Daylight Portland Now · 20 feet of clear view at every corner

Oregon law says 20 feet. Portland says wait a year.

State law already bans parking within 20 feet of a crosswalk. Portland opts out, then studies each corner one at a time. A jury just found that approach cost a man his life. We're asking the City to make clear corners the default and let neighbors help install them.

Email your councilor Read the five asks
Plan view of a side-street stop sign meeting an arterial. A car parked at the corner blocks the stopped driver's view of oncoming traffic. unmarked crosswalk → STOP 20 ft ARTERIAL · 30 MPH SIDE STREET
Today: a car parked up to the crosswalk leaves the stopped driver seeing only 63–108 ft down the arterial. At 30 mph, about 200 ft is needed. This is the geometry at E Burnside & SE 17th.1

October 2026

A jury put a price on a parked car.

Elijah Coe, 46, was riding home from his job as a chef on East Burnside when a driver at the SE 17th stop sign pulled out. Cars parked right up to the corner hid each from the other. Coe swerved, struck an oncoming car, and died five days later.1

On October 9, 2026, a Multnomah County jury found the City of Portland 70% responsible and returned a $5.1 million verdict. The City's attorney argued it "doesn't have the money" to put No Parking signs on every corner where parked cars block sightlines.1

  1. 2010A daycare at the corner warns the City of "virtually no visibility" for turning drivers.2
  2. 2019Elijah Coe is killed at E Burnside & SE 17th.
  3. 2020His family sues, arguing the City ignored the state's 20-foot rule.4
  4. 2022A circuit judge dismisses the claims against the City.
  5. 2025The Oregon Court of Appeals reverses. The City can't claim blanket immunity for its corner-parking choices.3
  6. 2026Jury finds the City 70% at fault. Coe is found 0% at fault.1

The bottleneck

The safe distance is already the law. Getting it back takes a year.

Oregon

20 ft

ORS 811.550(17) prohibits parking "within 20 feet of a crosswalk at an intersection." Every Oregon intersection has a crosswalk, marked or not.4

Portland

0 ft

Portland lets cars park to the corner unless it signs otherwise. PBOT applies its own 20-foot vision clearance policy mostly during paving and capital projects, on pedestrian-priority streets.5

A neighborhood request

12+ mo

That is how long PBOT says one corner investigation can take. That includes locations already on its own eligible list.

"PBOT's Traffic Safety team will investigate the location and determine if changes are recommended. As part of the investigation, staff will visit the location, observe conditions, review crash history and the history of requests and previous changes. Currently, due to staffing and demand, investigations can take 12 months or more."

City of Portland, replying to the Sullivan's Gulch Neighborhood Association's request to daylight two neighborhood greenways, NE 26th Avenue and NE Multnomah Street.

Neighborhood greenways are on PBOT's list of streets eligible for vision clearance.5 Restoring the state's default distance along two eligible greenways shouldn't need site visits, a crash history review, and a year in a queue.

Return on investment

One verdict costs more than a thousand clear corners.

PBOT reports daylighting costs about $700–800 per intersection in materials and labor.6 Hoboken has done corners for as little as $1,500 with paint and posts.10 Move the sliders to compare.

Defaults use PBOT's reported unit cost. Engineering review time is not included.

Your daylighting program$800,000
City's capped payout, Coe case1$1,450,000
Full jury verdict1$5,100,000
One life, USDOT valuation9$14,200,000

The City's share of one verdict would pay for 1,813 intersections. Preventing a single death is worth 17,750.

Bars share one scale, set by the largest value shown. The payout figure excludes six years of City legal costs.

What other places learned

Posts work. Signs alone don't. Defaults scale.

New York City · 2025 study

3.4 vs 2.3 yrs

At 756 daylit corners, hardened daylighting (posts, planters, bike racks) stretched the time between pedestrian injuries from an expected 2.3 years to 3.4. Sign-only daylighting showed no significant benefit on average.8

Hoboken, NJ

7+ years

No traffic deaths for seven years as of 2024, after daylighting corners with paint and plastic posts, along with lower speed limits and retimed signals.10

California · AB 413

Statewide

Since January 2025, no parking within 20 feet of any crosswalk statewide, painted or not. Cities don't run a study per corner.11

NYC DOT's study is a reason to do daylighting well. It found sign-only corners underperform. Flexible delineators cost little, go in quickly, and are exactly what trained volunteers can install.

Every project, every bill

If a crew opens the street, the corner should close safer.

Starting January 2027, Portlanders pay the new Transportation Utility Fee on the same utility bill as sewer and stormwater service. The fee raises about $46 million a year, and a quarter of it goes to safety.7

BES sewer and stormwater crews already restore streets to PBOT specifications. Adding corner paint and posts to that spec costs almost nothing on top of work already happening. The same goes for PBOT paving, utility cuts, and private development. Daylighting shouldn't wait for a transportation capital project to come through.

What we're asking Council to do

Five changes, no new bureaucracy.

  1. Make 20 feet the default.

    Apply the state standard at all intersections with no site-specific study. Save engineering review for proposals to shorten or remove a setback.

  2. Daylight with every street project.

    Add corner paint and delineators to the standard restoration spec for PBOT paving and maintenance, BES sewer and stormwater work, utility cuts, and private development.

  3. Harden corners, starting where it matters most.

    Make flexible posts, bike corrals, or planters the standard treatment rather than signs alone, following NYC DOT's findings. Install them first on greenways, commercial corridors, school routes, and the High Crash Network, then citywide through routine projects. Paint-only setbacks can hold the line on local residential streets in the meantime. Adopt it as a standard spec now, not after a multi-year pilot.

  4. Create a Community Daylighting Permit.

    Model it on PBOT's free street-painting permit. Neighborhood associations, schools, and nonprofits that complete City training install City-spec paint and posts after notifying neighbors, and the City inspects the result. Sullivan's Gulch neighbors already did similar work at NE 21st & Clackamas in 2019.12

  5. Fast-track requests and publish progress.

    Resolve requests on greenways, near schools, and on the High Crash Network within 90 days. Publish a running count of daylit corners and the request backlog.

Take action

Tell Council to clear the corners.

Individuals

Copy this email, add your name and neighborhood, and send it to your district councilors. Find them on the City's City Council page.

Organizations

Strong Towns PDX, BikeLoudPDX, Oregon Walks, The Street Trust, neighborhood associations, PTAs, and business districts: sign the Daylight Portland Now coalition letter. Write to the organizer with your organization's name and a contact person.

[organizer email]

Already campaigning? Oregon Walks' Clear the Corners makes the same case.13

Subject: After the $5.1M Coe verdict: let Portland clear its corners without a 12-month study

Dear Councilor ___,

Last week a Multnomah County jury found the City of Portland 70% responsible for the death of Elijah Coe, killed in 2019 at E Burnside and SE 17th where a car parked right up to the corner hid him from a turning driver. At trial, the City said it doesn't have the money for "No Parking" signs on every corner where parked cars block sightlines.

The City can afford it if it removes the paperwork. Oregon law (ORS 811.550) already bans parking within 20 feet of a crosswalk. When the Sullivan's Gulch Neighborhood Association asked for daylighting along the NE 26th and NE Multnomah greenways, PBOT said investigations "can take 12 months or more."

PBOT reports daylighting costs about $700-800 per intersection. The City's capped share of this one verdict, about $1.45 million, would pay for roughly 1,800 corners.

Please:
1. Make the 20-foot setback the default citywide, with no per-site study.
2. Daylight on every PBOT, BES, utility, and development project.
3. Harden corners with posts, starting on greenways, commercial streets, school routes, and the High Crash Network. No multi-year pilot.
4. Create a Community Daylighting Permit for trained neighborhood groups.
5. Resolve greenway and school requests within 90 days.

Thank you,
[Name], [Neighborhood]

Sources: https://daylightpdx.org

Sources

Check our work.

  1. Aimee Green, "Portland policy of allowing parked cars to pack streets led to motorcyclist's death, jury's $5M verdict," The Oregonian/OregonLive, Oct 13, 2026. Verdict, fault split, sightline distances, capped payout, City's argument.
  2. KATU, "Portland parking policies blamed in fatal motorcycle crash, jury awards $5.1M," Oct 2026. 2010 daycare warning.
  3. Gazitt v. City of Portland, Or. Ct. App., June 25, 2025; BikePortland coverage.
  4. ORS 811.550(17) and ORS 811.560; OPB, Feb 2020.
  5. PBOT, Vision Clearance at Intersections. Policy, eligible streets, 2021–26 counts.
  6. BikePortland, "New details on how PBOT will spend $200,000 on intersection daylighting," Mar 26, 2025.
  7. PBOT, Transportation Utility Fee.
  8. NYC DOT, Daylighting and Street Safety: An Analysis, Jan 2025.
  9. USDOT, Value of a Statistical Life guidance. $14.2M, 2025 base year.
  10. AP via NBC Philadelphia, Mar 2024; Streetsblog NYC, Jun 2026.
  11. Town of Los Gatos, California AB 413.
  12. PBOT, Street and Structure Painting permits; BikePortland, Jul 2019.
  13. Oregon Walks, Clear the Corners; Portland Vision Zero.