Councilor Avalos wants renewed push for bus-only ‘Rose Lanes’ – BikePortland

Remember the Rose Lane Project? What started as a grassroots call for bus-only lanes in 2017, then launched as an official City of Portland project in 2019, and was adopted by City Council in 2020 — the project was supposed to result in a network of dedicated bus (and sometimes bike) lanes criss-crossing the city.

Of the 70 total identified projects where the Portland Bureau of Transportation and TriMet team up to make bus service faster and more efficient, only about half have been built in the past seven years. And it’s been a full two years since we’ve heard even a peep about them. By my count there have only been four significant Rose Lane projects implemented in the past three years: SW Alder, NE Couch, SW Hillsdale, and E Burnside. A combination of the Covid ridership decline, changes in political leadership at City Hall, and a triage budgeting environment have likely put the Rose Lanes on the shelf to gather dust.

But City Councilor Candace Avalos is poised to put the plan back into action. At Wednesday’s City Council meeting on Vision Zero, Avalos shared a comment that raised quite a few eyebrows in transit lover circles: “I just wanted to flag for my colleagues that my office is looking into proposing a resolution on affirming our commitment to the Rose Lanes,” Avalos said. “That will contribute to our Vision Zero goals. So that’s some legislation we’re working on and we’ll bring that to a future committee.”

Curious what Avalos has cooking, I emailed her Chief of Staff Jamey Evenstar. Evenstar (formerly Jamey Duhamel) was chief of staff to former PBOT Commissioner Chloe Eudaly and was the point person for the Rose Lane project when it launched in 2019. The idea was to make transit, “fast, frequent, and full,” and it was framed as an urgent priority to fight climate change and to help Black and other Portlanders of color who are disproportionately impacted by our car-centric transportation system. In late 2019, a national movement was coalescing around mobility justice and Evenstar said the primary goal of the project was, “to allow people of color to reduce their commute time.”

A lot has changed in the past six years, but the political will for faster, more frequent buses remains.

In response to my inquiry about Councilor Avalos’ recent comment, Evenstar said, “The Rose Lane Project was a big deal before Covid hit and we are deeply concerned that it has been deprioritized and changed over the last 5 years.” Evenstar also acknowledged they are only in the early stages of the effort. Here’s more from her response:

“All I can share at this point is that we are interested in learning where the administration is in terms of implementation of the original plan and then working with our community partners to identify what needs to happen moving forward. Maybe all that is needed is a resolution to recommit to the plan as it was originally created since it was done with a lot of intentional root cause analysis, or maybe the community is looking for something updated and different in these new times.”

Avalos’ office is in the early stages of this effort. Once something more concrete emerges, she’s like to have very strong support for better bus service among her council colleagues. And if you’re a transit advocate, now might be a very good time to dust off your organizing hat.