CALL WAITING
Following the time, infrastructure, and public decisions between a 911 call and help arriving in Portland.
Current state Public research; work continues
What happens between 911 and help arriving?
A call passes through several systems before someone reaches the scene. Call Waiting follows the time, organizations, and geography underneath emergency response in Portland.
I started this project after witnessing a motorcycle collision on Sandy Boulevard. I wanted to understand what happened after the call for help. That led to a larger question: how do you examine a system when its different parts measure different things?
What you can explore
The Response page explains answering, police queue time, and dispatch-to-arrival time, with reported BOEC figures and the official PPB dashboard. The System page follows the organizations and technology involved, including Oregon’s transition to Next Generation 911.
Investigations brings together the Sandy Boulevard case and a plan to examine the I-5 closure. The Map page provides service-boundary context. Money and accountability preserves the existing public-record search, financial tables, and transportation evidence. Methods keeps definitions, sources, and limits beside the work.
What remains unanswered
I have not obtained a verified official timeline for the Sandy Boulevard collision. The project does not calculate a response duration for that incident or claim that the I-5 closure caused a change in response.
The public site is available while research and development continue. Incident-level comparisons, the interactive incident timeline, and a dedicated emergency-system funding ledger remain unfinished. Missing evidence stays visible.
How the projects connect
Call Waiting is part of The Portland Porch, my broader home for Portland maps and local questions.
Portland TRAP asks transportation institutions to show the recovery plan, identify who can act, and make progress visible. Some of its public-record research shares the existing ArcGIS collection with Call Waiting.
Groundtruth 911 develops tools for the people maintaining NG9-1-1 data. Call Waiting is a public research project about the systems residents depend on. The two serve different purposes.
Help make the record better
If you know of a relevant public dataset, timestamp definition, operational document, or correction, send me the source. Include the specific claim or question it addresses. Please leave private caller and patient information out of your message.
Current release
13 September 2026: the first public Call Waiting research release is available. Sources and limitations are documented inside the project. Updates will follow the evidence and the time I can give the work.
Use the approach elsewhere
The research is being organized so someone else can adapt the questions and methods to their own city. A complete reuse kit is still in development. Public sources retain their own terms of use.