3 people die in crashes hours after Portland celebrates traffic safety plan

Portland Foster Road diet

Commissioner Chloe Eudaly appeared and spoke at a news conference Thursday to celebrate the completion of a long-awaited safety project on Southeast Foster Road.

A pedestrian was struck Thursday evening on Southeast Foster Road, roughly one block west of a popular Latino market where hours earlier city leaders celebrated the completion of a $9 million safety project on the busy thoroughfare. She died Friday.

Elsewhere in Portland, two people died in a single-vehicle crash on Interstate 405 in downtown. Twenty-five people have died in traffic crashes in Portland so far this year.

The deaths came on an important day in Portland politics for transportation safety issues, and they underscore the challenges the city faces with its Vision Zero goal to eliminate all traffic fatalities by 2025.

The news of the 82-year-old woman’s death after being struck on Foster Road hit Commissioner Chloe Eudaly’s office hard. Marshall Runkel, Eudaly’s chief of staff, said early information indicates the Foster death may have been a “tragic accident.” The driver stayed at the scene and was not charged, police said.

“Doing everything we can to make our streets safer is not going to prevent tragic accidents,” Runkel said in an interview. “It’s not a guarantee that bad, horrible things won’t happen.”

Eudaly, urban renewal agency leaders and local businesses owners celebrated the completion of a $9 million project on a 40-block stretch of Foster Road a mere 10 hours earlier Thursday morning, an effort that added flashing pedestrian crossings, miles of bike lanes, wider sidewalks in some areas and a center turning lane. Later that day, Portland City Council adopted a two-year action plan intended to speed up traffic safety projects and rapidly respond when possible to deaths or injuries.

By Friday morning, three were dead.

“Every death that happens on our streets is a harsh, harsh reminder that our work isn’t done,” Eudaly said Thursday during a City Council meeting. “We have to try harder. I’m proud to stand behind it,” she said of Vision Zero.

Sgt. Brad Yakots, a Portland police spokesman, said the Foster driver was headed east and the pedestrian was in the road at the time of the crash. It’s not clear whether the pedestrian was at an intersection or marked crosswalk.

Portland is one of dozens of cities participating in Vision Zero, a global initiative to eliminate all traffic fatalities by enforcing traffic laws, redesigning roads to slow down drivers and make streets safer for bicyclists and pedestrians and educating the public about the dangers of speeding and impaired driving.

Portland Foster Road diet

Portland has finished a $9 million project to add bike lanes on a 40 block stretch of Foster Road in Southeast Portland, a center-turn lane and wider side walks and pedestrian crossings. Commissioner Chloe Eudaly and Transportation Director Chris Warner celebrated the completion on June 13, 2019.

The transportation agency talks about shared responsibility, but Eudaly and transportation staff made clear that pedestrians are frequently blamed for deaths and injuries.

“We don’t typically see a lot of distracted pedestrians, at least so far, as crash causes,” said Catherine Ciarlo, the city’s active transportation and safety manager.

Eudaly, in her comments before the council approved her agency’s plan on a 3-1 vote, went further. She cited her father's death in a traffic crash as an example of someone making "bad choices" in bad weather on a poorly designed road. He was responsible for the deaths of two other people in a 1983 crash on Southwest Farmington Road in Hillsboro, she said. “I will continue to push the principle that car drivers do bear the onus of the responsibility because they’re driving a vehicle that could be a deadly weapon,” she said.

Willamette Week previously reported on how Eudaly had not been candid about the circumstances of the crash. Eudaly told the paper in 2017 she “didn’t learn the complete story until very recently.” She added then, “I regret any pain I may have caused surviving family members by discussing the accident in public.”

Portland’s goal, to eliminate all traffic deaths by 2025, is admittedly ambitious.

Last year, the city saw a significant decline, from 45 deaths to 34, but this year’s death toll is on pace to surpass last year’s.

The transportation agency is openly considering whether Vision Zero needs more achievable short-term goals, “so we can benchmark our progress on the way,” spokesman Dylan Rivera said in an email. “This has not been finalized.”

Transportation leaders teased that topic on Thursday at the council meeting.

Commissioner Nick Fish, one of three elected officials who’s lost an immediate family member to a traffic crash (along with Eudaly and Commissioner Amanda Fritz), said the city sets itself up for “naysayers” to poke holes in their plan if they never achieve the ambitious goal of eliminating all traffic deaths. He likened the effort to another intractable problem branded with a boldly named goal: The 10-year Plan to End Homelessness, which was adopted by council in 2005.

Fish says the region learned a lot and “made a dent” in homelessness but was tied to that goal.

“We can transform the roadway,” Fish said, “We can beef up enforcement, we can do everyone you’re asking, but my guess is we’re still going to lose people to this senseless behavior.”

Chris Warner, Portland’s Bureau of Transportation director, acknowledged the challenges. “Perhaps we will never do it,” he said of eliminating all traffic deaths. But he added that the city needs to make streets safer regardless. “Zero always needs to be our goal,” he said.

Rivera said it’s unlikely the goal will be a specific number of fatalities greater than zero, saying it’s more likely to be a “percentage decrease in fatalities compared with recent history, as we continue to work towards the goal of zero.”

Portland has been hamstrung by projects, like the Foster one, that often take years to move forward due to funding issues, community pushback or design challenges. Local business owners and residents started pushing for safer crossings for pedestrians on Foster at least a decade ago. Warner, then Commissioner Steve Novick’s chief of staff, started working on the Foster project in 2013.

The two-year action plan adopted by council Thursday includes commitments to do more, and quicker. Slowing down left-turning cars will be a major focus. For example, Portland will install rubber speed bumps and plastic wands at 40 traffic lights this year to try and slow down left-turning vehicles (20% of pedestrian crashes happen when drivers fail to yield to pedestrians). The city will expand those projects in 2020 if they prove to reduce crashes and deaths. Protected left turn signals, where drivers have a dedicated turn from a traffic light instead of having to wait for a gap in traffic, are another top priority. Portland said it would install those lights at “at least three priority intersections” this year and make it agency policy to do that in the future.

Engineers will also install “at least ten” traffic signals this year and in future years to give pedestrians a head-start at crosswalks before vehicle traffic is given a green light.

Greeley Avenue crash

Two sisters identified as victims in a fatal crash on Greeley Avenue in North Portland.Andrew Theen/The Oregonian

The city, as The Oregonian/OregonLive previously reported, plans to break ground on extensive safety projects on a number of the city’s most dangerous roads this year and next, including projects in 2020 on Southeast Stark Street, Southeast Division Street and 122nd Avenue.

Officials said they’d continue to wheel-in prominent electronic signs in the wake of traffic deaths to notify the public. A recent sign on North Greeley Avenue said, “Travel with care, Traffic Death 5-22-19.” The sign remained there for two weeks.

Warner told the council people frequently don’t know a death occurred on a street soon after the debris is cleaned up. He said the signs force drivers to “really reflect on how they’re driving.”

Portland just received $6.7 million from the state to alter traffic signals, add bike and pedestrian signals or street painting and make other safety changes at more than a dozen locations across the city, including on the stretch of Foster where the pedestrian was struck and injured Thursday.

The city is also gearing up for a new five-year $15 million contract with a provider to install or replace red light and fixed radar speed cameras on major roads.

Portland has red light cameras at 10 intersections and eight fixed-speed cameras on four streets. The speed cameras, which photograph cars and ticket drivers if they exceed speed limits, have resulted in a 57% decrease in cars traveling over the posted speed limit on those roads. The number of high-end speeders, those traveling more than 10 miles over the speed limit, has plummeted 85 percent in the past two years.

-- Andrew Theen

atheen@oregonian.com

503-294-4026

@andrewtheen

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