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Max Crashes

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
7 Comments

Vancouver voters apparently bought claims that C-Tran needed a tax increase to maintain bus service. Meanwhile, TriMet is so eager to reach Vancouver that it crashed a light-rail train into the buffers at the end of the line that could eventually cross the Columbia.

Few knew about the accident until someone sent the security camera video to a bus driver who posted it on his blog. When the Oregonian asked TriMet about it, “the agency said the video didn’t exist and denied knowing about the incident,” then suspended the driver for “invading privacy laws.” Isn’t security camera footage taken by a public agency public information? In any case, no one was hurt as there were only “a couple of people” on board. That’s why they need so-called “high-capacity transit”?

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Getting Priorities Straight

By | | News commentary, Transportation
14 Comments

Facing a $12 million to $17 million budget shortfall next year, Portland’s TriMet transit agency is cutting bus service for lack of funds. But it has enough funds to spend $250,000 on a giant sculpture of a deer with a baby face.

The agency has already cut bus service by 13 percent and light-rail service by 10 percent in the last two years. Yet it is spending at least $3 million on “art” as part of its $200-million-per-mile light-rail line to Milwaukie, one of the most wasteful rail projects ever. As a matter of policy, TriMet spends 1.5 percent of its capital expenditures on art, even though it is not required to do so.
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After all, the most important thing is to keep Portland weird, not to actually provide transportation to people who need it. In furtherance of that goal, TriMet recently hired a multicultural manager and a transit equity manager, no doubt paying both more than $100,000 a year.

TriMet asked the public for ideas to help it close its budget gap. Most of the ideas involved taxing someone else such as auto drivers or out-of-town visitors. How about ending capital-intensive projects and focusing on providing efficient transit service on routes and schedules that fill up the buses so that losses are minimized? I bet they never thought of that one.

The City That’s Corrupt

By | | News commentary, Urban areas
32 Comments

Portland, whose slogan, “The City That Works,” was stolen from one of the most corrupt cities in America, has been rocked by a new scandal, this one involving actual charges of bribery and under-the-table dealings. The FBI raided the home and office of the city’s parking manager to investigate allegations that he accepted large bribes to turn the city’s parking meter business over to a particular company.

These allegations apparently go back several years, but only now are being investigated in detail. What is interesting is how many Portlanders read the headlines and say, “yep, it must be true,” rather than, “this would never happen in our city.” A city that wastes huge gobs of money on silly streetcar and light-rail projects just exudes a culture prone to corruption.

“Portland is one of the most corrupt and nepotistic city governments in America,” says former Portland planner Richard Carson, who walked away from a lucrative planning job because “I just could not compromise my principles for more money.” He specifically points to the city building a light-rail line after voters rejected it twice and taking money from water user fees to spend on pork-barrel projects as examples of that corruption.

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John Charles Responds to Sam Adams

By | | Urban areas
32 Comments

Early this month, Portland broke ground on a hugely expensive light-rail bridge across the Willamette River, part of a $1.5 billion, 7.3-mile rail line to the Portland suburb of Milwaukie. This prompted faithful Antiplanner ally John Charles to write an article arguing that this is a “bridge to the last century.”

In response, Portland’s mayor, Sam Adams, wailed at a public meeting that “We’re under attack. Basic, impartial information is under attack” (click here for a 33-MB audio recording of the meeting; Adams’ comments are at 1:05:05, but the meeting is liberally littered with statements by public officials hostile to anyone who doesn’t share their utopian vision).

Adams called Charles’ article a “screed,” but what really raised Charles’ ire is the claim that Adams was on the side of “basic, impartial information.” So Charles replies with a barrage of “basic, impartial information” about the new light-rail line.

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Henry J. Is Spinning in His Grave

By | | News commentary, Transportation, Urban areas
39 Comments

To find everything that is wrong with American transportation, you only need to look at the process for replacing the Interstate 5 crossing of the Columbia River. Planning for a new bridge or bridges between Portland and Vancouver began at least six years ago, and planners have so far spent well over $130 million without turning a single spade of dirt. The Antiplanner suspects planners are perfectly happy to spend as many highway dollars as possible on anything that doesn’t actually increase roadway capacity.

The current proposal calls for two double-deck bridges.

The bridge itself is expected to cost a little over $1 billion. But all the various government agencies that have jumped on the planning effort have managed to drive the cost up to $4 billion. A big part of this increase is the cost of light rail to Vancouver, including a special bridge or bridge deck for a rail line.

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Building Micro-Homes in Portland

By | | Housing, News commentary, Urban areas
60 Comments

Okay, it is one thing for someone who wants to live within a block of Central Park to pay $700 a month for a 90-square-foot “apartment.” But now a major homebuilder, D.R. Horton, is building 364- to 687-square-foot micro-homes in Portland.

“You can’t just keep going farther from the city and acquiring farm land,” says Portland advertiser Jim Beriault. Well, actually, you could if it weren’t for that pesky urban-growth boundary. Oregon (which is 98-percent rural) has plenty of land, and there are plenty of urban areas that are much bigger than Portland.

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Whitest City Gets Whiter

By | | City planning, News commentary, Urban areas
40 Comments

Portland should change its motto from “the city that works” to “the city that’s white.” Already the whitest big city in America in 2000, the city has gotten whiter still as poor people have been pushed from the inner city into the suburbs, as shown in this stunning series of maps.

The Antiplanner has covered this issue before, but it is worth repeating, partly because of The Oregonian‘s excellent coverage yesterday and partly because of what The Oregonian didn’t say. As Portland’s only daily paper pointed out, the city did little to help low-income minorities and did many things that hurt.

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TriMet Tax Fraud

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
9 Comments

TriMet, Portland’s transit agency, gets about half its operating funds from a payroll tax. In 2004, this tax was 0.6218 percent, meaning employers had to pay TriMet $62.18 for every $10,000 they paid employees. Employees, other than the self-employed, are largely unaware of this since it is on top of pay, not a deduction from pay.

In 2003, TriMet persuaded the Oregon legislature to allow it to increase the tax by 0.01 percent per year for ten years, starting in 2005. In 2009, TriMet went back and convinced the legislature to allow it to continue increasing the tax by 0.01 percent per year for another 10 years. Thus, the tax now stands at $69.18 per $10,000 in payroll, and will rise to $82.18 per $10,000 in 2025.

At the time, TriMet promised that all of this tax increase would be dedicated to increasing service, and as of 2010, TriMet CFO Beth deHamel claims this is being done. But according to John Charles of the Cascade Policy Institute, that’s not what is happening.

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Updates from All Over

By | | News commentary
9 Comments

California Republicans are proposing to divert federal grants for the state’s high-speed rail program to improving U.S. Highway 99 instead. Highway 99 is the major route through California’s Central Valley connecting Modesto, Fresno, and Bakersfield, while Interstate 5 skips those major cities. Highway 99 is highly congested and is in relatively poor shape, and Representatives Denham, Nunes, and McCarthy argue that fixing and expanding it would do more for the region’s economy at a lower cost than high-speed rail.

Over in China, the head of the country’s high-speed rail authority was fired for some combination of corruption and poor quality construction. Recent reports found that low-quality concrete was used in constructing some Chinese high-speed rail routes, which is likely to create maintenance headaches and force slow-downs in the trains in as little as five year.

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Portlandia Is Here

By | | Follow up, Housekeeping
18 Comments

Although it will not premiere on television until January 21, the first episode of Portlandia is on line. Hulu says something about it expiring in three days, but if the video below doesn’t work, you might be able to watch it here or here.

Richard Florida claims that, by attracting the “creative class,” cities like Portland are building wealth and enhancing productivity. On the other hand, the thesis of Portlandia was best summarized by economist Randall Pozdena in 2007: “We are attracting (to Oregon) a lot of young, enthusiastic people who aren’t particularly well trained and who aren’t bringing a lot of human capital to the region.”

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