Disincentives to the Automobile

A recent article by Oregon writer and radio talk-show host Jayne Carroll brings back some old memories. Carroll notes that, sometime in the 1970s, Alan Webber, an aide to then-city commissioner Neil Goldschmidt, wrote a memo titled, “Disincentives to the Automobile.”

In the early 1970s, I was a college student who had helped to found OSPIRG. In the summer of 1972, OSPIRG hired me and a dozen other summer interns, including Dick Benner and Bob Stacy (who later worked for 1000 Friends of Oregon), to work on various issues. Henry Richmond (who later founded 1000 Friends of Oregon) was OSPIRG’s staff attorney and Steve McCarthy was its executive director.

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