Flyer by Portland for All
Hope everyone’s having a good Tuesday and enjoying a bit of sunshine and dry skies. This is just a quick post to share a thing I’m doing on March 19th with some great folks on an important topic. I’ll be on a three-person “Policy Talks” panel hosted by local nonprofit Portland for All. The title of the panel is, “Creating streets safe in every community.”
Portland for All is an all-volunteer group that is organizing around ideas. Their website says they were, “born out of conversations folks were having with friends and neighbors concerned about the challenges facing our City, and all of the negative rhetoric about this place we call home,” and that they believe, “there is a hopeful, positive, and inclusive future that’s possible for our City.” This is the third event in their Policy Talks series. The first two were about public safety and homelessness.
Joining me on the 19th at this virtual event will be two folks you’ve read about a lot on BikePortland over the years: former Oregon Walks executive director and current Metro Councilor Ashton Simpson, and veteran community advocate and current Portland City Council (D1) candidate Steph Routh. It just so happens I’ve already had both Ashton and Steph on our podcast. I spoke with Ashton in March 2022 during his run for Metro Council and I shared an interview with Steph from Bike Happy Hour back in November.
To give you a sense of the focus of our upcoming panel, here’s the blurb from Portland for All:
Portland is known as a city with great transit, cycling, and walking – yet not every community has safe access to all these choices. Many people across the region do not own a car and rely on transit, biking, and walking to get around. Despite our reputation, our streets have become increasingly unsafe – we’ve seen record traffic deaths in recent years. These changes have occurred under new City Council leadership and as budget deficits have emerged with fewer people commuting to work generating lower gas taxes. In this webinar, we will focus on why traffic deaths have increased, and what steps we need to take to make our city streets safe for everyone.
The questions we’ll grapple with include what we see as the key problem Portland faces in our efforts to stem traffic crashes, how to get at the root of the problem, what it will take to get folks to stop driving so dang much, and how to talk about all this stuff without fighting with folks who see things differently.
It should be a spirited chat and I’m really looking forward to it. You can RSVP here and find info on past Policy Talks here.
