This is the second in a series of six posts in the first phase of our online RTP policy exercise. Your job is to describe what the outcomes will look like if the RTP succeeds in producing the 2040 objective of Healthy Economy:
A healthy economy that generates jobs and business opportunities and sustains the region’s agricultural industry.
To remind you of the rules for this exercise:
– An ‘outcome’ must be reduced to a single ‘bullet’, i.e., a one sentence statement. You may follow that with a single short paragraph providing further explanation if you want.
– If you have multiple outcomes, submit one comment for each.
– If you agree with someone else’s outcome, quote it in your comment (my preference is italics for quoting) and say you agree and elaborate (no more than one paragraph) on why if you want.
– No criticism of other people’s proposed outcomes
– If you have questions or comments about the exercise or rules, comment on the exercise overview post, not here please.
Go!
24 responses to “RTP Exercise: Healthy Economy”
– Outside of peak commute times, freight flows freely past areas of SOV congestion through tools like queue-jump lanes, differential pricing or truck-only lanes.
* Most qualified graduates from local colleges and universities will be able to find sustainable employment in their field within 6 months of graduation.
Riffing on Garlynn:
* Most qualified graduates from local colleges and universities will be able to find sustainable employment in their field within 6 months of graduation, and are able to live within walking, biking, or a 15 minutes or less single-seat transit ride of their employment.
– Businesses of all kinds are welcomed and supported as the backbone of our economy and the source of our region’s wealth, instead of a money tree to be shaken down regularly and tied up with petty regulations.
All modes of transport directly pay through taxes and fees for the costs of infrastructure used while all types of development and property pay their fare assessed value share of property taxes for schools and government services thereby returning Portland to a market based economy instead of a propped up subsidized economy.
Explanation: Bicyclists are taxed to pay for specialized bicycle infrastructure, transit fares better reflect the costs of providing the service, property tax abatements on all but low income housing are eliminated and the schools portion of taxes assessed on increased development in urban renewal districts goes directly to the schools. Transport infrastructure priorities and development priorities are then based on demand rather than socialized government subsidies thereby improving the overall economy of the region.
The economy is freed from the shackles (regulations, petty laws
“All modes of transport directly pay through taxes and fees for the costs of infrastructure used while all types of development and property pay their fare assessed value share of property taxes for schools and government services thereby returning Portland to a market based economy instead of a propped up subsidized economy.”
Kinda like what existed about 90+ years ago. It did work better – more transit options, more transit speed, more transit throughput, it’s rather amazing really how far we haven’t come as a society in America through subsidizations.
I don’t know what happened with the “The economy is freed from the shackles (regulations, petty laws” comment – I think I accidentally made some malformed HTML in that one.
Basically it’s a ditto of JKs comment.
I second JK’s and Terrys’ comments though… anyway… however these comments are supposed to work.
Another major outcome I would love to see, but doubt the honesty and integrity of America will ever acheive this again.
Business operate businesses, Government provides the commerce mediation, protection, and individual rights it is supposed to and was created to provide.
i.e. – Government gets 100% out of transit, roadways, schools, and all the other things that it has gotten into and destroyed REAL market based private involvement in. Over the last 100 years the Government (City, State, & Fed) have effectively destroyed any real private school system, obliterated privatized transportation, and done a debauchery of roadways with almost half of them being of market irrelevancy or so heavily overutilized that we are now ridiculously dependant on automobiles. Needless to say, this would take a MASSIVE EFFORT on behalf of the citizenry, because the Government is definatley NOT going ot release itself from control of so many things in our lives.
A Two Bullet Reality Check:
The reality is that without a significant measurable increase in motor vehicle infrastructure capacity to make up for many years of neglecting the true needs of this majority choice mode, this region will strangle itself with congestion to the point where the economy will never fully recover.
The fantasy is that transit and bicycles will become the Metro area’s dominant mode of transport and that such an ideology could even support a total economy abundant with family wage jobs.
– Retailers of all sizes provide a wide variety of choices of merchandise ranging from automobiles to windmills to porn sourced from around the country and around the world, including low cost producers.
– New businesses, in fields that the planners never though of, spring up and leave city planner chosen target industries in the dust because their motive is to serve the public, instead of the planner’s delusions.
– Area residents can meet their needs for housing, food, health care, and recreation with earned income.
I think this is the goal.
– The area’s economy will not suffer greatly if two industries are depressed or if the prices of two or fewer natural resources were to increase significantly.
This is the healthy part
– The area’s economy does not attract new residents or businesses at a rate that impairs the area’s ability to meet other goals.
The danger of success
– Planners realize that they should quit trying to make Portland more like European counties that have lower incomes than ours, throw away their dogma, decide to really study what really improves a city’s economy, discover that Portland is overplanned, over managed and over regulated then they resign en mass for the good of the people and a year later Portland gets it first Fortune 500 company HQ, with three more considering moving to Portland.
– Portland remains an attractive place to live for the 20 and 30 something members of the “creative generation” who build new businesses and infuse energy and innovation into existing businesses.
Commercial development will be limited to walkable, competitive environments served by transit, rather than auto-oriented, one-stop monopolies isolated from competition by parking lots and pedestrian hostile urban design.
– Less road congestion allows commuting further distances, providing more job choices, allowing people to get better paying jobs leading to higher incomes, family harmony and happiness.
– After the planners are kicked out of Oregon, the state regains its freedom and world class leadership, makes spectacular progress towards low cost, sustainable transportation allowing longer, faster, drives to mega stores which save everyone money on their daily needs which along with some of the lowest rents in the country due to removal of the “planning penalty”, Oregon achieves the highest standard of living in the country and the poverty level has to be raised to higher the average income of California to keep the poverty services business viable.
Increasingly efficient use of existing roadway capacity through expanded transportation options will allow the region to continue to shift public resources away from transportation and toward education in order to “grow” and attact talent essential to a 21st century economcy based on adding value and innovation as opposed to the movement of cheap commodities.
We would not be spending our time on a Regional Transportation Plan, but on a Regional Education Plan, recognizing that transportation is of secondary importance in a economy driven by ideas. Indeed affordable and attractive communities with good schools (see Vibrant Communities) is key to attracting talent…along with Mt. Hood, the Coast and the Gorge…
Jeezus. everybody’s taking their pet peeve for a walk this morning …
i agree with Mark. His are good outcomes, at least for Portland.
here’s another, more statewide outcome:
— Oregon maintains a favorable balance of trade with the rest of the nation and the world.
Balance of trade is what the feds look at to gauge the health of the US economy: do we spend more money importing stuff than we earn exporting? It’s also a measure of out-of-state businesses that operate here: do they employ and pay us more than they sell us stuff and take the money out? It’s this sort of analysis that makes Intel a more desirable Oregon business than Wal-Mart, for instance.
In short: buy local, sell global.
– Portland will become attractive to genuine creative people, with a science education, who create technological inventions in a wide variety of fields and start successful companies that actually stay in Portland because of the fantastic business climate and the low cost of doing business instead being home to a bunch of romantics who create art with a limited market potential, and carp about Portland not being as dense as a low income European, South American or Asian city.
Portland will become attractive to genuine creative people, with a science education,
I agree. All one needs to do is look at Intel to understand that its Portland’s attractiveness as a place to live that attracts industries that depend on highly skilled workers. It is those young Intel engineers and other high tech workers that have transformed Portland from a dying timber town in the early 80’s to a thriving high tech center in this century.
– Peak hour traffic on any road is moving no more slowly than 10 mph under the posted speed limit
– Average commute time is stable or declining from year to year
– Congestion is reduced through cost-effective demand-management measures rather than expensive supply-side (capacity-adding) approaches.
Washington County is the poster child for our region with the greatest dollar amount of transportation investments and it reflects our regions best economy.
Washington County has had in effect since the late 1980’s a Major Streets Transportation Improvement Program, funded with 78 cents per thousand of property proceeds ($25 million/year)and significant property tax assessments on all new subdivision in unicorporated areas for at least 15 years. Washington County also has a 1 cent per gallon gas tax.
Washington County has also received major ODOT investments on highway 26 some of which have been on the boundry with Multnomah County at Sylvan.
Washington County received the large transit LRT investments with the westside Light Rail.
Washington County has very little to worry about with rivers to cross and bridge to build or maintain and has less aging transportation infrastructure.
So when people quote how successful our region has been in attracting high tech industry just look at Washington County and how they have invested into new and balanced transportation infrastructure and jobs and investments have followed.
Multnomah and Clackamas Counties are the step children in this picture.