ABC group ride on BIKETOWN

 

The Street Trust has developed robust e-bike and e-scooter training program in partnership with Forth Mobility with funding from Metro . Together we run workshops to put the training in action with Community Cycling Center and ABC or “Andando en Bicicletas y Caminando” (Riding your Bike and Walking Around). ABC is a group of community organizers who host bike rides, advocate for safe routes to school, and provide basic bicycle maintenance and training to friends and neighbors.

Recently, a group of ABC members with BIKETOWN for All memberships have been joining The Street Trust for e-bike and e-scooter clinics. Last weekend’s workshop was an e-bike clinic that went beyond the typical safety skills and group ride to include troubleshooting and problem-solving elements of Biketown that would allow participants to assist others interested in trying out Portland’s bike-share.

We did a lot of locking and unlocking Biketown bikes, located a lone bike to practice a mid-ride bike swap, flagged a bike as damaged, and identified the East Portland Super Hub Zone. We also intentionally experienced the power drop upon entering a slow zone in Kʰunamokwst Park (the best part was hearing the laughter when we left the park as the bike motors boosted back to full speed!)

ABC has a busy summer planned with the aim of getting more of their community onto bikes, and The Street Trust urges its followers to consider supporting them and attending the following events:

  • ABC will host several rides with BIKETOWN this summer- including at both Sunday Parkways– to get people signed up for BIKETOWN for All and guide them through the experience.
  • ABC will also host a Bike Fair at Rigler School on Sunday, June 12th, where they’ll teach community members how to ride, get them signed up for BIKETOWN for All, and take them on trial rides with BIKETOWN staff.
  • ABC will participate in three additional workshops with The Street Trust, Forth, Community Cycling Center, and BIKETOWN to build their knowledge of the system.

Beyond just learning to ride and use the BIKETOWN app, ABC’s collaboration with BIKETOWN addresses the very real issue of secure bike parking. PBOT installed bike lockers at Hacienda CDC, which the community appreciates and uses, but as more and more community members gain confidence on bikes, even more parking is needed. It’s a good problem to have, and using BIKETOWN solves the dilemma.

BIKETOWN for All provides Portland-area residents 16 and older living on low incomes with a reduced-cost BIKETOWN membership. Learn more here.

Love this? Volunteer with our clinics.

 

 

WeBike participants in Beaverton

 

WeBike is The Street Trust’s program to inspire more trans people of all genders, gender non-conforming people, Two Spirit, and women (both trans and cis) to incorporate a bike into their lives and use biking as a way to meet their transportation needs and personal goals. WeBike dismantles the barriers of cycling through rides, knowledge-sharing events, meet and greets, and mentorship.

Last weekend, WeBike’s May ride ventured into new territory: Beaverton! The 10-mile loop started at the Beaverton Farmers Market and utilized many quiet greenway-type streets, the Westside Trail, several bike-friendly cut-throughs (one gravel!), and creatively utilized a shopping center parking lot, an office park parking lot, and some sidewalk to avoid a couple not-so-bike-friendly roads. The ride passed many points of interested including two entrances to Tualatin Hills Nature Park, the Aloha Mall shopping center, and BG Food Cartel food cart pod.

In June, WeBike will have a meet-up to talk about bike camping! We are always looking for new participants- no experience necessary. Learn about all the ways you can carry camping gear by bike, what you need to bring, where to go, and get all your questions answered! Camp coffee and snacks provided. Read all the details on the Shift/Pedalpalooza calendar listing and RSVP here.

Find WeBike events on The Street Trust events calendar and shared to the WeBike Instagram and Twitter.

The WeBike-Portland private Facebook group is a resource, hub, and a way to connect with others riding in the area. If you have any questions about biking or great biking tips you want to share, post them there!

Ways allies can support WeBike: promote events on socials, print a poster, and donate to The Street Trust.

 

Join WeBike’s Next Ride!

 

Donate to support WeBike!

 

Enter the Walk+Roll May Challenge Art Contest!

 

 The Walk+Roll May Challenge Is On!

Kids across Oregon are getting outside to move and celebrate active living with their schools for the Walk+Roll May Challenge. This month, The Street Trust is encouraging and supporting students who choose to ‘walk and roll’ outside for transportation and exercise, and asking K – 8 students to draw why they walk+roll for our May Challenge art contest.

Click here to learn more and submit art by June 15 to win cool Walk+Roll prizes. Art will be judged based on the inclusion of walking and/or rolling safety features and creativity. Drawings can include anything from students’ imaginations or experiences, so wackiness and fantasy are encouraged!

Winners will be selected in the following grade groupings: Kindergarten – 2nd grades, 3rd – 5th grades, and 6th – 8th grades.

In Oregon, we celebrate the Walk+Roll May Challenge in conjunction with National Bike to School Day. The first-ever National Bike to School Day took place on May 9, 2012, in coordination with the League of American Bicyclists’ National Bike Month. Almost 1,000 local events in 49 states and the District of Columbia joined together to encourage children to safely bicycle or walk to school.

The event builds on the popularity of Walk to School Day, which is celebrated across the country – and the world – every October. Many communities and schools have been holding spring walk and bicycle to school events for years, and National Bike to School Day provides an opportunity for schools across the country to come together to celebrate and to build off of the energy of National Bike Month.

Submit Art To Be Eligible For Prizes!

Learn More About Our Walk + Roll Programs!

 

 

 

We’d like to thank our long time partners Nelson\Nygaard for supporting The Street Trust and contributing to an amazing closing event at Lucky Lab NW for the 2022 Oregon Active Transportation Summit.

During the Summit’s closing party The Street Trust’s new staff were finally able to connect in person with Nelson/Nygaard’s team and talk about all the wonderful things our  organizations are working on. This includes Nelson/Nygaard’s newTransportation Demand Management guide, which helps local leaders work with their communities to implement TDM measures that advance health and sustainability goals. The Street Trust is proud to support their efforts to reduce collective VMT levels. 

Closing event sponsor Nelson\Nygaard

We also want to celebrate The Street Trust’s Chair Drusilla van Hengel, a Senior Principal at Nelson/Nygaard and an esteemed and beloved professor at Portland State University. Along with being a transformational leader in her field, Dru has been instrumental in the The Street Trust’s success since she joined the board in October 2021. Through hard work and determination, Dru helped guide our organization through the many trials of the pandemic, ensuring that the Greater Portland metropolitan region would continue to have a powerful voice advocating for a safer, more accessible, more equitable, and more sustainable transportation system. In keeping with The Street Trust’s mission, Dru gets around the region using both TriMet and her Xtracycle — except when she uses carsharing to take her dog somewhere exciting. 

When we asked Dru what an ideal transportation system would look like for her, she told us it would be on in which, “No people using our streets are required to trade personal safety or time to make up for gaps in our public space, walking, transit, or bike systems”. 

Below are photos of Dru and many of our other wonderful supporters having fun at the 2022 Summit closing party. With help from generous sponsors like Nelson/Nygaard, The Street Trust hosts a wide variety ofevents like this one throughout the year. Our biggest annual events are the Oregon Active Transportation Summit and the Alice Awards, which take place in the Spring and Fall. If you are Interested in becoming a sponsor or a business member, please contact our Strategic Partnerships Manager at [email protected].

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Civic Leaders on Bikes in Nashville

 

For more than thirty years, greater Portland’s civic leaders led by The Street Trust Board of Directors Vice-Chair, Randy Miller, have been traveling together to other cities and regions seeking tools to improve outcomes here at home.

The past couple of years have been challenging for Oregonians as we came together to face the intersecting crises of the COVID pandemic, the racial justice reckoning of the Black Lives Matter movement, and unprecedented wildfires in our state made worse by the climate crisis. For Nashville, these crises were compounded by multiple natural disasters and a Christmas morning bombing that shook their downtown.

John Lewis mural in Nashville Over the decades, Portland’s leaders have worked to ensure our civic learning trips are more intentional, effective, and inclusive. Now, as our region finds itself in transition -at a crossroads, some would say- it is more important than ever that we invest as a community in increasing our capacity for addressing the various challenges we face, including population growth and housing affordability, congestion and the need for transit investments, and deepening social and economic inequality.

Prior to joining The Street Trust, our Executive Director, Sarah Iannarone, worked full-time hosting inbound and outbound delegations of urban leaders seeking tools for improving conditions in their places. An expert in educating policy makers, she led the design and execution of a transportation focused learning experience in Nashville for over 100 Portland officials and civic leaders. She and Strategic Partnerships Manager, Anouksha Gardner, worked with Walk Bike Nashville and Bike Fun Nashville to expose Portland’s leadership to a range of active transportation, Music City style.

The three-day deep-dive into policies and best practices encouraged our local leaders to explore what’s working and what’s not in another city, and to better understand what tools they should bring home to help Portland grow smarter. It also reminded many participants how fortunate we are for robust transportation tools already in place in Portland – from TriMet’s regional cooperation with Oregon Metro to local mobility solutions such as PBOT’s Biketown for All

People in a conference panel discussion, professional setting.

In addition to walking and e-bike tours, the trip included a transportation deep dive moderated by Sarah Iannarone with Diana Alarcon, Director, Department of Transportation & Multimodal Infrastructure, Nashville  and Steve Bland, CEO, WeGo Public Transit. The group was later joined by Ashley Northington, Vice-President and Managing Director, Moving Forward Nashville. They discussed similarities between our two regions including the challenges of getting people back on transit post-COVID and ways to fund transportation in the wake of failed multi-billion dollar ballot measures. The delegation also spent an afternoon at Vanderbilt University which included a presentation on Sensing and Control of Traffic on the I-24 Smart Corridor, an innovative public-university partnership to manage congestion on highways. 

Other topics on the agenda? Regional economic development led by Monqiue Claiborne of Greater Portland, Inc, preserving indie culture led by Music Portland‘s Meara McLaughlin, and a thought-provoking conversation about treating mental illness as a health (not criminal) issue led by Multnomah County DA, Mike Schmidt.

Want to learn more about the trip? Read a reflection from our partners at Business for a Better Portland and coverage in the Portland Business Journal.

Civic leaders lined up side by side for group shot in sunshine

Thank you to our generous sponsors!

Sponsor Logos - Greater Portland, Melvin Mark, The Street Trust, AAA, PGE, Port of Portland

 

Despite challenges created by the ongoing pandemic, last week The Street Trust’s 11th annual Oregon Active Transportation Summit drew 95 speakers from around the region, state, and country to talk about the needs and challenges in our transportation systems and how we can address them.

From learning about how transportation advocates can improve media coverage of traffic deaths, to exploring the new public plazas in downtown Portland, and discussing how cities can reach zero auto ownership, this year’s summit demonstrated our commitment to promoting all modes to achieve a safe, accessible, equitable, and sustainable transportation system.

 

Summit 2022 – by the numbers:

  • The Summit included 30 virtual sessions over the course of 3 fun-packed days
  • 158 passionate transportation thinkers and doers attended to Monday’s 3-hour opening session featuring USDOT Civil Rights Office chief Irene Marion, Metro President Lynn Peterson, Youth Climate Activist Cassie Wilson, Multnomah County Commissioner Jessica Vega Pederson, Washington County Commissioner Nafisa Fai, and N. Clackamas School Board Chair Libra Forde among other community leaders
  • By Day 3, Summit sessions had accumulated more than 1,000 views from over 300 attendees — ta 50% increase over last year’s attendance
  • The experience included 10 fun and engaging in-person events across the Portland metro, including a visit to the Afrovillage MAX conversion and a closing happy hour sponsored by Nelson/Nygaard (thank you!)

 

The Street Trust team was thrilled to bring back some in-person programming and we were humbled by the terrific response we got from attendees and volunteers who helped out. After two completely virtual Summits, it was wonderful to see our friends getting together as a community again. 

Missed the in-person events this year? Below are snapshots of just a few of the exciting adventures put together by The Street Trust and our partners. Watch for video recordings of sessions as they’re posted as well as our summary report coming soon.

Thank you to our generous sponsors!

Cars on a highway, with a skyline in the background that is in Portland's Lloyd District.

 

Toll lanes are unfair! 

We hear this a lot, but it’s not necessarily true. In fact, there are many things happening on our streets and roads right now more inequitable than road pricing.

Road pricing systems are direct charges levied for the use of roads. These most commonly take the form of highway tolls, but can also be distance or time-based fees, congestion charges, or charges based on specific vehicle size or fuel types. 

Conversations about the implementation of road pricing systems are emerging across all levels of government throughout the Portland Metro region. From the demand-based parking model proposed by PBOT’s POEM Task Force to the Interstate Bridge Replacement Project and ODOT’s I-205 tolling project, our region is exploring various methods and strategies to implement charges for road use – pushing back on the normalized practice of subsidizing road use for drive-alone trips.  

The Street Trust supports road user charges that reflect the true cost of driving and greenhouse gas emissions, while improving travel for everyone. We’re excited about a future where the cost of driving more accurately reflects its negative impact on everything from the climate to public safety and individual health. However, we know that the primary objective of many road pricing models (even in the Portland metro) is to generate revenue  to cover the cost of new highway construction rather than to change behavior to improve traffic flow and help us reach our climate goals.

This is unacceptable and we’re working to change it.

We will continue to show up at decision-making tables across the region fighting to ensure that before any of these policies are put into place there’s a guarantee that they will improve equitable outcomes throughout our transportation system. 

If the future of road pricing is something that interests you we invite you to join us as we move toward a better future, together! 

 

Support Advocacy For Effective Congestion Pricing

Weigh In! Complete ODOT’s Pricing Survey by May 16th

 

Picture of wide, auto-centric roadway

 

The Street Trust is proud to announce that Seattle-based Bullitt Foundation has committed a major gift to fund, in part, the #OurStreets regional community mobilization campaign. This award is among a suite of funding requests The Street Trust submitted to foundations this year in an effort to grow community power to fight for and win transportation policy and investments that prioritize safety, accessibility, equity, and climate justice in our region.

Their generous $45,000 contribution will support critical work engaging diverse and underserved communities across the greater Portland metro. It includes building out a data visualization tool, the #OurStreets Scorecard, which is designed to empower communities to advocate for investments such as street lighting, sidewalks, and transit service where they live, work, and play. It will also support other regional advocacy work underway at The Street Trust, including the implementation of equitable congestion pricing, e-bike lending libraries, and ensuring the multi-billion dollar Interstate Bridge Replacement Project has a positive impact on multimodal transportation in the region.  

This gift is a significant investment in Portland-area mobility at a time when the region is facing numerous challenges and experiencing a changing-of-the-guard in leadership. An agenda-setting funder of climate action for a quarter-century in the Pacific Northwest, in 2019 the Bullitt Foundation funded The Street Trust to found what is now known as the Getting There Together Coalition (GTT), an effort to lead development with Metro regional government on a multi-billion dollar transportation measure. GTT continues to advocate for transportation justice in our region today. 

Bullitt Foundation is giving away most of what’s left of its endowment during the next couple of years, so this is likely to be one of their last investments in helping Portlanders achieve equitable, climate-smart transportation in our region.

“We see this as an important opportunity to elevate multimodal transportation as a priority issue at all levels of government and in all parts of the region,” says Henry Miller, Grants & Impact Manager at The Street Trust. “It will help us empower communities to advocate for themselves and hold their leaders accountable for making real progress in improving transportation options at a time when they’re desperately needed.”

We still have $30,000 more to raise to reach our goal. Please join us in thanking the Bullitt Foundation for their investment in our future, and consider joining them by giving to The Street Trust today.