The gist is that Portland drivers couldn’t stop hitting crucial safety infrastructure (proving its necessity) so PBOT gave up on it.
As one of the commenters pointed out: Since a pedestrian/bike fatality costs PBOT nothing and replacing a concrete planter a car has demolished costs them more than nothing, to balance the budget they’re going to go with more pedestrian deaths.
Imagine being so bad at driving that you can’t avoid hitting a bright yellow concrete cylinder sitting in the middle of the road when you’re doing 25kph.
They should just replace it with steel planter so they have to replace it less often
Just fit them with IEDs and gradually eliminate the problem drivers