[PRCo] Re: A summer trip through the west

[Vigrass, Bill]

Hasn't there been complaints from developers about being prohibited from doing what they do best?   Haven't they complained that land within the urbanized area (served by LRT) has become too expensive? 
Is there any control on development outside the county?
Have we heard from Wendell Cox about this?
BillV.    curmudgeon 2/c.  

-----Original Message-----
From: Craig, Philip [mailto:pgcraig at bechtel.com]
Sent: Monday, July 29, 2002 9:04 AM
To: 'Fred Schneider '; 'Alexander D. Mitchell IV ';
'pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org '; 'Andrew Blumberg '; 'Art Ellis ';
'Arthur Schwartz '; 'AUREJOHN '; 'Bernie Orient '; 'Bill and Barbara
Gray '; 'bill middleton '; 'Bruce Bente '; 'bruce wells ';
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'; 'Daniel & Michele Lawrence BSM # 20 '; 'Dave Hamley '; 'Dennis Cramer
'; 'Dick Kotulak '; 'don duke '; 'Ed Lybarger '; 'edson l tennyson ';
'elmer fry '; 'F. van Dam en E.J. van Dam-van der Meer '; 'george gula
'; 'Glen Bottoms (TPM) '; 'Greg Walz '; 'harold geissenheimer '; 'Jack
May '; 'jack samuels '; 'Jeff King '; 'Jerry Kelly '; 'jim graebner ';
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'Justin Skrbin '; 'Kenneth Josephson '; 'kevin farrell '; 'Mac Sebree ';
'Mark Dawson '; 'mike taplin '; Craig, Philip; 'Peter Johansson '; 'ray
windle '; 'Rich Allman '; 'roy king '; 'Russell E Jackson '; 'scott
becker '; 'stan bowman '; 'tom hiser '; 'Tom Phillips '; Vigrass, Bill;
'Walt Keevil (E-mail) '
Subject: RE: A summer trip through the west


Fred:

RE "Weather stinking hot ... most days between 90 and 114 degrees Fahrenheit
except the day in San Francisco was in the high 70s.   I
believe it was the World War Two era news commentator Ernie Pyle who
quipped, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco."

The Mark Twain's Quotations reports:

SAN FRANCISCO

For all the folks who may have landed on this page seeking the source of the
quote:

"The coldest winter I ever saw was the summer I spent in San Francisco."
 
- This quote has been attributed to Mark Twain, but until the attribution
can be verified, the quote should not be regarded as authentic.

Perhaps not Mark Twain [Samuel Clemens] but someone before Ernie Pyle most
probably made this observation first.

As to your comments about Portland viz:

"Portland - a great traction city which I concluded happens because there 
are so few blacks that the whites continued to shop downtown instead of 
fleeing to a suburban mall.  The railway just capitalized on what was 
already there ... stores, restaurants, theaters.  Don't blame the 
messenger here.  It is the only reason I can conceive for the 
unqualified success of the light rail lines. I'm not the racist here. 
The usual rules simply don't apply."

Having worked in Portland in 1978 on planning for the Banfield [East Side]
LRT Line, I have a different perspective.  Portland had its quota shopping
malls, homogeneous suburbs and other aspects of suburban sprawl in the
1970s.  It was headed downhill and it knew it.  What is different about
Portland is that it made a conscious decision not to be destroyed by them as
a place to live, work and enjoy by them.

I would trace its success turnaround to three things:

1)  The decision to build the Transit Mall along Fifth and Sixth Avenues,
which while a pair of one-way streets set aside for buses and local [not
through] vehicular traffic with widened and landscaped sidewalks, began the
process for cementing in Downtown Portland as still worthwhile destination.
It stemmed what otherwise would have been the collapse of the business
district.  And because the business district survive, it periphery was
stablized and then improved as an attractive place to live. [Having
"Fareless Square" based on the Transit Mall helped by making it possible to
take short rides within downtown without having to pay a fare.]

2)  Cancellation of further Interstate Highway construction within the city
and transferring the Federal funds [without much support in the beginning
from UMTA] to a) building the East Side LRT Line, largely on a right-of-way
tucked in between Interstate 80 and the Union Pacific Railroad.

3)  The establishment of limits on growth within Multnomah County which
channeled new housing construction in a way that, while ever accessible to
the automobile has a viable transit alternative in the form of LRT and a
good bus system.

What you see today in Portland's vibrant character simply did not exist 30
years ago.  It took a lot work to get to where the city is today.  Old Town,
along First and Second Avenues, booms today as an "in" place full of
restaurants and shops but back in 1978 - when I worked there - was skid row.
In large measure, what changed it was the LRT made it accessible to up-scale
customers in ever greater numbers.  The more came - whether by train or by
automobile - the more the restaurants and merchants prospered and the more
that they invested in a good and growning thing.

In essence, what Portland did was to look back at the lessons learned in the
late 1800s and apply them again.  Lo and behold, with adaptions to modern
times, they still worked.  And one of the ingredients in the success formula
was light rail transit.  It was a major contributor to success; not a result
of it.

The key ingredient in Portland's success, in my judgment, is that it
possessed an enlightened population and skillful politicians who saw what
needed being done and accomplished it, a rare mix in late 20th/early 21st
century America and even rarer result.

Regards,

Phil