Advocacy & Safety - Portlanders - is this true?

Found this (http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8463) today while doing some background reading on the now infamous (in BikeForum world anyways) ADC.


Though many people consider Portland, Oregon, a model of 21st–century urban planning, the region's integrated land–use and transportation plans have greatly reduced the area's livability. To halt urban sprawl and reduce people's dependence on the automobile, Portland's plans use an urban–growth boundary to greatly increase the area's population density, spend most of the region's transportation funds on various rail transit projects, and promote construction of scores of high–density, mixed–use developments.

When judged by the results rather than the intentions, the costs of Portland's planning far outweigh the benefits. Planners made housing unaffordable to force more people to live in multifamily housing or in homes on tiny lots. They allowed congestion to increase to near–gridlock levels to force more people to ride the region's expensive rail transit lines. They diverted billions of dollars of taxes from schools, fire, public health, and other essential services to subsidize the construction of transit and high–density housing projects.

Those high costs have not produced the utopia planners promised. Far from curbing sprawl, high housing prices led tens of thousands of families to move to Vancouver, Washington, and other cities outside the region's authority. Far from reducing driving, rail transit has actually reduced the share of travel using transit from what it was in 1980. And developers have found that so–called transit–oriented developments only work when they include plenty of parking.

Portland–area residents have expressed their opposition to these plans by voting against light rail and density and voting for a property–rights measure that allows landowners to claim either compensation or waivers for land–use rules passed since they purchased their property. Opposition turned to anger when a 2004 scandal revealed that an insider network known as the "light–rail mafia" had manipulated the planning process to direct rail construction contracts and urban–renewal subsidies to themselves.

These problems are all the predictable result of a process that gives a few people enormous power over an entire urban area. Portland should dismantle its planning programs, and other cities that want to maintain their livability would do well to study Portland as an example of how not to plan.

Here's the PDF (http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-596.pdf), and the HTML (http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/html/pa-596/pa-596index.html) of the full paper. If I find the time and the stomach, I'm going to try and give it a read tonight... (my quick scan shows its fairly biased)



What is the feedback from on the ground? I love Portland, from visiting about 7 years ago... and even tried to relocate there as I really admired many of the bold steps the city was taking to handle 'growing up'. I miss it, and hope to get back soon.

What are your thoughts?

It's a crock. Nothing more than pro-sprawl, pro-automobile propaganda from a pro-sprawl, pro automobile "astroturf" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing) group. It's a supreme moment of irony that the author's name is "tool."

It's a crock. Nothing more than pro-sprawl, pro-automobile propaganda from a pro-sprawl, pro automobile "astroturf" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing) group. It's a supreme moment of irony that the author's name is "tool."

love the astroturf reference. i'll have to remember that... :)

Housing is getting more expensive here. And the roads are getting more congested here. But it's not because planners are trying to make housing more expensive and roads more congested. It's because more people are moving here.

If anything, Portland is famous for trying to make the roads less congested by making them more bike-friendly, and by expanding public transit-- something that's happening as I type this...

I also think it's a crock. Housing costs in Portland have certainly risen in the last 20 years, as they have everywhere on the west coast, but housing in Portland is still more affordable that in either San Francisco to the south or Seattle to the north. Furthermore, light rail works; back in the 70's now ex-mayor and ex-governor Neil Goldschmidt led the fight to kill the Mount Hood freeway, which would have destroyed the wonderful neighborhood I now live in, and the city used the money to build the first light rail line instead. The light rail has been a tremendous success, expanding from one to three (soon to be four) lines, all with very strong ridership numbers. Traffic congestion is certainly on the rise, but again, not as bad as either San Francisco or Seattle.

It sounds to me like Randal O'toole has a sour grapes attitude, he's fled the city for the vastly less populated south coast. He made his reputation fighting Old Growth logging, which IMO was a good thing, but he's lost it with his support of the ADC.

The central city in Portland is a preautomobile city that grew up along streetcar lines with wonderful little neighborhoods and small local commercial districts. These older parts of town are fully built out, are eminently bikable and transit friendly, with no more room to add new roads or widen existing ones. Even with the urban growth boundary, it is the outlying suburban development that fuels local traffic congestion.

A much better resource than Randal O'Toole would be Gordon Price (http://www.pricetags.ca/), an urban planner and five term former Vancouver BC city councilor who speaks eloquently on the inability to ever build new roads fast enough to keep pace with the growth in the number of private motor vehicles added to the system each year. One of the wonderful things about Vancouver is that they successfully kept the interstate highways out of the central city, and it certainly hasn't prevented Vancouver from becoming probably the most vibrant, livable and economically important city on the entire west coast.

It sounds to me like Randal O'toole has a sour grapes attitude, he's fled the city for the vastly less populated south coast. He made his reputation fighting Old Growth logging, which IMO was a good thing, but he's lost it with his support of the ADC.I'm almost embarassed now to have his forestry book on my shelf. And oddly, he's a cyclist, even though he's now devoting his energies to a pro-automobile, pro-sprawl agenda.


The light rail has been a tremendous success, expanding from one to three (soon to be four) lines, all with very strong ridership numbers. Not to mention the streetcars our probable next mayor proposes to lace the city with.

One battle cyclists may be facing here in portland will be to keep our access to light rail. There's some reason to believe that Trimet may be cutting bike access during rush hour, rather than expanding service. If they are considering that, it will be up to us to make sure that doesn't happen, and it will be up to us to make sure that cyclists instead have expanded access to light rail, whether it's by adding more cars to existing trains during rush hour (even if that means delaying auto traffic when a train is at the platform), or adding trains during rush hour. My personal preference would be one car per train with expanded space for bicycles.

Another Portlander who thinks it's a crock... If what he was saying about housing prices were true, then housing in greater Seattle and the Bay Area should be less expensive than Portland. After all, they place no barriers on sprawl. It's not. Hey, I'm not happy about the cost of real estate. I live in the same neighborhood as randya, and I will honestly tell you that I could not afford to own a house here. Thing is, housing costs seem to be high in all areas whose economy isn't in the toilet. Randall O'Toole lives in Bandon? That's one of the most economically depressed areas of the state. People move from Coos County and head north because there's no work to be had. In nearby Josephine County, they've shut the library system down, and are discussing closing the Sherriff's Department (the only law enforcement in the county!) and county jail because of lack of funds. He ought to be sweeping his own front porch before he attempts to sweep others'.

As for public transit here, it's not a perfect system. Please show me anything created by human beings that is "perfect". It's certainly better that most places in North America.

I also agree with randya - Gordon Price is the man!

I don't live in Portland, but I've spent several days in the past couple weeks traversing it by public transit, personal car, and bicycle. From what I've experienced, that is totally off base, while I don't know the ins and outs of the funding allocations and the politics involved with supposedly taking funds from other programs and stuff; from street level, what they are doing/trying to do works. The public transit is easy to navigate, clean and from what I saw on time. Housing in Portland, expensive? well, maybe if you live in Midwest there would be some sticker shock. Portland is easily one of the cheapest major cities that I know of.


Hey, I'm not happy about the cost of real estate. I live in the same neighborhood as randya, and I will honestly tell you that I could not afford to own a house here.

When you really think about it, who can afford to own a home? anywhere?

It's also more than ironic that Randal O'Toole helped kill the old growth forestry economy in the part of the state in which he now resides, and now he spends his time ragging on Portland*, the current economic engine of Oregon. Follow the money, Portlanders pay the taxes that keep the rest of the state afloat.

*or perhaps more specifically, on METRO, the tri-county regional government that is responsible for managing long-range planning within the urban growth boundary in the Portland metropolitan area

thanks all. what i thought. i spent an extended stay there in the late 90's and loved every minute of it. worked really hard to move out there, and some days really wish i had, especially with all the bike stuff going on... but, i ended up in a great place - similar spirit here in burlington, without the size... but we have alot of work to do.

i expected as much. aside from my personal feelings, the paper itself turned out to be very disappointing - even from a journalistic / research point of view. it certainly is clever, in the way it weaves many unrelated issues into the debate - but sad that it left me feeling sick to my stomach. (i sensed some foresterisms in the paper... must be a common tactic for defeating other's ideas) i fully realized its 'hit job' status when i read the passage about 'every american's dream of owning a home'... sure, people want safe places to live - but come on already - break out the apple pie, the veterans, kiss some babies, strike up the national anthem, and the line up the amputee dogs for the parade!

donnamb - we happen to own a town house here - but real estate here and in other places i've lived has always been pricey. we sort of wish we had waited a year. the market really deflated in the last 3 months - our neighbors keep dropping their price on a townhouse very similar to ours. we'll have to wait for a good rebound to get our money out now. i do think housing was in a bubble though. i am just finishing transitioning from working in the business (design / specialty construction of mid to high end 'green' homes - but i've had enough!) and i've been amazed these last 3 years as to what people were paying for!

As much as I like to dump on a lot of things about Portland, I think this would much more accurately be labeled a "polemic" than a "policy analysis".

For a variety of reasons (including the congestion and high housing prices mentioned in the article), I would not want to live in Portland. However, I'd live there long before I would in just about many other areas. The policies the article cites as causing Portland's problems are why the city is as nice as it is.

yeah, if fate moved the American Dream Coalition's 'bicyclist' affiliates like randall o'toole and john forester to the greater PDX area, they would probably choose to live in Beaverton and endlessly complain about the bike lanes on the Beaverton/Hillsdale highway - while driving past them in their automobiles.

Wait a minute, I didn't realize it was the Cato Institution. Libertarians, no wonder it seemed insane.

While I think most of it is a crock. I will say that while our housing prices are lower than Seattle and SFO, our incomes are also lower on average. So I think when comparing median housing prices to median incomes, Portland is somewhat expensive to live in. I'm still in shock with how much houses cost around here these days.

It is certainly a pro-automobile and pro-sprawl paper, but I would hardly call the Cato Institute an astroturfing organization. Astroturfing is a tactic where highly organized, well funded groups pretend to be grassroots activists; the Cato Institute doesn't pretend to be anything other than a libertarian Washington think tank.

The only mention of bikes in the article is Ikea's policy of giving free delivery to people who ride their bikes to the store. Cool.

On the article's subject, I support anti-sprawl policies, but the policies do have costs. Transportation planners ignore those costs at their peril. Making it difficult to get out of the city by car does increase housing prices in the city. Anti-spawl policies aren't the only factor, of course, but they are a factor.

Making it difficult to get out of the city by car does increase housing prices in the city. Anti-spawl policies aren't the only factor, of course, but they are a factor.
Regionally speaking, I have found it far more difficult to get out of urban and suburban Seattle by car than Portland. Last summer I was in a wedding and needed to get to a department store 5 miles from my friend's house in Bellevue. We're talking suburban wide arterials and super huge freeways here. The entire 10 mile round trip took me 2 hours - 20 minutes of which was actually spent in the mall. I even went at a time my friend said would be lower traffic. It was truly the car trip from hell. During that trip, the Sunday paper highlighted the last 4 neighborhoods in the Seattle "metro" area that had housing affordable for families that earn the median income. They were all 45-50 miles away from the center of Seattle. I just couldn't get over how 50 miles away is still considered the "metro area".

Every time I go up there, they're widening a road. Every time I go up there, the traffic is noticibly worse. Every time I go up there, I hear how owing a house is just about impossible. (I don't know a lot of wealthy people.) Sprawl sure has done a lot for them, it seems.

All I know is that the next time I go up there, the bike is coming with me. I don't care how many steep hills I have to walk it up.

While I think most of it is a crock. I will say that while our housing prices are lower than Seattle and SFO, our incomes are also lower on average. So I think when comparing median housing prices to median incomes, Portland is somewhat expensive to live in. I'm still in shock with how much houses cost around here these days.
This is one of the side effects of the urban growth boundary, and you can see a similar dynamic in other cities. That makes it hard to move in, which is a bad deal if you are not already there. That is one of the reasons I don't live there. However, unchecked and unplanned growth is far worse even if you are coming in from the outside.

This article is not worth the network bandwidth and hard disk space it consumes. Supposedly about planning, much of the "analysis" seems to relate to sex scandals and political intrigue. The good news is that it alerts us to things people could have hardly guessed, e.g.

For Goldschmidt, the big advantage of light rail was that it was expensive, easily costing enough to absorb most of the federal funds that had been allocated to the Mt. Hood Freeway

With all the things a governor has to worry about, who would have guessed that the real purpose of a major project was to simply divert and waste funds? I'll bet even Goldschmidt didn't know himself. The paper is only 18 pages long, so thankfully the author chose to dedicate the rest of the space to similar insights rather than wasting time presenting boring evidence.

This is one of the side effects of the urban growth boundary, and you can see a similar dynamic in other cities. That makes it hard to move in, which is a bad deal if you are not already there. That is one of the reasons I don't live there. However, unchecked and unplanned growth is far worse even if you are coming in from the outside.

This article is not worth the network bandwidth and hard disk space it consumes. Supposedly about planning, much of the "analysis" seems to relate to sex scandals and political intrigue. The good news is that it alerts us to things people could have hardly guessed, e.g.

For Goldschmidt, the big advantage of light rail was that it was expensive, easily costing enough to absorb most of the federal funds that had been allocated to the Mt. Hood Freeway

With all the things a governor has to worry about, who would have guessed that the real purpose of a major project was to simply divert and waste funds? I'll bet even Goldschmidt didn't know himself. The paper is only 18 pages long, so thankfully the author chose to dedicate the rest of the space to similar insights rather than wasting time presenting boring evidence.

I love that quote about the Mt. Hood highway... so if all the funds were absorbed by road building it would have been OK?

Look at some of the neighborhoods in NY that were destroyed by Robert Moses freeway building spree... I think Portland did the right thing, in the long term - which is still very much in front of us.

All I know is that the next time I go up there, the bike is coming with me. I don't care how many steep hills I have to walk it up.


Then make sure you don't come up on Amtrak, at least before 2008. The Talgo trains are out of service and they won't let you bring a bike on the Superliner. :mad:

I would say, if he wants to see what happens when unchecked growth occurs *without* such planning, come on over to Northern Virginia. We have about the worst traffic in the country (I think next to LA), and I'd bet we'll overtake them at some point. Our house prices have also gone up because, without the planned increase in density, not enough affordable housing can be built. Additionally, all the growth has been pushed to marginal areas that were farmland 15 years ago, meaning that suburban areas with high populations are serviced by lots of twisting, labrynthine networks of small roads.

He is right about one thing, anyway - if you build rail stations in suburban areas, you better build lots of parking, or people can't get to them. Our area is fighting with that as we attempt - ever so slowly - to get rail built.

The only mention of bikes in the article is Ikea's policy of giving free delivery to people who ride their bikes to the store.

Man, if they did that here I could have saved a lot of blood, sweat, and tears.

Not to mention gas.

Houston is the largest unzoned, unplanned city in the country, and the ADC seems to be celebrating that fact.

:eek:

:rolleyes:

Sounds like a crock to me. Here in the Buffalo NY there have been various articles written comparing Buffalo to Portland. There are a lot of size, age, and other similarities. We (Buffalo) is suffering from urban sprawl. There is an ever increasing ring of urban blight that spreads out from the city center. Honestly the city and its surrounding areas are clearly doing much better than they were back in the mid 1980's when they lost a large portion of its manufacturing job base. Due to the fact that our sub urbs could just keep on growing at the expense of the city. As a result we do have some of the most affordable housing on the East coast... but on the other hand for a better part of 15 years the housing prices stayed nearly static. During this same time Portland grew inward and revitalized much better than many other comparable cities. What Portland did seems to have worked a lot better than what most other cities have been doing.

Happy riding,
André

I would say, if he wants to see what happens when unchecked growth occurs *without* such planning, come on over to Northern Virginia. We have about the worst traffic in the country (I think next to LA), and I'd bet we'll overtake them at some point.
My bro lives out there -- the traffic there is mind blowing. But look on the sunny side. If you work in a place like DC, you could probably live 50 miles away and still get in faster by bike than by car most days.

Sounds like a crock to me. Here in the Buffalo NY there have been various articles written comparing Buffalo to Portland. There are a lot of size, age, and other similarities. We (Buffalo) is suffering from urban sprawl. There is an ever increasing ring of urban blight that spreads out from the city center. Honestly the city and its surrounding areas are clearly doing much better than they were back in the mid 1980's when they lost a large portion of its manufacturing job base. Due to the fact that our sub urbs could just keep on growing at the expense of the city. As a result we do have some of the most affordable housing on the East coast... but on the other hand for a better part of 15 years the housing prices stayed nearly static. During this same time Portland grew inward and revitalized much better than many other comparable cities. What Portland did seems to have worked a lot better than what most other cities have been doing.

Yeah, it sucks that housing costs so much.... but is it just me, or would other people pay more for a walkable community, good transit, and a planning vision that looks at things other than just the generic 'jobs' and 'housing starts'?

My american dream is to know my neighbors, be able to easily travel (walk, ride, or transit - but that means its far away) to a farmer's market to buy local produce, school, public services, support our coop, find a way to maintain all the embodied energy we have in our urban cores (houses, buildings, streets, etc), honor and nurture a vibrant meshing of cultures, ages, and ideas, and have access to decent transport for out of town (or longer in town) travel - car share, rail, bus, maybe air.

^^I'm quite certain Portland is doing a much better job at this than Houston, Buffalo, DC and a lot of other cities in the country.

It is certainly a pro-automobile and pro-sprawl paper, but I would hardly call the Cato Institute an astroturfing organization. Astroturfing is a tactic where highly organized, well funded groups pretend to be grassroots activists; the Cato Institute doesn't pretend to be anything other than a libertarian Washington think tank.Randall O'Toole is with the American Dream Coalition (http://www.americandreamcoalition.org/). While I haven't followed the money trail, that organization raises the astroturf red flags.

My american dream is to know my neighbors, be able to easily travel (walk, ride, or transit - but that means its far away) to a farmer's market to buy local produce, school, public services, support our coop, find a way to maintain all the embodied energy we have in our urban cores (houses, buildings, streets, etc), honor and nurture a vibrant meshing of cultures, ages, and ideas, and have access to decent transport for out of town (or longer in town) travel - car share, rail, bus, maybe air.That is brilliant! That's exactly what's needed to counter this type of "Let's all return to the good old days of yesteryear" propaganda....

I glad you guys have got the Toole back. Last time we saw him in Colorado, he was shilling for the Independence Institute against Fast Tracks (our light rail system). Telling us how it was going to cause the downfall of modern civilization, etc.

Now if only you'd take Dougie Bruce, Jon Caldera and John Andrews, Colorado would be a nice place to live. Want 'em? We'll pack 'em up and send the right out...free of charge;)

I glad you guys have got the Toole back. Last time we saw him in Colorado, he was shilling for the Independence Institute against Fast Tracks (our light rail system). Telling us how it was going to cause the downfall of modern civilization, etc.

Now if only you'd take Dougie Bruce, Jon Caldera and John Andrews, Colorado would be a nice place to live. Want 'em? We'll pack 'em up and send the right out...free of charge;)Our light rail is so popular there aren't enough trains to meet the rush hour demand. I guess we just didn't realize that they're really the downfall of civilization.

Oh, you can keep those guys. ;)

Here's the PDF (http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-596.pdf), and the HTML (http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/html/pa-596/pa-596index.html) of the full paper. If I find the time and the stomach, I'm going to try and give it a read tonight... (my quick scan shows its fairly biased)



What is the feedback from on the ground? I love Portland, from visiting about 7 years ago... and even tried to relocate there as I really admired many of the bold steps the city was taking to handle 'growing up'. I miss it, and hope to get back soon.

What are your thoughts?


I've had so many fights with Randal O'Toole. He is a child.

His American Dream Coalition has become a nightmare as the days of cheap motoring will mean the death of sprawl. Whenever there's a lightrail accident, O'Toole is quick to point it out on his site like a child who says see the big bad lightrail should close down! The man has serious issues.

Our light rail is so popular there aren't enough trains to meet the rush hour demand. I guess we just didn't realize that they're really the downfall of civilization.

Oh, you can keep those guys. ;)

Oddly enough, the lines that we have built are overwhelmed too. That didn't stop the Toole from telling us that we were wasting money and bringing communism to Colorado.

I've ridden Portland's light rail (with two loaded touring bikes) and found it to be a great resource.

Oh, and we insist that you take those guys. You're closer to an ocean. We'd dump them in a river here but all we've got is the Platte...ankle deep and a mile wide;)

Found this (http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8463) today while doing some background reading on the now infamous (in BikeForum world anyways) ADC.



Here's the PDF (http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-596.pdf), and the HTML (http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/html/pa-596/pa-596index.html) of the full paper. If I find the time and the stomach, I'm going to try and give it a read tonight... (my quick scan shows its fairly biased)



What is the feedback from on the ground? I love Portland, from visiting about 7 years ago... and even tried to relocate there as I really admired many of the bold steps the city was taking to handle 'growing up'. I miss it, and hope to get back soon.

What are your thoughts?

Randy O'Toole has been fighting the Portland planning model for years. He knows absolutely nothing about planning or zoning at all. I'm a planner, so some of his comments just seem so ridiculous to me. His all-time greatest quote was, "In Portland, some places are zoned so that, if your house burns down, you HAVE to build high density housing. You can't even rebuild your house." There's so much fallacy there, it borders in insane. Yes, that may be true on the face of it, but most cities are like that. Most cities were zoned with future development patterns in mind. In Indianapolis, we have lots of houses that are zoned commercial, meaning that if your house burnt down, you'd have to build a commercial structure there. HOWEVER, I guess Randy's never heard of variances to teh zoning code. They happen every day, and only require some sort of practical difficulty or hardship in most states to be granted. I've never seen a vraiance denied to rebuild, unless the structure or use was not legal to begin with (i.e. constructed w/o permits). The dude's an idiot.

I've had so many fights with Randal O'Toole. He is a child.

His American Dream Coalition has become a nightmare as the days of cheap motoring will mean the death of sprawl. Whenever there's a lightrail accident, O'Toole is quick to point it out on his site like a child who says see the big bad lightrail should close down! The man has serious issues.

You've been lucky enough to debate with him, too? I don't know his back ground, but I definitely know he isn't a planner.

Not true.

I lived in Beaverton (Portland suburb) for nearly ten years 'til about 10 months ago. The light rail was my daily commute method. Even in the suburbs I was walking distance to 2 grocery stores (and my gym, dentist and more. . .).

Housing and incomes are directly correlated; labor is a huge component of building, too, recall. Builders (and I am one, small-scale) don't like building on in-fill because it leans out their profit margin/margin for error. If you have to do much excavating to prep a site you have more into the project before you raise the first timber and therefore less chance to eke out a profit. Likewise if you have to raze old structures. Easier and cheaper to pave over level, fertile farmland -- but unwise in the long run, one thinks.

Up, not out. Else it's a microcosm of what's presaged the fall of virtually every empire. . .stretched too thin, too hard to maintain. Leads to bridge failures, if you get my drift. . .