Oregon Active Transportation Summit

A moderated panel discussion on the topic of the current and future state of Shared Micromobility, with representation from three Oregon cities (Portland, Salem, Eugene) and an expert with a lens on best practices nationwide.

Our discussion will center around the intersection -- current and potential -- of shared micromobility and transit in Oregon and nationally. Brodie Hylton, Executive Director of Cascadia Mobility, will moderate the discussion, talking about micromobility programs in the Portland, Salem, and Eugene -- both current and planned for the future.

We will discuss whether coordinated transit + shared micromobility is possible, why or why not, as well as the business and public investment case for transit agencies and ideas for greater transit agency participation and coordination. In a larger sense, we'll cover what we should be optimizing for -- people or profit -- and explore how a balance might best be achieved. There will also be an opportunity to ask panelists questions.

SPONSORED BY Toole Design

Public markets and food halls are becoming major generators of high-frequency trips including vendor supply, third-party delivery and prepared food pickups, catering and events, and waste hauling among many other needs, yet most are still designed as if freight, pickup, and logistics activities are incidental.

This session will share the planning and design approach underway for the James Beard Public Market Zero-Emissions Logistics Initiative: a zero-emissions concept using electric cargo bikes and an electric refrigerated van, paired with a small-footprint microhub, storage and charging infrastructure, cold-chain staging development, and changes at the curb with clearer loading and pickup operations.

Importantly, this is a pre-launch case study: the market and zero-emission logistics initiative are expected to launch in early 2027. That’s exactly why the session is valuable, most projects fail or stall because the building, curb, staffing model, vendor participation plan, and performance metrics aren’t designed early enough.

We’ll walk through the decisions we’re making now, the tradeoffs, what we’ll be measuring from day one, and how to avoid “pilot purgatory” by building a program that is efficient, sustainable, and scalable. Attendees will leave with a practical checklist for designing microhubs at trip-dense destinations, what to change in the facility, what to do at the curb, how to structure partnerships, and what success measures to set before launch.

Attendees will learn how to:
- Turn a trip-dense destination (market/food hall/main street) into a microhub + curb operating model before launch.
- Identify the minimum viable facility moves (staging, secure storage/charging, cold-chain considerations, order pickup design) to prevent operational chaos later.
- Build a partner + staffing model that clarifies roles and responsibilities between the market, the delivery operator, and the city.
- Create a vendor participation and engagement plan that supports small businesses and sets clear service expectations.
- Choose a small set of launch-ready metrics (dwell time, conflicts/double-parking reduction, trip displacement, CO₂e, reliability, participation/equity outcomes) and a simple dashboard approach.

Three Sessions:

• Data equity in transportation safety
• Correcting the Signal: Filling in the Active Transportation Data Gap and Accounting for Bias
• Crash Data in Your Hands: Metro's Traffic Safety Dashboards

Data equity in transportation safety


Anthony Cabadas and Nat Moss will present a StoryMap, “Data Equity in Transportation Safety,” developed for Metro’s Safe Streets for All program. The project explores what data equity means in the context of transportation safety, offering readers a more critical and nuanced perspective as they engage with crash dashboards and other public data resources. Using disability as a lens, the StoryMap highlights how missing representation shapes what we see - and fail to see -in safety data, and introduces “data visceralization” as a method for bringing absent experiences back into view. Participants will leave with practical ways to question common crash-data assumptions and ideas for incorporating equity-focused storytelling and visualization into their own transportation safety work.



Correcting the Signal: Filling in the Active Transportation Data Gap and Accounting for Bias


Public agencies launching active transportation programs often face the same challenge: they lack reliable bicycle and pedestrian volume data. Without exposure data, it is difficult to quantify risk, prioritize corridors, or justify investments. Third-party datasets like Strava Metro offer new opportunities—but also introduce bias, often overrepresenting recreational and higher-income users. When left unaddressed, these biases can unintentionally reinforce inequities.


This session explores how to use Strava as one component of a structured, bias-aware analytical framework grounded in mobility justice. Through a Vision Zero case study, we will demonstrate how a public agency estimated Vulnerable Road User (VRU) volumes across an entire network despite limited count infrastructure. By triangulating Strava Metro with demographic indicators (zero-car households, income, age), land use patterns, crash history, and proximity to essential destinations, the team developed an Active Transportation Need and Demand Index that distinguishes between observed activity and latent demand.


Addressing sparse data is only part of the challenge. Equally important is recognizing and correcting bias across all data sources to ensure that active transportation investments reflect who needs safe mobility—not just who is already being counted. Attendees will leave with a replicable, practical approach for responsibly integrating emerging datasets into equitable Vision Zero and active transportation planning efforts.


Participants will learn how to:

• Evaluate the strengths and limitations of Strava Metro for active transportation planning

• Detect and correct for spatial and demographic bias in app-based datasets

• Calibrate third-party data using permanent counters or regional model outputs

• Identify “silent demand” corridors where low recorded activity masks high community need

• Build transparent, defensible methodologies that center equity and mobility justice in investment decisions

Crash Data in Your Hands


Metro's Traffic Safety Dashboards: Four free interactive dashboards from Metro's Safe Streets for All resource hub let communities explore traffic crash data across the greater Portland region. This demo will introduce the dashboards as they address several dimensions of the safety crisis: traffic deaths and traffic injuries across jurisdictions, traffic deaths by race and ethnicity, and fatal and serious pedestrian crashes by location and time. Attendees will learn how to filter crash data for their jurisdiction, build charts they can use in presentations, and download data for safety planning, Safe Routes to School work and community advocacy. Bring a laptop or phone to follow along and explore the dashboards during the session.

Two sessions:

• What It Takes to Plant a Traffic Garden: Lessons from Oregon’s 2025 Pilot

• The State of PBOT's Public Realm and Street Activation: 2025 Lessons and 2026 Ambitions

What It Takes to Plant a Traffic Garden: Lessons from Oregon’s 2025 Pilot

What is a traffic garden, how are they useful spaces for teaching students walking and biking skills, and how can we get more of them? This session introduces audiences to the fundamentals of traffic gardens and shares the results of ODOT’s traffic garden pilot program in 2025, part of the greater Safe Routes to School Program. The program also includes a hands-on activity where members of the audience will get to design their own traffic garden.


The State of PBOT's Public Realm and Street Activation: 2025 Lessons and 2026 Ambitions

Lessons Learned from PBOT Plaza's First Open Call and other programs that are a source of inspiration to other cities and community organizations who can utilize the same tools.

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.

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

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

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.