For nearly two decades, Vancouver Washington has been an escape valve for the Portland area. Growth management has made Portland housing unaffordable, so families have fled to Vancouver. Transportation planning has made Portland congested, but Vancouver traffic is far better.
Now, the Portland Oregonian suggests that Vancouver should voluntarily come under the umbrella of Portland’s growth management. Metro, Portland’s regional dictator planning agency, is in charge of growth management, transportation planning, and greenspace administration. “We can’t envisage three more critical, and more connected, responsibilities,” says the Oregonian, without admitting that Metro has screwed up all three of them.
So the newspaper (no doubt speaking for Metro itself) thinks Vancouver should join some sort of bi-state commission. This may “scare some in Clark County, especially those who still think of Metro as an agency stuffed with bicycle-riding, light-rail-loving, in-fill dwellers who are deeply suspicious of anyone who actually grows grass in a big backyard. For them, we have a message: You can hide, but you can’t run.”
Can you imagine paraphrasing the language that Ronald Reagan used to threaten terrorists to try to attract a neighbor into marriage? That’s bound to work!
Let’s look at some facts. Portland-area home prices on the Oregon side of the Columbia River are significantly more than in Vancouver. Moreover, median prices disguise the fact that a home in Vancouver is far more likely to include a decent yard, while increasing numbers of homes in Portland are built either sans yard or as multi-family dwellings.
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As a result, families have fled Portland and many have ended up in Vancouver. In 2003, the Oregonian noted that the suburbs were “draining” Portland’s schools. “Middle class people are moving to the suburbs for bigger houses,” said a city commissioner. “Younger couples with kids have moved out,” said a Portland State University demographer.
Vancouver was on the receiving end of much of this move. In 1990, Vancouver was only 10 percent as large as the city of Portland. Over the next decade, Portland grew by 22 percent, while Vancouver grew by 210 percent, actually gaining more new residents than Portland. Between 2000 and 2006, Vancouver gained two new residents for every one in Portland. Today, Vancouver is 30 percent as large as Portland.
Affordable housing is only one of the attractions to Portland. According to the US DOT’s 2005 Highway Statistics, Portland freeways carry 70 percent more vehicle miles, per lane mile, as those in Vancouver. That means they are (roughly) 70 percent more congested.
Of course, Metro is doing its best to make life miserable for the traitors who moved to Vancouver. The Interstate 5 freeway connecting Portland to Vancouver is six lanes from Battleground, Washington (north of Vancouver) to Salem, Oregon (50 miles south of Portland) — except for one one-mile segment just south of the Columbia River bridge, which shrinks to five lanes, meaning only two southbound lanes. This is the source of endless congestion. Metro could fix this bottleneck in a few months for, at most, $10 million. But it refuses to do so until Vancouver ponies up hundreds of millions of dollars for “its share” of a worthless interstate light-rail line.
Vancouverites should not give in to this terrorist-like blackmail. They should resist all efforts to follow Portland’s growth-management planners into unaffordable housing and congestion hell.
I live in Clark County, just north of Vancouver. I expect the Vancouver urban growth boundary to expand to include my property within the next year.
Most of the new housing in Clark County is in developments of big (tall) houses on small lots with streets that don’t go through. Some housing is mansions on acreage with country roads.
I am trying to educate the politicians and citizens how to build transport infrastructure so that when the county population doubles to a million people travel times will be shorter than they are now.
There is some big city Portland envy in Vancouver – some people want more congestion and monuments for politicians. They believe the lies and myths about light rail. Most of the people outside Vancouver in the county don’t want Vancouver to expand to tax them more and don’t want light rail. Some people want the status quo with no or very little building and population growth.
Last month voters in the Vancouver Port District rejected a large property tax increase for the port district to acquire more property. The port district’s argument was that they needed the additional property to create more good-paying jobs so people wouldn’t have to go to Oregon to work. Many people would rather there were more jobs in Clark County so they that didn’t have to commute so far and pay Oregon income taxes.
Vancouver, Camas and Washougal vote mostly Democratic, the rest of the county mostly Republican. Vancouver’s mayor and some city councilmembers have conflicts with county commissioners over the Vancouver’s expansionist, big city ambitions.
If Vancouver were to join Metro the divide between Vancouver and the rest of Clark County would become much greater in my opinion.
Careful readers (that is: non-knee jerk ideolical response-types) will see that the editorial is concerned about the number of cars coming over, and are suggesting that ClarkCo gets a member on board of the MPO so they can plan a little better and get some jobs over there.
No need to scare people, Randal, when you try to spread your small-minority ideology.
DS
DS,
Only one sentence in the Oregonian editorial refers to “the number of cars coming over.” Interestingly, the editorial says, “Clark County. . . continues to serve as the relief valve for the Oregon metropolis. That’s why some 60,000 of its citizens commute to the Portland area each day, accounting for almost half the traffic crossing the Interstate Bridge.”
They could have phrased it, “Metro arrogance continues to force Portland workers into Vancouver. That’s why some 60,000 Clark County commute to the Portland area each day.”
But they didn’t phrase it that way. This makes it clear that the Oregonian‘s real goal is to shut off the relief valve.
I guess, judging from the reply, Cato doesn’t give their “scholars” supplemental education on deconstructing essays**. The piece, although certainly soft-shoeing and playing nice, clearly states that regional transportation coordination isn’t enough and it’s time Van starts creating its own good jobs to decrease the traffic into PDX & gosh, let’s work together to make that happen! Viz.:
Kinda like, Randal, when you advocate insurance companies coordinating efforts to avoid fire loss. Same thing here: cities are advocating coordinating efforts to obviate losses due to x, y, z.
See how that works? Insurance companies coordinating, cities coordinating. Very easy to comprehend.
DS
** “Scholars” aren’t purposely obtuse, surely.
Yeah Dan, cities coordinating to force people to live the planner’s dream instead of their own.
Planner = dictator.
Thanks
JK