NOW: Driven to Despair


I had several readers drop me a note late last week about the episode of PBS’s NOW magazine show that aired on Friday:

Driven to Despair
NOW on PBS

With gas prices spiking and home values crumbling, the American dream of commuting to work from the fringes of suburbia has become an American nightmare. Many are facing a hard choice: Paying for gas or paying the mortgage. How did it come to this? It’s not just about America’s financial crisis; it’s also about big problems with our national infrastructure. Overstressed highways and too few public transportation options are wreaking havoc on people’s lives and hitting the brakes on our already-stretched economy.

This week, NOW on PBS takes a close-up look at our inadequate transportation network and visits some people paying a high pricein both dollars and quality of life just to get to work. Do we have the means to modernize both our infrastructure and our lifestyles?

It didn’t disappoint.


26 responses to “NOW: Driven to Despair”

  1. Did you happen to notice that gas prices are down a bit and will soon be down a dollar?

    Now that the bubble has burst, gas prices MAY hit $2.00 almost certainly $2.50 as we are now below $3.00 in some parts of the country.

    It is time to recognize reality here (sorry to burst your Utopian dreams of creating a society of commuters driven to transit by poverty.)

  2. Of course we all know that oil is an infinite resource and that shortages are caused by liberal conspiracies. Not to mention the eagerness of the “drill baby, drill” crowd to pay more taxes to maintain, much less expand our automobile infrastructure to meet growth.

  3. Trace Salmon Says: Of course we all know that oil is an infinite resource and that shortages are caused by liberal conspiracies.

    You got that right. The liberals have blocked exploration and drilling for decades and not declare we are running out of oil!

    Trace Salmon Says: Not to mention the eagerness of the “drill baby, drill” crowd to pay more taxes to maintain, much less expand our automobile infrastructure to meet growth.

    Where do you get that crap? Road users entirely pay for roads and contribute to mass transit. It is mass transit that is 80% paid by taxpayers.

    I’ll bet, even you use roads.

  4. First of all, to those (like me) who missed watching it on TV, I’d like to note that you can watch the program online (thank you, PBS).

    Road users entirely pay for roads

    No. For example, roughly 20 cities in Oregon have enacted a street utility fee, paid for by everyone regardless of how much they travel. Washington County has a property tax-funded Major Streets Transportation Improvement Program and in other parts of the country, road projects are funded with sales taxes (while they may be voter-approved, they still result in road users not directly entirely paying for roads).

    In addition, motorists are paying directly for none of the Big Pipe project even though at least 40 percent of stormwater pollution comes from roads. And if the federal gas tax went first to pay for oil defense, there would probably be nothing left for roads.

    That, along with subsidies to new/low-density development for new schools and other infrastructure & services, is what got us into this mess. I was a little saddened that this wasn’t mentioned in the show.

  5. When I watched this episode (online) I was a little disappointed in the standard fare sensationalism and false assumptions.

    One woman who was interviewed compared herself to “a martian in Los Angeles” because she chose not to own a car. However statistics show that transit ridership in the Los Angeles metropolitan area is actually greater than that of Portland, with a higher percentage of trips taken are by transit (bus, BRT, light rail, heavy rail (above and below ground), and commuter rail).

    In fact, in my numerous trips I’ve personally taken to L.A., once once previously did I even consider a rental car (and for only two days of the trip). The upcoming trip I am taking next month will be the first time I will have a car with me the entire time (because it’s significantly cheaper), and even then I will use Metrolink one day (most of the time we’ll be in/around Anaheim and will have no need for anything but our two feet.)

    An example of the false assumption is the tired old “streetcar conspiracy theory”. What was neglected was that when the last of the Pacific Electric routes were terminated – the routes were, at the time, owned and operated by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority – not by National City Lines. So while NCL may have contributed to the decline in the streetcar system (ironically, I could argue that TriMet is taking a cue from NCL with regards to Portland’s bus system) they didn’t finish it off – the government did.

    Despite that, Los Angeles has spent considerable amounts of money upgrading all forms of transit (however, it took a federal lawsuit for them to spend on bus service). And Los Angeles was recently acknowledged by having the most improved, and the best, transit system in the U.S. – a feat that Portland last accomplished back in 1989, three years after the first MAX line was opened, but long before the “rail bias”.

    I think one key to remember is that Portland is not Los Angeles. It’s a stretch to say that people routinely commute 75 miles to work – Salem is within commuting distance and I-5 has a long ways to go to reach capacity (Highway 217 is another story). Portland is already a diversified community of numerous “town centers” as Metro likes to call; not everyone wants or needs to go to downtown Portland. Beaverton, Hillsboro, Tigard, Tualatin, Wilsonville, and Clackamas are significant employment centers. My own commute is only six miles one-way, entirely within Portland city limits – yet investments in transit in Portland have focused on downtown Portland and little else. WES is a start, but in comparison provides very little (only three hours of service in the morning and three in the afternoon, and no weekend service – despite TriMet acknowledging that some Saturdays have higher MAX ridership than weekdays) and at a high cost (now at $120M)

  6. Erik Halstead:

    However statistics show that transit ridership in the Los Angeles metropolitan area is actually greater than that of Portland, with a higher percentage of trips taken are by transit (bus, BRT, light rail, heavy rail (above and below ground), and commuter rail).

    Just out of curiosity, in that aggregate, what percentage of the trips are rail?

  7. GREAT NEWS!

    GASOLINE IS BELOW $3.00 IN PORTLAND

    I just filled up for $2.89/gal at Costco near the Airport! I asked if it was a special price and they said NO.

    This is very good news for low income people who are having trouble affording to drive and who were facing wasting hours/day on transit.

    Unfortunately, the local progressives will probably consider it sad that people can again afford to drive.

  8. billy Says:

    Unfortunately, the local progressives will probably consider it sad that people can again afford to drive.

    Yeah, progressives are well known for hating poor people. And none of them drive, either.

  9. 2.87 Wilsonville Costco

    Progressives adversely affect poor people all the time in many ways. All the while insisting the earners spread a little more to more of them.

    Stopping the drilling and refining of our own oil hurts poor people higher prices. So does blocking the use of our own nat gas supplies.

    Excessive bureaucracies pile on all sorts of processes and hoops for just about everythign imaginable that increases the cost and lowers the availabity for poorer people.

    Progressives also expand the cycle of dependency and entitlement hindering upward mobility for the working poor.

    Then they pull stunts like taking 100s of million in tax dollars, much of diverted from basic services, a put a light rail line up North Interstate and pretend it’s for their, our, own good.

  10. 100s of million in tax dollars

    We are spending $700B to bail out banks for bad loans made to people in exurbs, (like this video,) and you are complaining about 1/7000th of that being spent on a light rail line? Really, if we just built light rail lines into the exurbs, I imagine the housing prices wouldn’t collapse when gas prices rise, and it would probably be cheaper than bailing out the banks, (not to mention, save a lot of homeowners savings/credit scores/places to live/etc…)

    And the $700B was two weeks ago. They are thinking about doing more…

  11. Jeff F. wrote: Just out of curiosity, in that aggregate, what percentage of the trips are rail?

    The problem with the LA area versus TriMet is that the Los Angeles area comprises of numerous transit agencies (i.e. the MTA covers Los Angeles County, the City of Los Angeles has its own DASH system, several cities like Santa Monica have their own systems; Orange County has the OCTA…and then Metrolink is a separate entity all into itself. So pieceing together regional stats is difficult at best.

    What I can say is that for the MTA by itself (Los Angeles County), here’s the stats (July month):

    http://www.metro.net/news_info/ridership_avg.htm

    Bus (MTA operated): 33,181,739
    Bus (Contract operated): 1,183,951
    Bus (System): 34,365,690

    Orange Line (BRT): 716,677

    Red Line (Subway): 4,321,396
    Blue Line (Light Rail): 2,389,420
    Green Line (Light Rail): 1,222,938
    Gold Line (Light Rail): 724,010

    Rail total: 8,657,764

    Total: 43,740,131

    Rail: 19.8%
    BRT: 8.3%
    Bus: 78.6%

    Again, these percentages do not include Metrolink ridership nor does it include any ridership on other transit systems. It should also be noted that the BRT “Orange Line” is one line only; and does not include the “Metro Rapid” BRT-like services that run on regular streets.

    For example, the OCTA (http://www.octa.net/press_081408.aspx) stated that in July 6.2 million riders rode OCTA busses. Meanwhile, Metrolink (commuter rail) is carrying on average about 50,000 passengers per weekday, or roughly 1.3 million riders per month.

  12. Matthew wrote: We are spending $700B to bail out banks for bad loans made to people in exurbs, (like this video,) and you are complaining about 1/7000th of that being spent on a light rail line?

    Huge problem with that logic: Are you truly expecting the Federal Government to “bail out” Portland?

    The federal government is fully expecting to return an investment on that $700B to the banks. Frankly, I disagree with it – let the banks go broke; it’ll be a hard medicine to swallow but we’ll be just fine in the end. However the federal government does have a track record – Amtrak excepted – of actually making money on these investments. Conrail? Government earned a profit when it was re-privatized. Chrysler? Government earned a profit. Airline Bailout of 2001? Even with a few airlines defaulting on their loans (and shutting down aftewards), the government made a profit on the whole. I believe that the Savings & Loan Bailout/Resolution Trust Corporation also turned a profit in the end. Amtrak, on the other hand, is the only exception, having been a literal drain on the federal government.)

    So if we spend $1B building one light rail line to Vancouver, or Banks, or whereever you want to build a light rail line to, how does that help the region? If Banks gets a light rail line, what happens to Sherwood or Canby or Sandy? Since we’re talking federal obligation we can include Washougal or Battle Ground or Ridgefield just as well, or St. Helens or even McMinnville or Woodburn.

    Frankly I am tired of the mentality that we have had – spend a billion here, and create an environment in which everyone else gets to experience the feeling of “wow, I wish I had light rail because the busses suck.” This type of planning also doesn’t lend itself to truly regional planning – it’s more bits-and-pieces of planning. Just as Metro’s 2040 Growth Concept doesn’t just focus on, say, East County – why do our regional transit plans not include regional transit?

    That $1B figure, that 1/7000th of the bank bailout? That could buy 1,300 60′ hybrid-electric articulated busses. That would be enough to double TriMet’s bus fleet in size, plus an additional 40% in capacity per bus. We would be able to have 10 minute headway service on the major routes. For an additional couple of million we’d be able to build “streetcar-like” stops for each of these routes. Imagine the regional transit ridership growth you could achieve by doing that…versus building just one light rail line.

  13. Thanks JK for quoting conspiracy theories here. (We have now truly and completely departed from the topic of commuting patterns as presented in the episode of PBS’s “NOW”.)

    From the article you referenced:

    “An entirely alternative theory of oil formation has existed since the early 1950’s in Russia, almost unknown to the West. It claims conventional American biological origins theory is an unscientific absurdity that is un-provable.”

    […]

    “Western geologists do not bother to offer hard scientific proof of fossil origins. They merely assert as a holy truth. The Russians have produced volumes of scientific papers, most in Russian. The dominant Western journals have no interest in publishing such a revolutionary view. Careers, entire academic professions are at stake after all.”

    Would you care to lay out for us this new, alternative theory, of fossil (oil) origins, and why this is scientifically-superior and better-documented than traditional “western” theories of hydrocarbon origin?

    Finally, and most importantly, how does this alternative theory affect the commuting patterns described in the episode of “NOW” on PBS? (Have you watched the episode of NOW on PBS?)

    Thanks,
    Bob R.

  14. Russia production in early 2008 (when oil was over $100/gallon and anyone in their right mind that had access to oil was selling it,) was less than their production in 2007:
    http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ipsr/t11c.xls
    2007 Average: 9,437,000 barrels/day
    2008 Average: 9,335,000 barrels/day
    If they’ve figured out some trick to drill oil wells that never go dry, then why did their production fall?

    It looks more like they’ve been doing maintenance on the wells that peaked at 11M barrels/day back in the late 1980s, (back before USSR collapsed and Russia defaulted on their bonds. Humm, economic crisis tend to follow countries peaking, I wonder if the world peaking might be followed by a world economic crisis?) and less like they’ve figured out how to drill deeper into the earth…

  15. “how does this alternative theory affect the ommuting patterns described in the episode of “NOW” on PBS?”

    Cheap oil = less demand for government subsidized transit. Eliminates one more excuse for railroading Portland

  16. Cheap oil = less demand for government subsidized transit. Eliminates one more excuse for railroading Portland

    So you didn’t actually watch the episode, then?

  17. Bob R. wrote: (We have now truly and completely departed from the topic of commuting patterns as presented in the episode of PBS’s “NOW”.)

    Thanks, Bob, for getting us back on track :-)

    In the Portland metro area there is only one real good long distance corridor for commuting – I-5 from Portland to Salem. (Very little traffic travels east past Troutdale on I-84, there are too many on/offs on the Sunset with short and long distances involved, and there’s a question as to where Yamhill County residents commute to.)

    So, let’s take a look at I-5, between Wilsonville and Charbonneau.

    2007 – 122,300 ADT
    2006 – 121,900 ADT
    2005 – 120,300 ADT
    2004 – 114,200 ADT
    2003 – 114,000 ADT
    2002 – 112,000 ADT
    2001 – 110,000 ADT
    2000 – 108,000 ADT

    2008 numbers won’t be available until June of next year.

    Now, why there is such a large jump between 2004 and 2005, I don’t know – a change in counting methodology, possibly…?

    What we can see is a steady increase in traffic each year, including 2005-2007.

  18. Erik H. Can you point me toward a source for Average Daily Trips for I-84, and other segments of I-5?
    Thanks

  19. I would only be favorable to increased drilling (and the obvious benefit of low prices) as an emergency measure to stimulate the national economy. It seems like changing to alternative fuels or modes of power would benfit us all. Automakers–both foreign and domestic–seem to be getting more devious at figuring out how to make cars that are trickier to repair and use costly parts. My old Ford Van needed a mere $75 repair to the C4 automatic when it had 150,000 miles. Many cars these days would require a rebuild in the thousands. Not that an all eletric vehicle, for example, couldn’t have roblems too. But at least you could take it to one shop!

    Whatever alternatives come up, I hope they get easier to figure out and fix! But why should we switch out of petroleum fuels? We need the stuff for other products, too. There are 4000 products made in this modern age from petroleum—-Yeah…if we run out we can quickly find other sources for automotive power. But what about all the other products our industry uses and produces. Don’t we need to save an affordable supply for that, too?

  20. Paul Greenlee wrote: Can you point me toward a source for Average Daily Trips

    Absolutely.

    http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/TD/TDATA/tsm/tvt.shtml#Traffic_Volume_Tables

    Note that when you are using these documents, the “highways” use ODOT’s numbering scheme which is DIFFERENT than publicly posted route numbers. There is a “highway/route cross reference” document that will help you, but here’s the important ones:

    Highway 1 is also known as Interstate 5/Pacific Highway
    Highway 2 is Interstate 84, Columbia River Highway (further east Highway 2 becomes U.S. 730, and Interstate 84 becomes the Old Oregon Trail Highway.)
    Highway 3 is Oregon 43, the Oswego Highway
    Highway 26 is U.S. 26, the Mt. Hood Highway, from the Ross Island Bridge to Warm Springs Junction at Oregon 35.
    Highway 29 is Oregon 8 between U.S. 26 and Oregon 47, and Oregon 47 between Oregon 8 and Oregon 99W (the Tualatin Valley Highway)
    Highway 40 is Oregon 10, the Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway, between Oregon 217 and Raleigh Hills
    Highway 47 is U.S. 26, the Sunset Highway, from U.S. 101 to I-405.
    Highway 61 is Interstate 405, the Stadium Freeway
    Highway 64 is Interstate 205, alternately known as the East Portland Freeway or the Veterans Memorial Highway
    Highway 68 is Oregon 213, the Cascade Highway North. More commonly known as 82nd Avenue, between I-205 and the Portland Airport.
    Highway 81 is Oregon 99E, the Pacific Highway East, between Hawthorne Boulevard and I-5 at North Salem, as well as a segment from I-5 to Lombard Avenue in North Portland.
    Highway 91 is Oregon 99W from Clay Street to Oregon 99, then Oregon 99 in Junction City to I-5 in Springfield. Includes the Steel Bridge and the Denver Avenue ramp in North Portland from Columbia Slough to I-5.
    Highway 92 is U.S. 30, the Lower Columbia River Highway, from I-405 to U.S. 101 at the Megler Bridge.

    Highways numbered 12X are Multnomah County local highways (there are only two of them); 14X are Washington County highways, 15X are Yamhill County, 16X are Marion County, 17X are Clackamas County. Highway 100 is the Historic Columbia River Highway. These are all highways within the ODOT state highway system, maintained by ODOT, but serve a “local” function. These highways include Highway 144, the Beaverton-Tigard Highway, also known as Oregon 217.

  21. “We need the stuff for other products, too. There are 4000 products made in this modern age from petroleum—-Yeah…if we run out we can quickly find other sources for automotive power. But what about all the other products our industry uses and produces. Don’t we need to save an affordable supply for that, too?”

    If we run out of “natural” oil, we can just make it from any source of carbon and hydrogen. Hitler did it, Sasol is doing it and we can do it. Unless the politicians stop us.

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