Oregon Active Transportation Summit

Pick up your name badge and lanyard (as well as a Summit Prize Map!) on the 1st floor lobby of the Smith Memorial Student Union, right next to the entrance on SW Broadway. You'll then head up to the 3rd floor for breakfast and sessions.

Bill Nesper, Executive Director of the League of American Bicyclists, will provide a look at bicycling advocacy from the national perspective and an update the state of transportation policy and funding on Capitol Hill.

Portland City Councilor Tiffany Koyama Lane will share her thoughts on the future of transportation and infrastructure policy in the city, as well as how we can continue to make progress on our Vision Zero goals. Councilor Koyama Lane has worked to increase road safety and lead the effort to pass a resolution reaffirming Portland's commitment to Vision Zero last year.

Learn about the new Traffic Safety Report 2.0 from Multnomah County REACH (Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health), the long-awaited update to the 2021 REACH TSR that emphasized health injustices examined transportation at the intersection of Health, Race, and Justice.

Location Details:
Meet outside Smith Memorial Student Union at 10:00 a.m., depart by 10:15 a.m.
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM – Meet & travel
11:00 AM – 11:45 AM – Bike safety education & street mural project
11:45 AM – 12:15 PM – Bike bus wayfinding pilot & vision clearance
12:15 PM – 1:00 PM – Bike back
Here's the route! (about 17 miles roundtrip with three small hills)

Description:
This mobile workshop will showcase how three pillars of the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s Safe Routes to School programming—infrastructure, engagement, and education—complement each other to help Portland youth become confident bicyclists for transportation and recreation.

Participants will get on bikes and enjoy a ride down several of Portland’s beloved neighborhood greenways—low traffic, low-speed streets where cyclists can comfortably take the traffic lane. During the ride, they will visit several recently completed capital projects and learn about bike buses at Portland schools, including how PBOT, Metro, and school districts support this grassroots effort. Our trip will showcase a recent bike bus wayfinding pilot featuring wearable signs, pavement markings, and street signs.

We’ll discuss how bike buses support school attendance, climate goals, and student health and safety. The ride will stop at Rose City Park Elementary, where participants can observe bike safety education in action. Students learn skills for awareness and bike handling, as well as rules of the road so that they can travel independently as cyclists. Participants might even get quizzed on their bike safety knowledge!

The City of Eugene centers community engagement in our transportation planning processes, but have found that in many cases the conversation can be too narrow, with residents interacting only with staff. In 2024, the Transportation Planning Team began to explore how we could broaden the conversation so that community members aren't only talking with staff, but with each other. Afterall, projects impact everyone differently, and staff cannot represent those impacts to everyone, especially those opposed to a project. That brings us to our new style of public meeting, which we are calling Community Conversations. We asked ourselves, what if we created a public meeting where people could talk with one another and learn how this project might impact their neighbors? We booked a venue with circular tables, put together an interactive agenda, and ran our first Community Conversation for the 24th Avenue Protected Bike Lanes project. We have since replicated this process for the Polk Street Bike Lanes project. This workshop will show attendees how we run Community Conversation style meetings and the "why" behind the shift in how we run meetings. I will also create an interactive component where we run a mini community conversation so people can see it in action.

We all know that closing gaps in our walking and biking networks provides tremendous benefits, and quantifying those benefits helps make the case for further investments. In this session, we will explore a brand new tool that estimates the benefits of active transportation network improvements. Building on recently published guidance in NCHRP Report 08-149 (Estimating Benefits of Closing Gaps in Active Transportation Networks), we developed a simplified spreadsheet implementation that makes the methods accessible to a broader range of practitioners and community advocates. The tool is intended to make it easier than ever to create research-backed, defensible estimates of a range of benefits from active travel, including health, safety, emissions reduction, and accessibility. The tool will be maintained and further developed as part of the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) Resource HUB, and we hope it will empower planners and communities who advocate for increased investments in active transportation.

This session will cover the following topics:
* A quick summary of the NCHRP 08-149 Report.
* The purpose of the tool. Why it was created and who was it made for.
* A demonstration of the tool, including the different layers of customization and a quick example of how the tool can be used.
* Interactive example: Open the tool up to the floor to explore the tool as a group.
* Our session will include a discussion with the audience allowing them to ask questions and to better understand how the tool might help guide their work.

The concept of e-bike lending libraries is simple: they allow people to borrow e-bikes – for a few hours or a few months. Borrowing lets people try e-bikes when they're not ready or able to commit to the expense of buying one. By getting people used to riding e-bikes for everyday trips, lending libraries make e-bikes more accessible, reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT), and advance city and state climate goals. A new report, "E-bike Lending Libraries: Trends and Practices in the United States," offers a comprehensive scan of e-bike lending libraries across the U.S. This presentation will talk about the different types of lending libraries, program elements, and the things to consider when developing a program.

Did you know that a single line of zoning code can determine whether a neighborhood is walkable—or car-dependent for decades? While we often focus on transportation investments building sidewalks and bike lanes in the public realm, local rules and regulations that govern the development in the private realm quietly shape the design of communities. Supporting community mobility requires more than just infrastructure investments—it demands cross-sector collaboration across land use and transportation practitioners.The Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD) works with communities across the state to develop plans and regulations that foster active transportation and public transit. To make this work easier, DLCD and Cascadia Partners developed the Walkable Design Standards Guidebook, a practical resource that offers model code language and guidance on when and why certain approaches make sense for different places. This guidebook helps communities create walkable, vibrant, and transit-supportive environments.This session will provide attendees with an understanding of the often-overlooked land use regulations that shape urban environments and provide actionable strategies to improve community walkability. Attendees will gain insights into best practices for walkable urban design and learn how to apply them effectively. Through case studies from the Portland area, we’ll explore the interplay between urban design, walkability, and transit networks—offering concrete examples that participants can adapt to their own communities.

Public transportation funding in Oregon and across the country is facing an uncertain future. Oregon's public transit leaders continue to deliver collaborative, innovative service while managing limited fiscal resources in a changing mobility environment. This discussion will highlight the opportunities and challenges these leaders see in continuing to meet the needs of customers and communities while working to ensure future mobility services meet the needs of rapidly changing cities.

This conversation should also highlight how these leaders and others are thinking about the future of mobility and funding of transit in a year where the Congress is planning to take up Federal Funding Reauthorization. Attendees will learn about the current state of transit funding in Oregon and nationally and gain perspective on the decisions that leaders are making to ensure seamless mobility in their service areas, as well as speculate on paths forward to ensure the resources are in place to meet growing community needs.

Did you know Oregon’s SRTS program has had the highest share of schools participating in Walk+Roll events in the nation for two years running? And that last year over 40 travel options challenges or points programs were hosted through ODOT's Get There Connect, contributing to over 1,803,236 vehicle miles reduced through the platform.

Encouragement events like these are one of the core elements in a SRTS practitioner's toolbox to help a school community comfortably and successfully start walking and rolling. ODOT’s Safe Routes to School and Transportation Options programs educate, encourage, and support Oregonians in using active and shared transportation every day. Hear from staff on both programs in this session, which highlights the role of events and incentives in successfully encouraging people to try using shared and active transportation to travel to school (and work!).

Additionally, the session will highlight opportunities for SRTS and Transportation Options programs to learn from each other's strategies to encourage mode shift as well as opportunities to collaborate for events and challenges. Hear from members of the Oregon Safe Routes to School team and the ODOT Transportation Options team about their lessons learned from successful strategies for supporting participation in Walk+Roll events and Challenges around the state.

ADD-ON TICKET REQUIRED: Innovators Luncheon with VIP Speakers Coach Sam Balto and Portland City Councilor Angelita Morillo

Coach Balto has helped make the concept of the Bike Bus a viral sensation through his online videos, while Councilor Morillo has used her platform to directly address constituents, creating authentic communications and increasing transparency. Our VIP speakers will share how they've made innovative use of social media to build their movements and make big impacts on public perception.

To register:
- If you do not have your OATS ticket yet, you can purchase your OATS and Luncheon ticket in a bundle here.
- If you have already purchased your OATS ticket, use the form here to add on a Luncheon ticket.

Details:
- In the Smith Ballroom (#355) of the Smith Memorial Student Union.
- Limited vegetarian and gluten-free options will be available.

Questions? Email [email protected].
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Hosting events that allow everyone to participate equally is important. This session will identify how to plan for, promote, and host accessible events:

• How to identify appropriate venues that provide accessible rooms and amenities.
• Invitations and announcements of the event that can be read with assistive technology and how to connect with organizations that support and service community members with disabilities with their help in promoting.
• For the day of, we will talk about site logistics, wayfinding, event staff, food & beverage services, and accessible presentations.
  
  

This presentation will be very helpful for any kind of event including outreach events, bike rides, and plaza events.

SPONSORED BY AARP Oregon

Swing by our informal, drop‑in‑style Office Hours to chat with ODOT HQ Active Transportation staff and yes, ask us anything! Whether you’re wrestling with a policy question, curious about a project, or have questions about funding programs, we'll be there to chat. Bring your questions, your ideas, your “I’ve always wondered…” musings, or even your wild hypotheticals. We’ll bring the expertise, the insight, and cookies. Come for the conversation, stay for the snacks.

Note: this session was originally scheduled to take place Friday at 10:30 a.m. while riding the Portland Streetcar loop and was titled "Tap and Talk with ODOT Active Transportation."

Effective bike parking is an essential piece of our broader transportation plan. The intent is to insure safe, efficient spaces for bikes when not in use. In this session we will discuss Portland's current bike parking policies, what did not work, and what changes need to happen to get Portland back on track to have one of the best bike parking regulations in the country. A code that meets the needs of Portlanders without cost burdening housing or adding complexity all while increasing housing production.

SPONSORED BY Dero

Location Details:
Meet outside Smith Memorial Student Union at 1:15 p.m., departs at 1:30 p.m.

Description:
This is an interactive tour that combines walking and the streetcar!  We leave from PSU campus and explore the myriad Portland neighborhoods that are connected by our convenient streetcar loop, including the Pearl District, the Alphabet District and the Eastside mural district.  Learn how easy it is to see so much of the inner east and west side of the river by streetcar.

Location Details:
1:15 p.m. - Meet outside PSU Smith Memorial Student Union, for a 0.2-mile/4 minute walk/roll to ride in style on a chartered C-TRAN bus!

Capacity: 40

Description:
On this mobile workshop, we’ll visit key stations on C-TRAN’s Mill Plain BRT. On its way to three years in service, this award-winning BRT corridor extends nearly 10-miles from downtown and eastside Vancouver. Ever wonder how and why the stations look and feel the way they do? Come up close with us to experience the platform design details, accessibility features, bike/ped integration, and bus and station amenities. We’ll dive into how the details you see today started on paper in 2017. C-TRAN’s Director of Planning & Service Delivery will share how this second BRT corridor, serving 780k passengers in 2025, came to life and how it’s integrated with C-TRAN’s full system. We’ll see you on the Vine!

Attendees will learn about new and innovative ways that jurisdictions, transit providers and non-profits collaborate to encourage employers around the region to provide commute benefit programs that encourage and incentivize using travel options to get to work. Speakers will give examples of the successful programs that they offer, detail areas where they struggle to gain traction and hope to engage attendees in how they can support this work in their communities or use the resources for their own work.

Examples will include:
- new transit pass programs
- rewards and challenges
- upcoming vanpool subsidies
- online tools and webinars

SPONSORED BY Metro

After years of advocacy, ownership of 82nd Avenue--formerly known as Oregon Highway 213--was transferred from the Oregon Department of Transportation to the City of Portland. From years of neglect, the road had deteriorated; pedestrian access became more dangerous; access for transit users on the Region’s busiest bus line suffered; and the corridor’s cultural richness challenged.

This transfer came with promise and with public funding – and with big questions. To tackle these questions – and set the stage for success for the communities on 82nd Avenue – APANO, Oregon Walks, Unite Oregon, and Verde organized a community-led coalition to engage people and partners in reimagining 82nd Avenue, to advocate, and to navigate this transformative opportunity equitably.

At OATS a few years ago, we shared our initial ideas, approach, and vision of this community-led coalition… Now we seek to continue the conversation at OATS to share lessons learned, progress secured, and challenges ahead.In a lively discussion with attendees, Metro Councilor Duncan Hwang will moderate a panel of APANO, Oregon Walks, Unite Oregon, and Verde leaders on key topics – examining assumptions, highlighting the power of community problem-solving approaches, discussing the intersection between transportation and community health, and sharing lessons for others.

Discussion topics include:
1. Public agency partnerships to secure and shape transformative investments, including specialized bus lanes (BATs), sidewalks, and crossings
2. The 82nd Development Strategy: community-focused planning and future directions
3. 82nd Tax Increment Financing (TIF): the potential to support corridor key strategies and priorities
4. Implementation partnerships: Coalition’s collaboration with agencies (e.g., BPS Eastport Plaza)
5. Prioritizing affordable housing, schools, small business support, and workforce development.

Student Transportation Survey and District Policy Insights from Eugene Safe Routes to School:
Participants will discover the results and applied uses of a student travel survey, segmented into various groups, carried out by Eugene School District 4J Safe Routes to School (SRTS) program. The district-wide survey gathered input on barriers to and benefits of active and shared transportation for students living varied distances from school, using different modes of travel, and at various grade levels. Analysis revealed that the particular groups indeed perceive discreet advantages and obstacles to active and shared travel. The conclusions allow the SRTS program to target specific groups of students and families with messaging and support to increase the use of active and shared transportation. Many of these findings and/or a replication of the survey could be applied statewide.In addition, participants will learn about the unique policies that Eugene 4J has implemented to support student transportation options. The district developed an innovative “equity clause” in their Supplemental Busing Plan that expands the reach of school buses to those who need it most. And, as allowed by House Bill 3014, the “Bike Bus Bill,” the district has included funding for crossing guards in their Supplemental Busing Plan.The session will cycle between presentations and partner or small group discussions with share-outs. This will allow participants to digest the information being presented and to consider how they could use and apply the material after the conference. Participants will have the opportunity to access both the survey results and a blank version of the survey for adaptation and replication.

Regional Safe Routes to School Walkshed 2.0:
In 2022, Metro developed the first Regional SRTS Walkshed Tool that provides both geospatial and demographic data for every public school in the Metro boundary, allowing for SRTS practitioners to learn more about the specific vulnerabilities present at each school. The tool focuses on two key approaches: 1) The development of a routable pedestrian network to measure a true one-mile 'walkshed' around each school that incorporates streets and trails, and 2) Metro selected eight variables – referred to as vulnerability indicators - related to transportation safety and student demographics to assess an individual school’s needs and barriers for student transportation, relative to other schools in the region. The tool was updated in 2025 to reflect new school and street data, and the online tools is now fully accessible - one of the first geospatial web tools at Metro to integrate web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA standards. In addition, Metro developed individualized School Walkshed reports for every school, that can be printed and used during walk audits or in discussions about SRTS needs at the school level.This presentation will walk through the new tool and it's functionalities, discuss use-cases for the tool at the local level, and share more about the vulnerability indicators that were selected as well as the development of the school walksheds themselves.

Location Details: Meet outside Smith Memorial Student Union (on the west side, by the Park Blocks/farmers market side)

Description:
Come hear what the noise is all about! Multnomah County Environmental Health has partnered with OSU to map sound levels across Portland, and now it’s your turn to join the investigation. In this active mobile workshop, we’ll dive into the intersection of place, noise, and public health. Choose your mode—foot, bike, or transit—and hit the streets around OATS to capture real-time noise data. We’ll reconvene at Smith Memorial Union to compare our findings, discuss the environmental drivers of noise, and brainstorm strategies to improve our local soundscape.

Two sessions:

• Expanding Imagination with Non-Technical 3D Visualization

• Crashes Don’t Just Happen: Can We Model Them?

Expanding Imagination with Non-Technical 3D Visualization

In the immediate aftermath of a UO student killed on bicycle earlier in 2026, outrage about poor street design from new groups of people emerged. Within a week, a police-escorted funeral procession that closed major streets in Eugene ensued that was simultaneously a remembrance for the student and a public call for action. A week later, a public forum by a local advocacy group was hastily arranged to provide an outlet for the anger and to communicate to city leadership and staff that they need to do better in their street designs and need to do it more quickly; the event overflowed a middle school cafeteria with over 200 people in attendance, many who had never before engaged in street / transportation topics. One key part of both the gatherings and the potential directions was the use of a web-based, non-technical 3D street visualization software, called 3D Street, to redesign the street where the student was killed and to give this broader public a wider set of possibilities on how streets can be designed beyond calling for crosswalks, stop signs, and HAWK signals.

This session will focus on that visualization aspect of the case study, partially embedding it into the story itself and partially demonstrating the ease for non-technicians to make really effective redesign visualizations. As many of us know in the active transportation space, we have a lot of knowledge of how to build better streets, but we have a gap in putting knowledge into practice. Giving more people the tools to make effective visions of alternative futures and then using those visualizations to gather more support and pressure to accelerate better design practice is the focus of this session.


Crashes Don’t Just Happen: Can We Model Them?

Metro and ODOT have been working to develop and implement safety analysis techniques that incorporate systemic safety thinking to tell a fuller story about why and where traffic injuries occur in Oregon and in the Portland Metro Region. Many safety analyses focus on user behavior but ignore systemic impacts from infrastructure and roadway operational characteristics like traffic lanes and traffic volumes. This presentation will share recent work by ODOT to account for role that infrastructure and pedestrian volume play in explaining variation in pedestrian injuries. Metro is one of the first regions in the U.S. to attempt to implement spatial crash prediction models.

This talk will discuss the process of developing both agencies’ tools and where the tools currently stand. While developing these models, both agencies have learned about the data and tools available. They have raised interesting questions about how to use them to tell more complete stories about traffic safety in Oregon and Portland Metro region. This talk will emphasize opportunities for collaboration between Metro, ODOT and other partners to better predict the impact of investments on safety and pedestrian travel. It will discuss the initial results of the models and what they mean for the complicated relationships between vehicle-miles-traveled, investments for intervention, multi-modal travel, and safety outcomes. The talk will build into a bigger discussion on the role of data models to tell stories and inspire investment in safety and active transportation. It will engage the audience to share experiences about how to tell stories with complex models and limited data. This talk will revolve around open discussions, and we will encourage the audience to share their suggestions, experiences, and ideas for future collaboration.

Active transportation affects people’s daily lives, safety, and families — yet we often communicate about this work in ways that feel overly technical or abstract. Campaigns meant to educate or change behavior need a deeper strategy to stick with people after they walk away. So how do we share complex information in ways that spark curiosity, empathy, and action? In this interactive session, the Toole Design team will share practical strategies for creating clear, compelling calls to action that resonate with stakeholders and community members. We’ll show how understanding your audiences, thoughtful messaging, strong visual design, and human-centered storytelling come together to build grass-roots support for transportation projects, programs, and funding efforts. The workshop will start with a brief presentation on the general strategy that the Toole Design team uses to create transportation campaigns, showing how important collaboration between planners, designers, and the client is, giving attendees direction on how to start thinking about messaging and campaign development. From there, we’ll gather campaign needs or issues from the audience and allow the Toole Design team to create a campaign or work through challenges in real time, offering the audience opportunities to ask questions, give feedback or suggestions, and/or tag in to become part of the campaign development team. Participants will learn about collaboration across disciplines and leave the workshop with the basic tools to tackle real-world communication challenges, developing creative approaches that blend planning, strategy, and design.Attendees will leave with:Ideas for communicating complex, safety-focused projectsAn understanding of how to determine the story and key audiences of a communication campaignIdeas for making outreach materials more engaging and approachableExperience applying creative thinking to real communication challengesNew connections with peers facing similar opportunities!This session is designed to be collaborative, hands-on, and energizing — where planning meets design, and technical expertise meets human connection. Come play with us!

Two Sessions:

• More than just Blinky Lights: What’s New in School Area Safety

• Creating Space for Community, Connection, & Mobility with School Streets

More than just Blinky Lights: What’s New in School Area Safety

Join us to learn what’s new and exciting in school area safety in Oregon. This session will provide attendees with an understanding of the state and federal standards and guidelines related to school area safety and showcase projects from around the state. Bring your burning school zone questions and ask an engineer! Learn from cities and community partners who are taking steps to improve school area safety. Walk through ODOT’s newly updated Guide to School Area Safety with the team who wrote it. Learn about the latest standards, guidelines, and best practices for supporting everyone safely traveling to and from school. Community projects examples will include:

• Portland Bureau of Transportation’s SRTS Infrastructure Plan
• Quick Build and School Streets for School Area Safety in Hood River County
• Education Programs to Support School Area Safety

Attendees will leave with a better understanding of guidelines, standards, and strategies for school area safety improvements and where to find more information and support in the future and ideas for different types of projects to implement at schools in their communities.


Creating Space for Community, Connection, & Mobility with School Streets

School Streets are a proven, low-cost strategy that temporarily restricts through-traffic on streets adjacent to schools during arrival and dismissal, creating safer and more welcoming spaces for students, families, and neighbors. This session will move participants from curiosity to implementation.

Attendees will:

• Learn how School Streets function in urban, suburban, and rural contexts
• Hear evaluation findings and implementation lessons from Oregon pilots, including Portland Bureau of Transportation’s School Streets pilot and Hood River’s practitioner experience
• Explore practical considerations such as community engagement, abutter outreach, traffic flow design, activation strategies, and scalability planning

This session is highly interactive. After a brief framing presentation (approximately 25 minutes), participants will engage in a facilitated, hands-on planning workshop. Using a structured planning toolkit, attendees will draft a School Street concept tailored to their own community, including mapping the street configuration, identifying activation ideas, outlining engagement strategies, and developing next steps for piloting. Presenters will circulate to provide real-time technical assistance and feedback.

Participants will leave with a tangible draft plan and a clear pathway toward implementation.

Exclusive for Street Trust Members
Not a member yet? Join up for just $5/month here to attend and support active transportation in Oregon!

Location: At The Street Trust's Office in the Public Will Building - 733 SW Oak St, Portland, OR 97205
Refreshments: Beer, wine, NA drinks and light bites

Meet The Street Trust's Board, our new Interim Executive Director, Lindsay Huber, and learn about how your donations are making an impact for non-drivers and building the movement for safe, complete streets. We’ll provide an update on our programs and advocacy in the past year including:
- What happened in the 2025 and 2026 state legislative sessions. Our Legislative Consultant, Thomas Baker, will share his direct experience and outline what we need to do to reverse course in the 2027 long session.
- Program updates on Ride2Own, WeBike, Oregon Friendly Driver, and other education efforts.

We are so grateful for your support, thank you!

Questions about membership or the debrief? Please email [email protected].

Meet outside Smith Memorial Student Union at 4:45 p.m., ride at 5:00 p.m.
Arrive at Clinton Street Plaza at 5:30 p.m.

Join the bike bus from OATS to eateries next to Clinton Street Theater after Thursday sessions end. Three miles. Lucky Horseshoe and Dots Cafe have happy hour pricing on food until 6:00 p.m.

Still need your $8 ticket to the PK Slam? Purchase here.

Bring a bike lock! Bike parking is at staples in the area.

Doors open at 7:00 PM; event starts at 7:30 PM.

Purchase tickets from Clinton Street Theater ($8) here.

Join the OATS bike bus over at 5:00 PM (info here).


At this PK Slam or lightning slide celebration, hosted and organized by The Street Trust and Strong Towns PDX, our storytellers have 20 slides to share a topic, tale, or passion project, with each slide automatically advancing after just 20 secs.

MC: Art Pearce
DJ: Tyler Smith of Group Sound

Performers:

• Top down or Bottom Up - Aaron Kuehn and Allan Rudwick

• Skate Urbanism from BDX to PDX: How Skateboarding Can Power Placemaking, Tourism, and Public-Space Innovation - Margaux Mennesson

• TDM+U - Noel Mickelberry and Grace Stainback

• Transportation History via Pinball - Rachel Haukkala

• One Simple Trick for Better Bike Share - Al Hongo

• This is Not About Walking - Krista Catwood

• Beatboxing on the Go - Daniel Te

• From Pavement to Plaza: The Data Behind Portland's 7th & Sandy Transformation - Chance Morrison and Matt Zajack

• They're Gr-r-reat! Bike Buses Aren't Just For Kids - Brittany Quale

• The Importance of a Strong Transit Riders Union - Michael Ridenour