Facing public and board pressure, TriMet walks back 82nd Ave bus lane decision – BikePortland

TriMet staff and their general manager, Sam Desue, attempted to walk back a recommendation released last week to build just three miles of semi-dedicated bus lanes as part of their 82nd Avenue Transit Project. The controversial staff recommendation, first reported by BikePortland, opted for three miles of business access and transit (BAT) lanes, instead of the seven miles many transit riders and advocates were hoping for.

At a TriMet Board Meeting this morning in downtown Portland, GM Desue and TriMet’s Interim Director of Major Projects Michael Kaiser, both attempted to pin blame for the massive public outcry around the decision on BikePortland.

“I do think there was a recent blog post that may have misled readers about our stance with regard to BAT lanes and where we are with the project,” Desue said at the outset of the discussion (which was rushed onto the agenda due to public pressure around the topic). “So I asked staff to give an update and help clear the air.”

After a staff presentation about the project, Kaiser — along with 82nd Ave Transit Project Manager Jesse Stemmler and Interim Executive Director of Engineering and Construction Jamie Snook — received a bit of a scolding from board members. The board members wanted answers after having been inundated by emails about the project since my story was published on Friday.

Board Member Erin Graham spoke first. “I’m curious how the process is being communicated with the public,” she asked. “We put the recommendation online and that generated significant response that’s being sent to the board, so I don’t know that the process was very clear or transparent to people.”

“I know this is a little bit blunt, and I’m not looking to assign blame,” said Board Member Robert Kellogg. “But when 50 emails show up in my inbox Monday morning, I know something has happened that caught the public by surprise. So, without assigning blame, what happened?”

“We were also caught by surprised,” Kaiser replied. “Some of this was spurred by an article on BikePortland. I think because all the information wasn’t out there, it created confusion and immediately people went into action thinking this decision had been made because project team had put out a recommendation. And that simply wasn’t true.”

To be clear, my reporting was accurate and fair. It was based on good sources and done with an understanding of more context around the project than just the staff memo. In the opening line of my story I wrote, “In a move that has stunned transit advocates, TriMet 82nd Avenue Transit Project staff have recommended…”. It’s a fact that TriMet staff made a decision to recommend three miles of BAT lanes.

Kaiser went on to say he and other staff have had to respond to the “fallout” of public reaction to the news since Friday and that he hopes a project Community Advisory Committee meeting tonight (6:00 pm at Portland Community College Southeast Campus will “set things back on track.”

But Board President Dr. LaVerne Lewis wasn’t done. “Today you said you are at 30% design, but your memo says clearly 60%, and I think that’s part of being clear to the community and being very transparent.”

“Well, we finished 30%. We’re in this in-between point between 30% and 60%. So the recommendation was really focused on outlining a potential option as a starting point for what we bring into the 60% [design phase],” Kaiser replied.

“But [the memo] doesn’t say that,” Dr. Lewis interjected. 

She went on to share that she has received “over 50 letters” of concern about the BAT lane staff recommendation and that she stayed up until nearly midnight answering them all. “That, for me, was not a sign that there was communication, clearly, of the process.”

Board Member JT Flowers was next to speak. He urged TriMet and his fellow board members to be stronger advocates for transit.

“I think we get ourselves into trouble when we try to be something that we’re not,” Flowers said. “We are a transit agency at our core. Our core function is to advance the cause of public transit and make sure that people have safe, reliable and accessible ways to get to and from anywhere they care to get to and from. With an understanding of that core function comes, I think, a necessary understanding of the types of positions that we need to be more comfortable asserting on issues like this.”

Flowers went on to say the vast majority of people in his district have clearly said they want 82nd Avenue to be a “neighborhood corridor.” “This project is core to that. These BAT lanes are core to that,” he added.

Then Flowers added: “As an agency, I’d like to see us get more comfortable standing in that, rather than constantly trying to equivocate and balance things out.” Later in the meeting, Flowers continued in this vein when he said TriMet and their board “very frequently miss opportunities to show up and lock arm-in-arm” with the region’s hundreds of thousands of transit riders and transit advocates. “This feels like such a no-brainer from the perspective of a transit authority.”

“Let’s play to win, rather than playing not to lose,” he said. “And I think playing the win here means going for a full BAT scenario, rather than in the reduced scenario that was proposed in that memo.”

Like I shared more about in a story on Monday, another point where TriMet has lacked clarity in this process is who will make the ultimate decision about the BAT lanes on 82nd. Even Flowers was in the dark about that question. He asked staff to explain exactly where that decision would come from.

Both Kaiser and GM Desue responded to the question by clarifying that the decision will ultimately be made by the project’s Policy and Budget Committee — a committee made up of seven people (GM Desue (Chair), Clackamas County Commissioner Diana Helm, Metro Councilors Duncan Hwang and Christine Lewis, ODOT Policy & Development Manager Chris Ford, PBOT Director Millicent Williams and Community Advisory Committee (CAC) Representative Franklin Ouchida) which for some reason still does not have a page on the project website. (The only way I know who is on the committee is because I asked TriMet.)

From what I heard today, it seems unlikely that TriMet will ultimately settle on the “Some BAT” — or three miles of enhanced bus lanes — option. While some business owners are vehemently opposed to the bus lanes (the owner of Washman Car Wash testified against them at the board meeting, saying they’d create, “serious impediments to the vehicles trying to get to 82nd Avenue businesses”), they are broadly supported by policymakers, elected officials, and bus riders.

“We are switching paths,” Kaiser assured board members during his remarks today. “We put out a recommendation… but clearly it’s more valuable to have a bigger conversation where the Policy and Budget Committee can weigh in an maybe even be the decision maker on the extent of the balance that we choose to move forward.” Then he offered a note of warning. “And that will likely require support outside of the project [meaning beyond the staff level] financially, in terms of policy, politics, etc…”

“I think it’s going to be a great conversation where we all need to lean in to say, ‘What do we want and how are we going to get there together?’”

That conversation starts up again tonight at 6:00 pm at the CAC meeting. See the committee website for details.