Transportation and Economic Development


In today’s tight fiscal environment, governments are seeking ways to generate “economic development” through transportation projects. Many of the flexible funding and state-generated transportation finance programs now focus on economics.

This is a shift. Transportation used to be measured in capacity and funding went to increase movement of cars. In the 1990’s, Portlander’s talked about livability and funded plans and projects to promote that end. Now it’s all economic development.

A major problem is that very little research exists on the topic of economic impacts of transportation investments. More notably, public officials and transportation engineers have no clue where to best place $1 of public transportation dollars to best leverage Return on Investment (ROI) from the private sector.

My favorite transportation project is the removal of the Lovejoy Ramp of the Broadway Bridge. For $20 million this project removed a local truck bridge to open up the entire North Pearl District to over $1 billion in new construction investment. This project used existing utilities and infrastructure to create a huge local economic surge. The emerging South Waterfront is another area, with over $1 billion of planned development on less than $100 million of public investment, including Streetcar.

Perhaps focusing on ROI and Economic Development is not so bad for alternative mode advocates. Consider that foot traffic, not car traffic, is the key to retail business and proximity advantages provided by clustered business districts.

What’s your opinion? Do you have any insight on the hazy issues of ROI and Economic Development? Do you have a favorite project that supports my supposition of alternative mode projects being good for the economy or dare you beg to differ?


27 responses to “Transportation and Economic Development”

  1. Scott said—“The emerging South Waterfront is another area, with over $1 billion of planned development on less than $100 million of public investment, including Streetcar.”—

    WHAT is going on?
    Well known by the Urban Renewal Advisory Committee, the PDC and others who have been watching is that the current number is $270 million in public invest. This is not a complete number either. Many more public dollars will be needed for additional infrastucture and other needs created by the SoWa plan.
    How is it that Scott uses a “less than $100 million of public investment” number when the Tram alone is in excess of $40 million?

    In the Pearl he states that the $20 milion removal of the Lovejoy ramp “opened up the entire North Pearl District to over $1 billion in new construction investment”
    Again he uses only part of the public investment.

  2. I love this one.

    An example of a “public investment” in transportation is REMOVING transportation capacity to make way for tax-subsidized $300 per square foot condos for the elites!

    Another good transportation “investment” would be to remove the east side I-5 lanes so we can have more waterfront condos.

    Heck, let’s run the tables. Let’s “invest” in removing all the roads. That sounds like a good “transportation” investment.

    Orwell lives on in the latter day social utopians we call land use planners.

  3. PKR: An example of a “public investment” in transportation is REMOVING transportation capacity to make way for tax-subsidized $300 per square foot condos for the elites!

    How was transportation capacity removed when the viaduct was removed?

    The _RAMP_ is still there. It just drops down into the neighborhood 4 or 5 blocks earlier. There are new streets, the grid has been expanded, new signal lights and parking facilities have been put in.

    If by “capacity” you mean the ability to bypass a chunk of Portland, then “capacity” has been removed. If by “capacity” you mean the ability for people and their vehicles to conduct economic activity in that neighborhood, as well as to live there, “capacity” has been increased.

    PKR: Heck, let’s run the tables. Let’s “invest” in removing all the roads. That sounds like a good “transportation” investment.

    That’s a good one. Ha ha.

    In case you haven’t noticed, no one on this web site is opposed to roads. Our disagreements are about the nature of the roads, where they go, who uses them, etc.

    Look at South Waterfront… if you don’t like the idea of public money going to the tram or to the streetcar, that’s one thing. But in case you didn’t notice, there will be MORE roads in that area than there were before. A street grid is being constructed.

    Just last year when the streetcar was extended to Riverplace, a NEW road connecting Harrison to Macadam was constructed.

    I repeat: No one here is opposed to roads. No one here wants to remove all roads.

    Can we have a serious discussion without you guys projecting nefarious motives on the rest of us?

    Get real.

    – Bob R.

  4. Bob writes:
    “Look at South Waterfront… if you don’t like the idea of public money going to the tram or to the streetcar, that’s one thing. But in case you didn’t notice, there will be MORE roads in that area than there were before. A street grid is being constructed.”

    So, Bob: How many additional trips north and south on Macadam will the South Waterfront development cause to occur? What kind of capacity improvements to Macadam are planned as part of the development?

    S. Waterfront will clog up Macadam beyond belief because not only are they not going to do anything to increase capacity on Macadam (which indeed would be hard to do) they didn’t sufficiently study the traffic impact in the first place. And even if they did, their numbers would be all wrong because they assume that 30% of the trips in and out of the project will be on mass transit – a totally fanciful assumption.

    And you point to the grid of roads INSIDE the development as proof you are not anti road? Do you intentionally miss the point? It is the lack of capacity to move people around the region.

    When we say the Portland planning culture is anti-auto and anti road, it is because the policies they pursue always increase congestion. Vehicle miles travelled are far outpacing capacity improvements, and that is by intent, I am sure, so we get out of our cars and use their preferred methods of trasnportation.

    Look at Highway 26. Thirty years ago it was two lanes each way. Today, with about 300,000 more people living in Washington County, it is, er – two lanes each way.

    But we have the nice choo choo train that has all the people who used to ride the bus!

    This weekend I had occasion to cross the Sellwood bridge several times on Saturday and Sunday. Tacoma Street was a mess both days. Gridlock turning both onto and off of 17th.

    Why? Because our genius planners decided to squeeze it to one lane for most of the run between 99E and the bridge, and put in “traffic calming” devices (curb bubbles and whatnot) so the stretch would be more “pedestrian friendly.”

    Guess what the effect of this policy is? What does any rational person who is stuck in gridlock do after two or three cycles of a red light and he moves three spots closer to the intersection?

    Get in a bus? HA!

    No, we take the neighborhood roads. We turn off Tacoma onto the side streets.

    So, their “pedestrian friendly” community now has cars zooming up and down all the neighborhood roads finding the back routes thru sellwood. I’m sure the remaining parents of small children are thrilled about that.

    Of course there are fewer and fewer of those every year, as parents figure out that the city isn’t being planned for their lifestyle.

    You sense my hostile tone because, well, I am fed up with the transportation/land-use/urban planning cult that is ruining this city.

    Jobs in the downtown core are down 30% since 1990. That is a depression!

    Meanwhile, Kruse Way and Bridgeport Village are booming. You think this is a coincidence!

    Why is this happening?

    YOUR POLICIES!

  5. At the last South Waterfront URAC (Urban Renewal Advisory Committee)PDOT showed up with some interesting presentations. One was news that they will begin a transportation study of the area some time at the end of this year or early 2006.

    Nice timing.

    They also were there seeking approval of a new plan for the Bancroft/Macadam intersection.

    Even though there has been no study, PDOT claims this single newly crafted intersection at the South end of the development will accommodate 80% of the traffic in and out of South Waterfront.

    Worse yet is the committee was provided a copy of the plan only recently and had no time to adequately review it.
    When the committee tabled the decision until next month’s meeting PDOT officials were noticeably displeased.

    This is how the entire SoWA plan has moved along.
    Haphazardly, ill-conceived, poorly planned and without public approval.

    Like it or not.

  6. My friends in Sellwood believe that Tacoma IS a neighborhood street and should STAY 2 lanes. How many neighborhoods do we sacrifice to create regional arterials?

  7. First off, my post was about the shift from VMT to Economic Development as the criteria by which transportation projects are funded. And, economic development occurs in many shapes and sizes. There are many implications to the future South Waterfront development, and those rich people that are moving in are CHOOSING to move in and pay high rents. In fact, rents are higher in central Portland, there must be a demand for these socially engineered units…. perhaps not any more engineered than auto-dominant post WWII styled suburbs.

    Yes, South Waterfront residents will face utter congestion if they all drive, and so they will choose other modes. And it’s the developers and people that are choosing to build this model. Not only that, but much of the public funds are in fact generated as TIF on the development itself, it’s a good investment for the return of private dollars and the potentiall added economy.

    So is economic development a better criteria for transportation planning than capacity?

  8. Chris:
    So it your friends want Tacoma to be a neighborhood street? It HAS BEEN an arterial ever since the bridge was built. That’s pretty much what streets off of bridges are.

    So it would then of course follow that if they want Tacoma to be a neighborhood street and not an arterial, then they want to tear down the Sellwood bridge entirely. Right?

    So if I asked them do they want to tear down the bridge they would all say yes?

    Sure.

  9. PKR: Jobs in the downtown core are down 30% since 1990. That is a depression!

    Why, PKR, what a fascinating assertion!

    I suggest you take a look at the report, “20 District Employment”, which is available in spreadsheet form here:
    http://www.metro-region.org/article.cfm?ArticleID=895

    It is also available as part of the Metro Regional Databook, available as a PDF here:
    http://www.metro-region.org/library_docs/maps_data/metroregionaldatabookjan2005.pdf
    (Go to page 69 of the PDF, page 65 of the report)

    Specifically, consult Multnomah County Subarea 1. This is the portion of downtown portland bounded by the freeway loop, and also includes small portions of the eastbank. There is also a map showing the subarea near the front of the databook.

    I’ll make it easy for you:

    1990 Subarea 1 Total Employment: 103,872
    2000 Subarea 1 Total Employment: 121,222

    That’s a 16.7% gain in the downtown core, just between 1990 and 2000. Not a 30% loss.

    Or do you mean to suggest that downtown somehow lost 48,500 jobs since 2000? (That’s how many you’d have to lose since 2000 to get 30% fewer jobs than 1990).

    – Bob R.

  10. PKR: Well, some of my friends might be OK with tearing down the bridge :-)

    But most of them would say that the bridge should stay at 2 lanes and so should Tacoma.

  11. Chris,

    Tacoma is already a regional arterial. Until recently when then city commissioner Charlie Hales declared that some of the 34,000 vehicles which use the bridge daily will just have to find another route. I lived in that area 20 years ago when there was parking on both sides of Tacoma and worsening traffic caused overflow onto the adjacent real neighborhood streets. The city took away the parking during rush hour and enabled better flow with four lanes open to traffic. Now because of the lack of adequate traffic planning the city has placed bubble curbs and reduced the street back to two lanes.

    IMO this demonstrates that our public officials, planners and this log are not genuinely in pursuit of an effective transportation system as much as they are and advocating alternative modes at the expense of vehicular traffic.

    South Waterfront not having any traffic impact study or transportation plan is further evidence.

    The new Sellwood bridge better be getting four lanes and Tacoma reverted back to the previous four lanes to better provide for growth and transportation needs. As well to avoid the overflow onto neighborhood streets.

    Scott,

    Yes, South Waterfront residents will face utter congestion. So will traffic to and from the Sellwood bridge, Macadam/Hwy 43, Barbur Boulevard and I-5. Your “if everyone drives” qualifier has nothing to do with it. There is no alternative despite the wishful thinking based planning and declarations by Hales and yourself about other options.

    Who are the “people” who “chose” South Waterfront”? It’s quite the contrary. IN hearing after hearing the “people” spoke loud and clear in opposition to South Waterfront over a wide range of critical issues. Many of which were and are fatal flaws yet have been routinely disregarded by city officials and planners.

    —-“Much of the public funds are in fact generated as TIF on the development itself”—-

    Who told you that?

    The SoWa Urban Renewal District takes up 403 acres of mainly existing developed properties on the tax rolls. The property taxes from these existing homes and businesses will be siphoned off for at least 20 years to help pay for this development.

    Heck, the first OHSU tower now under construction and all other OHSU development will not be contributing one dime to the TIF as OHSU pays no property taxes.

    An upcoming tower, (The Alexan)consisting of 330 mostly luxury apartments is on track to have it’s entire $66 million dollar value exempt from property taxes for 10 years. Nothing for the TIF there.

    Still a good public investment? Still good planning?

  12. Chris Smith July 25, 2005 12:29 PM:

    PKR: Well, some of my friends might be OK with tearing down the bridge :-)

    But most of them would say that the bridge should stay at 2 lanes and so should Tacoma.

    JK: Since we clearly need more capacity, lets put the 6 lane bridge some where else and let Tacoma st be what the NH wants – a quiet little neighborhood street, in a ped friendly area, with a few hundred cars/day (after the exisying bridge becomes ped only). That should free up a lot of land currently wasted by businesses for high rise condo.

    Thanks
    JK

  13. JK –

    So is there no middle ground here?

    Isn’t it enough to say that Sellwood residents like Tacoma St. just the way it is? That eliminating on-street parking would _hurt_ local businesses?

    You seem concerned about getting from Point A to Point C rapidly, without much concern for what happens to Point B in the middle. And if Point B wants a say in the matter, they are being anti-road.

    – Bob R.

  14. “A major problem is that very little research exists on the topic of economic impacts of transportation investments..”

    Another major problem is the fact that there’s no proof Urban Renewal Districts increase tax rolls. Why should we subsidize development when it’s obvious So Wa and The Pearl are desirable places to live? There was no need to subsidize these areas.

    The best way to increase economic development is to make it easier for the free market to operate. Lowering SDCs, fees, property and income taxes would attract more business, development and workers for less cost.

    This insanity of spending $18 million on 0.6 miles of streetcar that goes to nowhere is just that — insanity.

  15. This insanity of spending $18 million on 0.6 miles of streetcar that goes to nowhere is just that — insanity.

    Funny, I thought the streetcar went to Riverplace/N. Macadam, Portland State University, the Central Library, Powells, the Pearl District, and up to Good Sam and NW 23rd, and of course the new South Waterfront developments.

    We can debate cost per mile, taxes and subsidies, ridership and all that, but “goes to nowhere” is a bit of a stretch.

    – Bob R.

  16. Since obviously nobody read my previous post, I’m going to repost it here verbatim.

    If you are going to talk about the difference between bus and rail, you need to talk about more than just numbers. There is a huge difference between a train – light rail, sub/el or amtrak versus a plain, old & stinky bus.

    And that’s where the difference lies: imagability. People respond to an image VERY strongly. This is obviously why marketing and commercials now infest every part of modern American society: they work!

    Now, if you are running a medium-sized city in America, faced with rising pollution and congestion from cars, and are quite aware of some of the downsides freeways bring – among others, development access to the countryside that leads to its suburbanization – wouldn’t you be looking for something DIFFERENT?

    That’s what Lightrail is – something different. We are not building a purely functional ‘move poor people from point A to B for the cheapest amount of money.’ This is a REVOLUTION (or, if you are Blumenauer, http://www.railvolution.com) in progress. Let’s remake the city! Make it beautiful! Attractive! Let’s make ABSOLUTELY CLEAR to people that we are going to get around this metro area in a different way – and make a statement about it!

    Busses move people from point A to B. Rail is a statement, pure and simple. While a bus route can potentially change every month, or even be elilinated, rail does not change very fast: since it is the product of long-range planning, citizens, businesses and developers can come to know how serious the city is about change with the amount of money it invests.

    Again, light rail is not really a transportation system: it’s a development tool. This is why they [metro, city, etc] endlessly have cited the original Hillsboro expansion as leveraging X dollars of private investment for every Y public dollar spent.

    Busses don’t do that.

    To think of it another way – building light rail is like building a street, or a freeway. It’s the whole package – hard infrastructure for the trains to run on, stations for the people to board, trains to ride on, and an entire army of personnel to keep it running, including security people. Besides Curitiba, there are VERY few cities that have bus-only lanes/roads. Those that do were usually preexisting and used for autos. This is why Rail will always be more expensive than busses, because bus lines never include the level of development and city beautification (that the city residents DEMAND) that accompanies it.

    I apologize for the length of this post, but it’s been pissing me off for so many years now when both transit advocates and critics just never get it right – they are always comparing a pipe wrench to a Monet painting!

  17. YESS!!!
    THEY FINALLY GOT IT!

    steve schopp says:

    “advocating alternative modes at the expense of vehicular traffic”

    BINGO. Somehow it finally got driven through your thick skull. Yes! Alternative modes of transportation! Not just driving! You have legs! You CAN walk! You CAN ride a bike! You CAN ride the bus along with all the stinky poor people!

    Halleluja! I see pigs in the sky! They have sprouted wings! Hell is freezing over! Tickets to Tahiti are on sale for $49.99….

  18. “advocating alternative modes at the expense of vehicular traffic” and that is exactly what a CITY should be doing. Folks you may not like it but we are building a city here, not another suburb. The Auto in a fully functioning city is the alternative transportation. I’m not sure why PDX needs to sacrifices the things that make living in the city worth while for the benifit of those who want to get home to the suburbs 5 minutes faster. We are returning to the tried and true city paradigm of putting people first and formost.

  19. Metro and other governments in the region are co-sponsoring a study with the Portland Business Alliance on the economic impacts of transportation. I haven’t seen the early drafts but I think it won’t answer Scott’s original question as it is focused on how lack of transportation affects exporting industries. It will be available in September and we will see if it helps with this question.

    On another note, Metro is looking at conducting the update of the Regional Transportation Plan with a new perspective. Instead of projecting existing travel behavior and the next 20 years’ population increases to create a “preferred” transportation system, we intend to use the “Price of Government” approach. This approach starts with community definition of the outcomes desired (in the case of transportation this will be access and mobility), then solicit strategies to deliver these services and rank them based on the cost effectiveness. It also recognizes that people are generally paying the amount of taxes and fees that are comfortable with and don’t want to pay more without being clear about what they are getting for their money.

    Then, services are “purchased” until we run out of money. If people desire more of any of them, they will be given choices of how to raise the money to pay for them.

    I think this will give us a variety of innovative approaches to increasing mobility (rush hour freeway pricing?) and access (free broadband for everyone?) rather than having a unfundable system that gets chopped down through a political rather than rational process. If it works right, ROI will be a major factor. Conventional thinking will be abandoned for proven, cost effective approaches.

    I am excited about this new approach because the current system is totally broken (witness the debate on this blog). Federal transportation funding is flat, not even covering maintenance of the interstate system (Oregon is paying for the upkeep of I-5 and I-84 with property taxes on cars). State gas taxes haven’t been raised since 1992 and buy only half of what they used to due to inflation. And our opinion polls tell us that most people don’t see transportation as a big enough problem to support increased taxes.

    Even if we wanted to increase capacity on roads, we couldn’t. No moola. Increasing capacity on transit is just as hard and dependent on once a decade infusions of federal dollars (harder and harder to get).

    Keep tuned. We will need good thinking and tough decisions from everyone to develop a workable transportation system at the price the public will pay.

  20. I’m for the state weighting toward economic development more than capacity. Metro and the state have not pushed the counties and cities to look at economic development as the engine for the tax base.

    So this is why we are behind on getting capacity in the Sunrise Corridor. Metro and the State should have been pushing hard on Multnomah County for the I-84 to US 26 expressway in East County earlier. In Gresham, we have a new planned industrial area (Springwater) but as many of us have told the planners, no investor or industrialist is going to want to deal with gridlock on local streets. Freight needs to move.

    I-205, Sunrise, Gresham Bypass, Westside Bypass, new bridges are needed for economic development. They all will need to be toll roads and bridges.

    But I, like many here, don’t believe that roads are the answer because pavement only creates more pavement. We like farms close by. So developments like SoWa, the Pearl, and many others use multiple facilities to move people basically from home to work. We believe that Freeways and transit are nothing more than tools, and if you depend on one to much you become addicted to it.

    I’m encouraged that the state has finally decides that Portland needs improvements to our local roads (Sunrise, South I205, and Newberg/Dundee Bypass are being proposed for business/government partnerships) based on economic issues not just capacity. For years, you heard how Southern Oregon or Eastern Oregon got highway funds for economic development. But they have left I5 alone for thirty years and we are now almost to the choking point.

    Good thread to ask basically ask a poll.

    One Bridge, One Vision

    Ray

  21. Bob R. July 25, 2005 03:17 PM:
    JK –

    So is there no middle ground here?

    Isn’t it enough to say that Sellwood residents like Tacoma St. just the way it is? That eliminating on-street parking would _hurt_ local businesses?

    You seem concerned about getting from Point A to Point C rapidly, without much concern for what happens to Point B in the middle. And if Point B wants a say in the matter, they are being anti-road.

    JK: This is, of course, one of our major problems – nobody wants a lot of traffic in their neighborhood. But if they all succeeded in reducing traffic, all of us would loose significant freedom of travel. One solution in many areas is to increase freeway capacity to draw traffic off on local arterials which will draw traffic out of the neighborhoods.

    However, Tacoma is a major route. And we need more capacity – what to do? Build it and if Tacoma doesn’t want it, try to find a place that does want it. Of course many would no longer go throught Sellwood and the will hurt business. To the extent that you dive out cars, you also drive out business. This is a simple concept that most city planners haven’t figured out yet.

    Beyond that, my crack about making the bridge truly walkable and ped friendly was just a jab at the anti-auto zealots. But a truly walkable Sellwood would get rid of cars which would kill all those little businesses that depend of region wide trade. By truly walkable, I mean the sort of smart growth idolized by some planners that was found in the former East Germany where few had cars and everyone walked or used transit . (Of course, since unification, the Germans got cars as fast as they could and abandoned that life style.)
    EndJK:

  22. Justin Wells July 25, 2005 07:11 PM:

    Since obviously nobody read my previous post, I’m going to repost it here verbatim.

    If you are going to talk about the difference between bus and rail, you need to talk about more than just numbers. There is a huge difference between a train – light rail, sub/el or amtrak versus a plain, old & stinky bus.

    And that’s where the difference lies: imagability. People respond to an image VERY strongly. This is obviously why marketing and commercials now infest every part of modern American society: they work!
    JK: Oh, I get it – you wan t us to spend an extra Billion on “ imagability.” when plain old bus would do the job. (Billion dollar extra based on I-5Partnership estimates of light rail thru Vancouver.)
    End JK

    Now, if you are running a medium-sized city in America, faced with rising pollution and congestion from cars,
    JK:
    Rising pollution? Car have been getting cleaner for years. The stuff that I read says that city air is getting cleaner year-by-year even as driving increases because cars are so much cleaner now days. Some even claim that cars are cleaner that buses for the same number of people – I read this in a Seattle paper, about Seattle buses, a couple years ago.
    End JK

    and are quite aware of some of the downsides freeways bring – among others, development access to the countryside that leads to its suburbanization
    JK:
    Of course suburbanization leads to lower cost housing for everyone, including low income people. Many suburbs are more racially integrated that the city. And usually they have cleaner air, less congestion and less crime. But I assume you are against this.
    End JK

    – wouldn’t you be looking for something DIFFERENT?
    JK:
    NO
    End JK

    That’s what Lightrail is – something different. We are not building a purely functional ‘move poor people from point A to B for the cheapest amount of money.’ This is a REVOLUTION (or, if you are Blumenauer, http://www.railvolution.com) in progress. Let’s remake the city! Make it beautiful! Attractive! Let’s make ABSOLUTELY CLEAR to people that we are going to get around this metro area in a different way – and make a statement about it!
    JK:
    That is YOUR idea of how people should live, just like Bush has an idea about how YOU should live. Why don’t both of you just let people live the way they like to?
    End JK

    Busses move people from point A to B. Rail is a statement, pure and simple. While a bus route can potentially change every month, or even be elilinated, rail does not change very fast:
    JK:
    Rail can’t even go around a wrecked fire truck where a bus would just go around the block. Nice try at turning one of rail’s flaws into some thing hype-able. We aren’t buying it.
    End JK

    since it is the product of long-range planning, citizens, businesses and developers can come to know how serious the city is about change with the amount of money it invests.

    Again, light rail is not really a transportation system: it’s a development tool.
    JK:
    And how many people want more ”development”in their neighborhood?
    End JK

    This is why they [metro, city, etc] endlessly have cited the original Hillsboro expansion as leveraging X dollars of private investment for every Y public dollar spent.
    JK:
    Prove it – without TriMet/PDC/Metro spinmeister input. Try real data. (Don’t forget to account for the tax abatements and other subsidies given to develop around the toy train stations.)
    End JK

    Busses don’t do that.

    To think of it another way – building light rail is like building a street, or a freeway.

    JK:
    No it isn’t – rail is many times more expensive. And roads don’t need stations and “an entire army of personnel to keep it running, including security people”
    End JK

    It’s the whole package – hard infrastructure for the trains to run on, stations for the people to board, trains to ride on, and an entire army of personnel to keep it running, including security people. Besides Curitiba, there are VERY few cities that have bus-only lanes/roads. Those that do were usually preexisting and used for autos. This is why Rail will always be more expensive than busses, because bus lines never include the level of development and city beautification (that the city residents DEMAND) that accompanies it.

    I apologize for the length of this post, but it’s been pissing me off for so many years now when both transit advocates and critics just never get it right – they are always comparing a pipe wrench to a Monet painting!
    JK:
    You pay for the Monet painting, & I’ll pay for the pipe wrench – lets see who gets to their destination first, most comfortable and free from bums, drug dealers and panhandlers.

    Don’t expect us working stiffs to pay for you Monet painting!
    End JK

  23. Mr. Burkholder writes: “On another note, Metro is looking at conducting the update of the Regional Transportation Plan with a new perspective. Instead of projecting existing travel behavior and the next 20 years’ population increases to create a “preferred” transportation system, we intend to use the “Price of Government” approach. This approach starts with community definition of the outcomes desired (in the case of transportation this will be access and mobility), then solicit strategies to deliver these services and rank them based on the cost effectiveness.”

    Is Metro looking at opening the market to expand the opportunities for private owner/operators?
    M. Wilson

  24. You’ll never get it will you?

    Justin said, —“Let’s make ABSOLUTELY CLEAR to people that we are going to get around this metro area in a different way – and make a statement about it!”—-

    No “we” are not. You can make as many statements as you want. A few will, at great expense, while you kid yourself about the rest of the community.

    You apparently don’t even know what “getting around” is. It’s people and commerce moving to where they need to be when they need to be there and as frequently as needed or wanted.
    Like it or not.

    Goods and services, (part of the “we”), are important.

    Tonto,

    The “advocating alternative modes at the expense of vehicular traffic” I was referring to is the failure to accomodate growth within the transportation arena. Growth in the population and all of additional traffic that comes with it.
    Your glee over vehicle traffic worsening is absent any consideration for the problem that represents.

    Justin, Tonto and others on this site seem to think there is no problem faling to accomodate that growth. Why? I’m sure you would agree there would be severe problems if we didn’t accomodate growth in water systems, sewer systems, school systems and parks.
    But not our transportation system?
    The so called “improvements” over the last couple decades have not done the job.
    And it aint because we haven’t built enough light rail. Yet I am certain many think that is all we need.
    “We’re in revolution”????

    What seems to be the problem?

    The status quo planning isn’t working and there will not be money needed for the additional planned light rail. I believe Rex is coming around to this reality. Let alone tearing up downtown for a light rail transit mall, convention center hotel, Tram and other waste.
    There won’t be a vote because it will fail.
    The diverting of property taxes through Urban Renewal is nearing effective exhaustion.
    The Feds won’t be coming to our rescue.
    So what’s plan B?
    More “development patterning”?

    There is not a scentilla of evidence that more of the Pearl, the Round, Orenco Station, Gresham Station, South Waterfront, Villebois or Cascade Station will ever deliver anything but more chaos at enormous expense.

    Those who are paying attention, including Metro, know that
    Urban Renewal funny money is drying up,
    Cascade Station sits idle,
    the tax exemptions will expire,
    half of the planned housing units for the Round have been canceled and will be replaced with a parking garage,
    same for the The Hillsboro Civic Center where the market housing developer pulled out and talk of a garage in it’s place has begun.
    road maintenance backlogs never get attention or funding,
    There is no traffic plan for South Waterfront or the entire region.
    a 500 new bed jail sits unopened
    property crimes are soaring,
    criminals run free,
    housing affordability is in decline
    and the UGB is reaching it’s peak of dysfunction

    And there is no genuine plan for any of this.

    But there sure are lots of planners. I wonder how many there are?
    The City of Portland has over 100, PDC many, Metro many, and the three counties and 23 Metro cities all have their own as well.

    There sure is a ho lot a plannin goin on round here.
    IMO

  25. “Funny, I thought the streetcar went to Riverplace/N. Macadam, Portland State University, the Central Library, Powells, the Pearl District, and up to Good Sam and NW 23rd, and of course the new South Waterfront developments.”

    I was talking about the recent streetcar extension:

    “The southern end of the line has been extended from PSU to RiverPlace, a distance of 0.6 mile. This $18 million extension (including the addition of two more streetcars) is one phase of an ongoing plan to serve Portland’s South Waterfront development area.”

    from here: http://www.answers.com/topic/portland-streetcar

    Riverplace is hardly a bustling city center. Regardless, spending $5681 per foot for a slow, unused streetcar is insanity.

    But back to may main point, why are we subsidizing development when it’s not needed? How can anyone feel sanguine in spending $57 million on a streetcar and $40 million on a tram when parks go untended, criminals are released and we can’t afford more police officers?

  26. It’s diffucult for me to tell whether something has been brought up before, especially links, so I just thought I’d throw in this case study of Portland transit featured on a European website dedicated to light rail.

    http://www.xs4all.nl/~rajvdb/lra/

    Just hit the “case study” tab and see what you think.

  27. In response to a few posts here:

    JK: I was referring to the pollution that was rapidly increasing in the 1970’s, not today. That was, after all, the period in time that most of the planning began to take shape – and led to the way things are today.

    Many of the plans that were enacted back then led to a reduction in the amount of pollution that we see today. This includes both more efficient vehicles (partially by smog & fuel efficiency legislation) as well as alternative forms of transportation and living patterns.

    Also, as far as infrastructure costs: busses and cars run on roads and highways. You have to build those roads as well as maintain them – and this takes personnel: highway engineers, transportation specialists, planners, road construction workers, POLICE (security personnel), and somebody to run and regulate the entire thing, including whether the busses are on time or not (and plan teh schedules), and to check where the auto congestion happens and setup those nice little ODOT cameras.

    I have NEVER seen anyone on this site remotely take these factors into consideration when comparing busses or cars to light rail.

    The other thing that never gets considered are the externalized costs of autos and busses, including noise and air pollution. In fact, I would not be surprised as to be called a ‘sissy’ for bringing up such unquantifiable factors. Well, get used to it: light rail DOES offer a higher quality product than a bus. Maybe it’s not as cost-effective as busses right now, it will likely be later on a few years down the road.

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