Milwaukie staff, consultant preview Transportation System Plan update; focus on bike/ped stress metrics and equity outreach

At an abbreviated Milwaukie work session, city staff and consultant Matt Hudark presented an update to the Transportation System Plan that emphasized bicycle and pedestrian performance measures, gaps in sidewalks and bike facilities, and planned community outreach in May and June.

The presentation centered on two technical performance measures—bicycle level of traffic stress (BLTS) and pedestrian level of traffic stress (PLTS)—that staff plan to use to identify and prioritize multimodal projects across the city. Matt Hudark said the BLTS and PLTS “are really gonna drive a lot of the project selection and evaluation that we do” and described the measures as data-driven scores based on speeds, volumes, facility width and observed obstructions.

Why it matters: The TSP update will guide which streets receive sidewalks, bike lanes, shared‑street treatments or intersection upgrades and will be used as a prioritization tool when the city seeks funding or advocates to regional agencies. City staff described the BLTS/PLTS analysis as an early, technical baseline that will be paired with community input before final project prioritization.

Most of the session focused on how the BLTS/PLTS scores were calculated and how the city will use them. Presenters said the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) methodology treats streets without sidewalks as deficient for pedestrians, which raised concerns from council members and others that some low‑traffic shared streets (for example, Island Station) feel safe to neighbors despite scoring high (more stressful) under ODOT’s rules. Laura Bridal, the city’s planning manager, noted that the ODOT framework is “kind of a baseline understanding” and that a high stress score “does not mean it's going to get prioritized for treatment or project” without additional prioritization filters.

Council members and staff discussed three practical implications: (1) technical limits of the state methodology, (2) whether to treat low‑volume shared streets as a separate category or treatment type, and (3) how to fold equity and lived experience into the numerical scores. Staff said they will include shared‑street and festival‑street “treatment types” in the project toolbox, but that changing the stress classification across the whole network would require manual review of many segments rather than relying solely on automated rules.

On equity, staff and the consultant said the BLTS/PLTS calculations do not directly include demographic or equity variables; they are based on roadway characteristics, speeds and volumes. Bridal said the project team has been consulting an equity steering committee and the project’s point of contact, Gabriela, and intends to engage the equity steering committee and neighborhood groups after staff publish draft project lines on maps. Hudark said the team will conduct a larger public outreach push in May–June and to “go to the equity steering committee” and neighborhood sites such as the Wichita Center and Hillside to solicit input once project lines are visible.

Staff showed several mapping products used to prioritize work: existing sidewalk and bicycle inventories, focus‑area overlays (town center, schools, transit stops, parks, grocery/retail centers, neighborhood hubs, and identified underserved uses such as senior and low‑income facilities), and a composite “walkshed / access” heat map that highlights where several focus features overlap. The team said the composite map is a prioritization tool: projects within darker (higher overlap) zones will generally receive more weight during project selection, but staff will combine that with other filters such as feasibility and right‑of‑way constraints.

Several speakers requested nuance in the way transit and walk‑sheds are shown. Council members noted that not all bus lines are equivalent (some are frequent; others are peak‑only) and asked staff to distinguish TriMet/Metro service plans from local gaps the city should advocate to regional partners. Staff said TriMet and Metro are on the project technical committee and that some long‑term transit investments may already appear in regional plans; the city can use the TSP to advocate for additional service where needed.

Technical field work and examples: staff described a sidewalk audit day in which they measured widths and obstructions. Hudark gave an example where a nominal 6‑foot sidewalk reduced to a PLTS‑4 rating because mailboxes and utility poles obstructed the clear path. A specific sidewalk example cited in the presentation was Roswell (site names as shown on maps).

Scope and next steps: staff emphasized that the BLTS/PLTS results are a starting point and that the team will not automatically program every high‑stress segment for immediate construction. The consultant and staff plan to return with additional classification maps and a prioritization framework at a future meeting; staff offered an additional hour on April 15 for follow‑up and said the large public outreach push will occur in May–June. No formal motions or votes occurred during the work session.

The meeting closed with staff and council agreeing to continue refining the methodology, to add shared‑street treatment types to the toolbox, and to plan targeted outreach in neighborhoods that do not currently show strong walkable “hubs.” Hudark said, “we're building the ship while we're sailing it,” and Bridal reiterated the intent to bring project lines back to the equity steering committee before broad public outreach.

Milwaukie officials said they will use the technical measures, community feedback and practical constraints (right‑of‑way, ADA, funding) together to compile a prioritized project list for the adopted TSP.