How should Portland spend $8M to improve safe access around schools?

Provide input on Safe Routes to School in March & April to have your say

Fixing Our Streets is a locally-funded street repair and traffic safety initiative that will bring much needed street improvement and safety projects to neighborhoods across Portland. It is expected to provide approximately $8 million for school neighborhood improvements along walking and biking routes to school — around $500,000 dedicated to each High School cluster (including the elementary and middle schools that feed into a particular high school).

Tell them what you think needs to happen around the schools to make walking and rolling to school safer and easier. Portland’s robust Safe Routes to School team hasn’t ever had this much money to spend on safety projects around schools, and now is the time to weigh in — especially if you access a school in the Portland Public (PPS), Parkrose, David Douglas, Reynolds, or Centennial School Districts.

If your student attends a PPS or Parkrose school, you can attend an Open House event to provide input (see schedule below). For David Douglas, Centennial, and Reynolds schools within Portland city limits, Portland’s Safe Routes to School staff will be organizing engagement opportunities at your schools – learn more: bit.ly/OpenHouseSRTS.

HOW TO GET YOUR VOICE HEARD

• Attend a SRTS Fixing Our Streets Open House (see dates below)
• Attend a Walk Audit with SRTS (specific schools in Wilson Cluster only)
• Attend a Walk Audit with Oregon Walks (specific Title I schools in PPS only)
  ‐ visit OregonWalks.org/HealthyTravel2School for details
• Submit specific concerns at saferoutespdx.org (for PPS schools only)
• Host a pop‐up open house at your school to collect comments from parents
  (SRTS will provide the materials!)

Join us 10/12: Portland City Council Hearing on Vision Zero Action Plan

Through the Vision Zero program, the City of Portland and partners are working to eliminate deaths and serious injuries on our streets by 2025.

The Vision Zero Task Force has overseen the creation of a draft Vision Zero Action Plan with specific steps to make streets safe. Kari Schlosshauer, the regional policy manager in the Pacific Northwest, together with numerous community groups, have called for Vision Zero policy for our city; for the past year she has helped create the Vision Zero Action Plan, ensuring it would tackle the biggest and smallest risks, be community based and data driven, and that would work to fix rather than exacerbate inequities for Portlanders.

3 p.m. on Wednesday, October 12 – City Council Hearing on Vision Zero Action Plan

Portland City Council will discuss and vote for adoption of the 5-year action plan developed by community organizations, partner agencies, and the Portland Bureau of Transportation.

Walktober with us to the hearing from the Eastbank Esplanade (Vera Katz Statue) to City Hall for the hearing. Meet at 2:00pm for the walk – we will arrive 15 minutes early to sign up to testify. Help us pack the house in support of safe streets for all Portlanders and zero traffic deaths and injuries on our streets.

Read Kari’s prepared testimony here.

Youth engagement, partnership, empowerment

Youth support for policy change, program development and community planning is powerful and can be the catalyst to success: When kids speak up, adults listen.

Youth-led campaigns, such as the #YouthPass4All campaign in Portland have a big impact and show how the voice of youth helps to change policies that affect them. OPAL Environmental Justice’s Youth Environmental Justice Alliance (YEJA) develops low-income youth and youth of color leaders through political education, campaign organizing, and skill-building to address issues of Environmental Justice. The leadership program creates a space for marginalized youth to take action on the issues that directly impact them and their communities.

Youth Pass provides a free transit pass to high school students in lieu of yellow bus service, but of course an all-access transit pass does so much more for high schoolers — from extracurricular activities to life-supporting jobs. Currently, Youth Pass only serves Portland Public Schools high school students; YEJA’s report on the need for Youth Pass programs in all of Portland features new data on student transportation needs and transit barriers in East Portland, and startling statistics including:

• 41% of the students at David Douglas High School have missed class due to missing the school bus and not having other transportation.
• 70% of students at Parkrose said having a free transit pass would make it easier for them to attend school.

Over the summer, OPAL ran a youth training program, Serve the People, with robust curriculum on environmental justice, transit justice and a variety of other topics relevant to training emerging youth leaders to lead their peers when they head back to school.

As we all head back into the school year, it will serve us well to consider ways to incorporate youth perspectives, voices, and leadership into our work. Below are more opportunities coming up — learn more and get plugged in.

August 17 – Participate in the #MoveEquity tweetchat to discuss youth organizing and leadership in low-income communities and communities of color, and engaging youth in getting to school safely.
Wednesday, August 17, 2016 – 10:00-11:00am PT

August 24 – Join the National Partnership’s webinar and learn about youth engagement at the local, regional and state level, how kids of all ages are influencing their community in positive ways, and how your community can engage youth, participate in meaningful dialog, and share ideas with decision makers and community members to make a difference for safety in their community.
Wednesday, August 24, 2016 – 10:00-11:00am PT
More information and registration

Vision Zero + Safe Routes to School – Stronger Together

Vision Zero shares many goals with Safe Routes to School. Vision Zero originated from Sweden in 1997 with the assertion that all traffic deaths and severe injuries are preventable. Sweden’s Vision Zero work was based on an old philosophy with a new twist: “it should no longer be the child that should adapt to traffic conditions, but the traffic conditions that should be adapted – as far as possible – to children.”

At their core, each one is a comprehensive campaign using a mix of education, improved engineering and targeted enforcement tailored to its specific environment to improve the safety of transportation users. These two efforts share goals and should work in harmony to enhance the safety for transportation users, particularly with one of the more vulnerable demographics – our youth.

Children are considered vulnerable transportation users as they are disproportionately injured or killed in traffic-related crashes:

• Being struck by a vehicle is the leading cause of injury-related deaths for youth under 14[1]
• In 2013, children under 15 accounted for seven percent of bicycle fatalities and 11 percent of injuries[2]
• Youth under 15 accounted for five percent of all pedestrian fatalities and nearly 15 percent of injuries in 2013[3]

The statistics are even worse for disadvantaged communities. Nationally, pedestrian fatality rates in low-income metro areas are almost twice that of more affluent neighborhoods[4]. Safe Routes to School and Vision Zero have important roles in improving these statistics.

As the number of small and large towns and cities pursuing Vision Zero policy grows, it becomes clear that Vision Zero and Safe Routes to School are stronger together. Kari Schlosshauer, PNW Regional Policy Manager, holds a seat on the City of Portland’s Vision Zero Task Force, where she’s been participating in the process to create a set of actions for the city and its partners. The Oregon Safe Routes to School Conference held in June in Eugene, provided insight from Seattle, Portland & Eugene on how Safe Routes to School and Vision Zero efforts are working in tandem to boost successes. Here are some takeaways from the conference, and updates on what’s happening from our perspective on Portland’s Vision Zero Task Force.

Two May Votes Bring Big Investments in Safe Routes to School

Two days after the City of Portland’s voters passed a 10¢ gas tax to fund street safety improvements including $8 million for needed crosswalks and sidewalks around Portland schools, the region’s Metropolitan Planning Organization, Metro, voted to also make a large, dedicated investment in Safe Routes to School for our region’s youth.

The For Every Kid Coalition, of which we are a founding member, represents 89 coalition partners, 9 school districts, 5 cities, and thousands of parents, youth, and residents of all ages, spanning all three counties in the Portland Metro region. Due to the tenacious work of this coalition over the past two years, targeting dedicated funding for Safe Routes to School investments in the region, Oregon Metro’s Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation (JPACT) voted to allocate a dedicated investment in Safe Routes to School.

The final vote dedicated $500,000 per year for Safe Routes to School programming, plus at least $2 million for street improvements near Title 1 (low-income) schools, and trails. The vote also preserved $25.76 million for walking and biking street safety projects across the region.

About the For Every Kid Coalition
The For Every Kid Coalition formed in 2014 to focus on gaining dedicated funding for Safe Routes to School programming and street safety projects. The following organizations are members of the coalition: Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO); Safe Routes to School National Partnership; American Heart Association; Oregon Walks; OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon (OPAL); Coalition For A Livable Future; Community Cycling Center, the Community Alliance of Tenants, the Bicycle Transportation Alliance (BTA), and many more.

Portlanders unite around safer streets for everyone

In the wake of a series of tragic crashes, injuries, and fatalities to people on foot and bike in the Portland region, now is the time to act. The unfortunate reality is that serious injuries and fatalities are happening on our roads on a regular basis. This is impacting vulnerable users at a much higher rate, with pedestrians making up over half of the fatalities on our roads last year. There is no one fix to our unsafe roads, but there are many things that we can, and must, do now. In 2014, there were 28 deaths in Portland due to traffic crashes and there have been 10 so far this year.

On June 2, Kari Schlosshauer, the National Partnership’s Pacific Northwest regional policy manager, joined our partners Oregon Walks, Bicycle Transportation Alliance, and Community Cycling Center, for a meeting with Mayor Hales and Commissioner Novick, and other stakeholders, where we called on the City of Portland to embrace Vision Zero, broadly, publicly, and immediately. Immediately following the meeting, Mayor Hales did so during a press conference and in a media release.

source: Bike PGH

Here’s a great primer on what Vision Zero is, from the Vision Zero Network.

Our community-based organizations called for action on immediate steps the City can take to improve safety on our streets, including:

• Reduce speed limits citywide – Transportation Director Treat recently made a formal request to the Oregon Speed Zone Control Board seeking to expedite the process for setting speeds on city streets, allowing the city to take into account how and when pedestrians and cyclists use the road.
  • Speed matters: at 40mph, only 1 out of 10 pedestrians survive, but at 30mph half do, and when speed limits drop to 20mph, 9 out of 10 pedestrians survive.
  • Other innovative ideas could include “neighborhood slow zones” or “play streets” such as those recently piloted in Seattle. Play Streets include both school-organized and community-led play streets, and offer an opportunity to expand the use of our streets and provide more places for people.

• Launch a broad-based public education campaign on Vision Zero
  • We must frame speeding in the same context as drunk driving and seat belt use. A sustained public dialogue is necessary, via signs on buildings, in buses, on our computers and televisions, enclosed in our utility bills, and more, that stresses the danger of what driving even five mph over the posted speed limit can do to a struck pedestrian or person riding a bicycle.

• Ensure greater enforcement of laws that protect people walking and riding bicycles – we were pleased to see the Portland Police Bureau at the table, and look forward to their continued engagement both at the table and on the streets.
  • Examine and document all crashes and injuries on our roads, and work to determine a root cause analysis of what goes wrong on our streets and intersections, and why these crashes are happening.
  • Ensure that enforcement is equitable and does not disproportionately impact communities of color, the demographic most likely to be injured while walking or bicycling.

•  Prioritize our limited safety funding on engineering improvements 
  • Fix our highest crash locations and ensure routes to high-use destinations, such as schools and transit stops, are truly safe. We must focus our limited safety funding on engineering improvements along High Crash Corridors, our most dangerous intersections, and high-use destinations, especially in those areas that are historically under-served or that serve our most vulnerable populations, such as older adults and youth.
  • Implement Leading Pedestrian Interval (LPI) and Leading Bicycle Interval (LBI) signals near schools, on high-use bikeways and pedestrian crossings, and in any location with vulnerable users, such as older adults and children. These signals allow pedestrians and bicyclists to get out in front of vehicle traffic, be more visible to drivers, and reduce turning movement conflicts.
  • Other innovative ideas could include “daylighting” intersection corners. State law (http://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/811.550) prohibits parking within 20 feet of a crosswalk at an intersection, yet this law is not enforced in Portland. Vehicles parked at intersections block sight lines for pedestrians as well as turning vehicles, including cars and bicycles, and contribute to unsafe intersection situations.
    

    “And what’s not to like about providing parking for 10 customers where there used to be parking for just one?” – Joseph Rose, Oregonian

Most fatal crashes in Portland happen on just 10 streets, which the Portland Bureau of Transportation have designated High Crash Corridors. Though they represent only 3 percent of the roads in Portland, they account for 51 percent of all pedestrian fatalities.

Students from 36 elementary schools in Portland, in PPS, David Douglas, Centennial, Reynolds & Parkrose School Districts, must cross or travel along a “High Crash Corridor” to get to their school.

Vision Zero has the goal of providing a safe, multi-modal transportation system where no one is killed or seriously injured on our streets. We are pleased that the City of Portland has embraced the concept of Vision Zero, but like so many multifaceted problems, it’s not clear how it will be implemented. While there is no one fix to our unsafe roads, there are many things that we must start to do now.

We look forward to long term and sustained support for safety for everyone on our streets.

Download our full media release here (pdf).

Take Action: Help Reduce Speeding on Portland’s High Crash Corridors

Students from 36 elementary schools in Portland, in PPS, David Douglas, Centennial, Reynolds & Parkrose School Districts, must cross or travel along a “High Crash Corridor” to get to their school.

These roadways, just 3% of Portland’s road network, account for more than 50% of the city’s pedestrian fatalities. This is unacceptable.

Speeding and aggressive driving are the top contributing factors to serious crashes. Currently in the Oregon Legislature, HB 2621 would authorize piloting fixed speed cameras on Portland’s most dangerous roads. Studies by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration suggest that over the eight year pilot period HB 2621 would:

• prevent the loss of 16 lives
• prevent more than 2,000 people from being injured in traffic crashes
• save ~$71 million in wage and productivity losses, damage, and medical expenses

Please join us in supporting HB 2621 in the Oregon Legislature. This bill will allow the installation of clearly marked speeding traffic cameras on high crash corridors — making it safer for our children to walk, bike, and roll to school. Whether you live in Portland or elsewhere in the state, this bill provides an opportunity to make our streets safer.

Please write or call your state senator and representative today and urge them to support HB 2621.

The Oregonian Editorial Board supports HB 2621: “It’s clear that speeders continue to pose unaccountable risk to other drivers, and most of all pedestrians… Unmanned photo radar would simply be a cost-efficient, not to mention racial-profiling-proof, method of detecting and punishing drivers whose indifference to life poses threat.”

One death on our streets is too many. Traffic fatalities and injuries are not inevitable, and can be prevented through smart policy and system design. Read more about Vision Zero initiatives in Portland and Oregon.