Annual Elected Officials and Candidates Ride - Saturday Oct. 4 10 AM

[Damon Yakovleff]

Please Join the Portland Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee on our Annual 

Elected Officials & Candidate Ride

CO HOST: Libbytown Neighborhood Association

Saturday, October 4, 2025 • 10 AM • End of Sewell St. (Near Train Station) to Rowe School

(Rain Date: Sunday, October 5 10am)

Join The Portland Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee and Co-Host Libbytown Neighborhood Association on our annual Elected Officials and Candidates Ride. Formerly known as the "Councilor Ride", we are opening our invitation to School Board members and other elected officials and candidates. City and School staff are also welcome and encouraged to attend. 

The ride this year will highlight infrastructure wins as well as needs in District 3. We’ll be riding at a conversational pace. We anticipate arriving at Rowe Elementary School at around 11:15, where we'll hold a discussion: Feel free to meet us there if you’re not up for a ride.

It’ll be a great opportunity to meet folks serving in or running for office and local Bicycle and Pedestrian Advocates. The route will highlight both areas in need of improvement and recent successes in District 3. We will also discuss challenges and opportunities for active transportation to school.

The detailed Route will be posted prior to the ride.

All are welcome and encouraged to join us for the ride! If you need to borrow a bike or e-bike, or require accommodations to attend, please email pbpac...@gmail.com and we will be happy to help.

Please forward this invitation to other interested parties, thank you.

[Damon Yakovleff]

Please Join the Portland Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee on our Annual 

Elected Officials & Candidates Ride

CO HOST: Libbytown Neighborhood Association

Saturday, October 4, 2025 • 10 AM • End of Sewell St. (Near Train Station) to Rowe School

(Rain Date: Sunday, October 5 10am)

Join The Portland Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee and Co-Host Libbytown Neighborhood Association on our annual Elected Officials and Candidates Ride! We are pleased to announce the route.

Formerly known as the "Councilor Ride", we are opening our invitation to School Board members and other elected officials and candidates. City and School staff are also welcome and encouraged to attend. The ride this year will highlight infrastructure wins as well as needs in District 3. We’ll be riding at a conversational pace. We anticipate the ride concluding at Rowe Elementary School at around 11:15, where we'll hold a discussion: Feel free to meet us there if you’re not up for a ride.

It’ll be a great opportunity to meet folks serving in or running for office and local Bicycle and Pedestrian Advocates. The route will highlight both areas in need of improvement and recent successes in District 3. We will also discuss challenges and opportunities for active transportation to school.

All are welcome and encouraged to join us for the ride! If you need to borrow a bike or e-bike, or require accommodations to attend, please email pbpac...@gmail.com and we will be happy to help.

Please forward this invitation to other interested parties, thank you.

[John Clark]

Hi folks - wanted to share a quick note that a few of us on the executive committee will be doing a test ride of the route this Friday at 5pm, starting from the start location (end of Sewall St.). We'll be going over talking points, safety plan, and checking on current conditions, so anyone who's interested in joining is welcome!

[Dustin Pillow]

I have a prior commitment and can't make the test ride, but plan to be there Saturday. Are there still folks riding to Westbrook after?

Best,

Dusty Pillow

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[Myles G. Smith]

Hello folks, 

A reminder about our ride on Saturday morning, below. Thank you to those of us who have said you'll be joining us. We will meet at 10am at the end of Sewell Street near the gated exit onto the Portland Transportation Center area, and we will finish up at 11:15am at the Rowe school for a conversation. Some folks will continue on to Bike Fest in Westbrook afterwards.

Please let us know if you have any questions, and thank you for you investment in safe walking, biking, and rolling in Portland.

Myles Smith

Chair, PBPAC

202-779-6179

On Fri, Aug 1, 2025 at 10:38 AM Damon Yakovleff <damon.y...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Myles G. Smith]

Hello Portland officials!

We would like to thank Councilmembers Pious Ali, Sarah Michniewicz, and Wes Pelletier, State Representative Sam Zager, and School Board Members Maya Lena, Jayne Sawtelle, and Julianne Opperman, as well as Council At-Large Candidate Sam Alborne for joining us for our Annual Elected Officials and Candidates Ride on this lovely past Saturday. Some takeaways:

1. Portland is falling behind other cities in the region and the country on walkability and bikeability. According to People for Bikes, Portland city rates only 38 out of 100 on biking infrastructure, which puts us in 490th place in the nation among the cities and towns the group has ranked. Portland does worse than bigger cities (Portland Oregon: 61), smaller cities (LaCrosse Wisconsin, 65), snowier cities (Anchorage, Alaska, 64), and others in our region (Cambridge, Mass, 68, Provincetown, Mass, 99/100!). Since 2018, we have improved modestly while other cities such as Burlington VT and Fayetteville Arkansas have shot right past us. All this means is: we know we can do better!
2. The result of car-focused streetscapes plays out in deteriorating street safety and quality of life for residents and visitors alike, where we have more crashes, injuries, and fatalities on our streets than ever. Portland has had 4 pedestrian fatalities this year, which is a higher rate per capita than Boston, Washington DC, New York City. Our outdated infrastructure is a causal factor in declining street safety - WalkMassachusetts found that the Better Bike Lanes program in Boston slowed traffic for all users, reducing crashes of all types and increasing safety for all street users.
3. I was on Capitol Hill last week with a national advocacy campaign to revive projects scuttled by the Administration under the Reconnecting Communities funding, including the Libbytown project. Senator Collins's staffer told me that this program was one of the 'harder ones to unstick'. We talked through alternative ways to pitch these concepts, and agreed that 'realigning streets to enhance efficiency' or 'freeing up underused public lands for development opportunities' may be more effective selling points than concepts such as 'road diets' or 'added bike lanes' or anything else that could be misconstrued as 'hostile to cars.' These sentiments were shared by staff for Senator King and Representative Pingree. We were also urged by the summit organizers not to accept in writing any project cancellation letters of any kind, but rather to wait and see if they could be funded under a future appropriation or reallocation of unspent funds. Each office agreed on the value of the funding and these programs.

With these facts in mind, the assembled group touched on a number of common reflections and items for follow-up:

• We widely agree with Representative Zager that street safety can be a non-partisan point of agreement. This is certainly reflective of what I saw in DC.
• We agree with Councilmember Michniewicz that urban heat islands from a lack of tree canopy and greenspace in Bayside are a real barrier to walking and biking onto the peninsula - the trip is not long but it is deeply unpleasant, and thus underutilized. Everyone who chooses to drive when they could walk, bike, or ride on that trip is adding pollution, carbon, traffic, and parking needs to our urban core, which is exactly where we need the opposite outcomes.
• Ultimately, Portland needs a contiguous access network that connects people to destinations, specifically schools, workplaces, parks, and necessities like groceries and other services. Portland's transportation network is only complete for drivers. It is particularly incomplete for cyclists and bus riders. On-street bike lanes end abruptly as roads widen to accommodate turning cars. Trails end at places like highway ramps and where on-street parking begins. Intersections where children board the bus have neither ADA compliant curbs nor crosswalks. The network feels incomplete, hard to navigate, and unsafe, which leads to it being underused by target user groups - students, tourists, local commuters, families, and young professionals.
• Specific areas for bike lane improvements would prioritize protected bike lanes from the peninsula to the west (on or parallel to Congress Street and Brighton Ave corridors) and north (Forest Ave and Washington Ave corridors), as well as safe access from off-peninsula through and across the spine of the peninsula, and a contiguous connection through the Commercial Street corridor.
• We would really like to see the city bring local bicycle, pedestrian, and public transportation users with lived expertise into the process of setting goals and strategy in the Transportation Master Plan. Councilmember Ali specifically mentioned the need for partnerships between the city and groups like ours, while also singing the praises of Assistant City Manager Jordan and others on the staff who get all this and want to see it happen. We believe this, too!
• We see an urgent need for dedicated bike-ped staff within the city government, particularly to execute the Complete Streets and Vision Zero policies and to oversee the work of contractors on non-driving facilities. Other municipalities who have hired folks with responsibility to seek and win grant funding for infrastructure enhancements have shown these jobs can pay for themselves. I spoke with folks from Philadelphia's city transportation department who told me this story in particular.
• Incremental improvements could make a big difference, as Mr Alborn pointed out. One simple recommendation would be adopting standards and a technical manual for bike and pedestrian signage, bike lane design, neighborhood byways, etc. Other cities have similar resources, we should simply adopt one of them with minor adjustments.
• Education on bike ped safety at schools and in drivers ed was mentioned as an opportunity by our school board friends. We hope to explore this locally and on the state level, where it has been proposed before. Perhaps we could do this locally regardless.
• By far the most dangerous and high-crash area of the city is anywhere near a 295 exit ramp. The area to receive the Libbytown safety enhancement grant sees almost 100 crashes per year, many resulting in injuries. The highway is completely incompatible with a walkable, livable, bikeable, and sustainable urban environment. In our lifetimes, we should reintegrate 295 into the city fabric as an arterial boulevard. 
• Portland Police enforcement of driving laws feels nearly non-existent, based on anecdotal data and raw numbers of moving vehicle violations written. We see the results in essentially lawless driving on our streets every day, which puts residents in severe danger. Portland writes a fraction of the number of driving tickets of neighboring municipalities, despite being far larger and being a destination for drivers from all those communities. Even the threat of a ticket may change behavior, but they feel no accountability for their dangerous behavior in the status quo.

All of this goes to say, we deeply appreciate the work you're doing at both the Council, School Board, Legislature, and city staff levels. None of this is meant to be a critique of any of you.- we know you're doing your best and in good faith with many competing priorities and (in the case of our elected friends) other professional lives to lead. 

We want to be a resource to improve the safety, equity, and joy we can all access in our city, and are eager to serve wherever we can to help bring about our shared goals. Please continue to reach out to us as you continue to push forward on your projects, and if we can partner in any way to advance the above initiatives, do not hesitate to reach out to us.

Best regards,

Myles Smith

Chair, Portland Bike-Ped Advisory Committee

Special thanks to Damon Yakovleff of Libbytown Neighborhood Association and other LNA and PBPAC members for the planning for this event!