PBOT leaders say they’ve already addressed many of the auditor’s recommendations. They also say the scale of Portland’s traffic violence crisis is too big for just one bureau to address. by Taylor Griggs

The Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) adopted its Vision Zero Action Plan in December 2016, with the goal of eliminating traffic crash deaths and injuries in the city. But in recent years, Portland has seen its highest numbers of traffic injuries and fatalities in decades. Pedestrians have faced a heightened risk of traffic violence in recent years, and parts of Portland with higher low-income populations and communities of color are also disproportionately impacted. 

The daylight between PBOT’s stated Vision Zero goals and the increase in recent traffic crash deaths prompted scrutiny from the Portland Auditor’s Office. A new report from the Auditor’s Office, released Wednesday, says PBOT “partially completed” safety projects identified in its Vision Zero plan, but notes the bureau doesn’t adequately evaluate the outcomes of the safety projects it completes. 

The Auditor’s Office recommends PBOT create a plan to evaluate its projects “to determine which get the desired outcomes and where Vision Zero efforts are most needed.” The office also asks the bureau to install promised speed cameras to help with traffic safety enforcement and recommends PBOT “revisit its equity methodology to ensure it accounts for smaller scale improvements that could have positive equity impacts.” 

“These efforts to collect data, analyze, evaluate, and carefully track which safety projects have the most desired outcomes could help move toward Vision Zero’s goal of zero fatal and serious injury traffic crashes,” the audit report states. 

The audit report highlights concerns about the Vision Zero program that many transportation and safe streets activists have raised for years—though the Auditor’s Office didn’t issue as harsh an indictment of PBOT as some critics may want. Earlier this year, when PBOT leaders presented their 2023 Vision Zero report to City Council, some Portland advocates didn’t mince words about their thoughts on the city’s implementation of the program. 

“There is no question that Portland's Vision Zero Program has been an abject failure,” Sarah Risser, a local transportation safety activist, wrote in public testimony to City Council in April. “Given its abysmal track record, it is reasonable to conclude that it will continue to be a failure.”

The Portland Auditor’s Office didn’t mark PBOT’s Vision Zero plan as a failure in its report, and PBOT leaders ultimately agreed with its recommendations, some of which the bureau says it has already implemented on its own. 

PBOT, too, acknowledges that larger structural changes are needed to save lives on the streets. Bureau leaders say they will continue working on their Vision Zero plans, but they hope the city government transition will break down silos and encourage more involvement in solving the problem of traffic violence on Portland’s streets. 

The year PBOT adopted the Vision Zero plan, 42 people died in traffic crashes on Portland’s streets. In 2019, when the bureau updated the plan to emphasize transportation system safety and focus more on actions within PBOT’s control, 48 people were the victims of traffic violence. In the last three years, more than 60 people have died in traffic crashes in Portland each year, with 69 fatalities in 2023. 

When PBOT leaders presented the 2023 Vision Zero report to City Council earlier this year, they acknowledged the rise in traffic fatalities since the program was adopted. But they said the program is successful in areas PBOT has been able to invest in, and said the bureau’s budget woes have curtailed its progress. The audit report suggests PBOT could get more out of the projects it does complete by improving its evaluation processes, which have historically been lacking. 

“Without systemic evaluation of safety outcomes, the Bureau is missing the opportunity to create more alignment between the work they do on safety projects and the overall goal of Vision Zero,” the report states. “A more systematic approach would allow trends to be identified and analyzed to better understand the outcomes of completed projects, and which may need to be altered or dropped. As traffic deaths continue to increase it is vital that the Bureau consistently evaluate completed safety projects so they can see which are working best at shifting the trend towards the intended goal of zero traffic deaths and serious injuries.” 

The second major recommendation the audit report suggests is that PBOT “do more to enforce speed limits” by following through on its promise to install more speed cameras throughout the city. Despite research showing the effectiveness of enforcement cameras as a way to reduce speeds and increase traffic safety—without involving the police—PBOT has been slow to install them. The bureau has blamed its camera vendor for the lag in speed camera implementation, but says it now has 37 cameras in operation or construction, and current contracted cameras will be online early next year. (By March 2023, PBOT had only installed nine cameras in the prior eight years.) 

The report also states despite PBOT’s attempt to prioritize and fund safety projects equitably—based on both crash data and neighborhood demographics—it may be missing “smaller safety projects with possible equitable outcomes” if they aren’t located on high-crash corridors. The Auditor’s Office recommends PBOT use more qualitative data to determine the projects it carries out. 

In response to the auditor’s recommendations, Public Works Service Area Deputy City Administrator Priya Dhanapal and PBOT Director Millicent Williams said while they “largely agree with the recommendations in the audit,” it’s a bit outdated. Last year, PBOT issued a Vision Zero Action Plan update for 2024 and 2025, which addresses many of the issues outlined in the audit report. 

“Our current Vision Zero Action Plan includes priorities directly tied to evaluation, delivery of the camera program and speed management as well as equity objectives,” Dhanapal and Williams wrote. “The audit was conducted on work and commitments outlined 3-5 years ago and work that took place during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.” 

Dhanapal and Williams also said PBOT needs help from other city bureaus to solve the crisis of traffic violence. 

“Eliminating traffic deaths and serious injuries in Portland is possible [and] PBOT can lead the way,” Dhanapal and Williams wrote in a letter responding to the auditor’s report. “However, Portland will not reach Vision Zero with street design alone…. A societal commitment to meet basic human needs and implement strategies to change current conditions are necessary to reach many of our shared goals, including Vision Zero. These changes require leadership, investment, and commitment from partners beyond PBOT.”

PBOT leaders say they hope that collaboration and commitment will be easier due to the upcoming changes in Portland’s government. 

“Eliminating traffic deaths and serious injuries is a City commitment and goal, but as a City we have focused the discussion on what PBOT does to change streets,” Dhanapal and Williams wrote. “We believe the City transition provides an opportunity to reengage City bureaus in Portland’s Vision Zero commitment and integrate the Safe System approach to traffic safety as a comprehensive prevention strategy to save lives.” 

A screenshot from Maroon 5's "Sugar" music video.; Credit: Maroon 5

Maroon 5 has a new music video built around a simple, viral-bait premise: Adam Levine and the rest of the band trying to crash as many weddings around Los Angeles as they can in one day (Dec. 6 of last year). It's a lot of fun, directed by "Wedding Crashers" movie director David Dobkin, but it appears that some of those "crashed weddings" may have been staged.

Watch the video (warning: contains adult language):

Maroon 5: Sugar

Fans have noticed that several of the couples seen in the video appear to be actors. Actors Stephen and Barbara Woo posted on Facebook that they played the parents of one of the brides in the video and said that not only were the weddings staged, they didn't even take place on one day, claiming that all the weddings were shot in the same location over the course of three days.

Facebook post by actors

The groom from the wedding featured the most in the video has been named by observers as Nico Evers-Swindell, according to Cosmopolitan. Evers-Swindell was already married to actress Megan Ferguson since 2011 — and she's not the "bride" in the video.

Fans have fingered one of the models as "America's Next Top Model" runner-up Raina Hein, according to Cosmopolitan. Also, the man believed to be her long-term boyfriend isn't the groom in the Maroon 5 weddings.

Don't lose heart, though — at least one of the weddings in the video appears to be real, with wedding photographer Duke Khodaverdian telling E! that yes, it was the real deal.

"It was an incredible surprise and everyone at the wedding is going to cherish those memories," Khodaverdian told E! in December.

Instagram 1

Instagram 2

A representative for the band told "Entertainment Tonight" that only the grooms knew about the band in each case — but it looks like that means in the case of the real crashed weddings. The representative did concede that some shots "had to be shot separately from the real weddings due to time and space constraints that were given," and the article does note that the video was shot over three days.

Levine expressed his excitement about crashing the weddings in an interview with People magazine.

"I had no idea I would be affected by the overwhelming reactions we received from the couples and guests," Levine said. He told "Entertainment Tonight" that it was stressful to arrange, but that the surprise felt good. "[We were] happy that they liked our band, too – [that] would have been a total disaster."

They also solicited Twitter to find people lip-syncing "Sugar" to possibly put in their music video, but it doesn't look like those submissions got used.

Maroon 5 Sugar tweet

If you want to see Levine involved in a different dubious outfit, you can see him back hosting "The Voice" on Feb. 23. Open call auditions for the show begin Jan. 24 in New York, with Los Angeles auditions on Jan. 31 and Feb. 1.

Did you spot any more actors you recognize in this video? Do you have any more evidence of any of these weddings being either real or faked? Let me know on Twitter at @MikeRoe.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

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1. Manoj Bajpayee recalls experiencing starvation, would gatecrash film sets during lunchtime to get a meal: ‘Was shooed away by production guys’  The Indian Express
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3. This actor lived on a rooftop, starved for days, gatecrashed film sets for food; became one of India's biggest  DNA India
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This actor, who once used to starve for days, gatecrash film sets for food, later became a superstar.

Photo by hisperati About 8 months ago I acquired a small startup called HitTail. You can read more about the acquisition here. When the deal closed, the app was in bad shape. Within 3 weeks I had to move the entire operation, including a large database, to new servers. This required my first all-nighter in aRead More →

The post How a Seemingly Well-Planned Server Move Crashed, Burned, and Rose from the Ashes first appeared on Rob Walling - Serial Entrepreneur.

PATTAYA - A foreign woman has been arrested for crashing her car into a motorcycle, killing one person and injuring another.

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Stock Market Crash: दिवाली के बाद शेयर बाजार में कोहराम मच गया है. क्योंकि बाजार में ऊपरी स्तरों से भारी बिकवाली दर्ज की जा रही. आज 13 नवंबर को मार्केट लगातार 5वें दिन टूट गया है. बाजार में चौतरफा बिकवाली देखने

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The internet is the perfect forum for small businesses to compete with big brands. Audience reach, social sharing and unlimited sales and marketing opportunities have leveled the playing field between big and small companies. Still, a surprising percentage of small businesses have remained on the sidelines. Either they do not have an online marketing strategy, or the one they are using is inadequate, and therefore unsuccessful. So why are some smaller companies not taking full advantage of this potent and indispensable marketing tool?

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The 2010 Polish Air Force Tu-154 crash occurred on 10 April 2010 when a Tupolev Tu-154M aircraft of the Polish Air Force crashed near the city of Smolensk, Russia, killing all 96 people on board. These included President of Poland Lech Kaczyński and his wife Maria, former president Ryszard Kaczorowski, the chief of the Polish General Staff and other senior Polish military officers, the president of the National Bank of Poland, Poland's deputy foreign minister, Polish government officials, 18 members of the Polish parliament, senior members of the Polish clergy, and relatives of victims of the Katyn massacre. They were en route from Warsaw to attend an event marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre; the site is approximately 19 kilometres (12 mi) west of Smolensk.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Polish_Air_Force_Tu-154_crash

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When we last heard from Lumos, the bike helmet company had announced a model which was simply equipped with a "smart" tail light. The firm is getting fancy again, however, with its turn-indicating, 360-degree-illuminating, crash-detecting Nyxel.

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Category: Bicycles, Transport

Tags: bike lights, Cycling, Helmet, Road Safety, Kickstarter

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