City Council Transcript

I want to talk about what Medford is already becoming and why the decision to remove the bike lane works against it.

We are a tourist hub in the making. This council is exploring the Creekside Quarter redevelopment, a minor league stadium — and all of this is predicated on continuing to build a downtown that people want to visit. We're beginning to build this destination city. Bike infrastructure is a big part of what makes that work. Jacksonville, Ashland, and Bend all have streets that are scaled for people, not just cars. And that's what draws visitors to linger, spend money, and come back.

Medford has advantages these cities have and more: the airport, the location, many visitors already coming through. It makes no sense to spend money making the streets that those visitors will see less safe and less welcoming.

We have the ingredients to be a destination city. I've been to Kansas City and mentioned Medford and people said, "Oh, I've heard of Medford, but not in a good way." We have the ability to change that. The question is whether this council will make decisions that make progress toward the future — or waste money proving that it won't. Please reconsider. Thank you.

I've already spoken to this council as a downtown business owner. Tonight I'm here as a woman. It's Women's History Month and I want to talk about who gets considered when our streets are designed — and who doesn't.

Women are three times more likely than men to be the ones doing school drop-offs. Women are more likely to travel with dependents — children, elderly family members. In every city studied, women are more likely than men to be pedestrians. That means when you make a street faster and harder to cross, the people who pay the price are disproportionately women and children.

Women also control roughly 80% of consumer spending in the United States. We are the ones stopping at the shops, picking up lunch, grabbing coffee after dropping the kids off. A downtown that's safe and easy to navigate on foot is a downtown where women spend money. A three-lane street designed to move cars through as fast as possible is not that.

Your own staff told this council that reverting to three lanes would bring speeds back up. The current configuration slowed traffic. It made Main Street safer to cross — for parents walking to the Children's Museum, for every woman navigating downtown with a kid on her hip and a bag on her shoulder.

For decades, transportation planning has been designed around one trip: a man driving alone to work and back. Women's travel patterns — the short trips, the errands, the walking — have been an afterthought. Medford did better than that. Please don't undo it.

I've already commented on the Main Street matter regarding the design merits, the planning process, and governance concerns. Tonight I want to tell you why this is personal for me.

Several years ago, I was traveling northeast on 8th Street toward the intersection at Grape. The light had just changed green. A youth on a skateboard was crossing Grape Street in the crosswalk. A truck sped through the intersection on Grape Street and struck the youth in the forehead with its side mirror. The skateboard was run over by the truck. The truck did not stop.

I called 911 immediately. Paramedics arrived within moments. The youth was conscious but visibly in shock. I was told police were able to apprehend the driver. I stayed until I was certain the youth was stable and officers didn't need my testimony. This young person survived, but it was too close.

A better built environment at that intersection — lower speeds, traffic calming measures, infrastructure that communicates to drivers that they are sharing space with vulnerable road users — would have helped prevent that moment from ever happening. These are exactly the scenarios our planning department was designing for when they crafted the current Main Street configuration.

My primary investment in this matter is simple: I do not want to see a single one of our neighbors become an avoidable statistic on our public infrastructure. Please do not revert the Main Street corridor. Instead, I ask you to go further — with more of the same projects throughout our city. That young person survived. The next may not. Thank you.

I am here to advocate for the bicycle lane.

First, the data: the city ran this experiment and it worked. Biking on Main Street went up five times. Speed dropped. Crashes didn't increase — they actually went down. This isn't my opinion. This is data found on the city's own website.

Second, the cost: Medford paid roughly $40,000 out of pocket for a half-million-dollar bike lane that was 90% covered by the state. And now we're going to spend a million dollars to revert it back to 1950s Medford.

Third, Oregon: the Oregon Bicycle Bill has been on the books since 1971. It requires that when a road is reconstructed, the city must provide bicycle facilities. Medford is about to spend a million dollars reconfiguring Main Street. That is reconstruction. That is the exact trigger the law was written for — and instead of providing the bike facilities, the city is removing them. A Portland nonprofit is already suing over this exact law, and a judge ruled that citizens can enforce it, and that precedent applies statewide.

Worth noting: this law was inspired by a legislator from Jacksonville who was nearly run off the road riding his bike to Medford. We are the birthplace of this protection — and we may be the first city to openly violate it. Thank you. Please reconsider your decision.

I'm here to ask you to reconsider the bike lane. I think you've heard all of the reasons why you should about a million times by now and I want to be a part of the solution.

I'm a member of the ACT Transportation Committee Board. I'm happy to talk with any of you directly.

We just heard from RVTD about how spending is going up, everything is more costly — and we're about to spend a million dollars on putting something back to, in my opinion, subpar. That's all I have. Thank you for your time.