As traffic deaths surged, Portland transportation bureau fell short of safety goals, audit says

As fatal car crashes recently reached record highs in Portland, the transportation bureau fell short of completing safety goals on some of the city’s most dangerous roads.

That’s according to an audit released Wednesday by the Portland City Auditor, which reviewed the city’s ambitious plan — called Vision Zero — of eliminating traffic fatalities by 2025. The city has since walked back that aspirational goal as crashes surged across the country during the pandemic.

“Street safety is one of the most pressing issues facing the City of Portland,” Auditor Simone Rede said in a statement. “The Transportation Bureau must evaluate safety projects to see which are working best at reducing traffic deaths and serious injuries to zero.”

East Portland, which is home to the city’s poorest and most racially diverse communities, has long seen disproportionately higher levels of car crashes. The bureau has made it a priority to address problems facing dangerous roads in low-income areas and communities of color, particularly east of the Willamette River, the audit says.

Between 2017 and 2021, the bureau spent 65% of its capital safety project money in these areas, while traffic fatalities increased there from 27 in 2019 to 42 in 2022, the audit says.

“It’s a serious topic, and a dangerous topic,” said KC Jones, the director of Portland’s audit services. “The (Portland Bureau of Transportation) is taking steps to address aspects of street safety, but they’re missing some components that they have promised.”

The bureau has made some notable strides toward its goals, the audit says, reducing speed limits and quickly changing the timing of signals to make it safer for pedestrians to cross some streets. But the transportation bureau also failed to complete key steps to bolster road safety in some parts of the city, the audit found.

Among them:

• The bureau fell short of placing “most” speed cameras along roads in the time frame it had planned.
• The bureau completed more than half of the corridor-wide safety projects — transforming streets and installing other measures that promote safer driving— in the years it had targeted, but other projects were delayed.
• The bureau did not finish installing lighting on two of the city’s especially dangerous roads, or complete layout plans for lighting dangerous roads in East Portland.
• The bureau made changes at intersections with the goal of improving pedestrian safety, but about one in four pedestrian crashes happen on stretches of road between intersections. At the same time, the bureau fell short of filling gaps between safe street crossings.
• Staff say the bureau doesn’t routinely evaluate if its safety projects are making roads safer. There is also confusion within the bureau about what projects are part of the Vision Zero plan in the first place. “Without that, they’re not really getting the ability to understand which things work the best in terms of specific safety improvements that they’re seeking,” said Jones, who added this makes it harder for the bureau to make difficult financial decisions.

The city’s transportation system has been plagued by surging construction costs and large transportation efforts that remain unfunded. The city’s clean energy tax helped fill the bureau’s $32 million budget shortfall this year, following five years of cuts.

While traffic fatalities dropped in Portland after the city council adopted Vision Zero in 2016, they increased in 2020 and topped out at 64 in 2021, which, at the time, was the highest total in three decades. The total in 2023 is expected to be even higher, with 69 deaths recorded, according to preliminary data.

The bureau’s efforts were impeded by a number of challenges, including the pandemic, limited funding, hiring freezes, supply chain issues and the fact that the state controlled setting certain speed limits, according to the audit.

“We really appreciate the auditor bringing attention to Vision Zero and largely agree with their findings and recommendations - many of which we are already putting into action,” Dylan Rivera, a bureau spokesperson, said in a statement. “Eliminating traffic deaths and serious injuries in Portland is possible, but we can’t do it alone. These changes require leadership, investment, and commitment from partners beyond PBOT. We’re grateful to the auditor for bringing attention to this critical issue.”

As part of Vision Zero, the bureau installed eight speed cameras by 2021 and planned to install more. The bureau says it has a plan to fund more lights and install new lighting on streets with high numbers of crashes, according to the audit.

“More lighting may help in that 70% of all traffic fatalities on Portland streets, between 2019 and 2022, were in lowlight conditions,” the audit says.

The bureau has also reduced most residential speed limits to 20 mph and lowered the speed limit along a particularly dangerous stretch of Northeast Halsey Street.

The audit recommends that the bureau create a plan to evaluate its safety projects, install promised speed cameras and smaller scale efforts to improve safety in low-income and diverse neighborhoods.