[What follows is one of the many articles in the Mercury‘s 2026 Transportation issue. Find a print copy here, subscribe to get a copy mailed to you here, and if you’re feeling generous and want to keep these types of articles coming, support us here.—eds.]
If you ever venture out of Portland’s central city to the eastern edge of town, you’re likely to witness some remarkable traffic sins. It isn’t rare to see people speeding down the median to pass cars daring to drive 30 in a 30. You’ll see pedestrians and people using mobility devices stranded in crosswalks, leaving to chance whether they’ll be hit by the big truck turning right on red without looking. And you can hardly find a driver who isn’t focused on their phone, despite the inevitability that someone on foot will soon dart into five lanes of traffic. Biking is only for the bravest.
The chaos didn’t materialize on its own. East Portlanders say they’ve long been ignored by local government, which promised sewers and sidewalks but mostly just delivered the sewers. Like many cities in the United States—where roughly 40,000 people are killed in traffic crashes each year—transportation infrastructure leaves East Portland as a highly car-dependent, individualistic, and wildly unsafe area of the city. But recent changes in local government could make it possible for elected leaders to change the paradigm.
Traffic fatalities in Portland are down in 2026, compared with this time last year. Of the five fatalities thus far, two have been in East Portland. The data from the 2025 Vision Zero Deadly Traffic Crash Report suggests things are improving in that edge of the city. In 2025, the city recorded 39 fatalities, including 11 in East Portland. On one fateful night in October 2025, three people died in separate East Portland traffic crashes.
But for the first time since 2018, East Portland recorded fewer than 20 traffic deaths, representing a 56 percent drop from the 2021-2024 average—greater than the city’s 38 percent decrease that year. Still, East Portland has a higher rate of traffic fatalities, at 6.4 per 100,000 residents, compared to six per 100,000 in the rest of the city, according to the Vision Zero report.
City Council President Jamie Dunphy—one of three representatives of East Portland’s Council District 1—has been particularly outspoken about the visible inequities on his district’s streets. He told the Mercury local residents’ top transportation complaints are the lack of neighborhood sidewalks, the number of unmaintained gravel roads, and of course, potholes. People also remain concerned about traffic safety.
The inconvenience of public transit means more people stay in the habit of driving, meaning more traffic and crashes.
Dunphy said the lack of access to Interstate 84, particularly for those traveling west from outer East Portland, means people drive like a “bat out of hell” on city streets.
“The fact there are no on-ramps to I-84 west in the entire length of District 1, is contributing to all of our main arterials becoming de facto freeways,” Dunphy said.
With residential streets that don’t connect, gravel roads, and inadequate TriMet service, main roads like Foster, Glisan, Halsey, Holgate, Powell, Stark, Burnside, Sandy, Fremont, and others lend themselves to reckless driving.
Of the top 30 intersections in the city with the highest number of reported collisions, 26 are on or east of 82nd Avenue, according to 2019-2023 city data.
Public transit in East Portland poses issues of its own. East of the Gateway Transit Center at the intersection of I-84 and I-205, MAX stops are few and far between. Buses are unreliable, and route circuitously around the neighborhoods to funnel people to the transit center where they can transfer to main routes, rather than having direct lines to more central areas in the city.
“That doesn’t really help anybody, so no one’s ever come to rely on it,” Dunphy said.
The inconvenience of public transit means more people stay in the habit of driving, meaning more traffic and crashes. Still, the city is working on a handful of projects in East Portland, including repaving, striping, and hardening bike and pedestrian infrastructure on 122nd Avenue; new bus lanes on 82nd; adding a traffic island and lighting near a bottle exchange; and other targeted safety projects.
Led by District 3 Councilor Tiffany Koyama Lane and Mayor Keith Wilson, the city doubled down on its commitment to Vision Zero goals in September 2025. The resolution called for further collaboration between the city’s bureaus to eliminate traffic deaths, implement infrastructure changes to reduce driving speeds and shift how Portlanders travel, and examine the overrepresentation of homeless residents in traffic fatality statistics.
In 2024, 19 homeless Portlanders died from traffic-related crashes, according to the most recent Multnomah County Domicile Unknown report, which tracks the causes of deaths for people experiencing homelessness countywide. The report said homeless residents died from transportation-related crashes at 23 times the rate of the general population of Multnomah County, and 54 times when limited to only pedestrians or cyclists. It’s an ongoing issue in East Portland, as homeless Portlanders are increasingly pushed out of public spaces in the central city. Wide roads with four car lanes and drivers prone to speeding make the area especially dangerous.
“That means that drivers have an even higher responsibility, but they’re not taking that responsibility,” Dunphy said. “They have to be more on the lookout for that.”
Dunphy said the bar is low for what East Portlanders have come to expect from their elected officials, compared to the rest of the city. But that won’t keep him from trying.
“When [City Councilor] Mitch Green shows up to the Downtown Neighborhood Association, there’s 200 people there,” Dunphy said. “They’ve all been coming for 10 years, and they’re ready to yell. When I show up to the Wilkes Neighborhood Association, there are five people there, and they just applaud the fact that I walked through the door. That’s how low the bar is.”
“I’m going to just make sure that, at the very least, I keep showing up and walking through the door as often as possible,” Dunphy said.