What is this plan?
The Way to Go Plan is a data-informed transportation demand management strategy to ensure the city is focused on advancing the policies, projects, and programs that deliver the most effective and equitable outcomes. It guides the Portland Bureau of Transportation's (PBOT) work to:
- Improve mobility for everyone through better access to and reliability of a wide range of transportation options, like taking transit, walking, rolling, and biking.
- Remove burdens for communities of color, people with low incomes, and people with disabilities so they have more transportation options, and increase the use of those options.
- Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by shifting people from driving alone to using more environmentally friendly modes of travel.
What is transportation demand management?
Demand management principles are well known in sectors beyond transportation. An example from the energy sector is where, through reducing home and business energy consumption, we avoided the large costs of building new generators and transmission lines.
Transportation demand management is similar; by influencing behavior through incentives and disincentives, these strategies aim to reduce the amount of car travel in our region, so that we continue to meet mobility needs even as the population grows, without building expensive new roads that increase transportation carbon emissions and lead to deadly traffic crashes.
