The Oregonian reports that construction of the Sellwood Bridge was rife with “graft, kickbacks and corruption”–or at least it was when the bridge was first planned 87 years ago. As comments to the article point out, not much has changed.
Today, the region is planning an expensive replacement bridge that is twice as wide as the existing one–but will have no more lanes of traffic. Instead, the additonal width is supposed to be for bicycles and pedestrians. The huge cost of that additional width, of course, is borne mainly by people who get around by automobile. Just down river, the region is building an even more expensive bridge that will solely be for light rail, bicycles, and pedestrians. Total passenger traffic on this bridge will probably be a fraction of one lane of the Sellwood Bridge.
This banyan tree still stands in the Horniman Circle Park, buying cialis online frankkrauseautomotive.com Mumbai. Many scientists have come up with some of the benefits of sex that make pfizer viagra discount lives better. discount bulk viagra All hypnotherapy has the same aim. Thus, the muscle ache of tension-type headache is present for more than 15 days a generic viagra online month or two. Meanwhile, Portland has developed urban renewal to perfection. The city buys land for fair-market value, then removes obsolete structures and installs streets, water, sewer, and other infrastructure–all costs that developers would ordinarily have to pay themselves. Then the city sells the land at below-market prices to favored developers on the condition that they build high-density, mixed-use developments. In return, the favored developers make large political contributions and gush over the city’s transportation policies. Not quite the same as graft, kickbacks, and corruption, but close.
The good news is people are revolting against the system. Clackamas County residents calling themselves “clackastanis” are challenging urban renewal and light rail. Even inner-city residents are protesting new high-density developments that the city is planning without parking. Until the city and TriMet go bankrupt, however, these efforts probably won’t be enough to stop the Portland rail juggernaut.
Then the city sells the land at below-market prices to favored developers on the condition that they build high-density, mixed-use developments.
Man, it must be really difficult to convince developers to build more square footage! I mean, what property owner in their right mind would want to squeeze out more rents from their land??
…by the way, speaking of Portland:
“Today, the region is planning an expensive replacement bridge that is twice as wide as the existing one–but will have no more lanes of traffic. Instead, the additonal width is supposed to be for bicycles and pedestrians.”
In what sense are pedestrians and cyclists not “traffic”?
It’s not that they aren’t traffic. It’s that they are a small minority of the traffic. There are about 530 bicycle trips a day on the bridge. Average daily car traffic is 30,500. Bicycles traffic is about 1% of bridge traffic. A full lane for the 1% is wasteful.
What will be the TPD of bikes in 2020? Will the infra be wasteful then?
DS
Despite the planner’s most frenzied dreams, it will be no different in 2020.
Awh! It is, like, soooooooooo awesome that they just know th’ fyoocherrr. How cute.
I wonder if these all-knowing future-knowers sell their all-knowing knowledge to folks wondering what the next winning PowerBall numbers are. That’s the path to riches, lemme tellya you betcha. Riches, b!tches.
chuckle
DS
People, this is how Planner Boy treats everyone he disagrees with, including the public he supposedly “serves”. Take note.
People, this is how Planner Boy treats everyone he disagrees with
You are hand-flapping away from the issue. In the most puerile, transparent way possible.
DS
“What will be the TPD of bikes in 2020?”
Why don’t you look into your crystal ball and illuminate us?
“What will be the TPD of bikes in 2020?â€
Why don’t you look into your crystal ball and illuminate us?
YOUR implicit argument is that the lane will continue to be wasteful. One would think YOU need to show how the investment for now, the near future and middle future is wasteful.
That is: transpo investments are for the future too. You want to argue that a multimodal future with no bikes is what will happen and therefore the lane is a waste. No one here wants to admit current trends will likely change.
DS
Most likely the number of cyclists will decline. Cycling has been a trendy thing for a while now, and has been flat in recent years so the fad will probably cyclically fall in the coming decade as the current cyclists age. But for these purposes it doesn’t matter if cyclists increase or decrease by 20%.
No, Sandy. You have it all wrong. In the year 2020, Portland will be so hot and dry from Global Warming that everyone can bike in November and December and January in Portland! Those 21 inches of bitterly cold and soaking sideways rain during those months will just disappear to be replaced by 80-degree, sunny, bone dry days! EVERYONE will want to bike in Portland in 8 years!
Especially all those hipster girls I saw on Ankeny wearing dresses on cruisers! They totally will love the new winters in Portland! They’ll totally be rocking the new Sellwood Bridge!
“Most likely the number of cyclists will decline”
That depends on how the roads are set up. At 20mph, a cyclist can take and hold the centre of the lane. At 30 mph, they can’t. So the speed limit is one important factor.
Other things include the attitude of the car drivers. In the Netherlands, few cyclists wear cycle helmets, but cycling is safe – most car drivers are also cyclists, and so car drivers look out for cyclists. Shares for bicycles – Amsterdam 30%, Groningen 60%.
So it’s to you guys.
FrancisKing, your forward velocity has nothing to do with whether you should wear a helmet or not. The purpose of a bicycle helmet is to protect you from injuries to the side of your head. A sideways fall of five and a half feet provides enough velocity to fracture your skull, even if you are standing completely still. This is because of the holes in the side of your skull which render it extraordinarily susceptible to fracture. Most head injuries on cycles are from riders falling sideways, usually at very low on no velocity. If the dutch don’t wear cycle helmets, it’s not because it is safe to do so.
Cycling has been a trendy thing for a while now, and has been flat in recent years so the fad will probably cyclically fall in the coming decade as the current cyclists age.
It definitely has a faddish component in Portland. Now that I’ve been doing it for several months, I see plenty of fellow cyclists who appear to be riding simply to make snide social statements. Of course, I guess I’m one of those people, albeit in my own way, given that my “social statement” is the pleasure I derive from not riding TriMet. In reality though, health reasons were my primary motivator.
I’m not convinced that cycling is a fad in places like Minneapolis, though, where trendy political activism isn’t as prevalent as it is in Portland.
Uh, the Brooklyn Bridge has pedestrian and bike traffic….in the middle. They can safely cross the bridge.
The city buys land for fair-market value, then removes obsolete structures and installs streets, water, sewer, and other infrastructure–all costs that developers would ordinarily have to pay themselves. Then the city sells the land at below-market prices to favored developers on the condition that they build high-density, mixed-use developments.
I guess no one can complain of a shortage of dwelling units. Or that the city doesn’t invest in basic infra. I guess they can complain that
developersThe Market won’t invest in projects with high risk of cost overruns from replacing old infra. Ah, well.DS
And the sheer corruption doesn’t bother planner boy one bit. Ah, well.
Why are you lying about what bothers people? What’s in it for you to lie like that?
I guess craven is a possiblity too. Or a low-rent spammer. There’s that – Ockham’s razor says low-rent spammer, so that’s the most likely possibility.
DS
Let’s see. You act exactly the same as the big-mouthed supporters these projects attract in Portland. While the majority decries the endless cashflow into these boondoggles, a small but vocal minority spends all day on local media, badmouthing opponents and employing sarcastic one-liners while avoiding any discussion of the merits of any of these projects.
You lied about what bothers me.
That is: you lied about what bothers me.
It is abundantly clear you lied about what bothers me. Now you attempt to change the subject – just exactly the same way so many low-rent ideologues do – by trying to change the subject to distract from your lying about what bothers me.
Few people are so dense that they can’t see you are lying about what bothers me.
Low-rent spam. No one falls for your cheap lies.
DS
Ooooohh he has taken umbrage, pooooooooooor wittle planner. There now, have a tissue and go plan some more streetcar lines!
Ooooohh he has taken umbrage
Thank you for the tacit admission that you are a cheap, low-rent liar.
We knew that already, but nice to see it in print.
No more reason to allow the propagation of your lying spam. Lie to yourself, alone.
DS
Dan, rail lines with a modest modal share (like the ones in Portland) do not qualify as “infrastructure.”
ACS 1, 3 and 5 year estimates for transit’s modal share for Multnomah County, Oregon are about 11 percent (and that includes bus, light rail and even streetcar).
Clackamas County, Oregon about 3% modal share for transit.
Washington County, Oregon between 5% and 6% for transit.
Private automobiles are over 70%.
Dan’s an ideologue, CP, not interested in reality. While all of us are ideologues to some degree, I’m happy to say that you are a fellow I could sit down with and have a reasonable, thoughtful conversation despite our differences.
How are you two different? You both hate railroads the same way the Klan hates black people.
Play the race card, hightardman!
Dan’s an ideologue, CP, not interested in reality.
Consistent pattern of lies from our little liar.
DS
CPZ, I never mentioned rail in the point I made about paying for infra, especially the part about developers paying for certain infra. No developer would pay for rail for their project.
DS
It’s not a race card, it’s that your hatred of railroads is based on nothing. Just as how the Klan hates black people.
Come on Frank, even you know that O’Toole is a fraud. He doesn’t complain that roads don’t make money, yet he complains about railroads not making money.
The Antiplanner wrote:
Even inner-city residents are protesting new high-density developments that the city is planning without parking.
Wonder what the default rate is on those condominium units (I presume) that are built without parking might be? Might there come a time when mortgage underwriters won’t finance condo units without parking? Even though some planners pine for everyone to live in apartment buildings without parking capacity.
Until the city and TriMet go bankrupt, however, these efforts probably won’t be enough to stop the Portland rail juggernaut.
A transit agency go bankrupt? I suppose it could happen (and the cost of personnel at Tri-Met as have been discussed here before) might push it over the edge.
As for Portland itself going bankrupt, I suppose that’s within the realm of possibility, given recent municipal bankruptcies in Pennsylvania and especially California.
Well government monopolies don’t go out of business when they overspend. The New York MTA is living proof of that. They’re 800 million dollars in the hole, but spending 15 billion over 10 years to refurbish the subways.
Though you’re not against the road in front of your house.
It will be interesting to see how the no-parking housing units work out in the Western US. I am glad I am not gambling my tax money on it.
I just saw a puff piece in a Seattle newspaper, boasting about the new no-car, anti-suburbia generation who simply wants to walk a couple blocks to ten different restaurants. Naturally, these apartments were $3 per square foot with only 2/3 as many parking spaces as units. It was hard to believe this was actually a news piece and not paid advertising for smart growth.
Hey. Don’t knock being able to walk a couple of blocks to ten different restaurants. It’s a huge reason why I lived in West Seattle. I would far rather stumble home from the brewery than have to worry about an expensive taxi or a more expensive DUI. It’s also nice to have Thai, sushi, Italian, a beer bottle store, two grocery stores, an…oops… yeah, evil walkable neighborhoods!
Although once cars are fully autonomous, fuhgetaboudit!
I’m not knocking the walkable neighborhoods, though in my opinion, downtown isn’t exactly what I’d call safely walkable (West Seattle is great, if I lived in the city long-term, that’s where I’d want to be).
What I find offensive is the article’s sweeping characterization of these neighborhoods as somehow morally or otherwise innately superior to suburbia. It’s a personal choice, these libs shouldn’t go trying to force everyone to live in a 40 story building.
I can walk to 11 different restaurants, and my suburban town is all single family homes except for two seven-story apartment buildings (which are mostly occupied by old folks and young families starting out).
Auto-dependent suburbia and Manhattan is a false dichotomy.
Frank, I am not especially desirous of operating or owning a self-driving automobile (I don’t care for the Prius, for one thing), but the potential to reduce the number of crashes on the highway network by drunk or impaired drivers is very appealing.
Andrew Reply: I can walk to 11 different restaurants…
How many are national or regional chains? Fast food?
Sandy Teal, can you be certain that there’s no taxpayer money (in the form of TIF, for example) going in to no-parking (or little parking) apartment buildings?
Promoters of such schemes seem to have endless (and harmless-sounding) ways of getting taxpayers dollars to fund (or subsidize) them.
And, of course, the transit that’s is intended to provide mobility for the residents of these units is massively subsidized as well.
Andrew Reply: “Auto-dependent suburbia and Manhattan is a false dichotomy.”
Good point. I’ve lived almost my entire life in an “urban” area, while residing in a single family detached dwelling. The neighborhood I grew up in in Denver has a little over 2X the density of the suburban neighborhood my mother lives in now, but the character of the two places are almost the same.
My point is 2 fold:
1. Increases in density do not have to compromise the character of a neighborhood.
2. I have yet to see the liberal gestapo marching people out of the suburbs and into high-rises. This hyperbolic b.s. is played out.
p.s. As a planner, I would say that parking is the most dastardly issue I face every day. It seems like every plan or development project inevitably gets hung up on parking, particularly in SF areas where residents don’t want people driving or parking on “their” streets. These instances create areas where there is no available parking despite the fact there are thousands of unoccupied parking spots. Or go downtown in anywhere USA. Parking is a bitch despite all the empty surface lots and garages.