Last Saturday my partner and I headed down to Corvallis for the “Envision Oregon” meeting sponsored by 1000 Friends, CLF, the Bus Project and a host of other organizations. It’s the beginning of a process to re-vision what we want for our state and how our land use system can be structured to get us there in a way that works for a strong majority of Oregonians.

We had two “table group” exercises. One was about what we valued about Oregon, the other was about visioning the future – what we wanted, what we didn’t, and what we thought would happen.

Interestingly, transportation rarely came up in the first exercise. I think that makes sense, transportation is a means, not an end. But transportation was a common theme in the future visions. In particular, high-speed inter-city public transportation (e.g., High Speed Rail) was a common theme of visions for the future of the state.

Let’s hope the legislature is listening. Meanwhile, I encourage everyone to get involved in the Envision Oregon process. There will be lots of meetings around the state and many ways to get plugged in (including online). Check it out.