The Portland Bureau of Transportation is scrambling to clean up a very messy situation on Northeast 33rd and a 25-year veteran of the bureau is taking full responsibility for having caused it.
Art Pearce is PBOT’s director of policy, planning and projects (he was also a finalist for director position that went to Millicent Williams back in July). Today, after yesterday’s direct action protest that prevented PBOT contractors from removing bike lanes, Pearce told me the entire unfortunate episode is all on him.
“This is an uncomfortable moment for me. This mistake happened under my watch,” he said during a 40-minute video call.
Before I asked him and PBOT Communications Director Hannah Schafer several questions about what happened, Pearce offered his take. He said his team took all the right steps in terms of identifying the bike lane project, finding funding, and getting it designed and queued for installation. But when it came to public outreach, they messed up.
“We really jeopardized trust with the residents along those four blocks,” Pearce said, “And in particular, in multi-generational households who feel as though this is being done to them with painful associations with other things we’ve done as a bureau over the years.”
Pearce was referring to previous projects such as the North Williams Avenue bike lane and the Lloyd-to-Woodlawn neighborhood greenway where longtime Black residents of north and northeast Portland strongly objected to PBOT plans.
“It does not indicate a shift of commitment for me or from the bureau towards cycling and the importance of cycling. There is no shift in terms of our policy approach, or our work toward those outcomes.”
In addition to not properly notifying residents about changing an on-street parking lane to a bike lane and the complex racial dynamic, Pearce mentioned another factor: a new four-plex built without on-street car parking was erected between the time the plans were conceived, to when the bike lanes were installed.
Pearce called the response to the bike lane from some residents of 33rd Ave “valid outrage” because, “there was no outreach other than a staff person scrambling around the morning the crew was out there to provide some level of notice that we were making this change.”
“This was a situation where we dropped the ball. And that’s mine to own, sadly.”
What about PBOT Director Millicent Williams? She’s been the source of anger among many in the community given her role in the SW Broadway bike lane scandal. Pearce and Schafer said they consulted Williams, but she was not directly involved. And since the project was in Pearce’s portfolio, the director is letting him handle the community fallout and response.
Relatedly, Schafer interjected that what happened on NE 33rd was completely disconnected from Broadway:
“I understand we have a very significant trust deficit right now. And that is largely because of what happened with Broadway; but I want to emphasize this was not related. And I know that that’s hard for people to see because of that trust deficit right now. But this is not related.”
Below is an edited Q & A from the rest of our conversation.
BikePortland: Was Commissioner Mapps’ office aware of the removal decision?
Art Pearce, PBOT: Not to my knowledge. We did not do a briefing with his office. I consulted with the director, and then, given the complete lack of notice, I felt like the best answer was to remove it and regroup rather than to simply try to retroactively do a level of involvement and consultation.
When did you realize that something was amiss on NE 33rd?
AP: When I heard the bike lanes went in. I was tracking the [project] list two years ago, in 2020.. But I had completely forgotten, candidly about them. I wasn’t tracking this as a specific thing that was happening.
There was a project manager that didn’t send the notification letters out. That person was was leaving the bureau and didn’t pass on the fact that they didn’t complete this activity. But that even if they did, it would have felt inadequate. I think even if they’d gotten a 30-day notice saying ‘We’re going to change your street,’ they probably wouldn’t have also felt consulted enough.
Hannah Schafer, PBOT: And we would have probably had a different type of storm.
The project management team realized [no notification took place] extremely last minute, and in an effort to course-correct, went and handed out in-person notifications as the striping was happening. So, a lot of internal errors led to this moment, unfortunately.
To be clear, you’re saying people never got notice of the bike lane at all, besides its recommendation in the Columbia/Lombard Plan?
AP: There was no direct communication around the decision to make this change to the street
HS: In a travel advisory for the paving project [sent out in August] we’d typically mention a major change like this bike lane, but we didn’t do that either.
Why did you determine that removal of the bike lane was the best course of action?
AP: Given some of the affected households, we felt like simply asking them to come to a meeting to tell them what we’ve already done — it didn’t feel like a very appropriate type of convening. And, bringing them into a big gymnasium [for a neighborhood meeting] with a whole bunch of people who are interested in seeing this from a system benefit, but maybe not as affected directly, it just felt like we were going to have a hard time creating the right kind of respectful convening to allow for their concerns to be addressed.
And so that’s what led us to say, ‘Alright, this is really painful, but we’re going to have to go back [and remove it] and then start a conversation going forward again.’
What about the communication around the removal? Was that done in a way you would have preferred?
AP: No. I think we were still living in a little bit of post-traumatic moment from the Broadway process and were like, ‘Oh my God, we’ve gotta go through it again.’ So we felt, let’s just remove this and then we’ll get to regroup.
Did anyone who lives on the street reach out to PBOT after the bike lanes went in?
AP: Yes. Even when the traffic engineer went out to mark the dimensions in advance of the striping, the concerned emails came into the general inbox.
So it was resident complaints that led to PBOT’s realization that there was insufficient outreach?
HS: No. It all happened at once. We were striping something that we hadn’t told people about, until like literally the day it was being striped… As soon as that striping went in, the weekend of October 7, we started getting emails.
There are a lot of internal lessons here that are going to be learned. This is a very big moment, and we are reviewing our internal processes. This is an embarrassing public mistake.
I also want to make a note about the costs. The whole 33rd project striping was $52,000. The cost to remove it would have been $25,000. So we are not talking about millions of dollars here. But we are calling it a costly mistake because we acknowledge that we need to be extremely fiscally responsible right now. And I acknowledge that people would say, ‘What is going on here?!’ but we want to own this and we want to make sure that we are following up internally and and making sure that these mistakes don’t happen again.
To be clear, if no one complained about the bike lane, would this removal still have been ordered just based on the lack of notice?
AP: No, I think we would have had some internal conversations about what happened. But no. It just happened to be, there’s also the specific character of this location as well. [“Character” is a reference to the racial dynamics at play with some concerned homeowners.]
You mentioned that residents had “valid outrage.” What about the protestors who showed up to stop the trucks? Do you feel their response was valid?
AP: Yes, absolutely. I think the same level of of outrage in response to a lack of consultation happened in both directions. And I think, from the sort of, either/or binary nature of the situation we found ourselves in [bike lane or no bike lane]. It’s a hard space to navigate your way out of.
What happens next in terms of public process?
AP: I haven’t had a chance to connect with the team about the exact approach, but the thought is that we will do direct engagement with affected neighbors first to better understand the trade-offs and the concerns — and then think about the specific remedies.
What just feels key right now is is careful, direct communication, acknowledging peoples’ concerns.
I’ve talked to [BikeLoud PDX Chair] Nic Cota and [BikeLoud Vice Chair] Kiel Johnson and they are very upset with me as well.
What we’re trying to figure out is, is there a non-binary solution that we can deploy? I’m hoping staff consultation with some of those affected parties can come up with some more subtle design solutions as the next step — rather than removing the bike lane and then talking about how to move forward — which was what we had been shifting to thinking about doing.
At this point, I’m hopeful that there is design solution that can address the concerns. That’s where I’m pinning some hope for the next step. And I don’t know necessarily what those might be, depending on what the specific concerns are, but we’ve got some work to do on the ground, quite literally, with those adjacent property owners to figure out what the answers might be.
[Pearce mentioned they might consider helping homeowners make changes on private property like wider driveways for parking.]
What we need is better understanding of the specifics of the hardships of these residents and then ask, ‘Are there ways to solve them?’ Or, are we willing to tell them that this is a change you need to accept.
We’re going to work to remedy this. It does not indicate a shift of commitment for me or from the bureau towards cycling and the importance of cycling. There is no shift in terms of our policy approach, or our work toward those outcomes, we just need to do better engagement.
