RTP Gets Lukewarm Reviews from Progressive Transportation Advocates


Metro has concluded the public hearings on the 2035 Regional Transportation Plan and let’s just say that the progressives aren’t turning hand-stands.

The Bicycle Transportation Alliance likes the bike projects but isn’t happy about the balance of auto projects in the mix.

There are also many strong elements to the RTP, and the BTA believes that Metro is making incremental progress towards achieving a balanced and healthy transportation system. However we must again stress that this incremental progress, on the whole, is not sufficient towards changing the overall reliance on automobiles and the associated consequences, including poor environment, high system and user costs, increased travel time and predictability, inactive and unhealthy population, and inequity of access for the total population.

And Coalition for a Livable Future’s testimony was along the same lines:

Mara Gross, policy director for the Coalition for a Livable Future, came to Metro to talk about climate change. Though she was generally supportive of the recommendations, she said they included too much focus on new roads and not enough emphasis on transportation choice.

“Roads are expensive, and it doesn’t leave much money for other needs,” Gross said.

Radical transformation to deal with Peak Oil and Climate Changes does not appear to be in our immediate future…

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22 responses to “RTP Gets Lukewarm Reviews from Progressive Transportation Advocates”

  1. It seems BTA is complaining that Metro sets particular goals concerning transit mix, land use, etc–and then local governments, in submitting projects, are ignoring those goals and instead wanting to build roads.

    The interesting question is: Which cities are those? Certainly, there are quite a few cities within Metro’s jurisdiction which rather dislike Metro and all its liberal socialist plots. :) Others may well simply be constrained (by money or imagination), and want to clean up the chokepoints in their existing auto infrastructure. And many suburban communities are so auto-dependent that providing useful levels of transit or anything else would be a highly expensive undertaking.

  2. Chris:Radical transformation to deal with Peak Oil and Climate Changes does not appear to be in our immediate future…
    JK: God, I hope not. Superstition and ignorance have no place in public policy.

    In order to believe in peak oil, you have to ignore economics, chemistry and history:

    economics (supply goes up with price)
    That is why we have recently had a series of dramatic announcements of new discoveries – the recent high oil prices have brought much new exploration which has found more supplies. (Just like we all learned in Econ 101 – you did pay attention, didn’t you?)

    chemistry (you can make the stuff)
    The Fischer–Tropsch (see fischer-tropsch.org) process and the Bergius process, both used from the 1930s on, make liquid fuels form coal. Methane instead of coal can also be used a starting point. Sasol has been producing commercial quantities of oil from both processes for years.

    History (Hitler ran a war on manmade oil)..
    The Role of Synthetic Fuel In World War II Germany Said this: “The percentage of synthetic fuels compared to the yield from all sources grew from 22 percent to more than 50 percent by 1943″
    (airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1981/jul-aug/becker.htm)

    As to climate, I’ll just remind you that key IPCC section author, Briffa, just got caught cherry picking data (the whole data set showed nothing, so he selected a part that showed warming) after he had to reveal the data after ten years of refusing to let anyone see his data. Around the same time the CRU, a major IPCC influence, claimed to have destroyed data after repeatedly refusing to supply copies of it. (Don’t look behind the curtain!!)

    Thanks
    JK

  3. JK –

    As usual, your post ignores the long-standing environmental problems of making oil from coal (it’s dirty), and the CO2 implications. The rest of your points about oil are broad-based generalizations that don’t address any of the particular data from studies suggesting we are approaching peak oil. You lead your comment with accusations of “superstition and ignorance”, and yet provide no actual science.

    But that’s fine, it’s a blog comment, and there’s nothing particularly untrue about the examples you cite (it’s just that they don’t prove/disprove anything).

    However, more worrisome (and tiresome), is your final assertion:

    As to climate, I’ll just remind you that key IPCC section author, Briffa, just got caught cherry picking data (the whole data set showed nothing, so he selected a part that showed warming) after he had to reveal the data after ten years of refusing to let anyone see his data.

    Not true:

    My attention has been drawn to a comment by Steve McIntyre on the Climate Audit website relating to the pattern of radial tree growth displayed in the ring-width chronology “Yamal” that I first published in Briffa (2000). The substantive implication of McIntyre’s comment (made explicitly in subsequent postings by others) is that the recent data that make up this chronology (i.e. the ring-width measurements from living trees) were purposely selected by me from among a larger available data set, specifically because they exhibited recent growth increases.

    This is not the case. The Yamal tree-ring chronology (see also Briffa and Osborn 2002, Briffa et al. 2008) was based on the application of a tree-ring processing method applied to the same set of composite sub-fossil and living-tree ring-width measurements provided to me by Rashit Hantemirov and Stepan Shiyatov which forms the basis of a chronology they published (Hantemirov and Shiyatov 2002). In their work they traditionally applied a data processing method (corridor standardisation) that does not preserve evidence of long timescale growth changes. My application of the Regional Curve Standardisation method to these same data was intended to better represent the multi-decadal to centennial growth variations necessary to infer the longer-term variability in average summer temperatures in the Yamal region: to provide a direct comparison with the chronology produced by Hantemirov and Shiyatov.

    Further discussion of this, and other smears, complete with pretty charts and graphs, here.

    As you’ve been told repeatedly, this is NOT a debate-of-existence-of-global-warming blog. There’s plenty of those, as I’m sure you are aware. *Just* as health policy blog should not have to explain/debate/defend the foundations of evolution every time the evolution of a virus is discussed. It’s a pointless distraction.

    You came in here and dropped a smear against Briffa, so I posted the easily-found refutation from the man himself. That’s the end of the useless debate for this thread.

  4. Just saw a BBC video about a Chinese electric car that they claim will go 250 miles before recharging. They’re coming. You won’t convince me to ride ten miles on a bicycle in the pouring rain.

  5. Ron, I don’t expect everyone to ride a bike in the pouring rain. I actually kind of enjoy it if I can shower afterward (not that its not like a shower). This isn’t a zero sum game. Its not either car or bike its the option to use something other than a car for those trips that don’t necessitate it. I’m not going to ride my bike to Costco, but if I forgot to buy onions for the dinner we are preparing should I have to drive to the store that is 1/3rd of a mile away.

  6. Please…… I didn’t say riding a bicycle for a third of a mile was wrong. Nor did I say that YOU shouldn’t ride ten miles—or thirty if that’s what you want to do. I was just expressing a personal opinion.

    Some people get a lot of exercise jumping to conclusions!:) Bicycle riders get old, too.

  7. This whole bike thing is one of the great examples of propaganda.

    Very few people actually use bikes as a proportion to the total population that is “out” in the world.

    It’s become an obsession in this city and a tool to get people to visit here.

    Put me down on the list of people who are sick and tired of having to hear about this as a top priority in this city.

    This city should stop looking at the trivial and start focusing on some real issues that will help its real citizens, not just the tiny fringe on bicycles.

  8. Al, according to the Census Bureau, the % of folks who commute by bike in Portland went from 4% to 6% last year. That’s hardly a fringe. In some neighborhoods it’s in double digits.

    Or do you think the U.S. Census Bureau is part of the Portland bike propaganda conspiracy?

    Bikes represent the absolute lowest cost way to provide mobility without fossil fuels. NOT focusing on growing this mode would be wasting money.

  9. And, according to the BTA’s just released survey, 90% of Portlanders own a bike, so the potential for getting more and more trips to be made on a bike is high.

    Al, I don’t know about the rest of the world, but SE Portland is crawling with cyclists. The newly remodeled Fred Meyer at 39th/Hawthorne has maxed out it’s bike parking capacity. Other businesses are asking the city for dedicated bike parking in front of their stores. I think PBOT’s biggest problem with bikes is not being able to build infrastructure fast enough to meet the demand.

    And, building infrastructure for cycling is by far the least cost of all the travel modes.

  10. 6% is definitely a FRINGE Chris!

    I have nothing against bicycles, I love bicycles, I used to ride mine all the time till it got stolen.

    The amount of time and effort that is put into this 6% is not something that deserves it!

    For crying out loud Chris, I just walked down to the 24hour club from my place and the streets were a mess!

    They canceled the leaf pickup? Something that actually benefited the entire population of Portland?

    We need to focus on more than bicycles and green living in this city!

    All that stuff is great, but there are other things that need attention that are getting ignored!

    I love bikes! I got nothing against them! But add up all the staff time and money spent on this stuff and we could be providing some real services that all of Portland can use, not just that 6%.

  11. And by the way, by canceling the leaf pickup they just put into harms way every single bicyclist that uses bike lanes covered with wet leaves and floods from blocked storm drains.

  12. add up all the staff time and money spent on this stuff

    Al, if you add it up you get about 1% of PBOT’s budget. So that 6% of the population only get 1% of the resources. Why aren’t you crying out for justice for the beleaguered minority?

  13. And by the way, by canceling the leaf pickup they just put into harms way every single bicyclist that uses bike lanes covered with wet leaves and floods from blocked storm drains.

    On this point we completely agree.

    I lived in Corvallis for about 15 years, and I became spoiled by the city’s frequent street sweeping and leaf-cleanup (and you could just toss your Christmas Tree to the curb, too — minus ornaments) … all things considered, due primarily to the university, Corvallis is a pretty bike-friendly town.

    (An aside: I don’t recall the year, I believe it was in the late ’80s — it snowed suddenly and unseasonably, and for the most part cars, transit, and bikes were useless for a few days, but I was able to rent cross country skis from the student activities center, and was able to get all over town, right in the middle of the road. :-) )

  14. The I5 to 99W Connector is a one billion dollar project & just like the Boston Big Dig — the bike and pedestrian facilities will be left off of the map because the BIG NEW ROAD was too expensive and caused much more environmental impact than originally thought. ANYONE FOR LOTS MORE VMTs?? How are these ideas sustainable. We’re building more HUMMERS instead of hybrids:)

  15. The I5 to 99W Connector is a one billion dollar project…

    So is the Newberg-Dundee Bypass, which will cut through low-income neighborhoods of both cities so a few people heading down to a casino or a winery can get there faster.

    We had he chance to say no… however this was tied to the vehicle registration fee increase, which also allowed for the new Multnomah County and Clackamas County local rates slated for Sellwood Bridge replacement.

    So, because this was sold as “progressive” and “liberal,” none of the environmentalist or mass transit-supporting groups staged an opposition referendum campaign. Because the fee increase included mostly road projects, the conservative groups didn’t launch any real opposition referendum campaign.

    In my very biased opinion, the way to stop further expressway projects is for people to stop being so complacent whenever new light rail trains and lines come off the pike and start caring about transportation spending and service in their own neighborhood, while creating overarching regional groups to advocate for the big picture, but on behalf of riders and those who will really use the system, not just some of us (myself included) who like to draw lines on maps and say “this seems like a good idea, hopefully someone will ride it.”

  16. Al, if you add it up you get about 1% of PBOT’s budget. So that 6% of the population only get 1% of the resources. Why aren’t you crying out for justice for the beleaguered minority?

    1%??????

    That 1% gets 99.9% of the publicity apparently.

    Cause that’s all we ever hear about from the city politicos.

    Bicycles,Bicycles paths,bicycle lanes, BICYCLES BICYCLES AHHHH!

  17. Al, you’re right. Take a look at the O “comment Ranking” anytime anything having to do with bike lanes etc gets posted. The article goes straight to the top. Just because something gets a lot of pub and press doesn’t mean it is getting a corresponding amount of money. Filling potholes is not sexy and with the exception of a recent photo-op, rarely gets press. Same with lots of other “normal” transportation topics.

  18. Again, I got nothing against bicycles, I love bicycles,I think they should close whole roads and make them bikes only!

    But I want the leaf program put back into operation. How dare this city stop a program that was so useful for everybody, pedestrians, bicycles, and automobiles! What’s wrong with this city government anyway? Have all of them completely lost their minds!?

  19. Al, Did I miss something? Was P-BOT in charge of the leaf pick-up program?

    There are so many bureaucracies and levels of government around here I have no idea who is in charge of anything.

    Just check out this TAX BILL!

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