Sarah Iannarone, Rob Zako and Steph Noll
For The Oregonian/OregonLive
Iannarone is executive director of The Street Trust. Zako is executive director of Better Eugene-Springfield Transportation. Noll is executive director of Oregon Trails Coalition.
Legislators’ draft plan for funding transportation improvements asks Oregonians to pay more, but fails to tell them what they will actually get in return. Ultimately, the package needs to deliver key outcomes that taxpayers are willing to pay for.
The outcome Oregonians demand is safety, and the clearest measure of that is the number of lives lost on our roads every year.
“Safety First” cannot be an empty slogan. We can’t ignore the daily risks Oregonians face just trying to get to work or school, such as beloved Portland children’s librarian Jeanie Diaz, who was killed two years ago while waiting for the bus to take her home to her husband and children. In 2023, nearly 600 people died on Oregon roads, over 3,000 were hospitalized with serious injuries, and over 34,000 were treated in emergency rooms. These numbers hit people of color and low-income Oregonians the hardest, as well as disproportionately affect those who live near fast-moving roads and have limited access to safe, affordable transportation options. These statistics represent families grieving, missed paychecks, mounting medical debt, and communities grappling with preventable tragedy.
Traffic violence is a public health crisis. And it is one we can solve with the transportation package now under discussion.
We appreciate that the framework names safety as a priority, but naming alone does not save lives. If this package does not include sufficient investment in programs specifically built around safety, it will fail.
Investing in safety must mean funding programs that reduce crashes, protect vulnerable road users and prevent serious injuries and fatalities. It is not enough to simply fill potholes – there must be targeted improvements including protected bike lanes, pedestrian crossings, traffic calming and safe access to frequent transit.
Programs including Safe Routes to School, which improves streets where children walk and bike to class; Great Streets, which combines improvements such as accessible ramps, crosswalks and bike lanes into a single project to create safer, more complete streets; and Oregon Community Paths, which creates separate facilities for people walking, biking and rolling, help complete the essential networks every community needs. The final transportation package must include allocations that allow these programs to grow and reach communities statewide, not just in a few urban centers.
Safety also means creating a strategic plan and long-term funding mechanism to upgrade and transfer some of the state’s deadliest highways to local government management. Many of these now function more as neighborhood main streets than high-speed corridors, yet they remain under state control, built for throughput, not safety. Local management would allow communities to make street design and investment decisions that reflect current land use, prioritize safety and support economic development.
We need dedicated, reliable revenue to fund safety, and we must be honest with the public about where that should come from. The proposed vehicle sales tax of 1% – billed as a “one-time system use fee” – should be renamed a “one-time safety fee,” because motor vehicles, which are the leading cause of traffic deaths and serious injuries, are driving the safety crisis. This money, expected to raise about $486 million per biennium, should be directed to safety programs, like those mentioned above, that prevent traffic injuries and deaths while transforming hazardous roads into vibrant main streets.
Instead of a gas tax, we support rapid, widespread implementation of a road user charge. All motor vehicles should pay by the mile, scaled by weight, as is already the case for trucks heavier than 26,000 lbs. Because heavier passenger vehicles increase the severity of crashes, a universal weight mile approach would be both fair and simple. It would uphold the constitutional requirement that cars and trucks pay their fair share and make it easier to mitigate impacts on rural Oregonians than the current gas tax.
These new revenue sources must be indexed to inflation to protect them over time, and the dollars raised for safety must be protected with real spending guardrails. After the Oregon Department of Transportation’s billion-dollar budget error and repeated cost overruns, the public needs confidence that safety dollars will not be raided to patch budget holes. Accountability must include project prioritization, delivery metrics, outcome tracking and transparency at every step along the way.
We understand the many pressures lawmakers are balancing, from housing and health care to wildfire and climate. But transportation is not separate from these issues. Safer streets improve public health. Reliable transit supports job access and housing stability. A walkable community is a climate-resilient one.
This is a once-in-a-decade opportunity to get it right. Oregonians demand safety and will support a package with real investment, real accountability for the dollars spent, and real results measured in lives saved.
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