Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx came to Portland the other day and said cities needed to find “moonshots” to fund their transportation programs. He criticized Congress for passing a $302 billion, five-year transportation bill last year because it “locks in a sustained period of underinvestment.”
If by “moonshots” Foxx means a magic formula for fixing congestion and other transportation problems, then Portland is the wrong place to look. The Portland area has already spent well over $4 billion on a light-rail system, yet as of 2014 light rail carried only 1 percent of the region’s motorized passenger travel and no freight. Update: Meanwhile, the last shipping company that delivered containers to the Port of Portland has quit because the city and the port have put being “green” above freight mobility. Despite this, the region’s leaders now want to spend $2 billion more on another 11-mile line.
It would be great if we could build all the light rail, high-speed rail, bike paths, highways, and dirigibles that anyone would ever want to use. But some people don’t want to accept that we live in a world of scarce resources, and to be successful at anything we have to use those resources as effectively as possible.
