Ariel Méndez

Easing Fire "Safety" Rules

One of the most interesting areas of political science research involves challenging the assumption that elections make officeholders more accountable.

People like this are saints. Working to prevent others from going through the agony, the hell, of losing your a child to a reckless driver.

Sarah helped make The Street Trust a leading voice of transportation safety in Portland and across the state. She leaves behind a lot to build on for the next executive director.

Congratulations on your next chapter, @sarahiannarone.bsky.social!

Well this is cool to see

At wall st? The story there is given the street was getting storm, water, and utility upgrades, could we include the intersection in the project for transportation safety as well?

The answer was yes, but budget constraints meant slip lane stayed.

It's hard to describe the feeling of not being able to stop our leaders from repeating 2003, except 1000 times worse, while Congress is doing less than nothing to stop this madman.

We'll keep doing the work locally, but this illegal war stains us all.

Keep speaking up. Americans don't want this.

This Shabbos, I’m praying for all of the innocent civilians - especially innocent Iranian civilians - who are going to suffer because of the warmongering of Trump and Netanyahu.

“The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost. That often happens in war.”

It is as if he shrugs his shoulders and says, “Oh well.”

Disgusting and impeachable.

Agreed! And just this week council gave direction to use $1.2m in one-time revenue to pursue those kinds of projects. I was pleased to see support to increase it from $600k. More details to come.

A raised crosswalk on the OSU-Cascades campus. Blue sky with white clouds and tree silhouettes are visible. A sidewalk lies on either side of dark gray pavement.

Blue sky and white clouds with trees in the background frame a raised intersection, visible in light gray concrete in the center. Four streets or perhaps drive aisles are visible on the sides. Lightposts appear on either side.

OSU-Cascades has added new surface parking. These raised crosswalks and raised intersection will make crossings safer.

I expect to start seeing more of these around town starting this year.

Twilight sky with city street lights illuminating a streetscape. Centered is a separated bike path with a white bike stencil. A motor vehicle travel lane is on the left and a sidewalk is on the right. Railroad tracks are visible in the foreground.

Coming back from the advisory body summit last night I got to ride through the new Olney. It was great to have separated space to drive, ride, walk, and wheel!

City of Bend Advisory Body Summit. Let's see what the next year holds.

A small sized silver truck with a mini yellow snowplow on the front. A brown building is visible in the background.

That’s even cooler than this little snowplow truck I saw on the OSU-Cascades campus today

Ironic that Hakeem Jeffries' advice to the Democratic caucus tonight was to maintain "decorum."

This is exactly what Mike Johnson threw out Al Green for last year. Green showed tremendous political courage again tonight. Democrats should take note.

Basically TikTok, I guess...

I asked my class of 29 students which social media platforms they use and none of them knew what BlueSky is

Looks like it's about 35% of total Berkshire Hathaway assets

BlueSky is publicly searchable. I wonder if that would meet the definition of that statute.

A discount for residents could mean they continue to pay current rates, or current rates could go down for residents.

Revenue could fund on-demand microtransit or circulating shuttles.

Downtown Bend Business Association recently asked the city to consider charging for curb parking as part of an overall strategy to manage curb access. Modeling suggests different rates for visitors and residents could generate significant net revenue, even accounting for administrative costs

Bend visitors should pay a higher rate to park. Residents should get a discount.

Residents already pay local property taxes and the transportation utility fee. State gas taxes are allocated based on population w/o accounting for visitors.

That would be a great one! Measuring transportation safety is HARD.

Property damage-only (PDO) crashes are another indicator: if you are walking and you see debris, you know it's not safe. But PDO crashes are only recorded if damage is >$2.5k, and even then reports weigh them less

@davidzipper.bsky.social is right: the flaw with deaths & injuries per VMT is that if people drive more, it looks like safety is improving even though the same (or more!) people are dying. It's the deaths & injuries that matter.

And increased VMTs is bad for traffic, parking, pollution, costs, etc.

Advice for transportation policymakers:
1) Fed gov't requires that MPOs use deaths & serious injuries per VMT for reporting purposes. BUT you can track the per capita figure for local performance metrics.
2) Fatal crashes and serious injury crashes are typically very similar. Both are impt to track.

“We have all been here before
We have all been here before…”

Yep. Also it's bizarre that The Economist says CA's billionaire tax would "only" raise 2% of its annual output. That is a ton of money! And why is annual output the right metric, as opposed to percent of general fund which would be significantly higher?

the worry about higher taxes destroying (or "distorting") the economy must consider that
A) people at the bottom aren't seeing the benefits of economic growth and
B) vast inequality itself is also a threat to the economy (let alone democracy as you point out!)

Go Hunter Hess! Your hometown city council is proudly cheering you on.

And that was back when the average number of people per car was 1.75!