2045 TSP Vision, Goals, and Objectives

Overview

The Vision, Goals, and Objectives of the 2045 Transportation System Plan (TSP) set the long-term direction for how Portland's transportation system should evolve over the next two decades. Grounded in extensive community input, they articulate a shared vision for a system that is safe, accessible, equitable, climate-resilient, and well-maintained, while clearly defining what success looks like across all modes of travel.

These elements are important because they serve as the foundation for decision-making throughout the TSP. The Vision establishes shared values, the Goals translate those values into clear priorities, and the Objectives provide guidance that staff and decision-makers use to evaluate policies, prioritize investments, and assess tradeoffs. Together, they ensure future transportation projects and policies are aligned with community priorities and can be consistently evaluated as the plan moves into implementation.

For more information on how these elements were developed, please refer to the 2045 TSP Vision, Goals, and Objectives Public Involvement Summary and the Summary Memo of 2045 TSP CAC feedback incorporated into the vision, goals, and objectives

Updated August 2026.

Vision

Portland's transportation system connects people to opportunity, supports a strong economy, and helps create safe, healthy, accessible, and vibrant communities.

We're building a future where everyone can get around easily, affordably, and sustainably—no matter who they are or where they live. Our streets will be well-maintained, welcoming places for people, goods, and services to move safely and efficiently. We're investing in a transportation system that repairs past harms, strengthens neighborhoods, and prepares Portland for a climate-resilient, age-friendly future—one that is equitable, joyful, and boldly Portland.

Goals and Objectives

Access 

Portland's transportation system ensures all Portlanders can reach the places they need to live happy, meaningful, and fulfilled lives - including jobs, schools, services, and community destinations. 

• Complete multimodal networks: Build pedestrian, bicycle, and transit networks that prioritize active transportation and reach every corner of Portland and connect all neighborhoods.  
• Key Destinations: Prioritize network gaps near key destinations – including schools, community centers, and grocery stores.  
• Complete Communities: Align transportation investment with land use to support walkable, efficient, mixed-use neighborhoods.  
• High-quality transit and the last mile: Support fast, frequent, reliable transit available to everyone—day and night. Extend the reach of transit by supporting connecting services like bikeshare, carshare, and ride hailing services accessible to everyone.   
• Intuitive multimodal wayfinding: Improve the ability of Portlanders (including seniors and people with disabilities) to understand and navigate the transportation system so they can get where they want to go. Provide accessible information, encouragement, and incentives to expand the range of transportation options available to everyone.

Safety

Portland's transportation system can be used without fear of injury or harm. The transportation system protects people from traffic violence, supports personal security, and prioritizes access for vulnerable road users.

• Vision Zero:Eliminate traffic deaths and serious injuries.
• Safe speeds:Manage driving speeds to support multimodal interactions.
• Safe streets:Prioritize safety investments that reduce the risk of high-impact collisions, improve visibility, and expand safe pedestrian, biking, and rolling infrastructure.
• High injury network: Prioritize safety investments in high-crash areas, retrofitting high crash streets and intersections with crash reduction treatments.
• Vulnerable users:Design for vulnerable users including children, elders, people with disabilities, pedestrians, people on bikes, and people using micromobility devices; also prioritize communities most impacted by traffic violence.

Health

Portland's transportation system supports Portlanders' health by creating opportunities for active travel, cleaner air, quieter and more comfortable streets, and stronger social connections.

• Healthy air: Reduce emissions and exposure by expanding zero-emission modes, zero-emission zones and creating buffers between people and vehicle exhaust.
• Healthy movement: Support regular physical activity by completing pedestrian and bicycle networks and prioritizing transit connectivity.
• Healthy soundscapes:Reduce noise pollution and exposure by reducing excessive roadway noise and creating buffers between people and noise sources. 
• Healthy streetscapes: Reduce urban heat, foster connections to nature, and support healthy watersheds by reducing paved area and integrating trees, shade, and greenery.
• Healthy connection: Foster social connection and mental well-being by expanding shared public spaces, design that encourages interaction, and community-led activation.

Climate

Portland's transportation system helps fight climate change by reducing transportation-related emissions. 

• Low-carbon options:Make walking, rolling, cycling and transit more attractive than driving by investing in safe and convenient multimodal networks while pricing driving in accordance with its climate impact and reducing barriers for those otherwise unable to afford low-carbon transportation options. 
• Complete communities: Prioritize and encourage multimodal transportation investment and use in places with concentrations of destinations, the city's Centers and Corridors. 
• Green fleets: Support the transition of public transit, municipal, private-for-hire fleets, and other private fleets to electricity and cleaner fuels.
• Charging infrastructure: Expand public availability of EV and e-bike charging infrastructure, especially where it is harder to charge at home, such as in multifamily housing.
• Resource-efficient and low-carbon materials and practices: Integrate strategies that favor low-impact, long-lasting, and safely reusable or low-carbon materials in transportation projects, and support construction and operational practices that limit waste and reduce reliance on resource intensive approaches.

Resilience

Portland's transportation system is built and maintained to withstand foreseeable disruptions and minimize harm, including earthquakes, severe weather events, and human-made shocks. Resilient transportation infrastructure and operations help hasten the city's recovery from disruption.

• Earthquake-ready: Prioritize seismic retrofit or replacement of the most critical and seismically vulnerable transportation infrastructure. Also consider the criticality of utilities (drinking water, electricity, etc.) carried by the infrastructure. 
• Climate resilience: Design infrastructure to withstand climate impacts and reduce community harm, such as through expanded urban tree canopy, and other green infrastructure. 
• Geographic resilience: Recognize and prepare for the different vulnerabilities and resilience challenges in different parts of the city – for example, the presence or lack of tree canopy.
• Coordination: Coordinate with other jurisdictions to implement infrastructure resilience strategies.
• Disaster response: Build and maintain the transportation system to support disaster response measures, including emergency response.
• Transportation funding and asset management: Develop and pursue stable funding sources for transportation system maintenance while considering project and asset management approaches that reduce the number of assets to maintain as well as overall maintenance liability.
• Redundancy: Use transportation network redundancy as a strategy to avoid single points of failure during and following a disaster.

Equity

All Portlanders experience a transportation system that is affordable, inclusive, convenient, safe, and responsive to their needs.

• Reducing disparities: Prioritize investment to address disparities in transportation outcomes including safety, cost burden, and access. 
• Affordability: Expand fast, convenient, low-cost, all-user mobility options. 
• Beyond ADA accessibility: At minimum, provide ADA-compliant infrastructure citywide, prioritize filling ADA gaps in current infrastructure, and seek opportunities to incorporate Universal Design principles in transportation infrastructure.
• Community outreach: Ensure transportation decisions are shaped by the voices and lived experiences of the communities most affected, through engagement that is accessible, inclusive, and accountable, offering language and disability-accessible tools and culturally responsive outreach.
• Displacement impacts: Consider potential displacement impacts of new investments and develop and deploy community stabilization strategies in partnership with impacted communities.
• All-ages: Ensure the needs of people at different life stages, especially seniors and families with young children, are considered when planning for a more equitable transportation system.

Economically Prosperous

Portland's transportation system supports a growing, thriving, inclusive economy by improving access to jobs, supporting local businesses, and ensuring efficient movement of goods.

• Access to jobs: Improve walking, biking, rolling, and transit access to employment centers and main streets, including the Central City and Neighborhood Business Districts across the city.
• Goods movement: Support safe and efficient goods movement. Embrace smaller delivery vehicles and manage curb access to minimize freight's noise, scale, and safety impacts on neighborhood and city streets.
• Industrial lands: Invest in transportation infrastructure that can improve freight access to underutilized industrial lands, unlocking development or redevelopment.
• Support Growth: Prioritize multimodal transportation investments in areas of highest land use potential to add jobs and households in centers, corridors and industrial areas. Align transportation investments and programs with economic development strategies.  
• Main Street-friendly: Pursue streetscape improvements that create safe and attractive places for Portlanders to patronize local businesses.
• Good jobs: Create family-wage jobs through infrastructure projects and workforce development.

Strong Foundations​

Portland's transportation system is well-maintained, not only to facilitate Portlanders' ability to move about and access the city, but to house and protect the essential functions of modern society: clean drinking water, sewage, electricity, stormwater, communications, and emergency response.

• Partnerships: Identify opportunities for joint projects with partner public works agencies, regional partners, and other utilities.
• Future needs: Consider how to accommodate the potential future needs of utilities within the right of way.
• Asset management: Based on asset condition and long-term transportation system needs, determine whether assets should be retained, modernized, or retired.
• Opportunistic: Identify opportunities and funding strategies to address asset conditions while making system improvements.

Great Places

Portland's streets support welcoming, people-centered public spaces all across the city, reflecting streets' role as places to gather, celebrate, and connect—the city's most expansive public realm, not just space for moving vehicles. 

• Flexible use of the street: Support non-transportation uses of the right of way, including outdoor dining, public art, and community-led events. 
• People-focused streets: Reallocate street space to create attractive places to walk, bike, gather, and play, including car-free plazas, parklets, and pedestrian-only streets. 
• Green streets: Integrate trees and green infrastructure into streetscapes, especially as needed to address geographic disparities in tree canopy. 
• Connection and context: Design streets that foster joy, health, and social connection, creating spaces that acknowledge local history, culture, and art.
• Urban design: Create beautiful and distinct streetscapes that are human-scaled, context-sensitive, safe, and comfortable.