Kenneth C. Martin Blogs: PBOT Director Leah Treat to take job with private firm

Monday, May 14, 2018

PBOT Director Leah Treat to take job with private firm

Leah Treat speaking at Roosevelt High School in November 2017.
(Photos: Jonathan Maus)

The Leah Treat era at the Portland Bureau of Transportation is over.

The PBOT director hired in June 2013 announced today that she has taken a job with Nelson\Nygaard, a California-based transportation consultancy. Treat will be the managing director of the firm’s 130 employees.

In a statement about the hire on their website, Nelson\Nygaard’s current managing director Paul Jewel said, “We have found in her, hands-down, the most qualified, most capable, and most dynamic leader to take our firm to the next level—and to help deliver to our clients the most progressive transportation solutions in the world.”

For her part, Treat said, “My experiences and broad exposure to urban politics will help both Nelson\Nygaard and the firm’s clients achieve their goals of safe, smart, and equitable transportation.”

“Leah’s talent, combined with her passion and enthusiasm for her work, make her indispensable to the community she serves,” Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler added. “The citizens of the City of Portland —myself included — are fortunate to have benefited from her leadership over the past five years. She has helped our city to become the global exemplar of urban mobility and the gold standard for transportation innovation.”

It’s hard to say goodbye to @PBOTinfo. But I’m really excited to take the helm at @NelsonNygaard. I’ve been standing on the shoulders of giants in PDX. My heartfelt thanks to all my amazing people. I’ll be bringing the PDX ethos to the national level.

— Leah Treat (@leahtreat) May 14, 2018

Treat has many accomplishments to point to when looking back on her tenure. Chief among them are placing Vision Zero atop the city’s transportation priority list and sealing a deal with Nike to launch a Portland bike share system.

It’s worth remembering that when Leah Treat first started to talk about Vision Zero in early 2014, her previous boss, Commissioner of Transportation Steve Novick, had never even heard of the phrase. 15 months later it was Novick who led the charge as Portland City Council voted unanimously to make Vision Zero an official city policy.

Treat plays the role of decoy during a crosswalk enforcement action in 2014.

The announcement of Biketown was likely the high point of her career with PBOT. Treat oversaw a $10 million contract with Nike and was able to launch a world-class system after years of stops-and-starts. To date, Biketown has been a very successful program by many measures. Most importantly, it has avoided major controversies and scandals.

A low point might have been when she got her bike stolen from outside her office. Fortunately, she got it back.

Treat was a breath of fresh air when it came to progressive transportation policy. She was a big believer in parking reform (even appearing in a launch video for PBOT’s new parking payment app with a cat rapper), she ferried PBOT’s autonomous vehicle policy across the finish line, and she set a standard for building protected bike lanes by requiring them (or a good argument against them) on all new developments.

In one of her last major public appearances, a Business for a Better Portland event back in January, Treat urged the public to step up and support transportation reform.

“At the City of Portland, we have so many amazing projects lined up. So many things that we can deliver. We have tons of stuff we want to do,” she said. “What we need is support from the business community, from Portlanders everywhere, to help our council make some really hard decisions. Every time that we do a big transportation project, the sense at city council is that there are binary choices being made; that there are winners and losers being presented. And rather than having a conversation about who’s winning and losing, we need people to come together and voice their support for outcomes and policy decisions that the council needs to stick with. Every Wednesday morning at 9:00 the council agenda is open for anyone to come talk about anything. And they listen. If you showed up in front of council your voice will be 100 times more important than mine over the course of the year. So show up!”

Treat is set to begin her new job on August 1st. No word yet on the search for her replacement.

For more, browse the 27 posts in our Leah Treat archives.

— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org

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