[PRCo] Story of the little train that can’t

[Jim Holland]

 I have always liked Portland and on the announcement in the 1980s that they
were building light rail, I thought:   """Nice, but so what  --  small
sleepytown - what could it do?!"""       I Was Very Pleasantly Surprized 
-- Fantastic system from the word Go!!       They did their homework which
resulted in an extremely well built system with much attention to detail and
emphasis on operations and results.       As the system grew communities
wereplanned around stations while growth beyond a certain perimeter was
restricted to keep open space.

This article indicates that the desired results of more people using transit
with such development has not been achieved.     In fact, Portland fits the
national average of 3% using public transit!!

As Portland has grown and become more affluent I have become less enamored
with the town  --  such growth often spawns reckless leisure behavior that
encroaches on the rights and privileges of others with near total
abandon.       Altitude problems  --  don't like that  --  those are the
operative words around the Bay Area and I go to Portland to escape the
same.      I like a more industrious Portland but one which could still
relaxand enjoy life without interfering with or hurting others.

A recent trip to Portland found me stuck in massive traffic jams The Whole
Time  --  even on the weekends when bikers have successfully lobbied to have
Interstates and Bridges shut down for their exclusive usage.     It was
insanity.     I didn't spend Any Time In Portland but rather went to
Washington to explore and see the Columbia River Gorge from their
perspective  --  Breath takingly Beautiful!     Saw MAX from a distance 
(Very Nice to see that the Bombardier cars are still operating  -- 
ExcellentEquipment)  and haven't even seen let alone ridden the local
streetcars in Portland  --  some other time  --  mebbee!! 


Portland has used POP fare on the MAX  (Metropolitan Area Express)  trains
since opening in 1986  --  donut know about the beeses.     (Sacramento, San
Jose, San Diego, and as someone mentioned, all those systems built as new
from 1970s forward have used POP fare  --  Quite A Few Systems in U.S.A.
alone.)

With the opening of new MAX lines Tri-Met has rerouted buses to be feeders
torail and this makes a longer trip for many people who were used to the one
seat ride into town on their bus  --  but at least these people were still
riding.


http://www.examiner.com/a
-901418~Story_of_the_little_train_that_can_t.html[1]

O-R:::::

http://tinyurl.com/2ww92y[2]

SF Examiner

Story of the little train that can’t


SAN FRANCISCO  - ‘Transit-oriented development” is the buzz word for
policiesthat promote high-density, mixed-use growth clustered around mass
transit lines instead of more traditional settlements along suburban
highways. TOD is much favored among urban planners who assume that people
wholive and work near rail lines won’t use cars to get around. That’s the
theory, but it doesn’t always work in practice, as folks in Portland, Ore.,
have discovered. 

Portland has been a TOD leader since 1973, and won numerous awards for
strictly limiting growth in outlying sections of the city — the so-called
growth boundary — aggressive rezoning of existing neighborhoods and
significant investment in light rail. But, as former Portland resident
RandalO’Toole points out, after spending billions of dollars on TOD, there
islittle evidence that Portland residents have significantly changed their
travel habits. 

In fact, by 2005 less than half (38 percent) of Portland residents who
commuted downtown were taking mass transit to work. 

“More than 97 percent of all motorized passenger travel in the Portland area
is by automobile,” writes O’Toole, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, in
“Debunking Portland: The City That Doesn’t Work.” TOD has had the net effect
of taking “less than 1 percent of cars off the road.”


Portland was also one of the first cities in the nation to take advantage of
a federal law that allowed it to spend highway funds on mass transit,
including a no-bid contract with San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp. But
littlewas done to ease the traffic congestion caused by tens of thousands of
former city residents who moved to Vancouver, Wash., and other areas outside
the growth boundary in their quest for affordable housing. “Rather than
preventing sprawl, Portland’s planning has to some degree accelerated it,”
O’Toole maintains. 

Despite huge subsidies — including 10 years of property tax waivers —
Portland still has trouble filling all the vacant street-level shops along
its light-rail line. And after diverting billions of tax dollars from
schoolsand other essential services to subsidize TOD projects, it turns out
that they “only work when they include plenty of parking.” For cars, that
is.

All of this is a cautionary tale for our region’s urban planners, who
fortunately have a much more extensive multi-agency mass transit network to
work with. Comparisons of problems shared by two metropolitan areas don’t
always suggest the same solutions, but let’s hope that the future of
commuting in an already congested Bay Area doesn’t mirror Portland’s
unexpectedly excessive car-dependent reality. 



--- Links ---
   1 http://www.examiner.com/a-901418~Story_of_the_little_train_that_can_t.html
   2 http://tinyurl.com/2ww92y