What Moses Had in Mind for Portland


That’s Robert Moses, not the biblical prophet.

Following up on their “Dead Freeways” piece, the folks at the Merc have managed to find an online copy of Robert Moses original “Portland Improvement” plan from 1943. I’ve only had a chance to skim, but even at a cursory level, it’s fascinating.


12 responses to “What Moses Had in Mind for Portland”

  1. It’s worth noting that there is probably more in there about parks we should build than there is about freeways.

  2. Actually, so far – having only read about half of it thus far – it is actually not all that bad. And many parts of it make a lot of sense, and actually seems like a pretty good plan.

    Remember, at that time, they did not have the benefit of 50 years of experience with interstates. They did not have the same data and evidence to look at to understand their true impact. And I have even read parts which actually were proposed but never implemented – and if they had been implemented as proposed the negatives of the planned “thruways” would have been mitigated. It looks like the plans called for a lot more crossings of the thruways, and much better buffeting and landscaping along the edges of the thruways. One of the largest criticisms of the interstates built through existing cities is their devastation to the neighborhoods. This plan actually had recommendations to minimize that impact which it looks like we didn’t ever follow.

    The plan was opposed to widening streets, and also called for good bridges. One of my favorite quotes from page 30: “there is no excuse for ugliness; the engineer should realize that bridges are built to last a long time and he should spare no effort to see that they are appropriately designed and in good taste”.

    He planned for reforestation and playgrounds and all sorts of good stuff. It is easy to use hindsight to demonize this plan, but it didn’t really seem all that bad. How will our recent plans look in 50 years?

  3. I-405 is one of the most-crossed Interstates I can think of, with overpasses every block for some stretches.

    It still rips the neighborhoods it passes through, though probably less so than I-205 from Lents to Gateway, or I-5 along what used to be called Minnesota Street.

  4. Moses was a visionary of his time.. He saw the need to separate faster moving through traffic from slower moving neighborhood traffic.

    Its too bad Portland adopted the “lets have heavy traffic and congestion on all streets because it might boost transit ridership 1%” method of controlling traffic.

  5. Moses saw the need to separate lots of other things as well–goals that had utterly nothing to do with transit engineering.

  6. Scotty, I live near I-405 and don’t really feel it tears apart the neighborhood, one block of walking over/under a freeway isn’t that big of a deal to me though, and at least it’s mostly below grade.

    That said, I’d still love to see some park decks or buildings built over it. It seems like ODOT could probably find developers if they were willing to give away a long-term lease on the over-freeway construction rights.

  7. Something that struck me when I read a copy in the Multnomah County Library 35 years ago: The only reference to Portland’s city bus, trolleybus, and streetcar systems was an off-hand remark about converting the Council Crest trolley right-of-way to park access for automobiles.

    Another thing was that it did not discuss the inevitable result of a one-way grid downtown — the elimination of streetcars. I guess that was a foregone conclusion.

    When I later read Robert Caro’s book about Moses, “The Power Broker” I found out how Moses looked down on buses and bus riders, to the point of deliberately making the bridges across his new “parkways” in New York too low for buses to fit under.

    What Oregon has now, that we didn’t have then, is a Statewide Planning Goal that requires public involvement in planning. Although the planning elite (both bureaucrats and consultants) have a lot to offer, hindsight suggests that broader public involvement might have prevented some of the mistakes that resulted from the plans of that era.

  8. Anthony:Moses was a visionary of his time.. He saw the need to separate faster moving through traffic from slower moving neighborhood traffic.

    Its too bad Portland adopted the “lets have heavy traffic and congestion on all streets because it might boost transit ridership 1%” method of controlling traffic.

    ws:This is a baseless accusation. Any facts/observations to back this claim up?

  9. When I later read Robert Caro’s book about Moses, “The Power Broker” I found out how Moses looked down on buses and bus riders, to the point of deliberately making the bridges across his new “parkways” in New York too low for buses to fit under.

    I’ve found that claim odd since I read The Power Broker, since most of the roads that didn’t have clearance for buses were designed before buses had really caught on as a form of local transportation. His later roadways (such as the BQE, CBE, and Staten Island Expressway) all can accommodate buses just fine though.

    Also keep in mind there already were a number of railways and subway lines connecting areas of the city and the suburbs, as well as inter-city, and that buses were not necessarily needed (or even very useful) on these parkways, and higher bridges would have added to costs as well as damaged the aesthetics of some of the natural areas that the parkways were built to serve.

    The likelihood that Cato was exaggerating Moses’ problem with buses is increased even further to me by the statements in the 1943 Portland plan that a new long-haul bus terminal in Portland was badly needed.

    The Power Broker was a great read, but a number of Cato’s assertions in the book were at the least a bit questionable. Not to say Moses didn’t do a number of shady things, but it does seem Cato went into writing it with an anti-Moses bias and was not going to let a good story get slowed down.

  10. Some nuggets:
    “[Portland] is marred by the unnecessary ugliness…For example, the Union Station”

    “There have been suggestions that…repairs and readjustments in the Union Station are all that is required. We believe that funds expended in this way would be wasted and that an entirely new station should be built”

    “The largest single development, however, at Vanport City, seems to us to be destined
    for a longer life.”

  11. Some nuggets:
    “[Portland] is marred by the unnecessary ugliness…For example, the Union Station”

    “There have been suggestions that…repairs and readjustments in the Union Station are all that is required. We believe that funds expended in this way would be wasted and that an entirely new station should be built”

    “The largest single development, however, at Vanport City, seems to us to be destined
    for a longer life.”

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