365 Days of Advocacy and Action at TST

Posted on January 6, 2022 by Henry Latourette Miller

The Street Trust had an unprecedented year in 2021. Even as the pandemic continued to disrupt our society, our organization dug into an intensive rebuild with an eye to the future and took action to ensure we’re making an impact across the Portland metro region and beyond. Despite unique challenges, TST pushed the region closer to a complete, safe, low-carbon, multimodal transportation system that contributes to equity in access, opportunity, health, and prosperity for all.

In 2021, the organization hired an Executive Director; forwarded state legislation to get more funding for people walking, biking, and rolling; recruited 18 new esteemed and diverse board members across both the 501c3 and 501c4 boards; published our 2021-23 Strategic Action Plan; and kicked off the #OurStreets campaign – an intensive effort to build tools and community power for better transportation outcomes across the Portland metro region.

But don’t take our word for it! We went straight to our team on the ground for their wins from 2021 and their aspirations for 2022 …

2021 was a breakaway year for our advocacy work. Over the past year, we revived and rebuilt The Street Trust Action Fund, our 501c4 political arm. The Action Fund board members represent diverse experiences and perspectives, who aspire to work together for greater credibility and influence in the politics of the greater Portland region. Working in complement to the efforts of our 501c3 arm, they are going to focus on the politics of elevating multimodal transportation as a priority issue at all levels of government and in all parts of the region. Building in greater power will help hold leadership accountable for making real progress in improving transportation options for people in their communities.

TST managers André Lightsey-Walker and Anouksha Gardner at the 2021 Alice Awards.

Policy Transformation Manager André Lightsey-Walker worked intensively in 2021, writing letters to agencies and officials calling for more equitable, climate-smart mobility options, and serving on committees at every level of government to shape better outcomes. He is most excited with how the organization built up our “capacity and presence at a diverse variety of tables,” adding, “We’ve been impressing folks everywhere we go and building healthy relationships.” André is optimistic that 2022 will bring more opportunities, “to come together in person for walks, rolls, and gathering in Our Streets!”

Partnerships are critical to our work, and this year our Strategic Partnerships Manager Anouksha Gardner made connections that emphasize our commitment to building alliances across many sectors and throughout the entire Portland metro region.

She worked hard in 2021 refreshing existing relationships and building new ones, including signing reciprocal memberships with members of the freight, technology, and business sectors, including Forth Mobility, B-line, and Business for a Better Portland. By adding Killer Queen Cyclery and Icicle Tricycles as new business members, Anouksha kept TST true to our biking roots.

Anouksha also connected with large institutions whose commuters and political influence can work with us to shape the future of Portland, such as Kaiser Community Health and Portland State University. When it comes to community-based organizations, Anouksha kicked off collaborations with Historic Parkrose, Unite Oregon, and the Rosewood Initiative as part of the #OurStreets campaign.

Supporting the next generation of walkers and rollers continues to be central to our programming. Education Director Lindsay Huber is proud that, despite school closures and distancing, TST helped schools and students host multiple successful Walk+Roll events in 2021. “We were also very proud to add 123 Oregon schools to the list of schools across the United States celebrating Ruby Bridges Walk to School Day with support from Ruby Bridges herself! This event encouraged students to learn about racial justice and apply it to active transportation.”

Walking and rolling to school isn’t possible without a safe way to get there, which is why TST is thrilled with Safe Routes To School Coordinator Nicole Perry’s hard won successes in 2021, including new safe routes for students attending Linwood Elementary and Sojourner Schools in Milwaukie.

In 2022, TST will work hard expanding our offering of Walk+Roll programs, including a Winter Walk+Roll event to encourage students to get to school safely in cold, rainy, or snowy weather with active transportation; and an Earth Month event in April to help students think about the impact of how they travel on the environment.

Despite the pandemic, The Street Trust also continued our critical work in the streets. Community Engagement Manager Madi Carlson, “loved that the 2021 Move More Challenge expanded beyond biking and included walking, scooting, transit, and more in a bigger effort to reduce car usage.”

In addition to the Move More Challenge, Madi hosted inclusive WeBike rides and supported or led other bike rides throughout the year. This included two community rides hosted by Teatro Milagro in SE Portland: Día de la Madre in May and Día de los Muertos in October. She also worked with the City of Portland over the Summer to host an event at Gateway Discovery Park and an events action table in Old Town for the ‘Here for Portland’ weekend. To help fill the void so many of us felt with no formal Sunday Parkways, Madi led our efforts to activate the street outside Teatro Milagro every Sunday in August to create “mini Sunday Parkways.” In 2022, Madi is hoping to return to “more in-person programming for the Oregon Active Transportation Summit, Bike Commute Clinics, and The Street Trust member events!”

Community Engagement Manager Madi Carlson hosting the parklet TST hosted in Oregon City for Parking Day.

TST also deployed grants to support activations that transformed streets across the region into people-oriented spaces. In September, Grants & Impact Manager Henry Latourette Miller obtained a grant from SPIN and worked with the local business community to set up a parklet in a parking space in Oregon City as a part of International Parking Day. He was thrilled to organize the Oregon City event, which, “proves our commitment to serving the entire Portland metro, while featuring a partnership with the local business association, demonstrating our ambition to create innovative alliances across many sectors.”

In a perfect harmony of furthering our mission while building up our community, our biggest street activation of the year was our annual Alice Awards, which we transformed into a lively, intercultural block party at the Friends of the Green Loop’s Ankeny West space. Along with allowing our supporters and allies to gather in celebration of transportation leaders for the first time in over a year, the block party was also an opportunity to take over a full lane of West Burnside Street, one of Portland’s most notorious arterials.

White Lotus and Dragon Dancers performing at TST’s 2021 Alice Awards

Looking to the future, In 2022, we’re going fight for you from the literal intersections of a public health crisis in which unsafe and incomplete public streets threaten our lives and livelihoods. We’re going to refuse to settle for an autocentric transportation system that worsens disparities and sacrifices our future. We going to stand firm in the belief that we can stop preventable death resulting from inequality, lax safety, and climate change. And we are going to do everything we can to win policy transformation and major investments that save lives, reduce barriers, and expand opportunities to the people and neighborhoods our current system neglects.

In 2022, our work will be defined by a continued commitment to investing in advocacy, education, community, partnerships, and impact. The #OurStreets Community Mobilization Campaign is now underway, with planned collaborations with Rosewood Initiative, Historic Parkrose, and Unite Oregon set to take place this spring. We are supercharged with new faces and new energy ready to take the work of The Street Trust to new heights. 2021 was a year of big changes and bold moves. 2022 is the year those seeds we planted will bear fruit.

But we can’t do any of this without you. Together, we can have greater impact advocating for public investments that make our region more livable, equitable, and healthy. As a new year begins, please make sure your membership is up to date, gift a membership to street users you love, and sign up to volunteer. In 2022, we’re going to reclaim our streets, and our future – but we can’t do it without you.

Support The Street Trust

From Gridlock to Greatness

Posted on December 1, 2021December 1, 2021 by staff

Oregonians deserve transportation options that are safer, greener, more accessible, and more equitable than in previous generations.

By Sarah Iannarone, Executive Director

Passage of President Biden’s long-awaited $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (“IIJA”), earlier this month set the transportation sector atwitter with words like “once-in-a-generation,” “transformative” and “climate game-changer.” When added to money already coming Oregon’s way from the Feds, the IIJA means the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) stands poised to spend about $4.5 billion over the next five years.

As the 2022 election cycle heats up, candidates, electeds, and agency heads are banging the git-er-done drum in unison. They argue we should leverage this deluge of dollars to break the political gridlock and push through a suite of major interconnected highway expansions around the Portland metro region. The drum beating has reached a rapid tempo. One director is pushing for action while the “stars align,” as he said in his update to the bi-state legislative committee overseeing a proposed I-5 bridge project across the Columbia River.

It’s hard not to match the drumbeat, but ODOT is plagued by cost overruns on major projects alongside a half-billion-dollar annual maintenance backlog. The chance to increase revenues through tolling, now expanded thanks to the passage of HB 3055, has distracted ODOT from pursuing good policy and centered its focus on trying to find a way out of a financial pothole.

The fact is ODOT is severely overextended, yet wants Oregonians to trust them as they embark on a speculative freeway widening scheme intended to address congestion and get Portland-area traffic – especially freight – flowing like it’s 1966 when I-5 construction was completed. Even if ODOT’s new Urban Mobility Office – created expressly to coordinate the freeway expansions and concurrent tolling project – could successfully execute its mission, the logic behind its policies is fundamentally flawed.

We cannot build ourselves out of the congestion hole with freeway expansions, so ODOT needs to put down its shovels and stop digging.

On top of the climate and racial justice impacts of interstate freeway widening, the projects simply cost too much and fail to deliver on the congestion relief or free-flowing freight mobility they promise. ODOT’s insistence on these projects is especially worrisome because we know that better policies exist. For example, we need to be dynamically pricing the system to manage demand (for example, by increasing the cost of driving at peak hours). And, we should be investing in walking, bicycling, micromobility, and transit to unclog our roadways and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Every lane mile of highway ODOT builds costs taxpayers millions of dollars while adding drive-alone trips to the roads when we need to be reducing the number of cars on the road and the miles they travel.

Instead of dancing to ODOT’s beat, legislators and the Oregon Transportation Commission need to seize this opportunity and direct ODOT to start banking on the ROI of active transportation and transit investments if they hold any hope of unraveling gridlock and getting our state’s green leadership back on track. (And no, electric vehicles will not save us.)

We have less than a decade remaining to change course and preserve this planet for future generations. At COP26 in Glasgow this month,mayors from across the globe announced that investments in public transit must double to meet our climate goals. Those investments should not perpetuate the status quo.

Oregon’s transportation system contributes 40% of Oregon’s GHG pollution,and serves as the setting for the deaths of hundreds of people every year, while injuring exponentially more. It fails to serve people who don’t drive or own cars – approximately 30% of Oregonians don’t drive, according to a recent presentation to the Legislature’s Joint Transportation Committee. The maintenance of the status quo will only increase the ongoing impacts of systemic racism that have resulted in people from Black, Brown and Indigenous communities being more reliant on walking, biking, and public transit to get where they are going and more vulnerable to danger. The disproportionate burden borne by already trauma-impacted and vulnerable members of our community is unacceptable. We cannot continue to invest in a system that leaves so much of our population underserved and behind.

The health impacts and disparities of our current system should be argument enough for ODOT to change course from status quo investments. Oregonians deserve transportation options that are safer, greener, more accessible, and more equitable than in previous generations. Unfortunately, for every good dollar in the infrastructure package dedicated to climate resilience, active transportation, and transit, there are two more that incentivize driving alone and perpetuating an unjust and outdated system. This is no time to be taking one step forward and two steps back with our mobility investments.

The windfall to Oregon from this infrastructure package (along with Build Back Better Act, should it pass) is a rare opportunity to make equitable, climate-smart investments. These are the investments that the Oregon Legislature, Transportation Commission (OTC), and local DOTS previously told transportation advocates were not possible because “we just don’t have the money for that.” Now, that excuse doesn’t have a wheel to drive on.

We can upend the status quo by taking a few, critical steps (in no particular order): first, completing the Oregon Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan; second, exponentially increasing transit service and coverage across and between our urban areas; third, transferring our orphaned state highways to local communities; fourth, engage and learn from representative and inclusive organizations, such as those leading the Clean and Just Transportation Network; and, fifth, ensuring that we will have frequent high-capacity transit, local bus service, and active transportation infrastructure across the Portland-metro region, including along the I-5 corridor and across the Columbia River.

Unfortunately, what we’ve heard from ODOT thus far is too much money planned for major highway projects and far too little committed to reducing and regulating greenhouse gas emissions — projects that would align with Governor Kate Brown’s Executive Order on Climate Action. When asked by the media at a briefing last week whether ODOT’s future infrastructure spending would reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), Assistant Director Brouwer could not comment.

When it comes to transportation infrastructure spending in Oregon, the only correct official answer should be, “Yes, it reduces VMT and GHG.”

This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to focus on building a future transportation system that works for all Oregonians — one that is equitable and safe for people of all races, genders, zip codes, ages, and abilities. When our descendants look back at us in this moment a century from now, will they thank us for blessing them with mobility that is universally safe and accessible – a human right, even – or did we leave them more of the deadly and polluting system that we unfortunately inherited from our forebears a century ago?

Note: This essay originally appeared in The Oregon Way, Nov 26, 2021 – sign up for their mailing list for the first look at our quarterly contributions to their newsletter.

New Safe Routes to School in Milwaukie

Posted on November 17, 2021November 22, 2021 by Henry Latourette Miller

The City of Milwaukie has opened new Safe Routes to School for students attending Linwood Elementary and Sojourner School! Thanks to these multi-use pathways (pictured right), residents can now more comfortably walk and roll on Linwood Avenue.

These new pathways would not have happened with out the hard work of The Street Trust’s own Nicole Perry, who is our Clackamas County Safe Routes to School Coordinator and parent of one of Linwood Elementary’s students. Great work, Nicole!

Join The Street Trust as we celebrate the opening of the paths this Saturday afternoon. The City of Milwaukie will have four tent stations along the half mile stretch between Montgomery Drive and Aspen Street. The stations will be handing out treats, coffee, apple juice, stickers, and scavenger hunt prizes. Attendees can also also participate in bike decorating and sidewalk chalk art.

Arrive between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. this Saturday, November 20th.

Hey ODOT: Congestion Pricing is for Reducing Congestion!

Posted on November 9, 2021November 18, 2021 by Henry Latourette Miller

Last week The Street Trust’s Policy Transformation Manager sent the letter below to the Oregon Tolling Program about the Regional Mobility Pricing Project. TST will continue to keep the pressure on leadership to use congestion pricing for what it is for–reducing congestion–not for paying for more highway lanes and car infrastructure at the expense of bike, pedestrian, and transit investments..

“The Street Trust is a membership advocacy organization amplifying the voice of street users from across Greater Portland. We work at the intersections of an ongoing transportation crisis. Every day, our unsafe and incomplete public streets threaten our lives and livelihoods. Together, we can stop preventable death resulting from racial and social inequality, inadequate safety, and the climate crisis. For that reason, we are working hard to overcome the political gridlock that ignores these most urgent needs.

Given these priorities, The Street Trust is focused on advancing a regional system that manages demand and prioritizes multimodal infrastructure. We are strong proponents of the emerging use of pricing as a tool to help manage traffic demand, address urgent climate concerns, and improve equitable access to other modes in our transportation system. However, The Street Trust supports using pricing as a tool to manage transportation demand, not as a revenue generator for expanding capacity for drive-alone trips.

The language in your draft document states that the purpose of the Regional Mobility Pricing Project is “to implement congestion pricing to manage traffic congestion and to generate revenue for priority transportation projects.” This is unacceptably vague and as such, we ask that you please clearly describe the characteristics of a priority transportation project, especially as it relates to the stated goals of “support[ing] multimodal transportation choices to provide travel options and reduce congestion” and “provid[ing] benefits for historically and currently excluded and underserved communities” and “reducing contributions to climate change effects” (p. 7).

We are gravely concerned that every project listed on the Urban Mobility Office’s website is centered on freeways or freeway expansion.The Street Trust believes the future of Urban Mobility is multimodal, not auto-centric. Oregonians deserve more than a “pave now, pay later” investment in the midst of a long-overdue climate justice reckoning and recalibration.

Throughout the draft document, there is not a single mention of induced demand. A
clear explanation of this principle and its consequence is a critical element of transportation planning discussions; thus, the final purpose and need statement document must include an explanation of induced demand.

As leaders in the discussion of congestion pricing, it is important that ODOT embraces its responsibility for driving an essential cultural shift towards the elevation and prioritization alternatives to the carbon-intensive, drive-alone trip. This project is an extraordinary opportunity to help Oregonians understand that the things they’ve perceived as free have actually been quite costly, causing harm to our most vulnerable communities for decades and that without urgent, strategic, and innovative intervention, they will continue to do so.

Finally, we ask that you move forward with a commitment to equity by ensuring you spend sufficient time and resources engaging and taking direction from the multiple generations of communities that have suffered negatively from your previous freeway projects, with a specific focus on Portland’s Black community members displaced during the original Interstate 5 construction.

We remain appreciative of the work you’ve done and are excited about the potential for our state to emerge as a national leader on innovative, equitable, and impactful transportation policy. Please do not hesitate to reach out to The Street Trust if we can support you in this important work.”

Many thanks,
André Lightsey-Walker
Policy Transformation Manager
The Street Trust

Advocacy work is painstaking and thankless. #TST staff attend hours of public hearings, write letters, and show up to testify week in and week out so your voices are represented in these discussions. But we need your support to make sure that pricing is implemented to reduce congestion and not to pay for more highway lanes at the expense of bike, pedestrian, and transit investments.

Donate today to support TST’s advocacy work ensuring fair and effective pricing in the Portland metro region.

City Council: Use pricing to change behavior, not generate revenue

Posted on November 9, 2021November 9, 2021 by Henry Latourette Miller

Last month, The Street Trust’s Policy Transformation Manager sent the letter bellow to City Council to support Portland’s Bureau of Transportation and Bureau of Planning and Sustainability in developing an implementation plan for a suite of equitable mobility fees and investments based on principles recommended by the Pricing Options for Equitable Mobility Task Force.

Dear Mayor and City Council Members:

My name is André Lightsey-Walker and I am the Policy Transformation Manager at The Street Trust, a multimodal advocacy organization and registered lobbying entity with the City of Portland.

Today is a day to celebrate! I’m happy to share both my excitement and appreciation of the work the Taskforce has brought forward and I want to commend not only their outcomes but also – and perhaps more importantly – the groundwork and processes that have led to their final recommendations.

The Street Trust supports the Pricing Options for Equitable Mobility (POEM) Taskforce recommendations and encourages City Council to formally adopt these recommendations and to move quickly towards an implementation plan.

We are here today to support you as you navigate potential points of contention surrounding these recommendations and align your bureaus to ensure that they are implemented equitably, directed to do so with requisite urgency, and from a position of leadership both regionally and nationally.

As a regional advocacy organization, The Street Trust has identified equitable pricing as a strategic priority (and opportunity) to achieve greater mobility, equity and climate goals across the greater Portland metro area. We ask that The City of Portland not only support but lead implementation demand management of our transportation system by forwarding the POEM Task Force’s recommendations from your seat at the table in ODOT tolling discussions. You have the opportunity to set precedent at a pivotal point in the region’s history, where conversations of pricing are coming up at the local, regional, and state levels. Let’s work collectively to reestablish Portland as a global transportation leader and use our influence and successes as a model for how urban areas can do pricing right.

These are highly uncertain times in which you’re leading, and when discussing pricing options it may be tempting to center your priorities on revenue generation. It’s going to be important in this pivotal moment that you remember to prioritize changing travel behavior as opposed to generating revenue. The decisions you are making surrounding the POEM recommendations have the potential to positively transform our city and establish a tangible dedication to achieving the safety and climate outcomes we hope to achieve.

I encourage you all to remember that the primary goal of these recommendations is to reduce traffic demand and support congestion relief. Potential revenue should be looked at as an opportunity and tool to double down on your impact, by using the generated funds to continue to help reduce said demand and improve equitable outcomes in our transportation system.

When facing pushback to POEM recommendations, we must understand that the bulk of opposition stems from a perspective of Portland residents, old and new, who have traveled along and experienced city streets where policies and investments have prioritized the movement of automobiles over people… often, quite literally right over them. As long as we continue to prioritize drive-alone trips in our policies and investments, we will continue to see the creeping pollution, traffic violence, climate deterioration, and preventable death in our streets associated with those choices.

Many people, not unsurprisingly, are angered by the prospect of paying for something they’ve cognitively established as free. Whether it’s plastic bags, parking in their neighborhood, or crossing a bridge, and response to this change is natural. As leaders in our community, you have the opportunity to play a key role in helping people better understand that the things they’ve perceived as free have actually been quite costly, causing harm to our most vulnerable communities for decades.

And they will continue to do so without urgent, strategic and innovative intervention.

Data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

shows there is a national trend in traffic fatalities EVEN amidst the decrease in VMT associated with the pandemic. The City of Portland is no different: our streets are deadly, and we’ve already lost at least 51 lives to traffic violence in 2021. The Street Trust echoes PBOT’s proclamation that one death in our streets is too many, so we must collectively upend our auto-centric paradigm and prioritize the mobility of our most vulnerable street users first. We still have a unique opportunity to implement changes before returning to normal travel patterns. The Street Trust believes quick action on these recommendations will lead to more significant impacts and better outcomes for our community.

I ask for your continued leadership as we move forward in showing Portland and beyond, that designing streets for people is justice in action.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

A. Lightsey-Walker
André Lightsey-Walker
Policy Transformation Manager, The Street Trust
[email protected]

Donate today to support TST’s advocacy work ensuring fair and effective pricing in the Portland metro region.

What unstoppable partnerships look like 🤝

Posted on October 21, 2021October 21, 2021 by Anouksha Gardner

Four people in brighlty colored jackets stand with bicycles in fornt of law office.

Thomas, Coon, Newton & Frost has been working with The Street Trust to improve our region’s transportation network for three full decades. Ray Thomas gave the first bicycle and pedestrian legal clinicin 1992, and since then, TCNF’s bicycle and pedestrian lawyers have continued performing hundreds of clinics across the state. Today, attorneys Cynthia Newton and Chris Thomas present most clinics for the firm. Any interested organizations are invited to reach out to TST or TCNF to schedule a clinic free of charge for your team, community, or organization.

On top of their unwavering support of pedestrian and bike clinics, TCNF has also been involved in The Street Trust’s legislative advocacy efforts over the years. A recent example is Ray Thomas’s testimony in Salem in favor of legislation clarifying that bicycle lanes exist within intersections, even when painted markings are interrupted. Jim Coon has also recently helped draft proposed legislation updating Oregon’s bicycle bill, and spoke at last year’s Active Transportation Summit on that topic.

When asked why safe streets are so important to them, TCNF said, “As injury lawyers we have an intimate view of the impact traffic collisions can have on the lives of our clients, from the acute stages of treatment to the long-term mental and physical repercussions. Unfortunately, fear of another collision often discourages our clients from riding the way they did before, and we know many other would-be cyclists avoid riding out of concern for their safety. We need safer streets to welcome those who want to get around without a car, but don’t currently feel safe doing so.”

The Street Trust partners with a wide range of organizations from non-profit, labor, business, health, education, faith, and other sectors. These partnerships make our advocacy more powerful, by bridging communities across differences, issue areas, and geographic focus. The Street Trust appreciates and values the relationship the organization has with Thomas, Coon, Newton & Frost, working together for safe streets for us all.

The Street Trust is always looking to partner with organizations and businesses. Become a business member/partner here.

The Street Trust’s Newest Champion Business Member B-line

Posted on September 22, 2021November 18, 2021 by Anouksha Gardner

We’d like to officially welcome our newest Champion Business Member B-Line to The Street Trust!

B-line is passionate about our community and the planet! As a certified B-Corporation, they work every day by working with their customers to reduce freight congestion, CO2 emissions, provide local green-collar jobs, streamlined recycling services, and helping feed those in need via their B-shares program.

Since 2008, B-line Urban Logistics has done this by offering advertising, warehousing, logistics, fulfillment, and zero-emission delivery services to an ever-growing group of businesses in Portland, Oregon. B-Line customers value the delivery time they save, the cost savings of a centrally managed warehouse with dedicated staff, and their ability to help scale quickly with delivery, fulfillment, warehousing, and advertising services in a centrally located solar-powered warehouse on SE 7th and Salmon street.

B-line’s founding premise, that business can be a catalyst for positive change, is quantified in their 2019 and 2020 impact reports.

Welcome to The Street Trust Family!

Become a Business Member and join The Street Trust Family.

#BacktoSchool with #TST

Posted on September 9, 2021September 13, 2021 by Henry Latourette Miller

Drive Like It

School is back in session and with students traveling to in-person classrooms again, drivers need to remember school routes are everywhere and #DriveLikeIt!

The Street Trust has partnered with ODOT, Metro, the Portland Bureau of Transportation, and Safe Routes to School programs to share this message across the region. Yard signs have been distributed and Trimet buses are running bright pink ads reminding drivers to slow down and watch out for kids.

Want to get the message out in your community? Visit our toolkit to download campaign posters and create your own social media posts!

Walk+Roll

Wednesday, October 6 is International Walk+Roll to School Day! Is your school ready to celebrate and encourage their students to walk and roll?

International Walk+Roll to School Day is a global event that involves communities from more than 40 countries walking and rolling to school on the same day. It began in 1997 as a one-day event and over time, this event has become part of a movement for year-round safe routes to school and a celebration – with record-breaking participation – each October. Today, thousands of schools across America – from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico – participate every October.

Visit the Safe Routes to School website to learn individual and whole-school activity ideas, including how to sign up for our next student art contest!

Oregon Friendly Driver Classes

Want to learn to be a safer and friendlier driver while out on the road? Attend a free virtual Oregon Friendly Driver class !

The Street Trust will teach you how to drive around people walking and bicycling by talking about laws, infrastructure, and common mistakes that people make while out and about through our interactive virtual class. This free class is appropriate for drivers of all skill levels from new drivers to professional drivers!

Joins for a lunch time Friendly Driver training Thursday, September 1 from 12 – 1 pm and Thursday, September 30 from 12 – 1 pm.

Want to host a free Friendly Driver class for your workplace?Request a training !

Parkrose Pedal

On September 1st, The Street Trust partnered with the Community Cycling Center for the #ParkrosePedal by the Parkrose Middle School. The event was dreamt by and organized by Nichole Watson, a local bike advocate looking to improve visibility and representation in the cycling community, and the Parkrose School District. Three #TST leaders supported the “bike rodeo” activity and joined dozens of community members for a walk and ride to build a more inclusive cycling culture in the region.

TST was thrilled to see such a large turnout and is always seeking volunteers to participate in and help organize more of these types of events in the future!

Questions about TST’s education efforts? Email TST Education Director Lindsay Huber at [email protected] or

visit our website.

Become a Business Member of The Street Trust

Posted on August 20, 2021August 20, 2021 by staff

The Street Trust has a new business membership structure for organizations who support investments in safe and accessible streets. We have revised and remodeled our business membership to be accessible, equitable, and beneficial for organizations from all the different sectors.

The Street Trust’s work is done in partnership with a wide range of organizations from non-profit, labor, business, health, education, and other sectors. The support from our business members makes our advocacy more powerful, by bridging communities across differences, issue-areas, and geographic focus.

You can choose to be a Friend of The Street Trust, with getting access to our network and your information on our website, to choosing to be a Champion where you can partake in training and education from experts in the field of transportation and sponsorship opportunities. Partner with us by being either a Friend, Builder, Sustainer or Champion. For more information please email [email protected]

Our welcome to new business partners Paulson Coletti Trial Attorneys PC and Florin Roebig for joining The Street Trust Family.

Become a Business Member today!

Apply now for The Street Trust Board – deadline, August 19th

Posted on August 11, 2021August 11, 2021 by staff

Board member speaks to other board members at annual mmeeting outdoors

The Street Trust has embarked on an ambitious mission to advocate for multimodal transportation options that prioritize safety, accessibility, equity, and climate justice in the Portland Metro Region. Our new Strategic Plan, Executive Director, and Board will usher us into the post-pandemic age with integrity and action.

We are looking for six or more new Board Members to guide this important work. The ideal members believe in our core values and our priorities of Advocacy, Community, Impact, and Partnerships.

> Click here to view the Strategic Plan summary [PDF]

Our nominees will be chosen by the current board and voted on by our members. Board members serve a two-year term and may renew. The commitment is 2-4 hours per month.

> Please complete this brief questionnaire to apply (10 min)

Application Deadline: Aug 19, 2021

Board Members Chosen: September 2021

Onboarding and Training: October 2021