June S&T & HSC committee meetings: Notes, thoughts.

[Winston Lumpkins]

I had a surprise morning off of work so I watched the HSC traffic stop update, and then the S&T committee Vision Zero update.  

Here are my notes, some of which I shared with Councilor Bullet where I ask her to follow up on some things.  Kind of a mess but I thought I would share. 

Jeremiah's presentation from the S&T committee meeting is worth catching for sure; one concern I have about the new active no turn on red signs at Franklin and Congress is that they turn off partway through the cycle, while oncoming traffic is traveling at its fastest, while it is the least safe for drivers to turn right on red...  We do need to include drivers in our Vision Zero progress. 

Some intersections are getting exclusive Pedestrian phases. Fore and Union are one example (which is good, that intersection gets a lot of foot traffic and is scary with cars moving at the same time.   This is great, and is in line with PBPAC's goal for improving traffic signal configurations.

Very interesting about the Urban SDK speed mapping tool.  Phones are pretty creepy, but we may as well make use of the data.  

Daylighting Project: seems like it's signage only?  I've seen data out of New York State which convinced me that signage only daylighting isn't as effective as hard daylighting, which is when there's something there to physically prevent parking.  This is because A) people park illegally and B) Daylighting without bump outs or other hard narrowing widens the intersection and may encourage speeding. This is a needed step in that direction though, once you stake out all the daylighting it will be easier to harden it.  We should be hardening daylighting in high injury areas as we go along though.  That's a huge part of how Hoboken New Jersey has achieved Vision Zero

Greg mentions traffic calming petitions, says that they are taking a look at it. I've heard from a lot of people who have tried them, with little success, and some burnout from the work without results.

The Vision Zero presentation is followed by a presentation from Cashel Stewart on the Commercial Street demonstration project. 

Here's a pre-installation survey you might want to fill out:  https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SS4A2026 

It sounds like this will go up in Late July... which really only gives 2 or 3 months of use out of it but oh well. 

An update on Portland in Motion.  Do they mention the Advisory Committee?  

This was before the Library meeting.  

They mention that they are partnering with Speck Dempsey, which is Chris Dempsey and Jeff Speck (author of walkable city and walkable city rules, he'll be part of the next public engagement) and Nelson Nygaard for their recent work on Metro.  
 

Sounds somewhat hopeful in terms of approach to safety... They worked on Burlington VT recently. 

Mention of a discussion with stakeholders.  But not really a definition for the Advisory Committee.  Pious thanked Kevin Kraft for asking him to suggest someone for the advisory Committee. No further mention of it.  

I watched the HSC committee presentation on traffic stops I would really like to see breakdowns on how many citations are issued to motorists vs pedestrians vs manual bicycles vs. e-bikes if possible.  I'd really want to see e-bikes and regular bikes listed separately.  I think we're going to start having problems with the e-mopeds (what I call really big heavy motorcycle like e-bikes) pretty soon like other cities, and if there's any crash or citation data it could be worth tracking. 

I tend to think, and I think data bears this out, that traffic calming calms traffic- it's interesting that the officers feel like it agitates traffic...  I think other forces are at play there and the traffic calming is more necessary than ever to combat those agitating forces. Though, calming traffic in a way that gives fewer opportunities for the realization of agitation...  Not sure what I'm trying to say there. But some things work better than others, which we're finding out via demonstrations.  We could do a better job of looking at data from other cities.  

Lack of education is an issue in cyclist safety- and esp with the rise of e-bikes and bigger e-moped things, it could be really really helpful to educate kids

~Winston

Winston Lumpkins IV (he/him/his)

Past Chair, Portland Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Committee
https://www.portlandbikeped.org/

winston....@gmail.com
207-408-1508

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