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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 21, 2011)
street roots 13 Jan. 21, 2011 The Bicycle Transportation Alliance: A healthy vision BY ROB SADOWSKY w C O N T R IB U T IN G C O L Ü M N IS T Rob Sadowsky is the executive director o f O k Bicycle Transportation Alliance. You can reach him a t rob@bta4bikes.org. e’re excited to introduce you to . Healthy Streetbeat, a new monthly column for Street Roots written by the Bicycle Transportation Alliance (BTA). Our contributors are Rob Bicycle Sadowsky, Transportation executive director, and Alliance Margaux Mennesson, communications director. Over the next few months we will be sharing our thoughts about traffic justice, healthy streets, and other transportation issues that affect our community. Every day on our streets, there are acts that constitute a violent and anti-social assault on life, health and community. Our transportation system and our driving culture cause crashes that result in the loss of life and property. You might typically read about traffic accidents, when vehicles collide with other vehicles, with people walking, with people biking. These are not accidents. We believe that they can be prevented through improved engineering, through improved training and education, and through increased enforcement of laws. Our streets are suffering. They are unhealthy. We are afraid to go near them. We are afraid to let our kids go near them. We feel safer when we are protected by several tons of steel. We think walking or biking is too dangerous, not worth the risk. We fear for our personal safety, the safety of our kids, of our friends. Let us share our vision. We envision a • healthy street where a loving couple can walk through their neighborhood on the sidewalk holding hands, young toddler in tow, without concern for how they will cross the next intersection. We imagine a healthy street that is filled with people of all ages, colors and backgrounds riding bikes that- emit no greenhouse gases. We envision a healthy neighborhood where people walk to school and to the grocery store, with an occasional motor vehicle (burning clean fuel, of course) arriving to deliver a large piece of furniture. A healthy street is one that’s accessible by transit, so that the toddler’s elderly grandparent can easily get around to do their daily errands or meet their bird-watching club in a nearby park. A healthy street is part of a system, and a healthy system has interlinking parts. That system includes parks, schools, business . centers and libraries. The system flows smoothly between all its interlinking parts so' people can move around it no matter if the starting point or the destination is in a dense urban neighborhood or a tree-lined suburban neighborhood. We need to work to transform our unhealthy streets into healthy streets. We must focus on improving safety of the whole street environment through strategies such as speed reduction and building better biking and walking infrastructures. We must teach everyone safe driving behaviors, biking behaviors, and walking behaviors ’ through early education and ongoing training of road users. We must learn how to safely prevent crashes from occurring in the first place. To build healthier streets, to tackle the problems that have led to this unjust traffic environment, we need to engage all users of the road and all parts of our society. Underserved communities bear a disproportionate share of the burden of our current transportation system: There are more crashes, fatalities, and serious injuries, and the consequences of a crash are greater. More people are uninsured, so even minor traffic incidents can lead to long term health and financial effects. . We are hopeful and optimistic that we can make a big difference in this environment We will use this column to showcase successful stories and best practices that other communities have used to reduce crashes and redesign streets to make them truly healthy. We will only realize this vision of healthy streets within a healthy transportation system with many partners, and we’ll use this column to showcase some of the great work our partners have embarked upon. We’ll also share how readers can become engaged and involved in this work. Let us know how we’re doing, share with us what you’d like us to cover. Join us on our travels. • T he answer awaits for a familiar question on the street here am I supposed to go?” I’ve heard this question before, at similar volume, from many people over the years. It usually signals a homeless citizen pushed to the end of their rope by multiple police requests that they “move along.” Such requests invariably come Robert Pickett at the behest of another citizen, usually a nearby property owner or manager, who has called to complain about people sleeping and/or loitering on surrounding streets or sidewalks. Unfortunately, nobody has supplied the police with a good answer regarding “where to.” This was a little different, however. Mr. O’Dea’s eyes were wide and a little wild, his arms were moving everywhere and his pacing was incessant. His explanation about why he was keeping a six-foot-tall pile of belongings here on the sidewalk was irrational and meandering. And my respectful, soft tone wasn’t making mellow like it usually does. Matt was right, it was a mini-psychward down here. Matt is the officer assigned to this industrial part of the precinct He has worked here for two decades, answering 911 calls and non-emergency calls, many of the latter regarding the homeless residents of the neighborhood who have also been here for years. He knows all the people living on the street and they all know him as “Officer M att” He is known for his compassion and patience, particularly toward the homeless. Mr. O’Dea was one of three people Officer Matt was concerned about, all camping on the same block under an overpass, and all probably suffering from mental illness. The second, Mr. Wyatt, sat all day in his sleeping bag on the sidewalk, W Robert Pickett has been a Portland Police Officer for eight years. H e has spent most o f that tim e working in inner Southeast Portland, first a s a patrol officer, a n d more recently as a Neighborhood Response Team officer working on neighborhood livability issues. i citizen who happened by? Isn’t dealing with rarely moving, a pile of discarded food this possible threat one of the reasons why containers and cigarette butts slowly society maintains a police force? building around him. The third man, Mr. The next morning we returned to the Walker, regularly added alcohol to his illness block and found what appeared to be drops and was becoming increasingly of blood splattered on the street I worried unpredictable and aggressive when Officer that my sergeant had been prescient, and Matt would contact him. He would yell and some passerby had indeed been clobbered pace and walk menacingly toward Officer the night before. Matt before turning away. We found no other evidence of a fight, A few others were regularly spending the however. Maybe it wasn’t really blood. We night on this block, but would pack up and took photos of the possible crime scene just leave in the morning. O’Dea, Wyatt and in case,'but then moved on to our original Walker all hung around during the day, task of waking up the campers and however, growing their piles of rubbish and encouraging them to clean up and start drinking beer. A business owner, who had their day. spent a pile of money to renovate a I woke a guy wrapped like a mummy in a neighboring building, was calling incessantly sleeping bag on the sidewalk. He slowly for something to be done about these guys stirred, uncovering his head and face and and the trash, feces and disorder they turning toward me. created on the sidewalks. It was Mr. Walker. His left eye was After disengaging from Mr. O’Dea, Matt swollen shut, and his nose was twice normal and I discussed what to do about the three size with dried blood caked underneath it men. We could certainly call our mobile crisis » Sifting through the various, mostly nonsensical responses to my questions unit, which is a mental health worker paired with a police officer. We were skeptical that about what had happened, I was able to get that it was a fight over a campsite last night, anyone would be able to convince any of and he wouldn’t tell me who assaulted him. these guys to voluntarily accept treatment, I called for a medical crew to come check however, and the unit would take time to him out, and he asked to be taken to the respond because of their backlog. hospital. He grabbed his sleeping bag and One shorter term option could be to walked himself into the back of the continue to contact these guys and press ambulance. them about cleaning up and moving along I watched as the most threatening - and during the day, and maybe issue citations if at the same time most vulnerable — we caught them drinking in public. But character in this surreal saga was driven to particularly as Mr. Walker deteriorated, our one of the most capable, modern and guts told us that risked a violent reaction. expensive emergency departments in the Was it worth someone getting hurt? state. Assuming they don’t find any hidden We chose short-term option two: drive away, leaving the sidewalk situation to fester damage, I suspect they will probably give him an ice pack and a hefty bill that the rest and the business owner to fume. of us will ultimately pay. At the precinct I discussed the situation In a bizarre way, maybe this is the least with my supervisor, who brought up a good we should be doing for Mr. Walker — at least point If we were concerned that one of until society is able to answer Mr. O’Dea’s these men might react unpredictably and original question about where to go, or possibly violently to contact, wouldn’t it be better that he go after an officer rather than prevent him and his companions from having to ask it in the first place. some unsuspecting, untrained, unarmed D o n ’t w onder about w hat you m issed! Check o u t recent news a n d commentaries a t www.streetroots.wordpress.com
