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MICHAEL DUNNE: I'm Michael Dunne. We've done a lot in our community to make our roads safer. We've invested in traffic lights and stop signs, roundabouts and traffic cameras. We've convened groups and conferences, and we've stood up many, many advocacy organizations, all in the name of promoting road safety, and unfortunately, we don't have a lot to show for it. And in fact, we've seen a disturbing rise in traffic fatalities over the years. So, what can we do? Today on the show we talk with better Eugene Springfield transportation or best about what they see as the problem, which has more to do with a lack of community consensus versus engineering, and how looking for the easier and cheaper solutions might actually be the way to go. Rob Zako, the Executive Director of Better Eugene Springfield transportation, or BEST, Rob, thanks so much for coming on and talking with us.
ROB ZAKO: You're welcome. It's great to be here.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Why don't you remind listeners what is BEST? What do you do?
ROB ZAKO: BEST brings people together to promote transportation options, safe streets, walkable neighborhoods we formed over 14 years ago around the MX, bus rapid transit issue in West Eugene as a broad coalition with the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce, the University of Oregon, LCC, peace, health, neighborhood organizations, environmentalists, people of faith, etc. And we try to bring people together where there are hard problems that are coming around transportation.
MICHAEL DUNNE: When you started, including up to now. You know, what are some of our communities, the Eugene, Springfield area, what are some of our biggest challenges with regard to transportation in your eyes?
ROB ZAKO: Well, there are systemic challenges in their particular projects. Let me start with projects. Okay, change is hard for anyone. We've got a community the way it is, and somebody comes in and says, we're going to totally remake that. We're going to change West 11th. Going to change Franklin Boulevard, change Main Street. We change River Road, and change is scary. Change is uncertain, and people, typically, some people, react negatively to that and say, Whoa, slow down. We're not sure that we actually want to do that. We're not sure that's a good thing. We haven't talked about this enough. You haven't consulted us. We don't understand it. And some of those we're working on Franklin Boulevard, River Road, highway 99 Main Street in Springfield. They're all areas where there's been a lot of work done by governments. There's a lot of questions, there's a lot of concerns, and our better streets for people and businesses. Let's look at all those. Okay, more broadly, I would say there are issues around access and issues around safety. Somewhat shockingly, a lot of people don't drive. It's estimated as many as a third of people do not drive, or do not drive regularly for various reasons. They're too young, they're too old, they can't afford it, they have mobility issues and so forth. And so, we want a community where everybody can get around, and yet our community is designed mainly for people who drive. And so, if you don't drive, that's an issue for you. The other large issue, I'd say, is just safety. A year ago, a decade ago, the CV gene adopted something called Vision Zero, which is a goal to reduce the number of deaths and life changing injuries in our streets to zero, and also a holistic approach for doing so. It's a great goal. It's an ambitious goal. And over the last decade, we've seen, actually, in the last few years, we've seen deaths not decrease, but rise. This is very concerning. The reasons for that, it's not unique to Eugene. It's part of a national trend, but we certainly have to look at that and see, why are we seeing more tragedies rather than fewer on our streets?
MICHAEL DUNNE: Yeah, is that national trend that also percolates to here, into Eugene, Springfield area? Is that mostly because they're just more cars and more people, is it? Is it an issue of just numbers, or are there other factors in terms of the design of streets or the design of urban areas that leads to that safety challenge you just enumerated?
ROB ZAKO: Well, let me have a caveat. I'm not a total expert on this. Okay? What I say is like gospel, okay, but it's not just more people driving in the city of Eugene. For example, we've seen almost a tripling of deaths over the last three years. 2022 through 2024 is the last period the city of Eugene has reported and previously, we'd see maybe six people a year die. In the last few years, it's been closer to 20 and their population hasn't tripled. Obviously, the amount of driving hasn't tripled. So, there's something else going on. Is it the way things are designed? Well, yes, and not totally. There are lots of streets which are dangerous by design, and we can point to that spark Growth America. One of our partners does a report every few years, and they look at why streets that are designed for cars are dangerous, especially for people walking and biking. And we're seeing that some of the streets I listed before are typical of that. They're typically former state highways are fairly wide. They're designed for speed. If you're driving, maybe that's okay, maybe not. But if you're trying to get across the street because you're walking, maybe you're trying to catch the bus or biking along, it can be quite dangerous, and we're seeing an increase in pedestrian and bicycle fatalities. But part of it, and this is national data. Part of it is just people are when they drive, and maybe elsewhere in their life, but certainly when they drive, are behaving in riskier ways. We're seeing people speeding more. We're seeing people driving under the influence. We're seeing people running red lights, and this is me partially speculating we leave and live in stressful times. There's been a lot of disruption in our larger world. People are struggling to just get by. We're in a hurry. We've got things on our mind. We're distracted. Unfortunately, when that translates to how we drive that can have deadly impacts.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I know you bring together a lot of elements of the community. What are some of those conversations like, what do people who were invested in making our streets and our roads safer do? What are some of the things they talk about, both in terms of, you know, the process to make safer roads, but also in terms of, you know, sharing the road, the idea of making our roadways safer for people who aren't driving, like pedestrians and bicyclists and whatnot?
ROB ZAKO: Let me answer your question a little bit indirectly, and start with the people who are not so much working for safety. Okay, a couple years ago, we got a grant for the American Public Transportation Association, the National Trade Association for transit agencies, to look specifically at Franklin Boulevard, the city of Eugene. For many years, since before the pandemic, has been talking about redesigning it to what's called a complete street. Franklin Boulevard is part of the original highway 99 US, highway 99 that went from Mexico to Canada, designed as a motor motorway for traveling long distances. But it's the front porch of the University of Oregon. Increasingly, as University of Oregon expands and residences expand, there's activity on both sides of street, and the people wind across that there's a lot of activity, and there are conflicts there. Not everybody is on board with wanting to change it. Some people say it's just fine the way it is. So, a couple years ago, we organized a couple walk audits, and we invited anybody who was interested to join us, including some business owners who are quite skeptical. And they came and they're saying, No, roundabouts are a stupid design. We don't want to save Eugene or change anything. We said, okay, that's fine. You know, we're all welcome to our opinions, but today we're just going to look at how the streets work. Today, we're not going to look at solutions. We're going to look at problems. We're just going to look with our eyes and say, how well is the street working? Is it working for people to drive, it's working for people to walk. So, working for people's bicycles. So, 30 or so of us, and including on one of those walk audits, was at our time, our mayor-elect Kaarin Knudson, went from agate to walnut and back on both sides of the street. And we just looked around and we talked and we notably observed. And a funny thing happened. Some of those skeptics who said, you know, don't change. It doesn't work. They were saying, wow. Do you know how long it took us to get across the street at agate? You know, we only had 30 seconds on the pedestrian signal, and we barely made it. And we're fairly able bodied. Imagine what if we had mobility issues, we couldn't make it across? Wow. Look at how fast those cars were going. It's a 30- or 35-miles zone. They were going like 45 miles an hour. They were a couple feet from us. It was really loud. Boy, the traffic's gonna increase. And we said, yeah. So, would you say that the street right now is just fine? Or do you think there's some issues to dress and we got sort of a begrudging well, maybe, maybe. Some things to talk about here. We said, Yes, exactly. Does that mean that best agrees with you that roundabouts are bad, or disagrees with you and thinks that roundabouts are good? We're not really sure yet. We're waiting for information about that. What we are seeing, though, is on Franklin Boulevard, it appears that a lot of people see their problems, and the fact that people agree that their problems is the basis for coming to agreement about what solutions might be, at least having the conversation if you don't even agree that there's a problem, it's really not worth talking about what the solutions might be. And what we see oftentimes, and this is not a criticism, what we often see is that governments come in, they see a problem, they're experts. They know there's a problem, and so they come up with a solution, they go to the public and say, How do you like the solution if the public isn't on board that there's a problem there? That's not a very constructive conversation, because the public ends up being critical of the solution when really, they're skeptical of the problem. So, what best tries to do is we try to step back and say, Is there a problem here? There's no problem. That's great. We don't have to have anything to talk about. We're done. Let's go somewhere else. If there is a problem, we agree on that, let's figure out what we can do about it. Okay, so I want to start there, because it's really central to what best does, and the way we approach things, of bringing people together, being very open to all points of view, and trying to bring people along to having a shared understanding or exploring where there is a shared understanding. You asked, what do the people who do see problems do, whether they tend to do so, ask me that question again and redirect me, please.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Sure thing. I mean, it was great the way you said that. I just wanted to know what those voices that you bring together, what they've said with regard to, let's take that. Let's take Franklin Boulevard. And you did a great job explaining, you know, that walking tour that you did, you know, but obviously there are competing interests sometimes. And I wanted to kind of, you know, pull the string a little bit more about the economic interest that might come from the chamber, as well as the city's interest, as well as, like you said, I mean, the University of Oregon, all the students that have to, you know, navigate that, as well as LTD and whatnot, just kind of how you're best able to sort of, you know, perhaps, harness the competing interests and move it in a direction that maybe you can get to a solution.
ROB ZAKO: What I would say is that streets are public spaces. They're not privately owned, they're publicly owned, and so they're for the public good. And the public definitely includes people who drive, but the public also includes people who walk or bike or ride the bus or use wheelchairs. The public also includes businesses who are trying to make a living along streets. Includes people who live there, includes people in neighborhoods adjacent to that, and all those different segments the community have a stake in what happens with the street such as Franklin Boulevard. And sometimes, oftentimes, those are competing interests. You know, maybe if I only drive a car, I would say, let's turn this on a highway. Only drive a car to go through. I don't want to actually stop anywhere I'm just going through. I might say, let's, like, close off all the side streets. Let's make it no walking, no biking. Let's just make this sort of a thorough way up. I don't know, in other states, they call them parkways or something like that. In theory, conceptually, you could do that. But that doesn't really balance public interest very well. That's saying what I want is more important than whatever else wants. We could also turn it into some sort of bicycling Nirvana, and say it's only for people's bicycles. But a lot of people get to places by car. A lot of people go through there and so forth. Busses and MX need to go through there. The challenge is to take a limited right of way and to figure out how to balance those interests and to give everybody, or most people, most of what they want, but probably not anybody, all of what they want. And it is definitely a balancing act. And when we talk about better streets, that term is in contrast to a national jargon phrase Complete Streets, as if it's an absolute, it's either complete or not, or the Oregon Department transportation talks about great streets, we feel like both those terms complete or great are a little bit too lofty, especially with very challenging roadways like Franklin Boulevard. There's a lot going on there. There's not a lot of right away. It's probably not possible to make it totally complete or totally great, but maybe we can make it a bit better.
MICHAEL DUNNE: We've talked a lot about Franklin Boulevard, but there are other roads that you've identified as really dangerous, and other organizations have to talk about some of those, like river road and highway, River Road and also about the, some of the some of the reasons why.
ROB ZAKO: So let me start in Springfield for a little variety Main Street. I mentioned earlier the idea of Vision Zero, of no deaths or life changing injuries on our street. There's a very particular incident on Main Street in Springfield on February 22 2015 and. Being a pickup truck driver, I ran a red light. He just was distracted, and hit him out of there are three kids. The mother survived. Her three kids, her entire family perished in an instant, total tragedy. It wasn't malicious, he wasn't intoxicated, he didn't have a record. He lost attention, and he just ran the red light. That particular incident caused the best at the time, we were better Eugene, Springfield transit. We were focused on bus issues, MX issues. It caused us to ponder who in our community is working on safety issues. Nobody really that we saw. And so, we took it by ourselves to push for safety on all of our streets, for everyone we learned about this relatively new concept the United States called Vision Zero. We push for that. Main Street has a history of tragedies all the time. I mean, a few years ago, that particular tragedy wasn't unusual in that it happened. It was only unusual that so many people were killed in it, and it woke up the community in Springfield, and they committed to making Main Street better. They did some planning. They did some more planning. And then a funny thing happened, a few years ago, they came out with a plan that BEST thought was overly engineered. They had a plan where there were going to be nine large roundabouts at every single traffic signal on Main Street and the business community, I think with good reason, didn't want to do that, because those big roundabouts were going to take out all the corner businesses at those traffic signals. It was also a lot of money. The city of Springfield decided not to proceed with the plan that their own staff had developed, and that's about the last we've heard of it. That is truly unfortunate. We haven't been tracking exactly if people have died since, but it's a matter of time. Unfortunately. It's really unfortunate that there was community support for doing something on Main Street, and that support couldn't be harnessed into a particular solution, we would love to work with the city of Springfield and say we would like to help you bring people together. There's clearly a problem here. Maybe that particular solution wasn't the right solution, but let's find something that works for your community, maybe something a little bit less expensive, less intrusive, and can be implemented quicker. Right now, the city of Springfield is feeling kind of burned about that. The politics around it got very dicey. The business community really didn't want to go there, and so maybe it's a matter of time before that becomes something we can talk about.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Well, it brings up a great question, I believe in that. You know, given the realities of money today, big projects and transportation projects are often some of the most expensive that a city, a county, a state can do. Can we find the money? I'm not saying you're an economics expert, but you know, to be able to, and this is also a philosophical question. How do you balance what a town, a city, can spend to make something safer and better? In your own words, maybe not perfect, but better. How do you balance that between, you know, the money we can spend, the money we can get and making a road safer?
ROB ZAKO: You raise a really good question, Michael, and clearly, we live in more austere times. We're going to have a discussion in Oregon next year about whether we raise gas taxes to maintain the roads we have. And there's been a lot of issues around that, a lot of disagreement. The Oregon Department Transportation says they're out of money, or they don't have money to maintain what we have that said there are sources of funding. What we're seeing in the Eugene Springfield metropolitan area is smaller projects, modest products, that projects that do have public support, do get funded, are moving forward, and not everything has to be a big, hugely engineered kind of tenure effort. A lot of work can be done with paint, with signs, with flashing lights, with medians, with fairly low, low impact, low-cost technologies. There's an approach called Tactical Urbanism, and the general idea is it doesn't have to be perfect. What can we do in the short term with what we have to make this better oftentimes, and I'll use a jargon term here, what works is called a road diet. There are places where the road is actually too wide, given the amount of traffic there, merely taking away travel lanes could be an effective solution. That may be the case with Main Street. I don't know. It could be the case with lower River Road. I don't know. It's definitely not the case with upper River Road, certainly around Beltline, where there's a lot of traffic and it would be chaotic to try to take away lane. We've done this before. South Willamette Street was very controversial. It had been a four lane, two traveling each direction, with no bike lanes, and there was a lot of controversy over that. At the time, city manager John Reese said, We're never going to resolve this through theoretical arguments. Let's just do a trial. Let's do a test. How about for a year we change the painting on the street. If the world ends, then we'll un-paint it. If it works fine, then we'll make it permanent. And so that happened. They repainted the lines of what it was to be one traveling each direction, a center travel, a center turn lane, which didn't exist before, two bicycle lanes. The world did not end. It seemed to be fine, and the CBG made that permanent. So what did they have to invest there? They had to invest in paint. They also repaved the street, which they had money to do and they were going to do anyway. That's a road diet. That's sometimes what can be done. Franklin Boulevard has too much going on. I wouldn't suggest that that would be a solution there. Part of the proposal is to double track, MX, bus rapid transit, because there's been a lot of travel there. But the street is right now really needs to be configured. You've got cross streets that intersect at an angle, a weird angle. They don't go through. It's you don't have left turns in some places. The city's proposal to put in roundabouts is actually trying to retrofit or address long standing problems with driving, and those are much more expensive. So short, short, virtually answer. In some cases, they're fairly low cost, things that we can do, and if that's the case, we should go ahead and do it. Other times, it's very expensive, and those end up being projects to take five, even 10 years from idea to design to getting funding to construction to completion, and always have the resources to do that. Yeah.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Well, Rob, I know we could talk about this, and we should talk about this more and more, and I'm sure we'll have you back, but we'll have to end it there. Rob Zako, the Executive Director of Better Eugene, Springfield transportation, really appreciate you taking time out to talk with us.
ROB ZAKO: Thank you so much, Michael.
MICHAEL DUNNE: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon On The Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. Tomorrow on the show, everything you ever wanted to know about coffee and caffeine from the U of O's Dr. Coffee. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon On The Record, thanks for listening.
