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Help Sam Spend Your Money
Commissioner Sam is going to ask his Portland City Council Colleagues to put some of Portland’s one-time surplus funds into the backlog of road paving and other transportation improvements (with a safety focus). Sam is looking for suggestions on projects to include in the request. Sam’s missive is below. Head over to CommissionerSam.com to add…
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Breakdown in Communications?
Yesterday’s O has lengthy piece on the divide between PDOT management and the road paving crews in the Bureau of Maintenance. The argument boils down to the central office folks saying (and the Auditor agreeing) that best practices (and in some cases State law) are not being followed, while the crews say they know best…
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Anatomy of a Crash
Sam Adams apparently has some concept of the limitations of his power as Transportation Commissioner. Last week he convened what he’s calling an “operator’s steering group” of all the agencies that have something to with operating transportation in the City of Portland. I scored an invitation, I’m not sure whether it was for my Streetcar…
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Smarter Roads
I had the opportunity to attend a breakfast meeting on Friday, convened by Gail Achterman, a member of the Oregon Transportation Commission. The subject of the meeting was Intelligent Transportation Systems, the whole concept of getting more capacity from our roads and transportation system by using information technology for better coordination and communication. The headline…
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Transportation and Education
An article in Sunday’s O (Buses eat up classroom dollars) outlines how 5% of the state’s education spending goes to buses, and the way reimbursement from the state is handled, there are few incentives to try to make this more efficient. The Oregon Department of Education picks up the tab on most every dollar school…