The Metro Council may push the region's cities and counties to build more crosswalks on major streets, countering a recommendation from Washington County and from Metro's planning staff to wait on the mandate.
The council is in the midst of updating the region's main transportation plan, a small "maintenance" update that's required under federal law. A more significant update of the plan is scheduled in 2018.
In the draft Regional Transportation Plan, Metro planning staff included a section of the Regional Safety Plan, a section that called for improved crosswalks every 530 feet on major roads "unless there are no intersections, bus stops or other pedestrian attractions."
That's about 10 crosswalks a mile; 530 feet is about the distance of two Portland blocks.
The problem, which was pointed out by the Washington County Department of Land Use and Transportation in early May, is that while the proposed language from the Regional Safety Plan was available as part of the public review draft, the plan was never adopted by the Metro Council, nor by the Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation, which is primarily made up of local elected officials.
In their objection to the 530-foot requirement, Washington County pointed out that more crosswalks could cause safety and mobility issues – in other words, it could make crashes more likely in some areas, and could significantly slow traffic down.
That objection caught the eye of Metro councilors Bob Stacey and Kathryn Harrington, who in turn sought to keep the 530-foot requirement in the Regional Transportation Plan, even though it hadn't been reviewed by JPACT.
"Sixty-plus percent of all fatal or serious pedestrian car crashes occur on major arterials," Stacey said at Tuesday's Metro Council work session.
"How many people have to be maimed or killed before we make some improvements?" Harrington said. "Now is a really good time to be doing something more. Are we doing everything? No. But I think the public expects us to continue to make some progress."
It may seem like a tempest in a teapot, but RTP rules have an impact on planning and federal funding throughout the Portland region.
"It does involve policy choices about funding processes, and the allocation of resources among modes," Stacey said. "We're going to be faced with difficult choices."
Metro staff proposed putting off adoption of the 530-foot crosswalk requirement to 2018, giving the region's cities and counties a few years to weigh in on how the requirement might play out on local streets. That initially sat well with three Metro councilors: Sam Chase, Craig Dirksen and council President Tom Hughes.
"I don't know that (530 feet) is a policy issue that I'm qualified to judge. It's a discussion among people who have some expertise on traffic safety that I don't have," Hughes said. "I'm just a high school social studies teacher. I'm not an engineer in traffic studies. I'm perfectly happy to have the two staffs (Metro and Washington County) work out compromise language that gets us to where we want to be, given the fact that we all want to be safe, and we all want to increase safety."
But Stacey and Harrington, instead, moved to put the question to leaders on Thursday morning, when JPACT is scheduled to endorse the RTP and send it to the Metro Council for adoption.
Their reasoning: Another proposal, from Washington County or anyone else, could be presented to JPACT, and that board could decide which to adopt into the final 2014 Regional Transportation Plan.
That suggestion was approved by all six Metro councilors at Wednesday's work session. JPACT meets at 7:30 a.m. on Thursday.
The Metro Council is scheduled to vote on July 17 whether to adopt whatever JPACT approves as the RTP.
Note: This article was updated after initial posting.