use public transit for most of my trips and walk and bicycle a lot. Portland's transit system was a major factor in choosing to live here.

Two years ago, when I moved downtown, I got rid of my car, and am now 100% transit, for everything. I walk a LOT, and otherwise use the Max and TriMet. Yesterday I took the bus from downtown to the 26th and Clinton area to meet friends.

We’re a one-car household, so when I’m not using that, I’m usually biking, walking, or taking transit. I bike most days. My most recent transit trip was taking the Yellow Line from North Portland into downtown.

I think most people are constantly doing a little calculation in their head about time, cost, and convenience when it comes to transit. For me, and for lots of people, driving often wins. If we want more people to take alternate forms of transportation, we have to change that equation. Transit needs to be faster, more reliable, and easier to use. It also needs to be more comprehensive. A lot of our system is still designed around getting people in and out of downtown, but Portlanders need to get between neighborhoods too.

If we can tip the balance of that equation so driving is no longer automatically the best option, we can move toward a city where everyday life is built around walking, biking, and taking public transit.