12 Trial Lawyer • Fall 2022 through neighborhoods and have resulted in a significant amount of pedestrian fatalities east of 82nd Ave., disproportionately affecting our elders, the unhoused, people with disabilities, low income people and BIPOC communities. This has been documented in a number of reports including the Oregon Walks Fatal Crash Report 20172019 and PBOT’s report “PedPDX: Walking While Black.” The Oregon Walks report focused on the contributions of the built environment to fatal crashes, instead of who is at fault. Task force The East Portland Action Plan was created by the Portland City Council to advocate for improvements to make life better in East Portland. Improving Outer Powell was one of their top priorities. Their task was not easy. ODOT wanted to make Powell an urban highway with four travel lanes and a center turn lane. Ten years of advocacy from the East Portland Action Plan led by advocates Lore Wintergreen and Arlene Kimura and others, including community leaders and elected leaders such as Representative Janelle Bynum and Secretary of State Shemia Fagan, brought in critical resources and investments that resulted in a sidewalk infill project in 2018. Sasha Marks, now 15 years old, finally has actual sidewalks to walk on! Those improvements focused on the section of Powell from 122nd Ave. to 136th Ave. The rest of Powell is slated for improvements as part of HB 2017, which is currently in the design phase. The new design has eight-foot-wide sidewalks, trees, lighting and high-visibility crosswalks, but more could be done such as protected bike lanes and radar cameras to reduce speeding. Marks had been following stories of the Outer Powell Safety Project which was supposed to make Powell a much safer street. So, he about exploded when he read the Oregon Department of Transportation was going to spend $1 million of safety money to repave Powell. No sidewalks, no crosswalks, no extra lights. Instead, they would make wider shoulders for people to walk on. The only separation for people from vehicles would be two white lines. At a community advisory meeting, he declared that people would die because of the plan, and held up his red and white cane to show the distance of how far the cars and trucks would be from him, asking how a white line was going to keep him or others from dying. The section of Powell Blvd between I-205 and 174th Ave was one of the most dangerous stretches of road in the entire state. Two senior citizens would die trying to cross Powell in the next 14 months. They died at SE 134th Ave. and SE 125th Ave. where community activists were demanding crosswalks. Both locations had apartment complexes with high concentrations of seniors (134th) and children (125th). Valentine Khubeyeva was a 70-yearold immigrant from Ukraine. She died on a foggy Dec. 7th night in 2013 trying to cross the road. Her other option was to walk to the light at 136th but that was just as dangerous because she would have to walk in the road anyway due to the cars parked next to Powell by the auto shop that stored extra cars there. She probably chose the least exhausting route and paid with her life. Marks was also out that night. He wanted to go to Plaid Pantry and had his wife drive him, because there was no way he was going to walk Powell in those conditions. Traffic was at a near standstill, and he figured there must have been a crash although he assumed it was probably some cars at the light. He and his wife were both horrified when they discovered there was a body lying in the road just being covered up by a bystander because the police weren’t there yet. Marks doesn’t remember many of the Pedestrian Experience Continued from p 11
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