Fifty-four people died in Portland traffic crashes last year, the most since 1996.
Speeding and impairment drove an increase in traffic fatalities in 2020, according to the Portland Bureau of Transportation.
Fifty-four people died in crashes Portland last year, the most since 1996, when 59 people were killed. The jump is similar to increases in other metropolitan areas across the county, PBOT said in a Wednesday, Jan. 6, press release.
The increases seem unlikely because traffic counts fell last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But PBOT said an analysis of the local crashes reveals that a high percentage of drivers were engaging in risky behaviors. According to PBOT, drivers crashed into fixed objects, including parked cars and utility poles, at high rates 11 last year, compared to about eight most years. Speeding and impairment are believed to contribute to those kinds of crashes.
New City Council to take up controversial urban renewal plan January 03 2021
Some oppose spending $67 million more in North and Northeast Portland until previously displaced residents are compensated.
The new City Council will consider a controversial urban renewal proposal for North and Northeast Portland when it meets for the first time Wednesday.
The Jan. 6 meeting will be the first with new members Mingus Mapp and Carmen Rubio. Mapps defeated Commissioner Chloe Eudaly in the November runoff election and Rubio won the race to succeed Commissioner Amanda Fritz in the May primary election.
Mapps and Rubio will be participating for the first time with the previous council members: Mayor Ted Wheeler, who defeated Sarah Iannarone in the November election; Dan Ryan, who defeated Loretta Smith in an August runoff to fill the remainder of late Commissioner Nick Fish s term; and first-term Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, who will be up for reelection in 2022 with Ryan.
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The $14 billion for transit in the new coronavirus relief package will be allocated within the next 30 days (Mass Transit Mag). Unfortunately, the package also includes $10 billion for highways (Transport Topics).
Sun Belt cities are known for being auto-centric, but expanding public transit is helping cities like Austin and Phoenix attract new residents and jobs (like it always does!). (Forbes)
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Readers Respond to Nurses’ Accounts of Working Through the Worst Week of the Pandemic “This is a truly dark and shameful chapter in our history, and so much of it would have been preventable.” Cleaning an ambulance at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center. (Alex Wittwer)
Last week, WW in which she wrote of feeling shaken by a different sort of suffering working in the Legacy Health s intensive care unit, and pleaded for Americans to take COVID-19 precautions seriously. Here s what our readers had to say: