Category Archives: Land Use & Transportation

By Garlynn Woodsong | CNA Board Member, SW1, CNA LUTC Chair

Concordians may smell a foul odor in the air from time to time – especially when there’s an inversion layer that traps a layer of warmer air next to the ground underneath a layer of cooler air, preventing pollution from escaping upwards.

Concordia is located near:

• Two major arterials
• A major transcontinental freight railroad line frequented by many hardworking diesel locomotives that are not subject to any meaningful pollution regulation
• An industrial zone that is home to many polluting uses, including propane tank facilities prone to leaking
• The airport, which is a hive of petroleum-burning activity, especially aviation gasoline and jet fuel – both of which are exempt from any meaningful emissions regulations
• Many other emissions sources, both fixed- and mobile-source

This foul air quality, although it is usually invisible, can have very real, long-term impacts on our health and quality of life. We, our children, our friends and our families all breathe in this air. If our air smells toxic, then we are likely inhaling toxins.

It can be frustrating, overwhelming and demoralizing to walk outside, breathe a foul odor, and to feel helpless and unable to do anything about it.

Now you can use a new free smartphone app, provided by Portland Clean Air, to crowdsource reports of pollution odors traveling through the neighborhood. The app also helps track down sources of industrial air pollution incidents.

You can download the app today and make a smell report – even if you walk outside, smell a beautiful clean-air day and, as a result, the smell report is positive.

Portland Clean Air has been working with app developer Beatrice Dias from Carnegie Melon University and with Seventh Generation to launch the app city-wide in Portland.

The Smell MyCity app crowdsources community reports of pollution odors and visualizes the city’s air quality. You can help with the launch of the app by downloading it today and making a smell report. This is a better alternative than your complaints being ignored by DEQ, or floating around Nextdoor.com.

Portland Clean Air now has a toxic smell response team with monitoring equipment, and data from nine agencies to help pinpoint the source so negotiators can be sent in to help reduce or eliminate the emissions source.

Find the Smell MyCity app free on the App Store and on Google Play.

SmellMyCity.org makes smell report data accessible publicly and easy for all residents and community groups to explore. It includes a map visualization page of how smell reports are distributed across the city over time. And it offers a data access page to download smell report data for further analysis.

Smell, submit, share!

By Garlynn Woodsong | CNA Board Member, SW1 | CNA LUTC Chair

The book “The Color of Law” by Richard Rothstein makes the case that constitutional violations have been committed by the federal government – and perpetuated by state and local governments – to create and enforce racial segregation in the United States.

That’s true especially after World War II, using the instruments of the Federal Housing Agency, Fannie Mae, single -family zoning, and other housing policy tools.

Urban renewal and freeway-building policies also served this agenda, to concentrate black Americans into small areas using zoning policy, then to systematically destroy those neighborhoods using urban renewal and highway building efforts.

This story played out in Portland with the use of single-family zones and mortgage redlining to concentrate most black Portlanders into a handful of neighborhoods. Those areas were then targeted for urban renewal projects, including: construction of I-5 through north Portland, and demolition of whole swaths of the neighborhood around Vancouver and Williams avenues north of Russell Street for uses related to Emmanuel Hospital.

Our Concordia neighborhood included areas that were redlined, where mortgage lenders refused to issue government-backed mortgages because the neighborhood was not all white.

I’d like to tie together these historical policies today using a website created by an associate of mine: NeighborhoodPulse.

For instance, in 2010, black people comprised 18.7% of Concordia’s population, compared to 7.8% of all Portlanders. Yet, 70.7% of Concordia homes were owner-occupied in 2010, opposed to only 53.7% of all homes in Portland.

Our neighborhood may have had single-family zoning imposed on it during the mid-20th century. But not soon enough to prevent it from remaining a diverse enclave within a whiter surrounding city.

This diversity made it the target of racist actions – including redlining – that prevented many Concordia homeowners from gaining access to low-interest, federally-backed mortgages to purchase or to access equity-backed credit.

The latter 20th century thus saw much of Concordia’s housing stock deteriorate, as owners had difficulty accessing credit to pay for maintenance and upgrades. Yet, against this adversity, neighborhood residents persisted. They founded the Concordia Neighborhood Association, and they worked diligently over the decades to overcome obstacles presented by lingering policies related to institutional racism.

The low housing prices in Concordia at the dawn of the 21st century made it an attractive place to settle; however, as new people moved in, many long-time residents moved out.

Today we have a mix of people young and old, long-time residents, new arrivals and folks who have been here awhile but not that long.

There are a variety of remedies that could be sought at the federal level. After reading “The Color of Law,” it seems locally there is a case to be made that constitutional violations have occurred as the city continues to act as a regulatory instrument that may be perpetuating ongoing economic and, potentially, racial segregation. Single-family zoning must be reformed to prevent it from inflicting further harm.

Adopting and enacting the zoning code updates proposed as a part of the Residential Infill Project represents our first, best chance to do so as a city.

This will not be a silver bullet to erase the harms imposed by racial segregation, but it will be a first step in the right direction.

Garlynn Woodsong lives on 29th Avenue, serves on the CNA board and is an avid bicyclist. He also is a dad who is passionate about the city his son will inherit. He is the planning + development partner with Cascadia Partners LLC, a local urban planning firm. Contact him at LandUse@ ConcordiaPDX.org.

By Garlynn Woodsong | CNA Board Member, SW1 | CNA LUTC Chair

Portland city commissioner Chloe Eudaly ordered the rewrite of city code 3.96, which governs the relationship between the neighborhoods, neighborhood associations, district coalitions, business district associations and elements of the city government.

She expressed a desire to increase equity by reshaping who gets a say in city policy. She feels neighborhood associations too often represent white homeowners and exclude renters, people of color and immigrants.

She believes neighborhoods serve as gatekeepers that stand in the way of denser development and additional affordable housing.

Your Concordia Neighborhood Association board does not disagree with her diagnosis. We feel, however, there are effective solutions to increase participation, ones that don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Fundamentally, we believe there is a place for geographically-based groups in our citywide dialogue. Faith- and ethnicity-based groups alone cannot sustain the robust civic life Portlanders pride ourselves in. This is a city of neighborhoods to celebrate, preserve and enhance.

In the spirit of Thomas Jefferson’s concept of a ward republic – and toward the goal of promoting and enabling more diverse participation in the most local geographic units of our democracy – the CNA board made these recommendations to city council:

• Elect neighborhood association board members in county-administered general elections. That’s how it works for East Multnomah County Soil and Water Conservation District and circuit court judges. Our local neighborhood associations provide much in the form of community-building activities. They surely are important enough to rate at least this basic level of recognition.
• Allow individuals to nominate themselves and others for board elections for free.
• Ensure neighborhood associations reach out to all community-based organizations within their borders to make those groups aware of the opportunity to be elected the neighborhood association boards.
• Dedicate a meaningful percentage of revenue from on-street parking – both from residential permit programs and from meters – toward neighborhood improvement project programs comanaged by each neighborhood association in partnership with the city and neighborhood coalition offices. This revenue stream could be used in combination with other funding sources to help deliver more livability outcomes in shorter periods of time. Neighbors would help decide where and when to build bulb-outs, place benches, stripe crosswalks, plant trees, place public art, hold events and otherwise help achieve and maintain community livability goals.
• Head off efforts by some neighborhoods to slow the development of much-needed new homes during our extended housing crisis by the city providing more by-right fastapproval development pathways in all neighborhoods. So, if projects are proposed that meet adopted development and design standards, they can be approved administratively and without the opportunity for delay presented by discretionary review and lengthy public involvement and appeal processes.
• Protect neighborhood livability from new development – rather than destroy it – by empowering neighborhood associations to work with the city to develop and adopt design standards that work as a part of a citywide form-based code. That will allow each neighborhood to articulate and enforce its own local design character, as long as those regulations don’t impede factors measured by the Buildable Lands Inventory that are related to the ability to provide sufficient development capacity within our urban growth boundary.

Garlynn Woodsong lives on 29th Avenue, serves on the CNA board and is an avid bicyclist. He also is a dad who is passionate about the city his son will inherit. He is the planning + development partner with Cascadia Partners LLC, a local urban planning firm. Contact him at LandUse@ConcordiaPDX.org.

By Garlynn Woodsong | CNA Board Member, SW1 CNA LUTC Chair

There are several ways to make streets safer. One is lowering speed limits, like Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) did recently on several Concordia roadways.

Killingsworth Street is one that Concordia Neighborhood Association (CNA) has asked PBOT to reduce the speed limit. After all, Oregon Department of Transportation speed zone standards state business districts should be posted at 20 mph.

However, PBOT refuses to lower the speed from 30 to 20 for the sections of the street at 30th and 15th avenues – clearly micro-business districts – with constant pedestrian traffic crossing the street, as well as significant cross traffic and turning movements that include TriMet buses.

In response to CNA’s request, PBOT engineering associate Mike Corrie replied, “After reviewing available data, we have determined the current speed zones on Killingsworth to be appropriate given the layout, and similar to other comparable-sized roads in the area. Therefore, no changes were recommended.”

This response is hard to reconcile with PBOT’s focus on Vision Zero, and the “20 is Plenty” campaign that apparently does not apply to our section of Killingsworth.

It’s possible, with the high volume of traffic on Killingsworth, lowering the posted speed limit alone might be sufficient to slow down traffic. This should certainly be the first step tried.

While lowering speed limits is something that CNA will continue to advocate in locations where it makes sense, such as the micro-business district of Killingsworth, we also are interested in solutions to lower speed by calming traffic with physical methods.

One is Ainsworth Street. Recent data shows, for two days in February, counts were measured on 4,330 trips average per day eastbound, and 4,154 westbound. The posted speed on this roadway is now 20 mph, having been lowered from 30 within the past couple of years.

During the survey, 91.8% of drivers were observed traveling above the posted speed limit eastbound, and 94% westbound. Of those, 13.8% of eastbound traffic was traveling at least 10 mph above the posted speed limit, as was 21.1% of westbound traffic.

Multiple times a day in each direction, some drivers were measured traveling at speeds above 45 mph. This on a street with elderly citizens in mobility devices and people pushing strollers.

So 20 mph signs didn’t help. A traffic-calming solution could include traffic-circle-type installations at intersections that would require traffic to slow down to navigate each circle. That would eliminate the ability to drive fast in a straight line down the long stretches between the very few stop signs at 33rd and 15th avenues and MLK Jr. Boulevard.

On Alberta Street, the situation is a bit different, although we don’t have traffic count data yet to quantify this precisely. The speed limit was lowered to 20 mph but anecdotal evidence suggests that at times when traffic is light – such as during morning rush hour – some drivers choose to use Alberta as their own personal freeway on-ramp, despite the presence of children walking to school.

A physical safety solution on Alberta could include raised crosswalks, such as those found on 42nd Avenue between Fremont and Knott streets.

Only through a combination of speed limit reductions and physical changes to the built environment can we achieve our desired outcomes: a safe neighborhood and city where nobody is seriously injured or killed in traffic accidents.

Garlynn Woodsong lives on 29th Avenue, serves on the CNA board and is an avid bicyclist. He also is a dad who is passionate about the city his son will inherit. He is the planning + development partner with Cascadia Partners LLC, a local urban planning firm. Contact him at LandUse@ConcordiaPDX.org.

By Garlynn Woodsong | CNA Board Member, SW1 CNA LUTC Chair

“On Tuesday, June 25, just before 6 p.m., police officers responded to a rollover crash near northeast Lombard Street and northeast 42nd Avenue,” reported the Willamette Week last June. “The unidentified driver was pronounced dead at the scene. The death is the 28th traffic-related fatality so far this year.”

“Smith was driving a blue 2000 Ford Crown Victoria eastbound on northeast Lombard Street, just west of 42nd Avenue, when it appears he struck the rear tire and wheel of a bicyclist, the affidavit said,” reported The Oregonian in December 2015. “Smith said he had veered to the right to avoid another vehicle that had swerved toward him, the affidavit said.”

“A busy road in northeast Portland has reopened now after a man was hit and killed by a taxi cab this morning,” KXL Radio reported in April. “Police got the call just before 1 a.m. to the intersection of northeast 64th and Columbia Boulevard, saying a pedestrian was hit. Crews tried to save him, but he died at the scene. Police say the victim was a delivery driver, who just pulled his truck out into the road, hopped out to close a gate and was hit by the taxi cab.”

Between 2008 and 2017, there were 23 fatalities and 85 severe injuries on Columbia Boulevard and Lombard Street between I-5 and I-205.

We’re tired of hearing of deaths on North Portland Highway / Lombard Street, and on Columbia Boulevard.

People are dying needlessly on Lombard, both on bicycles and within automobiles, because the Oregon Department of Transportation does not maintain the bicycle facilities there to any acceptable standard of safety. And both high-speed streets have local street and driveway intersections that offer many opportunities for car-on-car crashes as well.

The Concordia Neighborhood Association has been concerned with the Columbia / Lombard Corridor for many years now. We are unable to safely walk from our neighborhood to the Columbia River, even though we can see it from some of our houses, and its distance would certainly be within a pleasant walking distance of our neighborhood – if only safe facilities existing to connect us with it.

Emissions – not only from the roadway facilities themselves, but also from the industrial land uses nearby – drift into our neighborhood and foul our air when the wind blows from a generally northerly direction, as well as when it doesn’t blow much at all.

It is in this context that the Portland Bureau of Transportation has kicked off the Columbia / Lombard Mobility Corridor planning process, which focuses on the corridor between I-5 to I-205, with a buffer area to include parallel routes.

The process is expected to last through next July, resulting in a plan to guide a strategy for making implementation investments.

Stay tuned to this page in CNews. Better yet, attend the LUTC meetings the third Wednesday each month at 7 p.m. in the McMenamins Kennedy School Community room.

Garlynn Woodsong lives on 29th Avenue, serves on the CNA board and is an avid bicyclist. He also is a dad who is passionate about the city his son will inherit. He is the planning + development partner with Cascadia Partners LLC, a local urban planning firm. Contact him at LandUse@ConcordiaPDX.org.

By Garlynn Woodsong | CNA Board Member, SW1 CNA LUTC Chair

For years, neighbors in Concordia have joined with folks in other northeast Portland neighborhoods to advocate for the construction of more regional bicycle and pedestrian trail connections.

One trail in particular has captured the imagination of many: a trail connecting downtown Portland, through northeast Portland east to the Rocky Butte area and beyond, ultimately to the Columbia River Gorge to connect up with the historic highway state trail there.

This was called the Sullivan’s Gulch Trail Project when Portland City Council voted in 2012 in favor of it. It has since evolved to become known as the Rose Quarter to the Gorge Trail Project, and now the Coast to the Gorge Trail.

Indeed, Metro has previously discussed a concept known as the Infinity Loop for multi-day excursions. It would involve multiple trails heading out of Portland in all directions, connecting with one another at their ends to loop back and return to Portland without needing to retrace steps.

All of these visions for greater bicycle and pedestrian network connectivity could soon take one step closer to reality.

In June the Metro Council voted to send a ballot measure to voters to renew the parks and nature bond. If voters approve the bond measure in November, it would maintain the current tax rate of 19.cents per $1,000 of assessed value (about $4 a month for a home assessed at $250,000).

Among many other worthy funding categories – such as the purchase and restoration of new land from willing sellers to improve water, fish and wildlife habitat – the bond would include $40 million in funding for walking and biking trails. Metro would secure rights to build new trails and construct missing trail sections to complete projects identified in Metro’s regional plan for a network of walking and biking paths.

The Coast to the Gorge Trail would fall entirely on trail sections identified in Metro’s regional trail plan, so this funding could be applied to begin acquiring rights of way and engaging in trail planning if the bond passes.

Voters approved Metro parks and nature bond measures in 1995 and 2006, and local-option levies in 2013 and 2016, to protect and care for land, improve water quality and increase access to nature for people close to home.

As with those measures, all spending of a potential 2019 bond would be monitored by a community oversight committee and subject to annual audits.

Garlynn Woodsong lives on 29th Avenue, serves on the CNA board and is an avid bicyclist. He also is a dad who is passionate about the city his son will inherit. He is the planning + development partner with Cascadia Partners LLC, a local urban planning firm. Contact him at LandUse@ConcordiaPDX.org.