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.
In the UK if you crash and cause damage to the road infrastructure then you need to pay to fix it. They should bring in that law in US…
But that would impede their freedom to destroy stuff because of their terrible driving