Portland committee approves 4th Street parking, reviews Vision Zero safety plans

[0:31] Regina Phillips: Sounds like we're all set. Terrific. Thanks, Carly. Welcome, everybody, to the Sustainability and Transportation Committee meeting of the Portland City Council. My name is Regina Phillips. I represent District 3 on the Council, and I also chair Sustainability and Transportation. We're going to start by introducing the members of the Council that are on the Committee. Then we're going to go to folks that are not on the Committee that are on the Council. We really appreciate those counselors who are not on the committee of being here today, then I'm going to turn it over to director moon, so that you can choose and start to introduce the folks that are representing the city. I will turn it over to Council bullet and then we'll go from there. [1:13] Anna Bullett: Good evening, everyone. Thanks for being here. My name is animal district, or on the city council. Council. [1:22] Pious Ali: Hello, everyone. Councilor Pius Ali at large and a member of this committee. Thank you. [1:30] Mark Dion: Mayor. Mayor Mark Dion, not a member of the committee. Councilor Grant. Hi, folks. I've got my camera off because I'm on my commute, but I am Ben Grant, [1:45] Benjamin Grant: at large, member of the council and not a member of this committee. Thanks. [1:50] Regina Phillips: We really appreciate the mayor and Councilor Grant for being here. I don't see anybody else from the council on here, but I'm sure they may come on soon or later on in the agenda. And if so, we will make sure that we acknowledge them. I'm now going to turn it over to Director Moon to start the introductions for the city staff. Thank you, Councilor. I'm Troy Moon. I'm the [2:11] Director of Sustainability (Unidentified): Director of Sustainability for the city and liaison to the committee from the staff. And I'll pass it to Carly. [2:19] Carly Masucci-Meyer: Hi, I'm Carly Masucci-Meyer. I'm a Sustainability Associate within the sustainability office and I will pass it to Bruce. Good evening, I'm Bruce Hyman. I'm the transportation [2:31] Unidentified Staff (Planning/Urban Development): program manager in the city's planning and urban development department. I'll pass it to director [2:41] Kevin Craft: Craft. Hi everybody, my name is Kevin Craft. I'm the director of planning and urban development. [2:45] Carly Masucci-Meyer: i'll pass it to nil hi all i'm neil donaldson i also work in the planning department i'll pass [2:52] Mike Murray: it to Jeremiah. Hi, Jeremiah Bartlett, transportation systems engineer at public works. I will pass it to Director Murray. Good evening everyone, Mike Murray, public works director. I will pass it over [3:06] Benjamin Grant: to Tony Workus. Hi, I'm Tony Workus. I'm the parking division director. I will pass it over to Nicole. [3:15] Regina Phillips: Hi Nicole Albert. I am associate corporation counsel with the office of corporation council who has not gone yet. Greg, have you introduced yourself? [3:27] Greg Jordan: You just did. Thank you. I'm Greg Jordan, Assistant City Manager. [3:32] Director of Sustainability (Unidentified): And Councilor Michniewicz has joined us. Councilor Phillips. [3:35] Regina Phillips: Thank you. Good evening, Councilor Michniewicz. Would you like to introduce yourself? I think we have already done that. [3:43] Kevin Craft: Yes, thank you. Sarah Michniewicz, District 1. [3:47] Regina Phillips: Again, I want to thank all the Councilors and the Mayor for being here this evening. We have a very, tight agenda with a lot of great discussion that's going to be happening. And so for that, I'm not going to keep us. And so I would like a motion for the approval of the of the June. Sorry about that. Of the June meeting of the June meeting. So move. Second move by Councilor Ali, seconded by Councilor Bullett. Councilor Ali, how do you vote? Yes. Councilor Bullett. Yes. And I am a yes. So the minutes have been approved. Thank you very much for that. I'm now going to turn it over to Director Moon to give us an update on the Sustainability Department. [4:34] Director of Sustainability (Unidentified): Great. Thank you, Councillor. I'll try to be brief in the interest of time. Just a few things we wanted to mention. So we are in the process of recruiting our new Sustainability Associate to replace Katie, who you remember from helping me staff the committee many times. So we'll hopefully have a new person sometime later this summer or early fall. Also, as you recall, we've been working on our climate resilience project to do a shoreline inventory of all of the coasts of Portland and South Portland. And we're developing a tool that will help us identify and prepare for the impacts of coastal flooding on critical infrastructure. So that work has begun. So we'll have teams of our consulting engineers and surveyors doing field work over the course of the rest of the summer. So we'll have a more report of what that tool will look like in the fall or early next year for folks. I'll skip the composting. I'm going to do a little bit more in depth on our composting project, but a couple other things. I was a guest presenter at a sustainable agriculture and research conference back on July 1st, talking about our community composting program with a statewide audience. We facilitated the first of our land care lunch breaks to educate the public about sustainable land care practices and how not to use pesticide. We had our first webinar on June 17th, and we have two more scheduled this summer. And then we had a really interesting Coffee and Climate recently on June 12th that was talking about how to communicate climate challenges in a more upbeat way and not focus so much on facts and figures, but to really engage people. A really interesting session and I would encourage people to check out the recording of that if they have an opportunity and I just want to take a couple minutes to talk about our composting program. We have some developments coming up in that area soon so just quickly share my screen so as you know we do have our community composting pilot project around the city and the reason we have our composting project is because our one climate future goals include reducing organics in the waste stream by 70 by 2030 and we also have a goal to be a zero waste community by 2050 which means diverting 90 of our waste from the waste stream so we do have a ways to go but composting and waste food diverting food waste from our waste stream is a really important way to that we can achieve that. A recent waste study we did with eco main showed that about 45 of all the trash that goes into our trash bags in Portland are is compostable over 30 of it is actually food scraps and there's other parts of compostable material in the bag as well so there's a lot of opportunity to divert food scraps and compost out of those our city trash bags and get them to higher and better use. So a number of years ago we started our curbs our community composting program started in 2021 as a pilot program and we've been expanding it through the years so in 2026 we hope to do some more improvements to we're hoping to add another site to make it more convenient for people to drop off their food scraps and we have a grant that will help us do that as well as a grant to help kind of make the sites look better. We have we're planning to add some kiosks to some of the facilities and to make the signs up you know update the signs some of them are getting kind of aged some of them were installed back in 2021 so it's time for new signs. Just a quick reminder of where the drop-offs are we have them spread all around the city you know from boys a lot of them are community gardens and others are at some other Facilities, including some schools, a few parks, and also on Peaks Island. So we have good distribution, but we are looking in the longer term to add even more facilities and anticipating adding one more site later this year. We take a whole range of food scraps, basically things that were alive in the past can be composted in our program. We try to help people do a good job, all the signs at the facilities. We try to be really clear and have colorful signs with really a lot of pictures to demonstrate what people should compost and what they can't compost. And we also have translated versions of the signs on all the sites. So our neighbors who speak languages other than English can also learn how to participate in the program. And I think the signs have been pretty successful. We find that the contamination at the sites is extremely low. So we're really pleased that the residents and the participants of doing a great job with composting. We do also do a number of outreach things to help people know about the program. So we do things like attend wayside food programs, picnics in the gardens. Most of them are co-hosted around our drop off spot. So we attend and help people who attend those programs learn how to compost. We work with school children and other groups who want to come to visit the site and learn more about the program. We do a lot of work on social media, including teaching people about our pumpkin cycle. Every fall, we have a big program to collect pumpkins so our sites aren't buried in pumpkins. We also try to do fun education things around, you know, big events. Like here's one we did around the super bowl, you know, just kind of whimsical things you can compost and things you can't. And just recently we conducted a survey, community survey, to learn more about how people feel about the program. So we had about 400 responses. We learned that 89 percent of our respondents compost at least some of the food scraps, and people still want it to be easier, which we do as well. So we're going to continue to try to work on making it more convenient with more spots. And we also ask people how they compost. So of the respondents, almost 60% of the folks used our drop-off sites. Most of the rest of the people use the garbage to garden curbside subscription model that people pay extra to participate in. Reasons people want to participate are they want to help the environment. And I think another big factor is because this is free, people can compost for free and not have to spend money on city trash bags. So that pay-as-you-throw model is a really good incentive to get people to divert waste from the waste stream. It was interesting that 20% of the folks weren't aware of our composting program, so we clearly do have some more work to do to get the word out, and we will be doing that. And some of the barriers people noted that, you know, the cost of the subscription for Garbage to Garden is about $20 a month. So a lot of people find that to be a barrier and other people notice that they would like to have more drop off spots. But overall, the program has been showing success, increasing success over the years. We started out when the program started in 2021. We had, you know, about 50 tons of materials composted, and in 2025, we had about 450 tons of material composted. So people are definitely beginning to participate more as time goes on. But I should mention Garbage Garden has been a great partner for us. They are the company that comes and picks up the compost from our drop-off sites, and they also provide the curbside service to folks who want to pay for the subscription service. And at this point, we estimate that one in seven Orland households are a subscriber to Darbyshire Gardens' composting program. And so also I wanted to mention the Peaks Island team. So we also support composting on Peaks Island, along with a dedicated crew of Peaks Island volunteers who help manage the program on the island for us. And we're also working with the Peaks Island volunteers to develop an on-site composting facility, along with support from the staff at the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. So, really kudos to the Peaks Island team, who is really, committed and dedicated to the program out there. And that is our brief program overview. Happy to have any questions you might have. If I can stop sharing. Actually, I don't know if I ever, did I ever share or not? Probably not. You did share. I did. Great. Perfect. [13:46] Regina Phillips: Yeah, if you want to bring us back to the full group, that would be great. Okay, hold on. No worries. Thank you, Director. Can you see up on the bottom? [13:55] Director of Sustainability (Unidentified): Yeah. Oh, stop share. Here it is. Sorry. Okay, good. You're good. [14:01] Regina Phillips: Not a problem. Really want to thank you as well and your team for all the work that you have done regarding this project. Exciting updates. Does anyone have any questions for Director Moon or Carly? [14:18] Anna Bullett: Council Bullitt. No questions. questions real quick just a plug for the wayside pop-up picnics they're fabulous I was Monday night we had excellent weather and it was gorgeous and everybody composted all their food scraps so try to make it to those this summer if you're around thank you counselor any [14:39] Regina Phillips: other questions for the director? Carly, do you have anything to add either with the updates or the composting or anything? No, Troy pretty much covered it all. I guess I'm just really [14:49] Carly Masucci-Meyer: excited for the new, the new kiosks that we're planning for some of the sites too. That'll be awesome to give them shelter and have the community boards as well and more engagement [14:59] Regina Phillips: around composting. Yeah, terrific. Thanks, Carly, appreciate it. Okay, well, if there aren't any other questions, we're going to continue on with our agenda. The next thing on our agenda is the golf courts, golf carts on Peaks Island. I don't think I saw Zach on, I could be wrong. I think Nicole's, I think Nicole's gonna take this one. Okay, I'm gonna turn it over to Nicole. Thank you. Wait, what? Oh, sorry, no, that wasn't me, sorry. I don't have that. No, that's quite okay. I don't [15:34] Director of Sustainability (Unidentified): see is it me or i don't see is that i can probably cover it counselor let me get to that part [15:41] Regina Phillips: until September. Up to you. Why don't we do that? We'll just postpone. I don't think it's critical. Awesome. Yep, terrific. Thank you for that. We apologize to the public that we cannot give this update, but we will get back to it in September. The reason why we're getting back to it in September is usually committee, committees don't meet in August. So for those of you don't know, we will not be having a committee meeting in August. And so we will revisit this topic in September. Thank you very much for your understanding. The next item on our agenda is the additional parking spaces on 4th Street, and so I'm going to turn this over to Director Warkus. Thank [16:24] Benjamin Grant: you. So this item is currently on 4th Street, the parking spaces, or there's an area of no parking that we're proposing to add additional parking spaces. The street is wider in this area and it was something that we discovered that there is an opportunity to add about six additional parking spaces that also includes allowing for a 40-foot setback so that we're not creating any issues with sight lines. So the request is to add this to the traffic schedule to convert the no parking to two hour parking. And then in addition to that, it would be to modify the traffic schedule to add this area to the zone 11 residential permits. So that would allow Islanders to park in this area as part of their residential permit program. Jeremiah, did I miss anything or anything to add? [17:13] Mike Murray: You did not. We have done some work out there to ensure that this conversion can be done safely and without any issues to the traveling public. I concur, it is, it is wide enough to do [17:28] Mark Dion: this. Thank [17:31] Regina Phillips: you, Director. Thank you, Jeremiah. Any questions from any counselors or any questions at all regarding this, Director? I have a question, and so when you say that this is open to the folks on Peaks Island with a permit only for the two hours, correct? No, so the one and two hour [17:56] Benjamin Grant: zones are included in the residential permit program, so it would allow someone with a residential permit to park over the time limit. So currently the Peaks Island residential zone is directly next to this area on 4th Street, so we would just be expanding their zone a little [18:11] Regina Phillips: bit further. So this is specifically for Peaks Islanders, which means that those six spots are pretty much directly going to them? [18:19] Benjamin Grant: Not entirely. So the one- and two-hour zone is available for everyone, so let me clarify that. Anyone could park there for free. There's no meter or anything like that. However, anyone on Peaks Island would be able to park over that one- or two-hour limit. [18:32] Anna Bullett: Okay, terrific, thank you, Council Bullet. Thanks, Director Orcas. Is there a time limit at all with that residential, sorry, I'm not super versed in residential category 11, so it would [18:46] Benjamin Grant: just be the 10 hour, basically 10 days of storing the vehicle, which generally is only going to happen if someone reports that your vehicle is abandoned. Aside from that, you would need to follow all the street maintenance restrictions as anyone else would. Okay, thanks, I'll [19:06] Anna Bullett: just add this is a really good idea. I was just over there and it is like crazy tight with the closure of the [19:12] Regina Phillips: Thanks, Counselor. We are taking public comment on this, and so we will open it up to the public. So does anyone have any questions, any comments? Sorry, no questions, any public comments. Sorry about the background noise. I do not see anyone wishing to give any public comment. Do you, Counselor? [19:52] Anna Bullett: I have one. Stephen has his hand up. [19:55] Regina Phillips: Oh, I don't know why I can't see. Oh, now I have mine. Okay. Carly, can we bring him over? There we go. Go ahead. [20:06] Stephen Scharf: Stephen Scharf of Brackett Street in Portland. And I sort of have two questions. One, what side of the street is this? It was, it's not clear from the materials. And can you, and when it goes to council, it should go with a map outlining the exact location of the parking spots. And my second question is if referencing residential 11. It's this, I, this is also in the Monjoy Hill residential district. I assume, I'm not sure which residential district it would be, but I assume it overlaps with that, and thus they would should be included in this. But separately, my concern would only be, I like that they're additive spots, but there are people who utilize the waterfront who would be able to utilize these spots conveniently. And if they're taken up all the time by Casco Bay folks, they're sort of useless for folks wanting to utilize these spots. Final part of that is that people who are using waterfront spots or doing something are usually doing things for more than two hours. Hours. So my question is, would it be possible to make it a four-hour spot in some way? That's all. [21:44] Regina Phillips: First of all, thank you for the comment. Oh, why am I doing this? Do you guys hear my echo? I do. [21:55] Anna Bullett: Am I okay now? [22:02] Regina Phillips: I think I am. Well, first of all, thank you for your comments. Typically, when we take public comment, we usually don't answer questions. However, Director, if you don't mind, could you possibly answer Mr. Schaaf's questions, if you don't mind? [22:23] Benjamin Grant: Yes. So it's going to be on the north portion of the road, so extending down from where there is currently already parking designated. Also technically yes, it would be part of the same Munjoy Hill residential zone. However, generally speaking, no one parks over there because anyone with that zone four would be able to park much [22:42] Regina Phillips: closer to their house. Thank you very much for that. I think the only question we didn't answer was possibly making it four hours. I think typically we, don't normally set a four hour parking thing that I'm like that I know, so it's usually two. So I say we stick with the two hours unless my counselors on the committee want for it to go before, or Director, if you think that would be more beneficial. Jeremiah, our traffic schedule doesn't support [23:17] Mike Murray: Residential parking, one or four hour parking, we'd have to start amending the city's traffic schedule for that specific purpose. So I think that, I think the intent had always been in those areas, either you're a resident, or you're trying to encourage some sort of turnover parking. Just trying to channel John Pavarotta's voice in my mind from the old days. [23:42] Regina Phillips: Good old John Pavarotta. Thank you for that. I appreciate that, Jeremiah. Any other public comments on this? I keep raising my hand and I'm going to the wrong place. Any, I don't see anyone else raising their hand. Any other public comment? Okay, public comment is closed. Any other further questions from the counselors? Okay, so I would, Director, I assume you want a motion. So a motion to add additional parking spaces on 4th Street, making it a two-hour parking. Is that done? Second. Moved by Councilor Bullett, seconded by Councilor Ali. We will go ahead and take the vote. Councilor Bullett? Yes. Councilor Ali? Yes. And I am a yes. And so that passes. Thank you, Director, for that. Moving on to our next agenda item, we're going to be talking about moped and motorcycle parking, we will not take any public comment on this. And so I will then also turn this over, the over to direct workers. [25:07] Benjamin Grant: Yes, thank you again. So this item was brought to us by Councilor Pelletier as well as a resident on Congress Street. Currently the way the traffic schedule is outlined and we touched on this a little bit in the last issue, motorcycle and moped parking in the traffic schedule has a 10-hour limit, so that is anywhere that you have motorcycle and moped parking it is always a 10-hour limit. It is not included as part of the residential permit program, so that means if you live near a motorcycle or moped parking space you have to, you're allowed to park it there for that 10 hours and then you would need to move it out of that area and move it back to be compliant with the ordinance. We received some feedback that on Avon Street near Congress specifically, there's a large area of about 10 motorcycle moped parking areas. The feedback we received is that the parking spaces were not being utilized to their maximum potential and that residential parking should be allowed in these spaces. So what we're, What we're seeking guidance on is, this an issue that we should pursue further with drafting a potential ordinance change? If this is something that there is an interest in changing, the recommendation from staff would be to create a new designation in the traffic schedule that would allow for eight-hour motorcycle or moped parking. So we would create that as the first portion of the change, and then we would incorporate that eight hour motorcycle and moped parking into the residential permit program. So that would make it so that way we're not creating a widespread impact in changing every motorcycle and moped parking space into residential parking. The reason I think that 's very important that we don't just make a widespread change is a lot of these spaces are one or two spaces where they are located. So if we changed everything to allow unlimited parking for residents, I think we could have some unintended consequence for local businesses and people that currently rely on that 10-hour parking, so that way there is turnover. Jeremiah, anything that I missed there from our discussions again? [27:15] Mike Murray: I thought you did a good job covering it. [27:18] Benjamin Grant: Thank you. That is all I have for that one. Thanks, Director. [27:23] Regina Phillips: Any questions for Director Warkus? Council Bullett? [27:28] Anna Bullett: Thanks, Director. So can you clarify? So if I don't have off-street parking and I own a moped or a motorcycle, but not a vehicle, and I need to park overnight or whatever for multiple days, with my residential permit, I can only use a full car spot? [27:43] Benjamin Grant: You could only use a one or two-hour zone spot, but since they're not marked off, you're not really taking up a full car space. You'd be taking up a portion of whatever that space is. [27:53] Anna Bullett: So we could free that up by letting more vehicles use those if we didn't move some of it. [27:59] Benjamin Grant: You could potentially free up a little bit of space, yes. [28:02] Anna Bullett: Cool. I'm good. Sounds good. [28:07] Regina Phillips: Councilor Ali or anyone else have any other questions for the director? [28:13] Pious Ali: No, I don't have any questions. Thank you. [28:18] Regina Phillips: Director, what is our next step here? year? [28:23] Benjamin Grant: So the next steps would be that I will work with Jeremiah on a potential change to the traffic schedule, as well as the residential permit program, and then we will bring that back to you for public comment and a vote. [28:40] Regina Phillips: Well, that sounds like a perfect plan. So we will probably hear more from you later on this fall regarding this change, correct? Correct. Terrific. Thank you, director, appreciate that. We are just cruising along, so the next item on the agenda is for us to get an update from the reimagined Franklin Street project from director Craft. This is an update. Typically with updates we do not take public comment. I know that there have been some emails that have gone back and forth that folks have had some questions about, and I think the director has done a really good job of responding to those emails. So director, I'm going to turn it over to you to give us an update. Great, thank you council Phillips, and thank you for having us. [29:30] Kevin Craft: We're really excited to be here tonight. Overview purpose of tonight's presentation is really to give just a quick update on the reimagining Franklin Street project. Within the last month we made some real progress on advancing some technical components with our project partners at Main DOT, and we felt it was the appropriate time to give the committee an update on the project and outline the next steps so you know what's coming within the next couple of months in terms of engagement and your involvement. So with that, I'm going to just turn it over to our lead project manager on the project, Bruce Hyman, who's going to walk you through a brief presentation. Bruce, not sure if you're talking, but we can't hear you. There we go. [30:19] Unidentified Staff (Planning/Urban Development): Thank you very much. Thank you for inviting us to provide this update. In 2024, we entered into a village partnership agreement with the Maine DOT that established a cost-sharing agreement and made them an active part of the project team. We kicked off the current planning process in March of 2025, and throughout we've emphasized that we are building upon the 2015 plan and prior public engagement, which began in the mid-2000s. This involves reflecting existing and anticipated development changes, in traffic patterns and travel patterns, and more recent city goals established by the council, such as sustainability and housing. Three project goals track the themes of heal, move, and grow. They relate to reestablishing urban fabric that was lost when Franklin Street was constructed, transportation via the move goal, and grow representing sustainability and creating opportunities for economic development and housing. The objectives drill down to more tangible outcomes we're working on to achieve the plan. These include safety for all users, with an emphasis on active transportation and right-sizing Franklin Street. The plan seeks to mitigate the barrier effect Franklin Street currently has, be it re-establishing lost street connections at Lancaster, Oxford, Federal, and Newbury Street, or combining the Cumberland and Congress Street intersections into one intersection at each location. The current design related to urban place, the current design of Franklin serves as a traffic funnel that currently serves as a traffic funnel between I-295 downtown and the waterfront. Placemaking is a key aspect of the project by creating developable parcels for mixed-use housing and establishing an activated street frontage. The existing character of traffic and land use changes significantly from I-295 to the waterfront. We're designing the street to reflect these traffic differences and to anticipate and help shape Franklin Street's future. Right now, the open spaces near or along Franklin Street are generally disconnected. Activated street frontages and state-of-the-art bicycle and pedestrian facilities will strengthen connections between the Back Cove, Bayside Trail, Boy Street Park, Garden Gordon, Lincoln Park, the Eastern Prom Trail, and the Portland Harbor Common, which is under construction currently. The process began by reintroducing the Franklin Street project to the public. There have been a wide range of people engaged, those that have been involved for almost 20 years to those that haven't been involved before. We got, for instance, 240 responses to the survey that we did, and over 70% of the people that responded to the survey hadn't participated in the Franklin process before. We began with more intensive work in the spring and summer of 2025 through the open house and community design workshops, and then we've been advancing since then to more technical work translating what we heard into the into the street design and land use concept we're working on now. We anticipate having the final plan completed in the fall. The public engagement included a wide range of ways to gather input and feedback from the public. This range from larger public events, like the open house and community design workshops, to smaller sessions like stakeholder meetings and meetings with community groups and neighborhood associations. So we've tried to really embrace the updating of the 2015 plan throughout the public engagement and the process, as well as making sure that we're modernizing Franklin Street to reflect state-of-the-art advancements in bicycle and pedestrian facility design, street design, urban design and placemaking, as well as making sure that we're staying engaged with stakeholder groups and getting us to this point that we're excited that we're at. [35:10] Kevin Craft: And just to wrap up here in terms of next steps and for the council's awareness. Following this meeting, as Bruce mentioned, we're working with our consultants WSP to refine what we'll call a draft final design that we'll share with the public later this summer, early fall. We intend to have another larger public meeting as well as some stakeholder engagement to get final comments on that, and then we'll do some refinement and tweaks to the design. That final plan will then come to this S&T committee for a public meeting, so a vote and hopefully endorsement, which would then go to the city council for an endorsement, and that would conclude the planning phase and we'd be able to move on into the next phase with our partner's main dot on the design phase which as you may recall is already funded from previous reconnecting communities grant funds so we're really excited to be kind of winding down here and really eager to get back out to the public and share kind of some of the concepts that have come up over the last year so thank you and we're happy to take any questions thank [36:08] Regina Phillips: you director do you want to bring us back to the, because we can see your presentation. Counselor Lee, questions? [36:21] Pious Ali: Yes, Madam Chair. Director, I know you have spoken about, how do we call it, the public engagement that you've done so far or that you have built based on the 2015. 2015. I also want to ask, there have been a few individuals in the community who have been part of this process since 2015. Are we still engaging them to get their feedback? [36:54] Kevin Craft: Yes, we're engaging with everybody that still wants to be involved. We've certainly engaged with many of the stakeholders that have been involved with this project dating back to 2015 or earlier. The public group, the Franklin Street Reclamation Authority, we've met with on several occasions, but we've certainly made it an emphasis to try to continue to work as closely as possible with folks that have been engaged, both new and older. Thank you. [37:21] Benjamin Grant: Mayor. Thank you, Madam Chair. [37:25] Mark Dion: Director Kraft, I appreciate the energy and the input and participation regarding the urban design component of this initiative. Is there going to be a companion financial outline? I mean, I always say the idea is nice, but where's the money and who's paying for it? So I'm just hoping that when you come back with a proposal that we have a fully developed financial plan that gives us some sense of our capacity and who's going to carry the burden moving forward. That's what I'll be looking for. So thank you. [38:08] Kevin Craft: Certainly. Thank you for that comment, Mayor. We will certainly make sure to include cost estimates as part of the plan. [38:16] Mark Dion: Madam Chair, can I just stop for a second? I think what's going to be as important is to profile the sources of revenue in terms of federal, state, and municipal participation in the overall cost, because I think we have a fiduciary responsibility to explain to our taxpayers what share of the burden they will assume and the likelihood of financing over a course of years that would be sustained by the state and federal components. So I have more confidence in the state than the federal part of the equation. So I need to put that on the table. That's why it's important. Other than that, sorry for the digression, Council Phillips. I'll shut it down now. [39:08] Regina Phillips: No digression at all, Mr. Mayor. We love having you attend our meeting and asking any questions that you would like to ask. Any other questions for Director Kraft? Well, Director, thank you for all your work on that, and I also want to just kind of reiterate what Counselor Ali was talking about. We have had a lot of neighbors that have been involved in this project, so I really want to thank them as well for any ideas and questions that they have as well. This is a big project, and I think once we're done we're gonna be able to see, you know, how successful this project was, and we're gonna be looking at a new neighborhood. So really, too, we want to thank everybody that's had a part in this project and we'll continue to have a role in that. If there are no other questions, we will move on to our next agenda item. We are going to be talking about Vision Zero. We have three presentations this evening in order for us to gain more information and have a really good dialogue on our Vision Zero policy and making sure our streets are safe and we reduce fatalities. So you can see on your agenda I'll just talk very briefly, sorry. Hold on one second. Sorry. I'm dealing with other things. Sorry about that. I really do want to apologize. I'm going to quickly go through and then I'm going to switch over to my cell phone. So I apologize for that. I will be on the call. If for some reason I get lost, Councillor Bullett said that she would go ahead and run the meeting and I will get back to you as soon as possible. If I miss anything, I will sure, I'm sure I will get caught up either with Director, Assistant City Manager Jordan or Director Moon or even my councillors on this call. So the way this is going to go is we are going to get a presentation from the Portland Bike and Pedestrian Advisory Committee. From that, from there, they're going to do a presentation from there. We're going to want, we're going to be hearing from the Greater Portland Council of Governments. They're also on our call and they will do a presentation regarding Vision Zero, Safe Streets, and that. And then after that, the city assistant manager, Greg Jordan, will also give an update and let you all know where we're at with some particular things. So I'm going to turn it over to the Pullman Bike Pedestrian Advisory Committee, and also I'm going to switch over to my cell phone. So again, I apologize. I am on the call, and so take it away. I think I'm going to turn Eve there over to Miles or to Winston. So take it off. [42:24] Miles Smith: Thank you, Counselor Phillips. This is Miles Smith. And I appreciate your inconvenience. I am sitting outside of the public library in Greenville. I am on vacation. My reception is not great. Winston, who is the previous chair of the committee, is going to step in at points. And in total, if I drop out, and also Liz Trice, who's a member of the committee and a partner on a lot of this stuff and a former GPCOG employee and planner, is also going to speak at points. I'm going to share some slides we prepared for this meeting. I think you'll be able to see those in a moment, hopefully. [43:11] Carly Masucci-Meyer: Yeah, we can see them. Thank you. [43:13] Miles Smith: Great. I don't know why it's doing it that way, but. Okay. There we go. So first, just briefly, what we're going to talk about in our 15 minutes or so, we want to acknowledge what Portland has been doing, which is great. We can see that this committee and the staff is working hard to change how we approach street safety and the pleasant, joyous experience of walking in our great walkable city. And we also want to call on the city to do more because we know that these incidents keep occurring and that they will keep occurring unless we take even more aggressive action to stop them. So we have two policies in particular that we're going to call on the council to adopt. And we will speak about those in more detail. They are 20 is plenty, which is a comprehensive reduction in speed limits in the city, and the second is a post-crash analysis process to look at the root causes of crashes and how the infrastructure is creating the conditions where crashes are very likely, and particularly those that kill people. So next slide, specifically we do want to acknowledge that this committee and the staff has worked hard on creating a, adopting Vision Zero, creating the quick action plan. There's a lot of great stuff in that plan. We thank them for bringing us in to work with them on the complete streets policy and the Portland transportation plan. All of this is great and necessary work. A lot of it is long-term and strategic, which is important, and the changes we're talking about today are more short-term, tactical, and lower cost things that we can do right now. We also want to acknowledge that some of those big investments and big projects that are transformative are in the pipeline or already happening. The State Street and High Street two-way projects, Forest Avenue, Brighton Avenue redesigns, the Payson Park changes that are being demonstrated this summer. These are all great. Again, though, we want to look at things that we can do right now that will make a difference, that don't cost much, and would be additive to our current Vision Zero plan and really give it some more strength in the shorter term. So one of these is kind of proactive, which is let's slow cars down to prevent crashes in the first place, and Liz is going to talk a little bit more about that, and the other is reactive, which means crashes will still occur because people make mistakes, pedestrians make Mistakes drivers make, mistakes they do, dumb things sometimes. Those things are illegal sometimes, they're just careless, sometimes they're just the product of bad luck or lack of skill. Those things happen all the time, but our streets are not currently set up to save us from those mistakes, and we want to know exactly how we can make those changes to make our streets more safe. So I'm going to first note that a lot of organizations are endorsing all of these plans that we're going to put forward, specifically the two we're talking about today, and also some additional ones we'll talk about at the end that are more big picture. But these are just the organizations that have already endorsed the policies that we're going to be talking about next. I'm going to hand it over to Liz Trice to talk about 20 is plenty. Liz, if you are audible, go ahead. head. [46:54] Unidentified Public Commenter: Hi, can you hear me? Whoops. Yeah, good. Hi, great. Okay, so I'm actually really excited about this. I don't know if you guys saw my letter to the editor that was published in Press Herald last week. I've been following this for a while. And really excited because the most important thing is when you look at this at 20 miles an hour, if somebody gets hit, they have an 8% chance of getting killed. At 40 miles an hour at 46% chance. I've actually seen other data that 's closer to 80 or 90 percent basically faster cars kill people and slower cars don't like that is the most single most important thing and so if we've got 35 miles an hour posted on most of our arterials that means most pedestrians who get in the traffic are going to die and that's and that's part of why we don't like walking there we don't like biking there no one feels safe there. There's also a hockey stick in terms of noise. So 20 miles an hour is actually really slow is actually really quiet. And 40 miles an hour is really loud. And it increases dramatically. And that means that not only do people not have a pleasant time walking there, it means you don't want to sit at a cafe table in front of a coffee shop. And it means you don't want to live there. I actually believe, you know, most of the work I do is as in housing advocacy and housing development. And I actually believe that the speed of our arterials is preventing housing development because for three reasons, a couple reasons. One is you have when it's noisy and unsafe to walk, people don't want to live there. And also, if it's not safe and pleasant to walk or bike there, then you need to provide parking and the economics are not there to build a five-story parking on Brighton Ave and a five-story parking garage. So whereas if you can build housing without parking and a family of four is like, oh, I can live on Washington Ave or Brighton Avenue and my kids can easily bike the mile and a half to school or work because it's safe and we don't need a car, like to even give people that option, suddenly that drops the price of housing dramatically and actually makes it possible to build housing along these arterials, which we have not seen yet in serious ways. So I think that this is the number one thing we can do to improve livability in the cities. And once you slow these speed limits, you are going to make them more livable, quieter, safer, and then you can narrow the lane widths and you can start building tree canopy again. So it hits basically every single marker that we talk about as livability for the city. So I got excited about this a couple years ago, but it was still kind of new. And now cities who have started implementing it, both in the US and abroad, are getting really exciting data because they are finding just by changing the speed limits that they're reducing crashes and injuries and deaths by over 20% immediately without doing any road reconstruction without doing any enforcement, just by changing the speed limit, which, you know, four or five years ago, when I started reading this stuff, we didn't know that we were told, oh, if you don't enforce it, or if you don't rebuild the road, nobody will do it. Turns out only 10 or 15% of people following the speed limit slows everybody down. And so there's all sorts of great data right now. So it's not speculative. It's, it's for real. And it's allowed under state law. And I'll let Myles talk about more of that. But I just think that this is the number one thing we can do for livability in our city. Can I see the next slide, Myles? Yep. Okay. So here are some FAQs. Is speed really the big factor in crashes? Yes. It's the number one factor in whether victims survive. Will reducing speed limits actually reduce speeds? Yes, they will. We already have data from other cities, as I mentioned. Have other places tried? Yes, it's worked. Even when people worry about it and freak out at the beginning, everybody adjusts to it and nobody goes back to faster streets. Will this cause big increases in commute times? No, it's vastly overestimated how much speed limit because people are only going a couple miles and they have to stop at stoplights anyway. Way, it's not actually a big difference in how much time, but it's a major difference in how many people live or die. So it's a huge, it's not a problem from a commute time perspective. Is DOT reviewing our speed limits? Yes, but slowly it's messed up and we actually have the right to change it ourselves. There's a little process there. Why not 25 miles an hour, 30 miles an hour. The issue with this is that basically people tend to go five miles an hour or 10 miles an hour faster than what's posted, right? And so, you know, it doesn't, the more conservative you go, the better, the safer it is. And so just post it what you want it and start there. Will this lead to more people getting speeding tickets? Probably not. Miles can talk more to that too but that's not this is a whole other discussion there's this whole super speeder thing that's happening in other states and it's a whole other thing but there's not a lot of enforcement going on really we're just talking about changing the signs changing and then having some public education around the city of Portland cares that people have been dying and this is a response that we're making because it's the easiest most cost effective most proven been a response to save lives. And there's studies done, and there's absolutely no economic harm that has happened in other places. So no concern about that. Is there another 20-20 slide, Miles? I think that's it. Okay. Is there anything that I missed, Miles, that you want to say? [52:50] Miles Smith: Well, I just would add to that last bit on the economic impact. The streets that have retail businesses do far better if vehicles are traveling at a speed that is comfortable for walking, and if they are going slow enough, they actually see what businesses are available on the street, and are traveling at a speed where they might stop and park and shop. So vehicles going 40 miles an hour down Forest Avenue don't notice all of the businesses that are on Forest Avenue. They blow past them, they blow through the neighborhoods, they cut through areas where kids are trying to cross those streets to get to various schools, including my own. And the businesses in that area do suffer when the vehicle speeds are higher, and they will do better when vehicle speeds drop. And we have seen this in many places. And the only other thing I will add on 20s Plenty specifically is in your packet, you will find a legal analysis of Maine state law and a step-by-step approach for how Portlands can, simply by writing a letter, request that we be able to set speed limits on our local streets, and we can request a specific speed limit on all of the state-owned streets, the major avenues. And most of our serious injuries and fatalities are happening on the state-owned major arterials, and that is where the speed limits are 35 miles an hour, or 40 miles an hour. That's where it's most dangerous. So while lowering speed limits on the local streets will help set a tone of safety and make it much more pleasant to live in our neighborhoods and have kids be able to bike and play in the street and be able to get out of the way safely when a car arrives, it also creates a general air of, hey, we're going to have calmer traffic in our city. So it's important to do both the local streets and the arterials. There is more information on this in the attachments. Now I'm gonna hand it to Winston to quickly talk about Crash Analysis Studio. [54:59] Winston (Unidentified): Hi. Winston, are you there? Yes, can we hear me? Yes, great. I've got too many microphones going on, so you never know. Thank you to Chair Phillips for having us and thanks to Liz and Miles for that great presentation. So the second thing we can do is react to crashes when they do happen, because especially as we move forward, you know, the Vision Zero plan has a goal to eliminate crashes by 2045, and there are going to be crashes that happen between now and then, and we can learn from them. one of the things that kind of invigorated me and the committee to look at these two items specifically you know because we have like a broader list of priorities that we've been pushing for but these two items specifically was an email exchange i had with the mother of one of the two kids who was hit earlier this spring on one was hit on may 19th and then may 20th while walking to school. And so when I was emailing with one of the mothers, she was talking about the frustration of knowing that another person had been hit on the crosswalk where her kid was hit a few years ago. She looked at the main DOT crash data map and could see that. And you know, the crosswalk has been the same the whole time she's lived there. And so that kind of thing was very frustrating for her. And so, you know, she likes the idea of 20 is plenty and her husband does too because that might have reduced the severity of the injuries their child suffered, but having some kind of, if something could happen because of this terrible thing that happened to their family that would make them feel a lot better, and that kind of affected me to go after this thing that we were already pushing for. So what we're asking for is to base, have something that's based on the Strong Towns, which is an advocacy organization that pushes for good local government. And they have made a protocol based on something that happens in the medical industry when something goes wrong to look at how to analyze a crash. And they're calling it Crash Studio Analysis, which sounds like an AI computer program that's going to cost the city $300,000. But it's not. It's a free course you can take. They have a free report you can read, and that's all you need. It's something that they got funding to do by someone who cared about it. And so it's not scary. It's not expensive. When someone's involved in a serious crash, when there's a serious injury or death, we need to react to that and investigate not only the legal fault, as the police currently do, but also how to prevent similar crashes. And this process should be led by the city staff and by the community. It's important to involve both groups. And so I'm just going to lay out really quickly how this works so that we can understand what we're asking for. First, we would form a crash response team as laid out in the draft resolution that's in the memo that Miles sent, made up of staff members, technical experts, and community members. We would then create a protocol for the review of crashes based on Strongtown's crash analysis studio, which would be a moderated process that generates a report with short-term, medium-term, and long-term recommendations. Recommendations we would then need a process to implement those short-term recommendations which would be kind of traffic calming elements flex posts or you know even orange cones or those barrel things or something else to like slow people down around a dangerous crosswalk or redirect or slow traffic in a dangerous intersection and that's the kind of thing that like without really studying it 's hard to just guess and it's important to involve community input. The report Strong Towns did because they did a test with this program on 18 communities where they did it on different crashes in different communities and they found that having community members involved in these decisions could sometimes lead to better results because people are actually quite good at knowing when they're in danger and why. And so, you know, as the slide points out, cars have safety features that are designed to protect drivers from their mistakes as well as those of other drivers. We can design streets that have safety features to protect people from their mistakes as well and that will help everyone even people who drive and yeah this is something i'm i'm passionate about and i think that it would not be we don't need consultants it's not expensive the process is there other cities are doing it this is also largely how they do it in europe and this is part of [59:59] Miles Smith: Vision Zero so thank you and i'll right and i'd only add to that thanks winston that i mean we personally paid for the six most recent crash reports for pedestrian deaths in the city we paid for them we looked at them ourselves we talked to some witnesses in some of those incidents and have we can identify a lot of things that went wrong because of the infrastructure Because of the way the traffic lights work, because of the way the pedestrian signals are timed, because of how wide the intersection is or how it's lit or how you come through a curve and into a crosswalk at a high speed on Franklin Arterial and then spend that way for 30 years. We shouldn't have to wait 30 years to fix these problems because it's pretty clear to see how we can fix them in the short term with not permanent fixes, but pretty good progress. Congress. So in your MENA packet, you're going to find a roadmap to implementing the first policy we mentioned, as well as guidance from the National Association of City Transportation Officials that underpins what we're calling for, the 20 is plenty campaign. This has been used in Seattle, in Boston, in New York, in smaller cities, Madison, Wisconsin, Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is working. There's also draft resolutions that the council can consider to pass to direct the staff to implement these policies. There are other things we'd like to see in the long term, which were in our annual policy goals that we sent to the committee at the beginning of the year. The only thing that we've added on consultation with other neighborhood groups is that we would love to see more specific quantifiable performance objectives in our Vision Zero plan. How many streets are we going to redesign? How many demonstration projects are we going to do? How much money are we going to spend on these things? Not that we necessarily will be able to guarantee we're going to do them, but if we're not tracking those numbers over time, if we are only looking at the number of crashes, but we don't know exactly the inputs and the outputs from the work, we won't have a sense for which we're really making progress towards doing our part to solve the problem. We can't solve everything ourselves. We need action from individuals and from the federal and state governments, but we can do a lot, and we would love to see those things measured. That's all from us. We're happy to answer any questions you have, and thank you for the opportunity, again, to speak. [1:02:23] Regina Phillips: Thanks a lot, Miles, Liz, and Winston. I really appreciate you attending the meeting and sharing your thoughts and ideas and opinions on this. I will open it up now to questions. Any questions from counselors? [1:02:45] Anna Bullett: Counselor Bullitt? No questions at this juncture because I'm eager to hear GP cog and then our own city staff, but just appreciation. I really find that the way that this group interacts with us is so thoughtful and true partnership, and so even if I'm like texting Winston in the middle of a meeting asking for advice on something, it's really truly helpful, and so I just thank you for your passion and your time and for helping us do a better job. Anytime. [1:03:16] Miles Smith: thank you for that appreciate [1:03:18] Regina Phillips: it thanks counselor any other anyone else have any other questions 13 oh council assistant city manager jordan how's [1:03:35] Greg Jordan: my audio is it okay yep okay great i was going to cover this later under our vision zero general update but since we're on these two topics i just also want to say I appreciate the Bicycle and Pedestrian Action Committee presenting tonight, sharing their ideas and recommendations and research with us. These are some issues that we've been talking about, as this committee knows, for some time. Both of these items are in fact on our Vision Zero action plan. We are actively looking at the issue of speeds across the city And we will have a more, I guess, a comprehensive assessment of our abilities on local streets within the city, what the law says we can and cannot do, the administrative process around that, the merits of lowering speeds, some of what you heard here tonight in a more comprehensive sort of format from staff, as well as it relates to the arterials that are under the direction of MaineDOT and the very separate process that has to be followed at their level because they do have jurisdiction over those speeds. And so we'll have a more comprehensive workup on this issue at our next meeting. The same with the conversation around how we can, I guess, expand our post-crash analysis of these incidents. A concept was presented here tonight. It's certainly something that we are looking at, and we will also be coming back to the committee maybe not at the next meeting in this one, but we can certainly try to accelerate it. But how we can go about expanding our post-crash analysis, there are very, I would say, complex legal issues to navigate there to make sure that we are doing that work and presenting that information and doing that analysis in a way that is going to pass legal muster. So there are some complex issues there to work out, and we want to bring that information forward also. So I wanted to sum up our perspective on these things and that we are working on to working on advancing them for your further consideration thank [1:05:51] Regina Phillips: You assistant city manager, appreciate your thoughts on that. Any other questions for Miles, Liz, or Winston from the council? Okay, I don't see any, so at this point in time, we're going to turn it over to Greater Portland Council of Governments. I see a couple of representatives here, so I'll let you guys introduce yourselves and take from there, and then after we will get questions if anybody has any questions from the Council. Thank you. [1:06:25] Cathal Stewart: Thank you Councillor Phillips. I'm Cathal Stewart, Transportation Planning Manager for the Greater Portland Council of Governments, and I'm joined today with Colin. Do you want to introduce yourself? [1:06:36] Kevin Craft: Sure. Hey everybody, I'm Colin Hodges, Senior Planner of [1:06:41] Cathal Stewart: Great. Do you want to pop the slides up? Colin and I are going to be discussing some projects where we've made safety investments in the region and look at some of the analysis, crash data before and after. Some really interesting takeaways, I think, for this group. But, you know, first off, I just want to say it's very encouraging to see City of Portland, so many counselors in the room today, see so many engaged citizens, you know, bonding around the issues of safety and using Vision Zero as the guiding light for it. I want to go next slide, Colin. And you know, Vision Zero is something we've been working towards regionally for a few years now. The region passed our Vision Zero action plan two and a half years ago-ish. And I won't go into gritty detail here. You know, Chief Peacock pops into these meetings every so often, mostly Rick, to give updates on Portland crash trends and things like that. But just wanted to, you know, say go to VisionZeroGreaterPortland.org for our full regional plan. It's got a lot of maps and data analysis at the regional level. It's got a lot of action being taken from other communities that can be a resource for you all. And, you know, obviously our plan has become a model for the local quick action plan in the city of Portland. And, you know, just proud to see it being used like that. And I'll, you know, I'll echo the urgency of the safety issue in the city of Portland and throughout the state of Maine. 2025 was one of our worst years for fatalities overall, especially pedestrian fatalities. And you know, we know what the issues are. Division zero outlines them. Speeds, design, things like vehicle size really do play a massive role in fatalities and serious injuries on our roadways. I'm going to go to the next slide. And I'm going to pop up a few slides. I'm going to try to rip through this, let Colin go and get to the meat of it. But, you know, we know speed kills. We saw a very similar graphic to this one earlier from Liz. This one, I think, is from U.S. Department of Transportation. But, you know, the emphasis has been made, And I'll just say it's based in research, and there's a lot of research in this regard. And we know strategies like reducing speeds will work here, too. And we know that design is also a major factor. Something as simple as lane width can play a massive role in how fast people speed. This is another sort of quick, easy win. Just moving the outer lane line in a few feet can make a big difference for how fast people are driving. You know, mostly it just makes the road feel narrower. Obviously, we want to go beyond that, too, but it is something that can be done cheaply and on an annual basis. You can see the regression line here, 10 and 11 foot lanes with speed significantly lower. Those, I think, are in kilometers per hour. So hopefully that doesn't scare you too much. [1:10:17] Mark Dion: But you can go to the next slide. [1:10:19] Cathal Stewart: We also know how many lanes contributes greatly to fatalities and serious injuries. Is, you know, I'll just say that a lot of roads in, especially arterials in the city of Portland are still four lanes, and that just inherently is a risk. You know, this graph shows that's putting people at 11 times a higher risk than two lanes, and even just a three-lane road diet can have people's risk just by adjusting how many vehicle lanes are out there. And this committee saw this graphic just last month, but I'll share it again for counselors and others that are in the room today. This is region-wide, but you can see that the numbers of people killed and seriously injured in our region have been going up. And you know, 10 pedestrians, that's a third of the people that lost their lives, they're definitely disproportionately at risk. Five of those were in the city of Portland. So it's, it's bleak, but in the second, I'll hand it to Colin for some optimism anyway. You can go to the next slide. Okay. Just to tee it up. Are you taking this one? Oh, good. No, I mean, I was going to tee it up for you, but if you're, if you're ready to go on this one, go ahead. [1:11:48] Kevin Craft: Okay. Yeah, I can, I can take it. Thanks casual. So just what we wanted to do here is run through, you know, as Cash mentioned, we have some optimism, some good news to share, mostly good news that is, and what we did at GBCOG was select in total seven projects, recent safety projects around the region, roadway safety projects that were implemented, some a little earlier than that, and what we didn't have any specific methodology, we didn't say okay, we want to choose these specific locations because we think there are going to be good safety outcomes necessarily. We had no, we kind of went in blind. We did not know what the safety record was before we selected these projects. And we wanted to select projects that were kind of representative of the region. Of course, tonight I'm going to be talking about only the Portland projects, of which there are three. But just to set up kind of the analysis methodology a little bit, when we look at before and after comparison of crashes, is FHWA, the Federal Highway Administration, and other sources recommend at least looking at three to five years of data before a safety improvement, three to five years after safety improvement, so that you have enough crash data to sort of minimize the noise a little bit and make sure that you're looking at real trends, and to that, in that spirit, so we chose the years between About 2016, 2019, and about 2022 to 2025, intentionally eliminating COVID years of 2020 and 2021, just due to the, of course, unrepresentative nature, those two years and the lower levels of travel. And I wanted to run through a few stats here just to set kind of your expectations in terms of what was happening in the region during this timeframe crash-wise, so that when we get into the case studies, you can see how different the before and after analysis is compared to these kind of regional averages, but total crashes throughout the region, and this is, this is the GPCOG region, so not just Portland, but property damage only crashes were down by about, or sorry, all crashes including property Damage only were down by about seven percent, serious crashes were about flat, and failure crashes were up by almost ten percent. So region wide, you know, in the recent years we have a much different picture of, we do have rising crash rates that we are very important we need to take care of and address. But just looking at these two different time periods, we have the common before and after periods here, just kind of graph for you so you can see the trend. You know, COVID very difficult year is very different, but there was a slight decrease in total crashes as you're seeing here. And then here you see serious and fatal crashes in a common before period and common after period. See, for the most part they were kind on the decline, or at least serious crashes were pre-COVID, and then they're, they're rising again unfortunately. But you can see we looked at the averages on the before and after just to give you those kind of baselines, and then fatal crashes have been rising as well and above where they were in the before breed. So just a quick overview, so the three projects we chose in Portland, USM Roundabout, Marginal Way, and Washington Avenue, and kind of spoiler alert here, all of them resulted in either a significant decline in total crashes or reduced crash severity in the case of the last one. And that's as you can see from the baseline we showed you before, that's in defiance of regional trends. You know, the regional trend was these were vastly improved over what we're seeing region-wide in these two periods. And again, these were, these are also important to achieve them, it's generally steady exposure rates. By that we mean just the traffic volumes in 2016 to 2019 period and then the 2022 to 2025 period were about the same for each, for each site. There was a little bit of variation, but they were not significantly different, and we would not point to that as a, as a cause of the difference. So we'll start with the USM roundabout, and everybody's very familiar with this project at this point I'm sure, but obviously a drastic change and a vast last improvement with the roundabout installed in the previous five-way intersection, just showing so I'll reach one, I'll show a before and after aerial image, and then a one or two before and after Street View images just to jog your memory. Yeah, huge improvement, and in general total crashes declined by about 40 percent in these two different periods, injury crashes crash became slightly less severe. Traffic was slower. And again, traffic volumes remained about flat. So there was no big difference in traffic volumes before and after. Just to put some images to those numbers, you can see crashes of all types dropped pretty significantly in the after period. This is important. So we look at crash types, too, and what kind of crashes were happening at each location before and after. You can see in the after period, and this is pretty common with roundabouts, a big benefit, is that you can see the rear end slash side swipe crashes were huge in the before period. And those, as many of you know, can be very, dangerous for everyone involved because they tend to involve higher speeds, angles that are just very, end up with deadly consequences. So those were minimized compared to what was happening before and overall just less risk in those crash types being presented. We also, so we used TomTom, which is a data analytics platform that we get access to through main DOT. And we looked at one of the before years and one of the after years to look at any kind of speed impacts that might have occurred. As we would expect, there were speed reductions noticeably on the roundabout approaches. So median speeds went down noticeably, and that's what we would expect. And that results in better outcomes for everybody, as the last presentation discussed. Next, looking at marginal way. So most are probably familiar with this one as well and the general I'll show before and after here the general improvements in the after period involved a road or lane reduction from four lanes to or five lanes to three lanes in many cases it's not true at the intersections in all cases, but in many parts of the corridor, there are now two through travel lanes with the exception of intersections. And then in some locations such as here, there were curb extensions added and just general pedestrian infrastructure improvements. A couple of before after, you can see this before photo on the left, you can see those lanes were reduced, but you know, the intersection turn lanes remain kind of largely the same. So there is a still significant number of lanes there. You can see here the Marginal Way, or the two lane was reduced to one lane and added a bike lane. So and again, most of you are probably familiar with these, but just going through these for those that aren't aren't as familiar. This one also saw some big improvements. Total crashes declined by almost half, so that was significant. Again, median speeds seem to go down to some extent, particularly on the southern end, Forest Avenue end of the corridor. And it is a bit of a mixed bag here, though. Just to show you the before and after, this is what the 50% decline looks like in terms of total crashes and crash types, or total crashes and level of injury. When you get to crash types, it's a little bit more mixed, just because you can, again, see the overall reduction in crashes which is great and positive and good news. However, you also notice that the you may also notice that the vulnerable road user crashes actually went up very slightly in the after period. And as we all are aware of, unfortunately there was a fatality at an intersection Marginal Way involving pedestrian just the other week. And what this is maybe telling us, at least at this first glance, is that the roadway has been improved and there has there have been there's noticeable safety improvement in the data to show for this. But at the same time there are still some vulnerable word user issues that should be addressed, and we saw that unfortunately most vividly recently. But in terms of speeds again, this was not too dramatic, but we do see a little bit of a reduced speed as I mentioned on the Forest Avenue end of this corridor, so reduce speeds there. And this is TomTom is not exact, but it does it does take a calendar year's worth of data from all traffic involving mobile phones or connected vehicles, so it draws from a lot of data sources, but it's not perfect. But from what data we have, we see speeds have gone down slightly. Last case study here is Washington Avenue, so again most are probably familiar with this, but big improvements to the streetscape, a lot of pedestrian crossing improvements, curb bump outs, and just generally delineating parking better and making The street more legible for all users. And one thing I didn't mention in the beginning, which I think is important, is that of course, as many people here realize or recognize, there's, there are the safety improvements, but then there are also the just place making and neighborhood improvements. I like the point that was made in the last presentation about noise. The, that is important as well. Even something, a vehicle is going slower, you know, people being more careful as they drive. That does result in different quality of life improvements and economic improvements beyond safety, although safety is, of course, a huge and top concern for everybody here. Just a couple of before and after. Looking from Fox Street. And, yeah, huge improvement. Much better streetscape. This one is interesting because total crashes remained about the same from the before period through the after period. This is also the earliest before period from 2014 through 2017. These improvements were installed relatively earlier on compared to the others, but we still use the 2022 through 2025 after period to make sure we, again, skipped the COVID years. But injury crashes here, the bright spot, they decreased by over 60% from 11 to 4. So pretty noticeable reduction there. And again, traffic volume is pretty flat and there was a noticeable traffic calming effect towards Fox Street with vehicles being recorded as going slower in that, in that direction from that, at that end of the corridor. Here's what it looks like generally before and after. You know, you can see that there, the crash levels and total crashes are remarkably similar, but again, those injury crashes are, there's one serious injury, but injury crashes overall went down very noticeably. Crash types, there's nothing too remarkable here other than, You do see, I guess, vulnerable road user crashes did go down, or that starts right. The point I was going to make here is the pedestrian crashes were eliminated in the after period, but there was a bicycle serious injury during that period. Just noting that, at least in the after period, there were no pedestrian incidents. Putting a map to the speed reductions, so you can see there is, again, not at least a hugely noticeable decrease, except for on the fox street side there was a reduction in median speeds in the aftergrade, and that's it. And we wanted to share this with you and just interested in any feedback or comments, and hopefully this is, hopefully this provides a few examples of roadway safety, how would we state your projects can make a positive impact in our communities and the difference they really make is all those crashes of course involve people, and there are or many, fewer people that had to experience a crash of any severity after these were installed. So thank you. [1:24:33] Regina Phillips: No, thank you. What an extensive report. Thank you so much for being here and sharing all of that information with us. We really appreciate it. I'm gonna open it up to anyone who has any questions for GPCOG, Council Bullitt. [1:24:56] Anna Bullett: Thanks so much, Chair. This is a little bit random, but also not. One of the things I always think about, and Colin, this is a question for you, when it comes to a non-fatal crash, but is a disabling event, like we talk about like serious injury. But for me, when I think, so like my background is I used to work in a hospital. Whenever someone would come in, especially a motorcycle accident, I always would think about the partner, right? I would think about how that's derailing the life of because you survive it and now you can't work and now your partner perhaps has to take or your parent or whoever has to take care of you for the rest of your life so I guess my question is there any data that we have about that about like what happens when there's a lifelong disabling event to a family's like economic status and like I just think that also is a data point that we're not doing a good job of like adding into the mix here sorry that's like really out of left field, but that's a really good question, i appreciate [1:25:57] Kevin Craft: that, and Cashel might also have something some to add to this, i know he's really knowledgeable in this area as well, but the, so there are studies that unfortunately you don't, you ever want to try to put a dollar amount on someone's life or their physical status, but you know it does help, and of course like to your point, Counselor Bullet, is an important consideration. When you look at investments that improve safety, what is the dollar amount that could actually, what's the, how, much can be saved Both in human suffering, but also financially, how is that good for the community also, in addition to that reduced suffering? And I don't have the studies offhand, but I know there have been at the FHWA, the federal level has been efforts to tie the economic impact of crashes to, like what, overall all the impact and economic impact is of different crash types so i don't cash if you have any more recent information or more detailed information that i can offer yeah i mean what came to mind [1:26:54] Cathal Stewart: Was the life cycle cost estimation tool for intersection designs that's an fhwa thing that looks at more than what you typically would engineering wise which would probably just look at traffic modeling and that's about it 's going to look at the full life cycle analysis you know how the safety benefits of an improvement and things like that you know how much maintenance costs and look deeper at the investments that we're making now does it include downstream impacts to people's families when These things happen i actually don't know the answer to that question. Certainly should. I mean, those are, they are hard to quantify, but they are very valid. So we can definitely look into that for the city because it's top of mind, those types of framing devices. [1:27:54] Anna Bullett: Thanks. And I think I don't necessarily need the data. I mean, that's fine. I think it can be like part of the narrative. For me, where it comes to is I think that it disproportionately impacts women because women tend to be caregivers of children and of their male partners. And so that's like the lens that I'm coming at. So just something to think about as we think about narratives around all of this work is the impacts of surviving an almost fatal crash and the impacts on the entire community of those people now not being able to fully participate to the extent of what we would hope a human could in their community. Thanks so much. [1:28:29] Regina Phillips: Council, I have personal experience with this. And so I'm not going to go into a lot of details about my situation. But I can tell you that in my situation, it was life changing. And so again, I'm not going to go into my details of what has happened to my family. It's not the appropriate time. And I just don't want to go into I don't want to go into it but I do have personal experience in it and it is 100 life changing with that Mr. Mayor I see your hand up would you like to ask some questions yes I'd like [1:29:11] Mark Dion: To ask a question, and it's more pedestrian in the sense that when we're looking at fatal crashes, I think the data is helpful, but I would like to see an addendum that outlines the causation factors behind a fatal accident. I think it's one thing to note that one occurred, but I think we need to have some background as to the factors that led to that particular outcome. Outcome. Because from my perspective, that helps me assess road design, speed issues, and judgment among the parties that were involved in the crash. So if we could tease that out in a future report, I think it's really helpful. Because I think one of the issues that I have to deal with as an elected official, which is not dissimilar than my colleagues, when posed with the question is, who's at fault? And the why is greater than just an engineering response. So I think causation factors are important to assess and to provide guidance in some other policy issues as well. Do you have a reaction to that? [1:30:29] Cathal Stewart: Yeah. I mean, it does boil down to the crash reports that are made at the scene. And those can take a long time to be put together and really release to the public, especially in the cases of fatality, you know, when it's with legal parties on either side. But I would love to do some more, some more digging on that. I will say our Vision Zero Action Plan at the regional level does look at the types of crashes that are happening. We only look so far into pedestrian crashes and, you know, the situational, you know what happened, but we do some digging into the types of crashes that are happening and the percentages and where they're happening, so that's worth checking out. [1:31:18] Mark Dion: Thank you, I, and I appreciate your consideration of the fact that these involve legal decisions that will be made by possibly the justice system in a criminal or in a civil venue. But I think at some point it's worth its value to collect once they've made their decisions so that the public's informed as to how these variables all came together, resulting in the crash that is characterized as a severe one. So thanks. And thank you, Madam Chair. [1:31:57] Regina Phillips: No, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Any other questions for our guests from GP COG? No, thank you again for attending and giving us that information. We really appreciate it. I am now going to turn this over to Greg Jordan, Assistant City Manager Greg Jordan. He's going to walk us through the Vision Zero, some changes and some updates and all of that. And so I think folks know I'm in Atlanta at an event. And so I've seen the Vision Zero plan and policy. We went over it at our last meeting. And so Council Bullitt, if you don't mind, I might jump off at this point in time. I apologize to the public. I apologize to everybody here. I was really, I'm glad that I was here. I definitely wanted to see the presentation from our folks from the Pedestrian Bike Coalition. I also wanted to make sure I saw our presentation from GP COG. But if folks don't mind, I might jump off right now, because again, I've seen this data before, and I would really love to see my [1:33:22] Anna Bullett: grandson's basketball game. I am cheering for Demetrius from Portland. Tell him I said go get [1:33:28] Regina Phillips: him thank you very much i apologize to the public and appreciate the council bullet [1:33:36] Pious Ali: for taking over thank you all very much thank you counselor i'm also traveling so if my internet goes off you may end up wrapping up the meeting that means i'm voting yes on that [1:33:52] Mark Dion: i have to react it's impossible with this council they're all far-flung i mean i've had the only council members that can speak to us from all parts of the country and i was going to make a joke that though counselor phillips is rightfully in atlanta for an important event i was going to comment and say, but at least we have Councilor Ali, and here he goes, discounting my assumption. Where are you, Councilor Ali? Baltimore. [1:34:21] Pious Ali: D.C.? Also, find an important event. [1:34:27] Mark Dion: Oh, I'm sure it's important. They're all important events, aren't they? I will be speaking to you from California next week, so I won't feel guilty about it now. I can punch my ticket as well. [1:34:39] Regina Phillips: Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor, we may Maybe out of the state of Maine on these important things and these important events, because I'm going to rat out Assistant City Manager Greg Jordan, who is also on vacation and also out of the state at a very important place. But however,, I think all of our hearts are definitely still in Maine. And if we could we could stay on or if we could change our situation, we certainly would. But, again, our hearts are there, and I feel bad for Assistant City Manager Jordan, who is spending time with his family as well, that he has to stay on. But all of us, I think, felt it very, important for us to have this meeting and not postpone it. [1:35:32] Mark Dion: I appreciate that, Councilor Phillips. And one day I'll have you all in Portland jurisdiction for one of these meetings. All right. That's my hope. That's my goal. I've distracted this committee long enough trying to be funny. So I'll withdraw and let Councilor Bullett take over the meeting. Thank [1:35:52] Regina Phillips: you. Thank you very much, Councilor. Appreciate it. No problem. All right. Director Jordan, [1:35:58] Anna Bullett: or Assistant Director Jordan, you're up. [1:36:01] Greg Jordan: Sounds good. All right. So as Councilor Phillips, Chair Phillips noted, we did have a very comprehensive presentation and discussion about a variety of the items that we're working on at the June meeting. So in your materials is really only a very slight update to the action plan. I've noted in red a few of the areas that maybe required some updating since that last meeting. Incremental progress here and there were things that were newly considering. considering. So I'm not going to go through that. I've also attached, again, for your reference, you've already seen this data, the most recent analysis of the crash trends from the full year of 2025, zeroing in on serious injuries and fatalities, as well as the quarter one of 2026. I'm not going to go through that data either. You have it in your packets. I think you know it pretty well at this time. So what I'd like to do is move into the very specific sort of issue briefs that we're bringing forward tonight, and they are on two topics that are in the Vision Zero Action Plan to at least try to advance or consider as a policy tool. The first is work to improve intersection safety, specifically in the areas of signal systems. And I'm going to turn it over to Jeremiah Bartlett, our transportation systems engineer, near to talk about some of the ongoing work to make intersections safer for pedestrians vis-a-vis our signal systems and what we hope to be doing in the current year. And then depending on CIP allocations in future years, what we could do in the future. So after that, he'll turn it back over to me for the beginning of a conversation around or the initial assessment around an enforcement tool, specifically red light cameras. cameras. So I'll turn it back over to Jeremiah for his quick review of that specific issue review. [1:37:52] Mike Murray: Go ahead, Jeremiah. Yeah, so thanks, Greg. I'll try to keep this brief, but I want to make sure that this can be an organic conversation. So if folks have questions, just sort of shoot them out as I go through this. You know, as part of this Vision Zero work, one of the things we're starting to take a more comprehensive look at are very specific outcomes that can benefit safety that are a little, tend to be a little more low cost, high impact with regards to traffic signal operations. And I believe there was an issue brief that you folks have received, and that outlines four primary categories that we're looking at right now. They're not the only categories of things we're looking at now, but they're the things that are the most likely for us to proceed on relatively quickly with regards to overall signal benefits. The first one is the introduction of what are called lead pedestrian intervals, which is what happens when you introduce several seconds of time prior to traffic going in parallel with pedestrians. This is important because, and we talked about it a bit in our meeting last in June, it allows pedestrians to be out and visible in the intersection and start moving before vehicles ever make that movement at all. And that certainly has been shown to make quite a big difference. Right now,, about 10 percent, 12 intersections have this feature in the city. And so I'll talk a little bit about how we're going to be modifying that. We also have exclusive pedestrian phases, which the whole intersection shuts down to allow pedestrians to cross. It's about six intersections in the city. We also have what's called flashing yellow operation. operation. Historically, what would happen in particular, say you were making a left turn and you could yield to oncoming traffic, there would just be a sign placed that said, hey, oncoming traffic yield to green ball. Instead, now what happens is we install what's called a bimodal signal head, which causes a yellow arrow to flash, which basically directs motorists to do the same. And even though technically you would think it would operate about the same, the reality is it's. It's much more clear to motorists as to what's supposed to happen. And so it does have a safety benefit. And then lastly, which frankly, even when these were starting to go up, it surprised me. But retroreflective borders, which are bright yellow tape markings around signal heads, it does improve the visibility of the signals. And just that alone does have a benefit on safety. Safety. That was one that surprised me initially, but it has been shown to have benefits in a number of studies. So right now we have a consultant under contract. They're looking at doing a signal retiming work along Washington Avenue and a portion of Congress Street from Fort River Parkway to Stevens Avenue. They're going to be looking to add LPI functionality to those locations. So that would be another 12 locations. And more recently, we now have a consultant proposal, which we will be getting underway to essentially do an entire survey of everything for all of our traffic signals for these components and come up with a tiered plan for us later this fall so we can integrate that into upcoming CIP. As part of that work, they're going to be adding an additional 15 LPI features into our intersections by about the time school starts. So we're really trying to accelerate that process. The reality, and again, this was something I did hint at back in June, is between that and other signal redesign efforts, we're. We're going to be bumping up against what available funding we have today. We'll be coming back for future years to determine how to do more. There are some limitations to being able to implement all of these things. In some cases, we need to change equipment in the traffic signal cabinet. In some, we have very old traffic signal heads where if you tried to put tape on them, quite frankly, they wouldn't survive the process. So those are how we're going to be providing all of that. It's going to allow us to actually have a database of all these things citywide so we can easily, you know, dial in, punch in what have we done so far, what do we need to do, what is that going to take us, and what do we need to ask for to get it done. And that will certainly make for, I think, the questions came up earlier about how do we, you know, how do we report on things, how do we talk about these metrics. It's going to give us something very concrete to report out on. And as a last note, before I End, I do want to note that what we've directed the consultant to do, who's going to be updating an additional 15 signals to have LPIs, is we're meshing that with the city's high crash, high injury network. So we're focusing those actions in the areas that have the greatest risk, in keeping with Vision Zero philosophies and strategies. Thanks, Jeremiah. I hope that was short enough, but still informative enough. [1:43:11] Anna Bullett: No, that was great. Greg, do you want me to ask my questions now or wait until you finish? [1:43:16] Greg Jordan: No, I just had one more comment, and I think, Jeremiah, I kind of covered this, that the work the consultants are going to be helping us do is understand a bit more how much, what's the scale of rolling these various enhancements out across the city to get more intersections equipped with this technology where feasible so that it can form the basis of a CIP project proposed for either FY28 or possibly if it's high dollar amounts. You know, certainly we can try to spread things over multiple years, but want to give the council and the committee a sense of what it would take to get to as close to sort of 100 percent intersection coverage on some of these options for the next CIP. [1:43:59] Pious Ali: Be great. [1:44:04] Anna Bullett: That's helpful, Counselor Lee or Mayor, do you have any questions at this juncture? [1:44:10] Mark Dion: Go ahead, Mayor. I guess I'll direct it to Greg, maybe Jeremiah, I'll jump in. Is it possible at some point to get a very brief report, like a two-pager, just outlining how do we determine the speed limit for a portion of roadway? I mean, I listen intently to the community leaders that spoke this evening about 20 is plenty. So the question there is, you know, what is a reasonable speed limit? What were the assumptions that were made about the structure of the road that led to a conclusion that one speed was appropriate over another? So before I can make an informed decision about speed reduction, I need to know how do we get to that decision to begin with? [1:45:01] Anna Bullett: In so there may have to be a rationale, excuse me, that's the next item, that's the next item on the [1:45:08] Mark Dion: agenda. Okay, I don't have the agenda in front of me, I'm sorry. Well, I'm sorry to preview [1:45:14] Greg Jordan: actually no, Council Bill, if you don't mind, I mean, the next item is, related, it's, it's, it's on, it's on enforcement at intersections, but I think the answer to your question, Mayor, and we can certainly provide, I think, what we'll need for the next meeting because we're coming back with an assessment on the speed limit issue, both at the state level and also at the local level. There's a lot of complexity there, but we're going to provide that information at the next committee meeting about how we might move forward on those questions. And we can certainly, in doing so, have something of an executive summary that kind of boils it all down for you also. [1:45:53] Mark Dion: So that would be helpful, and I'm sure it could be helpful and instructive for the rest of the council. So when it says 35, they didn't just put that number out of the air. I think the public needs to understand how they came to that decision point. That was the purpose of my question. I apologize, Council Bullet. If it's going to be all covered in the next section, go ahead. Thank you. [1:46:16] Anna Bullett: no that's helpful and i just as a thought and i don't know if we can pull this off but assistant city manager if possible to have representation from mdot i do think that would be helpful at the at the september meeting just if possible throwing that out there counselor lee i saw your hand for a second did you have a question no i will keep it until [1:46:41] Pious Ali: after the next part of the presentation. Jeremiah, I have a question about the technical [1:46:49] Anna Bullett: technical aspect of not the signals for the vehicles, but the signals for pedestrians. Are those on a separate operating system, or is it all talking to each other like it's all it's [1:47:02] Mike Murray: all tied in together. The pedestrian equipment is tied into how the signal works. The device called a controller that's inside the cabinet is connected to those buttons as well as all the other equipment in the intersection. And so, you know, there are devices in the intersection which know when there are things in the road. The buttons help it know when there are things on the sidewalk. We've experimented with things that are more sophisticated than that, which are very expensive. But nonetheless, you know, those things are all tied in together and all interact together as the overall intersection operation. Collaboration. [1:47:42] Anna Bullett: Great. I'm really glad to hear about exclusive pedestrian phases. I didn't know there was a fancy term for it, but now I do. So that was really helpful. And it's great to hear about LPIs being a really serious consideration. I continue to, in addition to LPIs, I'm going to continue to push for longer crossings in general and continue to ask about data around that. You we also have a lot of people that cross the streets with little kids, so I just think about the possibility of extending the walk signals so that they're not the anxiety inducing 30 seconds or whatever to cross Forest Ave, which is multiple lanes of traffic. And I see people at the park at the Danforth, yeah, crossing in front of RSVP on Forest Ave, and like the countdown is like clearly stressing them out, and they have a they have a walker, you know, because that's a senior living facility, so just putting that out there. And with that I will say one more time so that Assistant City Manager Jordan hears me, I do would love to also include a conversation about what it would take to make it illegal to turn right on red within the city of Portland. Thank you. [1:49:04] Mike Murray: I can respond technically on one topic. You know, essentially what we're doing when we add the LPIs is we're moving time away from vehicles and adding it to pedestrians. So in reality, typically you're going to end up seeing, you know, five more seconds very often on these pedestrian phases. So by default, you almost end up with more time, but that's something we can also talk to the consultant about and just make sure operating on fairly robust timing. There are certainly still a few locations in the city that were based on older determinations, which for some reason thought everybody was very quick and very spry when they crossed the intersection. And, you know, some of us know where those are. And the ones that we are able to adjust as part of this work, we will be doing exactly that. And as far as the RSVP crossing, we have a bid going out soon, which will overhaul the sidewalks there, including that crossing. So you should see improvements. So we are working on it. Yes, I know. And the crossing [1:50:09] Anna Bullett: at Baxter Woods, which I'm very excited. Yes,, we are. I want to like scream that from the rooftops. All right, next up on the agenda is the other issue brief. So is this you, Assistant [1:50:22] Greg Jordan: City Manager? Yeah, I'll lead off and we'll turn it back over to Jeremiah in a moment and possibly on Nicole also. And so this is a effort to look at or consider whether or not red light camera technology enforcement technology, you know, would make sense and could be managed to our standards here in the city and have an effect on traffic behavior and reduce crashes, injuries, and fatalities. Part of this is motivated by, as this committee well knows, our police department is understaffed. We have patrol officers that are spread thin, and traffic enforcement in the range of priorities within law enforcement tends to come toward the back of the line. As you know, we're also trying to increase enforcement, and the PD has done a great job in that. They are also working on more creative ways to be visible out there and to do more enforcement as best we can. But we thought it was appropriate to bring this forward for at least initial consideration and get your direction on whether or not you wanted us to continue looking at it and answering more of the questions that it raises. In the issue brief, it provides you with some basic information gleaned from a few sources of about just the about how these systems typically work. This is just pretty general information and doesn't necessarily represent a any technology that we might if we ever got to this point acquire and use, but it's meant to give you a sense of how they basically work. So basically the system is triggered once someone crosses a actually I should let Jeremiah probably describe this better than me. He'll do a better job and he'll also go through the data that we've been able to sort of pull together on the effectiveness of this technology from a crash perspective, from a pedestrian and fatality impact perspective. So I'll turn it back over to Jeremiah to cover those two sections, if you don't mind. Thanks. Sure. And again, [1:52:28] Mike Murray: we can keep this conversational, but these systems are designed to function you know, only at a very specific point that is tied to the signal operations. If you were entering an intersection that's become red, it will trigger an activation. That device will then therefore get an image. The image will have the license plate or the vehicle information contained on it. This would have to be something different than what the city already has deployed. We have overhead detection systems now, but they're just designed to know when things are in the intersection. So this would be sort of a new feature, a new you know bit of information that would be collected by the city, and you know at that point once you have the information there would have to be a process where that information was collected, some sort of QA QC system to basically check that information and make sure that information is also kept out of, you know, the public's hands. The violation data should be, you know, double check, review it, confirm that it supports the violation. And then essentially there, typically it's recommended that a law enforcement officer do that citation authorization in accordance with basically whatever the rules are, the legal stuff we'll talk about later. It is interesting to note, and it's important to note, that this is, some call it point-driven, some call it event-driven, but it's a very localized snapshot of what's going on with activity for this type of enforcement. There's obviously a lot of discussion going on about other types of surveillance, other types of devices, which are generally always on and always collecting information. These are typically only active and are designed to only be active when they have been configured to pick up certain types of behavior. So they only come up when there's an event and they are intended to do one job. So, you know, doing the research a little bit on, you know, what the implications of this are for actual crashes, because obviously having a Vision Zero conversation, what is really the point of this? You do tend to see a notable drop in violations, 40 to 50 percent. I think the important thing to note is, you know, you get anywhere from a quarter to a third of reduction in injury crashes. You get about a quarter reduction in fatalities. You get almost a third reduction in what are called the T-bone collisions, where you have people hitting each other at a 90-degree angle. The other thing is, motorists now knowing that there's activity like this at a location may be inclined to be a bit more judicious in their driving activity at other locations where the technology may not be present and so you know that's sort of a piece of it as well it is certainly there was a cost factor there is a maintenance factor an operation factor but there is quite a body of evidence that's been compiled that speaks to what the actual implications are from a crash and an injury perspective. [1:56:12] Greg Jordan: Thanks, Jeremiah. I'll pop back in here. And so, I mean, those results are certainly make this technology worth a look. There are trade-offs. Obviously, there are things for us to consider if we wanted to continue down this road. One of those trade-offs is that there's been data to show that it can lead to an increase in rear-end collisions, but they're usually more minor compared to the ones that are involved in red light violations. It is currently not lawful in the state of Maine for a municipality to operate any of this technology. So again, if we wanted to continue down this road, that's one hurdle that would have to be overcome. And Nicole can speak more to that if there are our questions. I want to emphasize, too, that the data we're marshalling here tonight is national level data, maybe international in some cases. We would really want to see, do we have intersections where this technology in Portland could actually make a difference? Jeremiah mentioned the concerns around surveillance. Any pathway forward on this would have to have all the proper guardrails and safeguards in place to make sure it's being used in a way that prevents misuse, protects civil liberties, and ensures that we have strong accountability back to the council and back to the public. A wide range of administrative issues to figure out. Who's managing the technology? Who's making sure that these violations are actually accurate? How is that process working? So a lot to answer there. Then, of course, there's the capital and eventual operating costs as well. And so we're providing this to you as kind of an introduction to see if there's interest in us continuing to answer some of those questions, and that's the real question for you tonight. Do you want us to bring this back with more information, or is it something that you think is not right for the city of Portland? So with that, I'll turn it back over to the acting chair. [1:58:14] Anna Bullett: Thanks so much, Counselor Ali, or Mayor Dion, do you have any questions or guidance at this juncture? Go ahead, Mayor. [1:58:23] Mark Dion: Well, I favor the technology. We tried in the prior session. It kind of fell apart on us. I'm confident that with a new governor and new legislators in place, I'm willing to take that initiative to the legislature and lobby for it. I think there might be some advantageous posturing on our part if we limited to a pilot, identify maybe two key intersections, and have a sunset provision that doesn't go on ad infinitum, but we'd have an opportunity to review our experience with the data collection and what came of that, as opposed to just getting blanket permission. But I think there's a lot of merit to it. It does supplement our capacity to enforce reasonable driving practices without deploying officers we don't have. So I hope that this committee would endorse that and send that request to the legislative committee so I and Councilor Sykes and Grant can assess it and move it on to the legislative agenda. So that's my opinion today on it. [1:59:45] Anna Bullett: Thanks. That's really helpful. Counselor Lee. [1:59:48] Pious Ali: Thank you, Madam Chair. They all consider it endorsed. That is what I was going to say. I think that would be helpful, not just to regulate or look at how people behave when they drive. I think we should start using the same technology to charge people who are coming into downtown town so that we can use that to regulate traffic oh [2:00:18] Anna Bullett: You're talking about surge pricing like in [2:00:20] Pious Ali: New York City. I'm not going to say New York City, but I've seen it happen and work effectively somewhere abroad. Well [2:00:31] Anna Bullett: It's called congestion pricing, not surge. Is Uber. Okay. [2:00:37] Mark Dion: Mayor, did you have something else? No, if the committee endorses Assistant City Manager of Jordan's initiative here, then I'd hope to get all that data and the proposal fleshed out enough that we can, and that goes to Nicole and her office, if we could put together some proposed legislation, then we can find a sponsor through our committee to get it on the agenda for the next session, which would mean we'd be advocating this during February and March. So that's the timeline, but it's going to happen fast once the legislation legislature is seated. So this is a [2:01:18] Anna Bullett: good time to do the homework. The good news is that we drafted something already, the mayor and I in the last a couple sessions ago, and so some of the work is already there. But what I really like that you just said, Mayor Diane, is the idea of pitching it as a pilot. So Greg, I would like go with that. I also question about a partnership with MDOT. I mean, I think the most dangerous intersections are arterials that are owned by them, and so that is something to consider as well, to see if they would like do this pilot with us and like push for this legislation in partnership, specifically obviously where the fatalities are happening. And then the other thing I will just say, as you know, go down this go down this path, is what the places where this works and it works well and then the rear end collisions don't happen, I would imagine, are places where there's lots of like communication to motorists that there's red light cameras in use, so that they're slowing down, you know, before the intersection and So I think that's something where we would need to engage with like the communications director as well to make sure that there's a plan around what it's going to look like to let folks know that these are being used, red light camera in use, or whatever messaging has to be for that. And I also will note I did look at that rear end data and it is 20 year old data, so you know maybe that's not true anymore. Just I was just, I just, that was from 2005, that study, so something to note. What else? did i write down qualified law enforcement officer has to write the ticket i would love to know more about that too can we qualify like someone within the pd who's not a fully like a full officer to be doing this work you know there's lots of things to flesh out but i'll i'll want to see all those things counselor lee you have your hand up did you want to say something else i guess not it's on hold i think that 's a endorsement to continue this path okay [2:03:30] Greg Jordan: Counselor, we'll, we'll try to answer some of those questions and bring back more of this policy program fleshed out for the September meeting, and per the mayor's suggestion kind of get it, I guess, ready to go over to legislative nominating if the committee. [2:03:45] Anna Bullett: In the end wants to move it forward. Cool, thank you so much truly for your efforts on this, and you too, Nicole. This is something I've been, poor Mark has to, I text him about it all the time. Thank you so much. That is the last item on the agenda. I do want to note, we don't have a meeting in August and then the September agenda is going to be really hefty because it's going to have a lot of that speed data that the mayor was talking about earlier, asking questions about, and there will just be a lot of other stuff on the September agenda. So if there's any, anybody from the public still? Yep, there are. Just, you know, be on the lookout for that September meeting and please attend. Is there anything else from any staff? Councillor Lee, you're good? [2:04:37] Pious Ali: All right. I am good. On that note, I'm making a motion to adjourn. [2:04:43] Anna Bullett: And I will second that motion. How do you vote, Councillor Lee? Yay. And I am a yes. So we are adjourned at 7 0 6 p.m. Thank you everybody, please go back to wherever it is that you're traveling to, even if it's your own home, and have a great evening and a great rest of the week.