Portland’s Transportation Lemons

The Oregonian is ending the year by listing Portland’s ten biggest transportation “lemons,” which is a family-friendly way of saying screw ups. Most of them were caused by various government agencies whose goals seem more oriented to reducing people’s mobility than enhancing it.

The lemons include:

1. ODOT highway signs that increase congestion by causing people to slow down so they can read them (a problem that, in my experience, will go away as people get used to the signs)
2. Portland’s transit agency giving its general manager eleven weeks of vacation a year and a contract allowing him to cash out up to $165,000 worth of unused vacation days when he leaves the job
3. Portland spending federal flexible funds on a bike-sharing program that–nearly four years later–has yet to begin even as many city streets still need sidewalks
4. Portland’s rejection of Uber after the ride-sharing program had already begun
5. Numerous accidents caused by ODOT’s failure to maintain one of the region’s most heavily used freeway interchanges
6. Portland’s idiotic name for its idiotically expensive light-rail bridge across the Willamette River
7. Troubles with an inconsistent Car2Go car-sharing program
8. Bicycle rider road rage
9. Spending $200 million on a bridge that never got built with the explicit aim of having Portland’s light rail invade Vancouver, Washington
10. Lying about the Portland streetcar
11. A collision between a TriMet bus and a San Antonio Spurs team bus that may have influenced the outcome of a game with the Portland Trailblazers.

By my count, eight of these eleven lemons resulted from anti-auto attitudes on the part of state, regional, or local governments. Some (such as the cushy contract for the TriMet general manager) resulted from insider deals, some (such as the problems with the freeway interchange) from diverting transportation funds into unproductive programs, but many (such as the bike sharing and Portland streetcar) are simply a result of ineptitude.