ODOT: You Need To Fund Portland’s Billion Bollards Club
(Source: Unsplash/Namnitha Peruri.)
A billion bollards! That’s what we called for back in 2021. As Congress was assembling what would eventually become the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), we asked ourselves: Instead of expanding highways and building more interchanges, what could the federal government fund that would make our cities financially stronger and our citizens safer?
As I wrote then, “America needs a billion bollards. There is no coherent argument against lining every street in America with them. This is the minimum level of protection needed to keep people safe from violence. It is the least we can do to correct the massive asymmetry of risk experienced on our nation’s streets by people outside of a vehicle.”
Engineers suggest that bollards along the sides of our streets might potentially damage automobiles; that is an expression of oversensitivity to the wrong problem. We routinely protect construction workers with concrete barriers placed between them and traffic, as we should. There is no reason why people walking along sidewalks, waiting to cross the street, or playing in the park should not be protected from the same threat.
One Strong Towns Local Conversation is answering the call. In Portland, Strong Towns PDX has created the Billion Bollards Club. They don’t have any of the money from the federal infrastructure bill, yet they are doing the critical work of identifying where Portland’s bollards should go.
Local Conversations are groups of people in your area who get together to socialize, talk about Strong Towns insights, and get involved in the future of your community. There's a space for you to join in: find your city on the Local Conversations Map and reach out.
In the spirit of the Four Step Approach to Public Investment, Strong Towns PDX asked, “If we could each place a few bollards, where would we place them, based on our lived experiences and understanding of our neighborhoods?” They created a map and invited their members, along with other friends and neighbors, to crowdsource the most urgent locations where bollards are needed.
The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) is receiving $4.5 billion from IIJA. ODOT, for just $250,000 (0.005% of your total funding package) you can fund somewhere between 300 and 500 bollards in key locations in Portland. Strong Towns PDX will identify locations for you; you just need to fund them.
As I wrote in 2021, “there is nothing we can do that will save more lives, and few things that will put us in a better position to build strong towns,” than installing a billion bollards. Let’s get started with a few hundred in Portland.
Americans are suckers for the idea of a moonshot, of taking a big, challenging risk and earning a huge payoff. The problem is, these moonshots usually fail, especially when they're trying to fix complex, chronic problems like traffic safety. There's a better way.