Oregon
Two Big Reasons States Keep Expanding Freeways
Highway widening advocates offer up a kind of manifest destiny storyline: population and traffic are ever-increasing, and unless we accommodate them we’ll be awash in cars, traffic and gridlock. The rising tide of cars is treated as a irresistible force of nature. But is it?
April 22, 2022
STUDY: 20 Is Plenty — But Signs Alone Don’t Always Get Drivers to Slow Down
Drivers did not slow really down after Portland lowered the speed limit in residential neighborhoods, but a new study suggests that the reason is more about road design than driver behavior.
February 2, 2022
Oregon DOT’s Real Climate Plan: Keep on Polluting
The Oregon DOT’s “Climate Action Plan” claims the agency wants to decrease greenhouse gases, but its revenue projections show it is planning for gasoline consumption not to decline at all – meaning that carbon emissions don’t decline, either.
December 14, 2021
STUDY: U.S. Not Doing Enough To Stop Stoned Driving (or to Boost Transit)
Car crashes rose in Western states after the legalization of pot, a pair of new studies finds — but increasing access to transit may be the only sure-fire way to rein in stoned driving, especially without increasing police harassment of people of color.
June 22, 2021
How Portland’s Transportation Bureau Lied About Bike Lanes
"The best time to build a bike lane was 20 years ago. The second best time is now."
April 6, 2021
STUDY: How Race and Income Impact Road Safety in Oregon
A growing body of research has proven that incomplete and dangerous transportation infrastructure in lower-income areas has a disparate negative impact on Black, Indigenous and people of color. Now ODOT’s own analysis proves the existence of these impacts on BIPOC Oregonians for the first time.
March 10, 2021
Increasing E-Bike Adoption Just 15 Percent Could Cut Emissions 12 Percent
A new study shows that just a 15-percent shift to electric bicycles in Portland would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 12 percent.
August 17, 2020
Portlanders Celebrate (And Question) New Cafes
For years local transportation reform activists have pushed City of Portland to go beyond car storage and driving and think more creatively about what we can do with our streets. And when calls for new uses of street space were made, it was often restaurant owners who lined up to say their business would perish without maximum access for car users.
June 26, 2020
How to Get Business Owners to Support Protected Bike Lanes
For the past month, Portland resident Zach Katz has been relentlessly promoting the idea of bike lanes on one of Portland’s most high-profile commercial main streets. His Healthier Hawthorne project has taken flight, going from one person’s idea, to a petition (signed by 455 people so far), to a Facebook page (now with 158 members), to a website with slick illustrations (like the one above) — all at breakneck speeds.
May 27, 2020
House Transport Chair Rips Uber, Lyft
This hearing takes on a topic that is already having far-reaching implications on transportation and mobility in our country. It should also serve also a wake-up call to the companies that have flooded our roadways with disruptive technologies and investor capital that their days of operating with little public policy and regulatory oversight in the transportation space are coming to an end.
October 18, 2019
