Update - Space For Trees At Risk!

Portland’s Pedestrian Design Guide Update Isn’t Leaving Room for the Trees We Need for Health, Well-being, and Livability at a Time of Inequity and Climate Crisis

Preserving space for large trees—which reach over 50 feet and live more than 75 years—is just as important as preserving existing large-form trees. Compared to smaller trees, large-species trees have a leaf volume expansive enough to cool all the air around them, thereby providing the most health benefits to nearby residents.

But space for large trees in the right-of-way is at risk! As we speak, the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s Pedestrian Design Guide is being updated and the current draft does not leave enough room in the public right-of-way for large trees. PBOT will adopt the document by administrative rule; it will not need Portland City Council approval. Administrative rules often slip under the public radar but can have huge impacts on policies and practices.

Here are our tips for how to comment on PBOT’s draft Pedestrian Design Guide update:

  • PBOT’s survey asks you to comment by October 30 on specific sections of the complex Pedestrian Design Guide. Instead, when you comment here, check “Other” on the first question, and for the page numbers requested, write “all pages.” This will allow you to openly address the points of concern below, which apply to multiple places in the document:

  • If accepted as is by mandating no space for large-form trees, the Pedestrian Design Guide update will condemn residents in the most disadvantaged parts of Portland to a future of unlivable heat islands, as these are the areas most likely to see street improvements in the sidewalk corridor.

  • In development, on the side of streets without high-voltage power lines, mandate a 6-foot to 8.4-foot minimum for furnishing zones (what TFLO calls treeways). This is the width range described in Urban Forestry’s Approved Street Tree Planting Lists.

  • In development, on the side of streets with high-voltage power lines, increase the minimum furnishing zone from 4 feet to a range of 4-feet to 5.9-feet, as described in Urban Forestry’s Approved Street Tree Planting Lists.

  • No existing furnishing zones (treeways) should be narrowed to make room for a sidewalk that’s already 5-feet wide, a width that is ADA-compliant.

  • Because low canopy is a legacy of inequitable development, in local streets do not default to a 6-foot sidewalk. Instead, mandate combined options in the whole right-of-way that permit the large-form trees that truly increase canopy.

Call for action by Oct. 30!

Make your voice heard! Tell both PBOT and City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, who oversees PBOT, that you want the updated Pedestrian Design Guide to leave space for large-form trees—our stalwart climate soldiers that are needed now more than ever all over Portland.

  1. Comment on the draft here by October 30.

  2. Contact City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty: joann@portlandoregon.gov

  3. Tell other city leaders to insist their bureaus cooperate to mandate much wider right-of-ways:

• Mayor Ted Wheeler 503-823-4127 mayorwheeler@portlandoregon.gov
• Commissioner Dan Ryan 503-823-3589 commissionerryanoffice@portlandoregon.gov
• Commissioner Carmen Rubio 503-823-3008 comm.rubio@portlandoregon.gov
• Commissioner Mingus Mapps 503-823-4682 mappsoffice@portlandoregon.gov


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