Since the 90's, I've been a proponent of banning all cars. Portland should lead by example and create an ordinance that bans all personal vehicles and imposes large taxes and heavy regulation on any commercial vehicles. An example of regulation would be reducing the speed limit to 10mph for all remaining commercial vehicles. Get vehicles off our streets and guess what? No more traffic fatalities.

Use the new tax to improve public transit or give out free bikes to every resident of the city. This ban on cars would create positive change:

Eliminate traffic violence.
Address the climate crisis.
Protect vulnerable houseless neighbors.
Riding bikes would cultivate a culture of happiness.
Improved physical fitness.
Enhance mindfulness and creativity.
Build stronger communities.
Bring about new Green markets.

We should all, including the Mercury, amplify this idea and these points to city leaders, planners, all who will listen. Ban the car!

Portland's worst mayor in the last 45 years, Ted "talks too much" Wheeler, promoted "driverless" car nonsense first thing in office. He knows it's not possible safely, but glibly promotes the idiotic notion to serve his most powerful constituent: automobile-related business interests who also control ODOT and PBOT and Tri-Met to ensure mass transit remains dysfunctional, Metro to ensure development is almost completely automobile-oriented. These agency directors have no concern for public safety.

Autonomous Vehicle AV tech is NOT possible safely at Level 5 "driverless" but at Level 3 "driver assist" the feature that would reduce accidents most is "Speed Control" whereby motorists can drive slower than posted speed limits, but not faster, nor too fast through busy intersections to recklessly beat the light.

As an advocate for mass transit systems here (since the 90's) I vehemently opposed the SW Corridor MAX on Hwy 99W (ODOT domain) ballot measurel on the Nov 2020 because of its inexcusably abominable engineering. In Nov 1998, after 5 years of planning, voters likewise rejected Metro's N/S MAX proposal. The worst engineered segment of the N/S MAX was along the embankment I-5 in North Portland (ODOT domain). Metro went back to the drawing board and in only SIX MONTHS devised the Interstate Ave alignment acceptable to dedicated transit advocates. The other segments of the N/S - the Green Line route on the Transit Mall, the Orange Line route through SE Portland and Milwaukie were likewise improved to meet acceptably higher standards.

Proponents of the N/S MAX proposal viciously "threatened" voters with "If the N/S measure doesn't pass, it will be the LAST light rail." I believe the N/S MAX and the rejected SW Corridor MAX if built were both designed to be the last light rail. ODOT director Kris Strickler and Metro Council President Lynn Peterson have a long record of terribly engineered proposals dating back at least to the CRC I-5 Bridge replacement fiasco 2004-2013. They should be prosecuted for criminal misdirection of these and other projects studies including the Rose Quarter I-5 widening debacle.