Road paving in Portland. There are only a few situations when a road should get paved (or the more likely situation of “re-paved”). Here’s the criteria:

• It can be (re-)paved with appropriate sidewalks on at least one side of the street minimum.
• It can be (re-)paved with at least basic bicycle lane amenities and if at all possible, buffered bicycle lane and car parking.
• It can be (re-)paved with appropriate spaced parking from the corners, with corner protection and drainage to clean the water built in.
• It can be (re-)paved with appropriate parking for cars, based on short term and long term parking striping.
• It can be (re-)paved with permission from the community immediately surrounding the street. Do not repave a street like 23rd without the communities permission. There is no need for it to be repaved and the roughness of the road encourages safety through slower speed and decreasing “through” traffic from using a neighborhood street unsafely.
• It can be (re-)paved if there are amenities for crossing safety added so we don’t have more children die. Already, the cost is too high with just one loss of life attributed to inappropriate road build out in the city. How many have to die to make it a priority for safety amenities? It should be zero, but it’s obviously already higher than that.

Right now Portland is rapidly gaining frustration with the Mayor. The Mayor isn’t informing the public why, how or if it should be paving streets. Instead the city office is just forcing ahead the agenda to pave “100 miles of streets” in spite of and in many cases without any of the above. A pot hole is one thing, a dead child is absolutely something else. A pot hole should not rate above human life. A pot hole shouldn’t even rate above a sidewalk. But alas, these days it seems that the city Government’s priority is around filling the pothole, and pushing people back into cars.

Not sure if anybody else has noticed, but if you have half a brain, Portland has stood out and seen growth over the last 30 years because it DID NOT follow these types of policies. How about we straighten back up and get our heads screwed on right? That’s the spirit!