Portland resident survey is out, affirms public desire and policy need for alternative transportation

[Myles G. Smith]

Hello folks,

Portland has received the results of its resident survey, which was covered by the Portland Press Herald this week. I was disappointed to see a headline referencing 'broad concerns about traffic'. In digging into the data, I found that there were no actual questions about street safety, and nor about traffic congestion. Reading between the lines, it became clear a great number of our neighbors are concerned about the safety of walking, biking, getting around with disabilities, and having better alternatives to driving. I wrote this post to explain what I found.

What do others think? Did you read it? I do think it's important that the council hears this message, and doesn't get told to fixate on 'parking' or 'repaving'.

I am not sure if Monday's 5pm council workshop on the survey will allow for public comment on the survey. I can send my personal thoughts to Councilors, but I won't have time to arrange a formal letter before Monday. If someone wants to pick that up and circulate it for approval, it's on the table!

Myles

[Jaime Parker]

Another thing to keep saying out loud is that in addition to saving lives, slower, steadier traffic flow can actually increase throughput, reduce congestion, create economic development opportunities and tax revenue, increase quality of life, AND be less aggravating.

We've got to speak to the concerns of commuters and others who don't really think about the broader impacts; they just want to get home quickly after work.  

 

Jaime Parker

(he/his)
Special Projects Director
Portland Trails
ja...@trails.org
207.329.6180

Non Sibi, Sed Omnibus

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[Scsmedia]

Council workshops never have public comment periods (except in very rare instances IE. the rent issues recently, this not being one of them).

I was wholly unimpressed with the survey.  It do not provide proper feed back.  It asked questions about you level of concern, etc. but not with whether you are concerned becuase you agreed or disagreed with the question.

There was also no free form oppotunities in the survey for these types of explanations.

This survey is not going to drive any policy in the city.  It will just be used to justify policy development.

Steven Scharf

207-415-4662

SCSM...@aol.com

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[George Rheault]

The survey report from the consultant hired to conduct it presents some confusion.  They say the survey was MAILED to specific addresses with prompts to respond online.  I vaguely recall the City encouraging people to participate online (seemingly whether or not a survey was mailed to them directly).  So did lots of people participate voluntarily without prompting but then not have their results compiled because they were not part of the sample the consultant mailed out to specific addresses?  This should be explored by the councilors at the workshop.  What was the full survey universe and how much of it was the subset that the consultant used to compile the report results?

  

Did anyone in this group receive a survey via mail at their home address?  

There was also a drawing with 5 winners each receiving a $100 prepaid VISA card.  That was to encourage responding to the survey mailing.  Obviously possible that a lot of responses were driven less by interest in the survey than by getting entered in the drawing.

Our scatter-brained, ADHD-plagued society is largely survey-proof at this point I am afraid.  But at least a survey was tried.  Hopefully it didn't cost too much.   

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[Scsmedia]

I know one person who responded to a post card and filled it on line.  She is well educated but was perplexed by the wording of most of the survey and also was unfamiliar with a lot of what it was asking about.  (There was a lot of inside baseball in the survey).

She did not do it for the visa card.  I suspect the folks looking to get in the raffle, dumped out of the survey at about the 3rd or 4th page.  It was much too long and as I noted before asked the wrong questions.

They were soliciting responses from online sources so they were not looking for a targeted subset.  We sent out emails about it.

Steven Scharf

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