The GPNA did just that. On May 14th, Earl Blumenauer joined Grant Park neighbors and several WPC members in the crosswalk of NE 33rd and Brazee to remind motorists that pedestrians have the right of way. Organized by the neighborhood association, the event was based on the Willamette Pedestrian Coalition's (WPC) successful pedestrian actions, in which people take to the street, wave signs with catchy up-with-pedestrian slogans, and--with just a touch of defiance--affirm their right to cross.
Launched in 1991, the WPC did
more than pioneer the concept of
pedestrian action, an idea that has since spread to many other cities,
including Seattle and Atlanta. Over the past decade, as the region has
implemented new alternative transportation policies, the WPC has
brought pedestrians forward as a constituency that needs to be taken
seriously. Smart, unpretentious and passionate about the cause, the
Willamette Pedestrian Coalition has left footprints around the city and
state (in some cases, around the nation), all in an effort to bring
walking into the multi-modal 21st century.
"Today, when
Portland and Multnomah County are considering a big project and want to
gather citizen input, they wouldn't dare not ask us to be represented,"
said Nancy Christie, WPC president from 1994 -1996.
As
Portland's transit, bicycle and pedestrian network continues to expand,
the Willamette Pedestrian Coalition faces new challenges: how to remain
sustainable as an organization, and how to address the impact of new
technologies such as the Segway Human Transporter on the walking
environment.
How It All
Started
The story
of the WPC begins with changes the city of Portland was making to its
arterial street classification policy, a program which is updated every
five to seven years. "We try each time to improve some specific things,
such as traffic management," says Steve Dotterrer, chief transportation
planner for the City of Portland and a WPC board member from 1993-2002.
Dotterrer says the Parks Bureau was the
first agency to suggest that
walking might be just the issue to focus on that year, as significant
numbers of people were registering concern about their desire for more
pedestrian facilities in both parks and neighborhoods. "That was the
first of many warnings we received about walking," Dotterrer said.
So when the city started looking for
people to be members of the
arterial policy citizens advisory committee, he says, they targeted
people who were interested in pedestrian issues.
In
addition to Vanderslice, who was representing the NW Neighborhood
Association, one of the people sitting around the CAC table was Doug
Klotz, a longtime pedestrian advocate who had been active in the
Brooklyn Neighborhood Action Corp. That's when talk of a pedestrian
advocacy group first surfaced. The crucial moment came when Klotz was
invited to speak at an upcoming neighborhood traffic summit. "They said
it would be better if I had a group behind me," he says. "So Ellen and
I formed the organization, the first one in the country to focus on
pedestrians."
Vanderslice tells a slightly longer
version of the story. "I remember answering the phone and it was Doug,
and he said: 'I would really like to get the group started.' I said:
'Doug, I will give you anything, money, resources, but the one thing I
don't have is time.' Well, the next thing I knew he was calling me up
saying we're going to have a meeting in his living room. There were
seven of us, but some didn't stick with
it."
With the
neighborhood traffic summit as their target date, Klotz designed a logo
and made buttons, while Vanderslice and Bob Elliott laid
out the brochure. Voila! With their wares spread out on one of the
tables, the Willamette Pedestrian Coalition made its debut at the city
traffic congress in September of 1991.
Four months
later, after receiving some capacity building assistance from Howard
Shapiro, WPC incorporated as a non-profit. Klotz was
president, Vanderslice secretary and Bob Elliot, Treasurer. By the end
of the year, the organization had about 60
members.
Twelve years after they started the
Willamette Pedestrian Coalition,
Klotz and Vanderslice were still at the helm: Vanderslice as WPC
president and Klotz as the policy guru who establishes positions on
sidewalk and crossing designs--the guy, as he puts it, who specializes
"in reading and analyzing documents."
Policy Changes and the Need for WPC
Changes in state transportation policy
also helped foster the
conditions for WPC's start-up. In April 1991, the Land Conservation and
Development Commission adopted the Transportation Planning Rule, which
required Metro and local governments to reduce total automobile vehicle
miles traveled by 10 percent over the next 20 years and another 10
percent over the next 30 years.
As a result, cities and
counties in the Portland area had to develop new Transportation System
Plans and incorporate zoning and development standards that would make
residences and businesses accessible to pedestrians, bicycles and
transit riders.
Portland's revision of the arterial
street classification policy was already moving in that direction. The
city had proposed a new "Transportation Element," which would
incorporate existing arterial policy into a larger comprehensive plan.
It also created a city Pedestrian Program, which would fund
construction of sidewalks on major streets and create a pedestrian
network policy, with a goal of having at least ten percent of all trips
made on foot within twenty years.
During a public
hearing of the Portland Planning Commission in January 1992, six WPC
officers and members testified in support of the program. "After
seventy years of public investment in a single mode of transportation,
it's time for a change in public policy and public investment," Klotz
told the commission.
WPC's efforts paid off. That
summer, Bill Hoffman was hired as the manager for the new Pedestrian
Program for the City of Portland. "The first place WPC had significant
impact was in the creation of the city pedestrian program," says
Dotterrer.
The WPC also had a direct impact on the
Transportation Planning Rule (TPR) itself, says Dotterrer. In 1993,
board
members testified in support of stringent regulations requiring all new
buildings on designated transit streets to be oriented toward the
street--a provision of the TPR that had come under attack by several
retail developers. In 1995, in conjunction with 1000 Friends of Oregon
and Sensible Transportation Options for People, the WPC successfully
appealed a Washington County ordinance which would have violated the
TPR by allowing buildings to be setback from the street behind acres of
parking.
Pamela Alegria, WPC president from
1996-2000,
also represented the group on the Clackamas County Transportation
Planning Rule project.
Pedestrian advocacy faces unique challenges
Perhaps because everyone, at
some point, is a pedestrian,
walking as a
mode of transportation is often viewed with contempt. In his book, The
City in History, urban planner Lewis Mumford traces the historical
roots of the problem. "With the development of the wide avenue during
the Renaissance," he wrote, "the disassociation of the upper and lower
classes achieves form in the city itself. The rich drive; the poor
walk." It was during this period, Mumford conjectures, that the word
"pedestrian" came also to mean humble, plodding, or commonplace.
"WPC is ahead of its time," says Nancy
Christie. "The world as
a whole
just can't accept the fact that intelligent, active, prosperous, people
walk." But the times are a changing. Traffic congestion, pollution,
rising obesity rates, and a renewed interest in the nature of
urban community and public space are all playing a role in the
pedestrian revival.
The challenge for the WPC has been
to convince policy makers, planners and developers that walking
requires the same kind of infrastructure support as cars and
bicycles.
"It remains to me a flagrant misuse of
urban areas not to have
sidewalks," says Katherina Woodward, a WPC board member from 1993-1998
who moved to the Hillsdale neighborhood from Washington D.C.-- "where
you can walk across town on 6-12 foot sidewalks." Woodward went on to
help write the Capitol Highway Plan, which placed 1.1 miles of sidewalk
on both sides of SW Capitol Highway, from Barbur Boulevard to Portland
Community College.
Taking back the legal right of way
WPC's pedestrian actions were the organization's most visible means of challenging the status quo. They emerged as a response to routine violations of Oregon state law OR 811 910, which requires cars to stop and yield to pedestrians. Vanderslice herself says she became a "radical pedestrian" in 1985, after a driver failed to stop for her and her two small children while crossing the street in NW Portland. She describes the incident on her website. Link to it here.
"Primed with indignation and a big hit of adrenaline, I bopped the back of his car with our diaper bag as he pulled away. And this man, who was in such a hurry that he couldn't yield the right of way to a mom with two babies, found the time to stop his car, get out, put up his fists and say: 'You ever do that again, I'll beat the **** out of you.'
Apart from one nominally
ill-fated incident at a
Pearl District
crossing (in which a nameless board member's husband kicked a car that
wouldn't yield), WPC pedestrian actions have been models of civility.
The first one took place on the south park blocks in the spring of
1994, after WPC was awarded a $6000 grant by the Bicycle Federation of
America. Approximately 50 people showed up for the occasion, including
TV anchor Eric Schmidt, who left his desk at 5 p.m. to participate.
"He actually led people across the
street," says Vanderslice. "His
mother had been hit by a car two weeks before and this issue totally
resonated,"
At a July 1994 action in Multnomah
Village,
says Klotz, "we even got a cop to show up." During the event, Portland
police officers wielded radar guns and ticketed several speeders.
Organized by WPC's board member, April
Bertelsen, the most
recent pedestrian action took place on the downtown transit mall in
August 2002. "Driving" cardboard vehicles up and down the sidewalks and
carrying signs such as "Pedestrians for Retail," WPC members protested
a downtown business association proposal to narrow the sidewalks and
allow parking on one of the city's most revered public spaces.
The WPC has also organized three major
walk to school media events for
National Walk our Children to School Day and International Walk to
School Day. The events have attracted Mayor Katz, Portland Schools
Superintendent Ben Canada, and Chief Kroker. The October 2002 event
involved 35 schools around the state, twice the number of schools as
the year before. In 2003, the WTSD event attracted more than 40 schools
around the state.
"The pedestrian actions were the main
way WPC was able to educate the general public," said Dotterrer. "It
got WPC on television and brought us to the attention of passing
pedestrians and drivers."
Policy,
Advocacy and Expanding the Network
By
giving public testimony or participating on committees, WPC members
have ensured that a wide variety of projects and regulations would
benefit pedestrians. A short list includes the Capitol Highway CAC, the
Sidewalk Obstruction Task Force, the Hollywood/Sandy Blvd. Plan CAC,
the Oregon Transportation Community Access Management Plan, the Land
Division Discussion Group, the Willamette River Bridges Accessibility
Project, and the Portland Transportation System Plan.
Since the inception of the city
pedestrian program, there has always
been a WPC member on the city's Pedestrian Advisory Committee.
And in
1995, WPC lobbied to save the pedestrian program when it was
reorganized as part of the Office of Transportation Options.
"The WPC Board was the most civically
active board I've ever come across," says Nancy
Christie.
The democratic process has not been
without its indignities. "Once Vera
Katz called me a transportation groupie because I testified so much,"
recalls Kathy Sharp, a board member in the early 1990s who helped WPC
get its 501 (c) (3) status. "In this line of work, you have to have a
lot of energy for a little bit of
progress."
WPC's
influence spread after Vanderslice went to work for the city's
pedestrian program in 1994. She was the principal author of nationally
recognized Portland Pedestrian Guidelines, which were adopted by the
city in 1998. The guidelines provide parameters for design as well as
detailed drawings and descriptions of pedestrian improvements in a
number of different situations. In 1996, Vanderslice also founded
AmericaWalks, a national coalition of over 30 pedestrian advocacy
groups. She chaired the host committee for the 4th annual
International Walking Conference, held in Portland May 1-3, 2003.
"It was ironic that I initially told
Doug I didn't have the time, then
it became my entire life to become a pedestrian advocate," says
Vanderslice. "WPC played a big role in shaping that."
In
January 1995, the WPC launched PedNet, an e-mail listserve for
discussion of pedestrian issues. PedNet has since grown to be an
international list, managed by Ottawa Walks, Ontario's pedestrian group.
Socializing,
networking and the future
It is a WPC tradition to get together
for dinner before monthly board
meetings. That kind of camaraderie is one of the signature traits of
the WPC, along with a certain self-deprecating sense of humor.
Vanderslice tells a story of one annual meeting where only
two guests
showed up: David Bragdon and Helen Ferrins, a member who was active in
the Homestead neighborhood. Says Vanderslice: "Helen took me aside and
said: 'You really might want to have more exciting things at the annual
meeting.' I said: 'Thanks Helen'."
One of the most
successful WPC socializing events was an annual meeting held in
February 1994 at the Benson Hotel with the WPC Advisory Board, which
included Earl Blumenauer, Bill Naito, Mike Houck, and Terry Moore. 'It
really helped bring people together," says Dotterrer. "We also got a
lot of good advice--for example, that the purpose of the WPC should be
to promote pedestrians, not oppose the automobile."
Attracting more members has been an
ongoing challenge for the WPC.
During its heydey in the mid 1990s, the Willamette Pedestrian Coalition
had 228 members, grant money, and a part time staff person. Since then,
the all volunteer organization has been high on passion and policy, but
less savvy about capacity building. Increasing membership, launching
fundraising drives, and building coalitions with other non-profits
remain key issues.
In 2003-2004, WPC took a big step in
this direction by forming a partnership with the Bicycle Transportation
Alliance on several projects: a Portland Department of Transportation
police training grant, an Oregon Department of Transportation
pedestrian safety enforcement grant, and a $20,000 Nike grant to expand
statewide walk to school efforts. In Spring 2004, the BTA and WPC also
hired a joint staff person, Robert Ping, as a Safe Routes to Schools
Coordinator.
In the 21st century, the battle to
reclaim the street and the sidewalk
for pedestrian transport has also become a bit more complicated than it
used to be. With the introduction of the Segway Motorized Scooter in
March 2003, for example, groups such as the WPC are re-thinking the
traditional car-vs.-alternative transportation paradigm that has
dominated land use and transportation planning over the last decade.
With the assistance of two consultants,
Wendy Novick and Sheryl
Sackman, WPC also developed a strategic plan in Fall 2003. As the plan
is implemented, the organization can look back with ownership on the
miles of new sidewalk, ADA accessible curbs, sidewalk plantings and
pedestrian friendly development that have reshaped the Metro-area
landscape over the past decade.
"Our constituency is
everybody," says Nancy Christie. "If we can hang in there,, there are a
lot more people to be tapped. Then we could really take off."