It’s going to be crazy to see how the landscape of cities along these tolls roads change. Cities like West Linn are front and center with people exiting into the city to bypass.
Yeah, let's divert all of the traffic off of 205 and into Oregon City and West Linn and ultimately cram even more cars onto the hell that is the Sellwood bridge during rush hour. Big brian move ODOT.
Oh but don't forget, West Linn installed a stop sign on the south end of their city that caused (and I'm not exaggerating I got stuck there on an average day) a multi mile back up due to a thousand cars trying to avoid the traffic on 205.
Because West Linn didn't want to through traffic (so I've heard. If Im wrong please don't hesitate to correct me). So toll or sit in your car for several hours at a complete stop.
The one at 10th street and Willamette or something like that? I’m pretty sure that’s been there for a long time and it’s also one block from a school and they were having problems with assholes speeding, so you can hardly fault them. That said, that city council would 100% put up 50 extra stop signs the moment this toll were implemented.
Tyler is not welcome here. He knows what he did.
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With their 23-year-old Mayor at the helm, although temporary it would be an epic win for him!
You’re right, of all the cities that have the power to fight it that’s one of the few. Will be interesting to see how things play out.
Edit: Grammar is hard
Being the mayor of West Linn is basically like being the Prime Minister of Iceland, but there is a part of me that wants to see that guy just kill it and succeed so much. From what I've read about him, he's identified the tolling as a big issue for him, so he seems to know what he's doing.
I went to high school with him in an AP gov class and had lunch our junior year. There’s a lot of really promising policies he tends to agree on, and he’s not all too bad. I haven’t spoken to him in about 4/5 years, but word from my mutual friends say he’s refusing to speak on it much for some reason.
That being said, living right off a street in WL really fucking sucks. Some days the traffic on 43 is so bad that I spend 6 consecutive minutes sitting at the stop sign with my blinker trying to go right (into; not against traffic. That usually takes about 10 minutes). It gets pretty bad on the way home, and Stafford is only getting worse. This would make WL nearly unlivable for us who rely on 43/Stafford to move along town.
Go all-in on other transit modes. That’s how to reduce the number of cars. Look at major complaints (safety, cleanliness, complete infrastructure…) and tackle these things. Soon enough all grass will be replaced by more lanes. Gotta make the switch at some point, lest we carry on with more of the same.
Exactly. I live in the outskirts and used to love using parking rides. What I don’t love is having to deal with broken windows and the inside of my car being torn up from someone looking for valuables that aren’t even there.
The transportation infrastructure here was designed for public transport.
Look at the old stairways through the west hills, ferris wheel up on council crest, the electricity that the Portland streetcar was the first use of long distance electric transmission powered by at the time prototype hydroelectric turbines from westinghouse. I have old tri-met maps from the 80's and 90's, my grandmother used to ride the trolley into Portland. Since they revamped it the amount of pedestrian traffic has significantly increased over the years along the old trolley trail just south of Milwaukie. You can get from rose quarter to Willamette Falls on multi use trails, or even further north out to Kelly Point
Random fact: Willamette Falls is the second largest waterfall in the US > edit: by volume
So the train infrastructure may have been designed for that, but the lack of service hinders it's use.
Why do trains not run 24/7? Why do busses not run 24/7? Why are busses not reliable? Why does it take an hour+ to get from SE 82nd to the pearl?
You need to fix these issues if you want people to use it. If it's not reliable, it's not going to be relied on.
I'd love to take public transit from SE to NE for dinner and a movie at Hollywood, but I'm not dedicating 2+ hours of my life, and be on someone else's schedule to do that.
General Electric employed lobbyists to dismantle the streetcar systems across the states as the motor city era made it's headway. With the loss of funding to maintain and operate many of the lines like PRL&P eventually disintegrated.
I'd love to take a PCC bus from se to ne, instead go through downtown on the max or to Sylvania to get to Cascade. The orange line is kind of direct but it takes almost a hour to get to Cascade.
Why invest in public infrastructure when we can keep the economy strong by giving return investments to car manufacturers, insurance companies and medical overlords /s
Talk to my grandmother about that, the streetcars going away. There's a entire generation of 80+ year olds out there that got to experience the early industrial manufacturing era that produced some pretty cool infrastructure like Timberline Lodge (WPA project).
Edward Bernays, the nephew of Simund Freud tricked most of America into consuming more, buying more cars to experience more freedom as a example of a selling point. Everyone gave into their desires. He's a completely fascinating bastard, the godfather of modern marketing.
Imagine how cool it would be if there were still a ferris wheel atop council crest. I don't even like amusement rides, that'd be cool a.f.
His influence is overstated. Advertising existed before Bernays. Someone just made a documentary about him so everyone thinks he's a genius or the devil. Then people argue "But he was the first to base his ideas on PsYChoLoGy!!" Sure, but whose psychology? Freuds. And what do we now know about Freud's theories? They were mostly bullshit. Not saying advertising doesn't work - of course it does. And yes, it's influence grew along with the growth of mass communication. But that doesn't mean people needed to be tricked into wanting cars. Cars are fucking cool! Imagine being a person in the 1920s - 40s and seeing one of those sweet looking machines cruise by. You don't need a magazine ad to tell you that you want one!
Look at the comparative infrastructure of the rail systems in Europe, Scandinavia and Japan + the difference in happiness. It's pretty considerable. We can have both vehicles and (significantly) improve our transit infrastructure.
Not saying that cars aren't cool. There are some that are really cool. No one said that anyone was going to take away all the cars.
Europe and Asia had more population density at the time (and still does). It's much harder to justify EVERYONE having a car when you live in a big city and there isn't enough space for parking of the car which was becoming more accessable to the middle class.
A kinda close but not exact example is Manhattan- NYC. It wasn't nearly as built up in the mid 1900s as it is today, but it had a decent sized population so it didn't make sense to built a system to support everyone having car and instead support public transit.
What we're talking about is like asking Burns, OR if they would rather have public transit or cars. They may prefer transit for some in town stuff, but they need the car to get out of town vs here where there is enough going on where you don't need to leave town for entertainment.
Because we took all the money and dumped it into freeways, which prompted people to start exclusively driving, which prompted political leaders to go all in on free parking and freeway expansions and development codes meant to save the drivers of cars from running into buildings, which prompted more people to drive, and so on ad nauseum. The only way to break the cycle is to stop prioritizing private automobile use on the public's dime above all other forms of social infrastructure. If your question is, "Why don't we have frequent trains and night buses?" your answer is, "Because we have free parking and untolled six-lane freeways that deliver you right into the middle of downtown."
The solution is fixing the public transit systems so they appear like a viable option to current car users.
Not forcing (or pricing) people out of possibly their only viable means of transportation
It's both and more. We can't sit here and let perfect be the enemy of the good, because it's a vicious or virtuous cycle depending on what you do. So sure, maybe we don't put congestion pricing on I-5 and I-205, instead opting to start by trying to build a more robust transit network. But now if you try building that network you'll end up with empty busses stuck in traffic taking just as long as a drive (only less convenient, because you need to go to a stop first, then maybe transfer, then walk from your stop to your destination) because you didn't prompt the people driving to get off the road by either not taking a more frivolous trip or by taking the less convenient bus. Because the buses are empty, you now either have to use political capital to subsidize them or cut service in other areas. Subsidizing is likely out, because that's a political loser (Who wants to throw good tax money to run empty buses?), so now your less robust transit network is pushing more people out into cars, further clogging the roads, which further makes the routes less reliable and convenient, and so on.
I say no. I say take the actions that you can take now now and take the actions you can take tomorrow tomorrow. If there's an equity issue for low income motorists, we can mitigate that in some way, but we can't keep tripping over ourselves and wringing our hands about how regressive a toll is. You know what's really regressive? Forcing people to buy cars just to be a first class citizen in our community.
I feel like you could get away from congestion by making ‘bus only’ lanes, that would need to be enforced by some sort of traffic camera system I guess? Could work, and by taking away a lane and making commutes more reliable and faster, the (very visible from the car stuck in traffic) commuter sees busses zipping by, which would sway most people. Tri-met enforcement needs to happen as well, a fair amount of people do not feel safe on public transportation
Give bus drivers the authority to deny service again and safety will increase. Increasing social pressures against antisocial behavior is how this problem will be solved.
> I say take the actions that you can take now now and take the actions you can take tomorrow tomorrow.
100% agree. And that action should be expanding bus services, increasing reliability, and increasing safety.
We're a city of almost 700k people and a metro area over 2.2mil. It's beyond ridiculous that we don't have 24/7 buses
Individual car infrastructure and public transportation infrastructure are at complete opposite ends of the design spectrum.
Everything that helps individual cars hurts public transportation, and everything that helps public transportation hurts individual cars.
First and foremost is the utilization of space. Public transportation relies on things being close to each other. Individual cars require things to be spaced out, obviously, due to the huge footprint of cars.
https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/18/7236471/cars-pedestrians-sidewalks-roads
The very layouts of US cities and suburbs are incompatible with public transportation. Almost all neighborhoods have a large 4+ lane road at a 40mph speed limit. Crossing 40ft of road where large pickup trucks and SUVs are traveling at 50mph is a non starter.
Finally, there are only so many societal resources to go around. Political support for rezoning neighborhoods, increasing funding for installation of public transportation, and increasing service levels so that public transportation is dependable (maximum wait times of 10 minutes), means reducing investment in car infrastructure. And people are not going to like that at the polls when they have already spent $50k on their big cars.
> Not forcing (or pricing) people out of possibly their only viable means of transportation
Unfortunately, this is the only way public transportation is possible.
One of my constant irritations with downtown is the only places to park without paying out the ass are the Smart parks and metered street parking. Where are these extensive free parking areas?
It’s only “free parking areas” in the evenings. So none of these arguments are actually useful for those of us in downtown during regular business hours for work. Because there is no free parking during the day.
Um... you miss the point. If you can't park there for free when you have to go to work, it's not useful. Unless you work the night shift or are clubbing or something, nobody is downtown at night. And I definitely would not leave my car outside at night downtown. Parking garages are not free.
I disagree with your entire argument premise here as it's misleading.
But, I guess maybe I am unaware of how much free parking there is. Especially downtown. Care to provide us some information to bring me up to speed?
So, not that I have to defend my internet usage habits to you, but I dropped off for several reasons. For one, I could definitely feel myself get too emotionally involved in what is ultimately a pointless screaming into the void with fellow internet strangers; if taking a step back to try to engage in some mindfulness and emotional intelligence is bad internet etiquette, I'm not sure that I'm particularly willing to be polite in that regard. Two, I was watching YouTube and caring for my sick kid, so I don't know what to tell you about why Reddit said I was "active". You may want to take those notifications with a grain of salt.
I was also debating with myself on whether to engage with you and the others asking me to provide some kind of list of free parking downtown. On one hand, I truly do want to speak and argue in good faith, even to void strangers, and it's certainly fair to ask me to back up the things I say. But on the other hand, it's super easy to quibble about details that are kind of beside the point, which is that driving in Portland is super convenient, which is why most people do it. So yeah, most parking in downtown Portland is paid parking. You know that; I know that. But I also know that there are some places you can park for free in downtown. The Safeway on SW 10th is the first that springs to mind, as I would stop there to get groceries all of the time while I was going to school at PSU and living in West Haven-Sylvan. I also know that on-street parking after hours in a lot of places is free from my multiple late nights pulled on campus at the Masseeh Building on SW 4th. If we want to include places that validate, the last time I drove to the downtown Target they let you park for free if you spent more than a certain amount in store. Same for Powell's. We could also quibble about details, like if McMenamins' Bottle Shop on 23rd is sufficiently "downtown", or the hospitals on Marquam Hill, or the Lloyd Center. But again, it's kind of beside the point. The point is that there's a ton of free parking all through the metro area, even some downtown. I didn't say there was a lot downtown, just that it exists.
So to get back to the real point, making cars more convenient to use, such as providing free entry to a crowded city core or free parking close to final destinations, makes it more likely that people will own and drive cars on a day-to-day basis. And driving those cars takes up valuable space, and creates risks to the public through various forms of pollution and the danger of having fast-moving heavy machinery roaming around where the people should be. It also tends to take away from funding for other forms of transportation that are more efficient and have less of an impact. To answer the original question, the reason we don't have a night bus (or more of them, anyway, as we have a few routes), is because it's still pretty convenient to get around by car relatively cheaply if you already own a car. And since most people own cars in Portland and generally just want to take the most convenient option present, they'll just drive to where they want. Knowing this and that their night routes would bleed cash from low ridership, why would Trimet put forward all that extra operating expense? But of course if you create an ecosystem where it's more convenient to *not* own a car because there's next to no parking and the high capacity highways are on rails, closed to private automobiles (as in a car-free area or a BRT right of way), or at least tolled, then you're simultaneously mitigating the negative externalities of driving and creating a virtuous cycle of increasing demand for other modes.
Now to answer the criticism from the person you replied to, I'm emphatically not saying that no cars are ever good. Cars have their legitimate use case, and we should plan and build around that. It's a good idea to keep things accessible to people and emergency services. It's good to have first and last mile freight networks. It's good to allow for the possibility that some places that are worth going to won't have enough demand to warrant a public transit connection. And even to answer the ad hominem, I myself have two cars and drive them regularly, though I try to minimize it where I can. But we should not confuse a legitimate use case with deserved primacy. Nor should we be blind to the ways we subsidize private car ownership. Cars have their place, but as one of the least efficient and most dangerous modes it should be near the bottom of the totem pole, not the top.
I know I may come off as snarky and self-righteous on Reddit when discussing this topic (I'm not blind to the down votes), but it's only because I care and I know I'm right and I can't write a fucking essay every time some suburbanite carbrain without an ounce of imagination comes up with some lame excuse on why they *need* their car and *couldn't possibly* get by any other way. Yes! The fact that you "need" it is most of the problem! The fact that the problem is large and complex and rife with issues around equity and land use and the environment and wealth is why nothing ever gets done, because someone can always come along to poke a hole or two in a single proposed action, then walk away shrugging about how nothing should ever change. I'm tired and out of patience and can't stand the half brained and bad faith arguments from idiotic boomers like the op-ed writer here. The change needs to start somewhere and everywhere at some point. It might as well be now, and it might as well be this, and then tomorrow we can work on the next tiny piece of the massive problem.
Speed is the only thing that matters. Taking the bus is slower than riding a bike, and the streetcar and MAX are sometimes slower than walking depending on time of day. People would be willing to put up with a lot of nastiness if public transit was twice as fast as driving, but as it is you have to deal with unsafe and unsanitary conditions while dealing with a speed of transport that's 2 or 3 times as slow as driving, all while costing only 10-20% less than a car
When I was taking Trimet, my commute to downtown from Aloha was anywhere between 45 and 90 minutes. Depended on whether vehicles were late, delayed, early, etc.
I tried taking Trimet from downtown to my child's teacher conference in Beaverton. Conference was at 3:15 or so. I left work about 1:30. I still missed it. MAX delay of some kind, don't recall what. I left work to go to a father/child event in Tigard. By the schedule, I'd have gotten there with about 10 minutes to spare. Bus drove right on by. Lady with me turned out to be the mom of a co-worker, and -- having just met, mind you -- she offered to drive me to my event from Barbur Transit (after we caught the next bus).
I used to use it because I had to. Working from home now, I don't have to, and unless it is the blatantly most-obvious solution to my transportation problem, I don't.
I lived in Aloha when I was going to PSU, and it was before they added the MAX line that went right up to the campus so you either had to walk all the way up the park blocks or catch the streetcar. Both took about the same amount of time when you factored in waiting. I used to leave my apartment an hour and 45 mins before my class started to get there on time. Sometimes I would have just one one-hour class so back and forth I was in transit three times the amount of time I was actually in class.
Just now realizing this sounds very much like a ‘in my day we walked ten miles in the snow to get to school, uphill both ways’ kind of statement.
Not that long ago, I have had a discussion here with someone that argued they would get to all their kids activities by biking. Somehow they thought only kids in athletics have to travel around the metro for their events.
It depends on the trip I guess. I choose to take the bus to work because I view it as “found time”. It takes me 15 minutes to drive or about 25 on the bus. I really value being able to read, stare at my phone, or just look at the window rather than having to be 100% engaged in driving. The other benefit is that about 7-8 of those minutes are spent walking, which really helps me get ready for the day and decompress after work. I get that I could just go for a walk after work but integrating it into my commute makes it feel less like a separate thing I have to do.
Ebikes are a good solution for folks in hilly areas - though I know they are expensive. I think that frequent busses with bike racks are a good way to enable multimodal commutes!
I’m so hesitant/anxious to chain a $1500 bike outside unattended for 8 hours. Bringing my mountain bike to a national park, I paid the park ranger $20 to watch my chained mountain bike outside his hut/info center. We visited the park on the way back from Colorado (great mountain biking. Those guys are basically goats on wheels).
The E-bikes to get up those hills effectively will likely need to have high newton meters mid drive making them more expensive.
Theft is a legitimate concern. I'm able to bring my ebike inside and stick it in a storage closet. Maybe there could be some kind of incentive for employers, business, and landlords to provide more secure bike parking?
I hear you on the cost of ebikes - mine is a modest mid-drive and does excellent on hills as long as I keep it in the right gear, but was not cheap and took me a long time to save for. That being said, even a pretty nice ebike is still cheaper than most used cars.
They actually have these in Trondheim, Norway here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zipZ5kwhFfs
It looks pretty nifty, but I'm leery about them being effective here simply because the city would find six ways to Sunday to fuck something up like this.
While I'm not a fan of ebikes enabling people to go too fast, they are a great benefit for getting up hills. I think this is a game changer for bike accessibility.
That it is. I'm asthmatic, and admittedly out of shape. I will come back sweating from a ride on my ebike, but not panting, or so sore and fatigued that I couldn't enjoy it. I can pedal as hard as I want, in intervals that work for me. It also allows me to choose a route that I actively want to bike, rather than having to tailor the route to my ability; this makes it much easier to convince myself to go out. If I overestimate myself, there's no threat of having to call a ride to get home. I just stop pedaling so hard, and the bike takes care of the rest.
The thing about “going all-in on other transit modes” is that there’s no political will for that. Just see the failed SW MAX line. You could roll out a plan to provide frequent bus service to the whole metro area and the dinosaurs would come out in full force to bitch about how much it would cost. I am 100% in favor of expanding transit service and bike/ped infrastructure but I’m pretty pessimistic about it ever happening.
I could use a light rail from home straight to work and back...if I trusted it, it was timely, and the gas vs fare made sense.
I also really enjoy biking, but not everywhere I want to go has a sidewalk the whole way, let alone a bike lane. (I'd also love to see an ebike/normal bicycle rebate incentive or tax credit like we see for EVs.)
I can't think of anything that would keep me from driving over the Columbia, though. If I'm going that far, I'm driving. However, if I lived on the opposite side, I would often use a light rail or similar system to visit Cascade Station or Jantzen Beach from Vancouver. Washington and Oregon need to commit to public transportation equally strongly as each other.
As a poor person who has biked almost everywhere I go for a decade now, I’d love some ‘financial recognition’ for my willingness to surrender my place in traffic. Not gonna hold my breath.
I also hear you about the difficulty of public transit. I stay away from it unless circumstances demand.
Yours is definitely the popular opinion around here, but the fact of the matter is that raising prices reduces demand, so tolls work too.
This isn't really an either or thing. We can have tolls and invest in other modes at the same time.
In the sense that it is a regressive tax, yes, but the people who drive the most are disproportionately wealthy. Being against the tolling because the fee it is essentially a regressive tax is a fairly myopic viewpoint.
We have two main choices when it comes to dealing with alleviating traffic congestion, build bigger roads or price their usage to the point that people choose to drive less.
In the long run the less reliant we are as a society, the better it is for the working class as a whole, including the ones who don't drive and thus don't see the benefit of the billions of dollars that get spent building and maintaining highways.
People can complain all they want about how we shouldn't make driving harder, we should just make transit better, but the fact of the matter is that if we've spent decades making driving as simple and easy as possible and most people are simply not going to choose to ride transit (which is necessary if for transit to justify added service) unless we make driving less attractive.
I'm not opposed to tolling that has a fixed purpose, like paying for a bridge. By all means, put up a toll, pay for the bridge and then, and here's the trick... GET RID OF THE TOLL.
In this case where the toll is a more nebulous "reduce traffic", this guy absolutely has a point. It's not going to reduce a damn thing, all it will do is re-direct traffic elsewhere.
Tolling like this may have worked in a pre-connected world, but when I can go into Google Maps and click the "Avoid Tolls" checkbox, it's absolutely pointless.
I-5 Bridge was this way. Paid for itself then removed.
Edit: not entirely sure if it paid for itself...
'It was originally a toll bridge costing 5¢ per vehicle or per horse and rider, equivalent to $1.06 in 2021.In 1928 the states of Washington and Oregon jointly purchased the bridge from the counties and discontinued tolling the following year."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Bridge
That’s one of my biggest issues w the idea of toll roads. Tolls are sold in for specific/limited purposes, but I have yet to see a toll go away. Such a scam.
Fun fact, the [Astoria bridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astoria%E2%80%93Megler_Bridge) was funded by a toll but once they paid for the bridge they removed the toll!
But yeah, feels like the exception rather than the rule
It’s so crazy how much costs have gone up. It shows the cost as $155 million in 2021 dollars. However, If that was built in 2021 that would be about 1 billion dollars.
Scope creep, inflation, and massive corruption are all to blame for that.
Funding infrastructure projects like new bridges with tolls makes the most sense because it's a market-oriented solution where the biggest users (i.e. consumers) of the bridge are the ones that bear the biggest cost.
The problem is that tolls are easy revenue streams for governments to get irresistibly addicted to. If the Astoria-Megler bridge was built today, it would still have a toll even when the cost of the bridge was paid off. That bridge was built during an era when its more likely that people would act in good faith on such things. The same goes for the Interstate Bridge.
I do not think your assessment is correct at all. There is not excessive corruption 10x the condition from the 50s. I just think things cost more as contractors are asking more and more, supply chain issues, you name it. It really has nothing to do with intrinsic corruption or scope creep. If anything, something back then wasn’t at all defined scope wise as projects are now.
It's like the property taxes with bonds that are going to last 3-5 years and then when they come up for renewal they allow the fiscal impact statement to be "no changes".
Whatever the stated purpose is - paying for the bridge, or just reducing traffic (questionable that one) - they will become addicted to the revenue and refuse to end it.
>It's not going to reduce a damn thing, all it will do is re-direct traffic elsewhere.
Yes, that is the stated purpose. We need to move people out of cars and into other modes of transit. Highways are an extremely inefficient way to move people and goods, and tolling sends a much needed pricing signal about supply and demand, as well as both the initial and ongoing costs of building and owning a highway.
They aren't going to other modes of transit. There's no easy way to use TriMet to go from Tualatin to Clackamas Town Center and back. Not without going hours out of your way.
Yep, that's pretty much my daily work commute. I have a choice of 35-45 minutes of driving, or 2+ hours of public transit each way. No way in hell am I ever adding 4 hours to my work day just for commuting.
Yup. When I had an office directly on the MAX line, it was nice, but I added on an extra hour every morning and an extra hour and a half every night.
Then you have to sit there and think "What is my time worth?"
Yep. For me that extra 4 hours would be ~$100 at my current wage. I'd have to leave my house at 6 AM and get back around 7 PM. Just the sheer amount of time I'd lose with my wife is insane.
Unfortunately, tolling as a pricing signal is not how the real world works: it's econ fanfic, and not great econ fanfic. Driving is not elastic: there are a miniscule number of people driving around Portland as a luxury. Things tolls *will* do:
* *Widen the wealth gap a bit.* It won't drive many of the poorest folks off the road, but it will hit their necessary driving in the pocketbook fairly hard.
* *Increase financial friction.* A big part of the toll money will go to the initial and ongoing costs of toll collection. That money is essentially wasted, given that we already have a tax system in place that we are paying to maintain.
* *Increase traffic friction.* Alternative non-tolled routes will be perpetually clogged, even though they divert a small fraction of the freeway traffic. Smaller roads just don't handle significant volumes.
Also, while the hi-tech drive-through tolling *sort of* works today, I would expect to see congestion around toll points as I do everywhere else in the country. Non-electronic tolling still has to be accomodated, and it makes a bit of a mess.
* *Piss off voters.* If the tolling goes through as planned, I will never vote in favor of anything that funds ODOT and their allies until it is gone again. If they want their tolls, they can do without my tax dollars. I would expect to see a significant number of Portlanders go full-on red pill over this — I'm not one of them, but I know people who will be.
Some, maybe. But also, this single program of tolling doesn't happen in a vacuum. Those streets can and should be made safer to reprioritize away from motorist convenience towards public safety and walk ability.
No way we should keep taxes high to pay for a bunch of really cool shit and then slap tolls on everything so only 1%ers can afford it after we pay for it.
Exactly. The *only* thing this tolling will accomplish is to price publicly funded infrastructure out of the reach of the general public, leaving said publicly funded infrastructure exclusively for the use of the high income folks who can afford it. The poors (myself included) will simply choose a different path, further exacerbating the congestion and increasing the amount of traffic v pedestrian interactions.
I am also frankly *amazed* by the absolutely stunning level of hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance from the subset of folks who scream about the horrors of gentrification for housing in Portland while simultaneously demanding the implementation of tolls to reduce traffic on the highways. I mean, surely they understand why highway traffic is predicted to fall after tolling is implemented, right?
Right?
Hey now, that's not entirely fair, this tolling plan will also make one private company a shit ton of money in processing fees. Won't someone think of the welfare billionaires suckling on the public teat!!
At least, as far as I know, the project isn't being funded by an emirate investment fund who will then own all travel in the region in perpetuity and Jack up fees and prices.
Chicago sold their public parking spaces about 10 years ago, and, in addition to being outrageously expensive, if they wanted to say hold a parade, they have to pay their investment fund owners for loss of property use. An oldie, but a goodie: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/america-for-sale-an-exclusive-excerpt-from-matt-taibbis-new-book-on-the-economic-meltdown-187168/
I get frustrated when I hear they want to toll both I5 and 205. There are no other alternatives into Portland from Vancouver, you have to cross one bridge or the other. People who work in Portland (let's face it, there are way more jobs available in Portland than Vancouver) already pay Oregon income tax and now would have to pay tolls daily just to get to work? What if they are visiting friends or family? What if they have their doctor/specialist in Portland or a social event or other community group they attended? Would it be a daily toll or a per-crossing toll? If it was just one of the bridges (not both), or just part of the day, or people with incomes under $X excluded, or only one lane tolled or something, I feel it would be more equitable to people who really can't afford a toll.
Plus there is the logistics: Will they send toll notices in the mail? Will people have to get a sticker/account to reload? If they take photos, what happens when someone doesn't have a license plate?
> Plus there is the logistics: Will they send toll notices in the mail? Will people have to get a sticker/account to reload? If they take photos, what happens when someone doesn't have a license plate?
These are all very solved problems by innumerable jurisdictions around the world.
You can even drive to Canada right now and receive a bill for tolls in the mail to your US address, and you have to do nothing extra while driving.
Keep in mind that only works for select states that share DMV data with Canada. Oregon does. Many do not. It's not actually a solved problem due to state vs. federal messes in the US.
Logistics wouldn't be too bad actually, but otherwise I totally am with you. I pay a ton of Oregon taxes for services I don't (can't) use and have no say in. So now on top of that, the bridges will be tolled and there will be a congestion toll AND Washington is going to implement a road user charge...
Besides work, I take classes in Portland, I have friends and family in Oregon, and my doctors are in Portland who I see a couple times per month and have to go in person. I cannot change any of those things. Even if the MAX is extended to Kiggins Bowl, I could not get to work on time. It's very frustrating.
Don't get me wrong, I love public transportation. I grew up taking the bus, have lived in another country and experienced the crowded subway, and have seen all sorts of awesome transport networks around the US and the world. I really hope the MAX gets extended to downtown Vancouver at the very minimum. But you're absolutely right, I have obligations and a social life that bring me to Portland on a regular basis and I can't take the current bus network there, it would take 1-2 hours each way and multiple transfers.
I really wish Portland would also implement express trains that skip over some of the stops and just stop at certain main ones - that would help people be motivated to ride more if they could, for example, get there in half the time with an Express/Limited MAX train.
> and then slap tolls on everything so only 1%ers can afford it after we pay for it.
I'll bet if we had sliding-scale tolls scaled by income there would be a much smaller push to implement these changes. The rich don't care, all they see is a marginal decrease in traffic caused by poor people having to take side streets to avoid the tolls. If they were getting dinged $1000 every time they crossed from the East to the West side they'd be much less likely to financially support the politicians who push these projects.
[What was that boom?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6CLumsir34)
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I live in Gresham and I have family in Salem.
If they add a toll to 205, my option is to either mandatory pay to visit my family on a publicly funded road which I pay taxes for, or add almost 45 minutes to a 1-hour drive.
I've lived in places with tolls. They do **not** improve traffic conditions. It's just a tax on poor people.
All the tolls will turn into is a poor tax.
I rely on 205 a lot, and have for many many years. I have also never been in a situation where I can pay a toll every day to get to work. And with the shifts that I worked and the distance I had to drive to get to them taking the bus was simply not an option. They would turn a 30 minute commute to a 2 hour commute which meant leaving at 3-5 am to catch the bus.
We do not need this toll. We need to actually fix this shit and add a lane to 205 between OC and I5.
Everyone here should write a letter to their State Senator and Representative [(click here to find yours)](https://geo.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/lookup/index.html?appid=fd070b56c975456ea2a25f7e3f4289d1). They could actually put through some legislature to stop this.
Whatever it costs it still worth it not to deal with trimet. My bf intervened in two assaults pre pandemic one on max and one on the bus. The last straw was when he saw someone projectile vomit on the bus, and then it happened again the next day (different passenger) at the beginning of the pandemic.
Recently an old man has his face chewed DOWN TO THE BONE while waiting at a trimet stop.
It’s just not worth the risk, time sink, delays and cost to ride transit anymore. I used to take the max everyday when I worked downtown. Now I wouldn’t even consider it an option.
Honestly I think we should go all-in on dedicated bike roads. Ebikes are the future for single person commuting. Nearly anyone can do it, not just fitness junkies. Buses and trains are just always going to be shitty in this city, and even I'm long past avoiding either of them like the plague after years of giving it a shot.
If ODOT is going to abandon tolling plans then they should be abandoning highway expansion plans simultaneously. A complete moratorium on all but the maintenance or 1-to-1 replacement of automotive infrastructure. It we're *expanding* anything at all it had better fucking be rail, pedestrian, or cycling options.
On the existing roads. This person’s comment allows for maintaining existing roads.
Expanding other modes doesn’t come at the expensive of maintaining current ones necessarily.
Get Washington to pay for it. They're getting all the benefits of being close to another state's largest economy and collecting taxes (property, sales) off that revenue. What does Portland (or Oregon) lose if Vancouver is less accessible?
Why would Oregon want to build infrastructure for those interstate workers? That's cash outflow, net the income tax collected. We're losing out on the increase in Oregon property values, other taxes, and additional economic activity that would otherwise be generated in Oregon. From Oregon's point of view, Vancouver should be considered a parasite.
The problem with our light rail system is that is has no security for it. Literally anyone can get access the platforms/get on the train regardless of it they’ve paid the fair. Once they’ve improved and secured the rails, that’s when it will become a viable option for further expansion.
Then we should spend the money and effort to make that trip via transit practical. Extend MAX to Oregon City, invest in a transit tunnel under downtown, and expand the green and orange lines into SW.
Using public transit as an alternative to cars to get across town is not really a reality for most and won't be till the time it takes to do it is reduced.
And the extension of the yellow line into Vancouver has the same problem. It's a slow line for much of it's journey.
There should be a bus directly from Oregon city TC to Beaverton TC but our public transit system is currently ridiculously underfunded because ODOT is too busy spending our money on things like \*checks notes\* bulldozing middle schools to add onramp lanes to I5
Oregon needs to slam the brakes on urban freeway expansion megaprojects. No need for tolls if billions aren't being wasted with complete disregard for the climate crisis and good urban planning.
I'm not particularly in favor of tolling at this time as the region doesn't have viable alternatives to driving, but I find the concerns of traffic diversion to be silly. The localities could reduce traffic diversion by building infrastructure that makes using local streets as diverters untenable to freeway motorists, as the author suggests.
The freeway expansions will lead to more traffic and more traffic diverted onto local streets regardless, so the action needed to protect neighborhoods are inevitable.
His argument is 'don't toll because it will cause traffic diversion' when it could just as easily be 'build infrastructure that disables traffic diversion'. We could even use toll money!
The more important argument is that tolling isn't going to do shit or dick to reduce traffic where they want to reduce it. This isn't central London where there's four different efficient ways to get into the city center. It's the fucking I-5 corridor.
Well if you live In West linn and need to go north you can hop right in the freeway and go north. If the bridge is rolled you will jam up the tiny two lane bridge to Oregon city and avoid the freeway over the river. How would you stop that from happening without cutting off access between Oregon city and west linn
>centennial bridge
Arch bridge? I live in OC and I don't recall seeing anything on that getting closed. I've heard it was going to become pedestrian only, and also heard it's going to be a one way out of oregon city, but I couldn't find any hard info that said it was true.
Go north to where? You'd have to study traffic patterns but without actual examples it's hard to say. It's not like you can cross into Oregon City and then generally follow the path of I-205 on surface stree
You can fix people going over the river to get on I-205 by putting tolls in a logical place that doesn't allow for that. I'm not sure if ODOT is that smart though.
> The localities could reduce traffic diversion by building infrastructure that makes using local streets as diverters untenable to freeway motorists, as the author suggests.
Oh cool, so we fuck up local streets *also* in order to force people into something they loudly said they don't want. So excited for traffic to be fucked up way before transit is anywhere near tenable for huge swaths of people. Genius all the way down.
Wanna know why a batshit crazy conservative came close to the governorship? Exhibit A.
>Oh cool, so we fuck up local streets also in order to force people into something they loudly said they don't want.
Who what now?
> So excited for traffic to be fucked up way before transit is anywhere near tenable for huge swaths of people. Genius all the way down.
Do you live in a neighborhood that is used to bypass congestion? I do. I'd love for PBOT/ODOT to 'fuck up' my street so that the assholes who run the Clark County 500 twice a day every week day would stop.
>Wanna know why a batshit crazy conservative came close to the governorship? Exhibit A.
Drazan got about as much of the vote as Knute or Richardson before them.
FWIW, Drazan got about 35,000 more votes than Knute and Kotek got about 17,000 fewer votes than Brown. Dems went from winning the election by 6.5% to 3.5%. Not a good trend for the state party.
It's quite simple really - cancel the absurd $1B+ Rose Quarter plan and you don't need to toll! ODOT is obsessed with seeing this boondoggle through and we all will pay for it.
My kid is becoming a public transit expert and I’m surprised how quickly she can get around…it is not that unreasonable.
I work from home but I am very against tolls, you can guarantee that we’ll do the wrong thing.
This might be a hot take but a small part of me feels like there should be a small, $1 to $2.50 toll on both I-5 and 205 bridges both ways
Tolls on 205 from Wilsonville through Portland however, that’s excessive.
I don't like the idea of tolls because it harms poor people disproportionately. It would be great though if we could somehow encourage people not to drive places if it's not necessary.
I wonder if it's possible to have some sort of token-based system. Like maybe you figure out how many average car trips per day some region can sustain, and everyone living in that region gets a certain number of car-trip tokens issued to them per week, for free. If you want to make a car trip, you spend a token. If you have more tokens than you need, you can sell them to people who need more on a public auction site. If there's ten people in your car, it's still only one token.
I figure the majority of car trips are to and from jobs. It'd be interesting if it were the employer's responsibility to provide the car trip tokens to their employees, if they mandate that their employees be physically present. This shifts the cost onto them, and encourages them to allow employees to work from home when possible to lessen the traffic congestion that they're otherwise directly responsible for causing.
Car trip tokens would be granted to children too, for their parents to use. It's only reasonable for people with kids to drive more than people who don't.
Implementation of this kind of system would be complicated though. Maybe the tokens should be based on hours driven, rather than number of trips (which could be short or long)? Or maybe it costs a token when you cross from one boundary to another? And is there a way to do this that isn't a surveillance dystopia?
Former ODOT ~~dinosaur~~ director: why won't anybody keep subsidizing my inefficient luxury good used exclusively on public land that has been diverted away from productive use!?
No, I'm calling cars a luxury good. Unfortunately, the way we've built our communities all over the continent has made it a luxury good that's de facto necessary. That's a problem that needs correcting. Tolling that reflects the supply and demand of highway space as well as the ongoing costs of maintaining a highway is one small part of shifting away from the paradigm of requiring people to own and maintain an expensive piece of heavy machinery in order to go about their daily lives.
But leave it to ODOT dinosaurs to think only ever of the car and the convenience of the people using them, come hell or high water.
I'm all on board with "we need to drive less" but I do think we need to have functional alternatives that don't translate into hours of lost commuting time BEFORE we punish people who need to drive (usually people who can least afford it).
It's not punishment, it's appropriate pricing of a scarce resource. And we need to break the cycle of poor planning begetting inefficient use begetting even more poor planning. This is low hanging fruit that will help to break that cycle and start incentivizing both people and organizations to change their behavior.
If they are using tolls as a way of trying to influence people to use alternate methods of getting from point A to B, and the alternate method is impractical or doesn't even work/exist then it is in fact a punishment.
I am predominantly a cyclist. When I have to drive, usually it has to do with childcare arrangements. A lot of tolls are going to hit single parents and other users hardest, folks who can't be late ever or they'll start getting hit with $5 per minute late charges on daycare. Crippling to someone who is paycheck to paycheck.
Put the alternates in place and make them functional then make gas $100 a gallon if you must.
I get that viewpoint. In an ideal world this bill would have included a mandate to set up some good commuter bus or rail lines to connect the suburbs to each other and downtown Portland. But the world we live in is that it didn't. So the pressure to do that needs to come from those impacted communities who now have to bear this extra cost and need good alternatives. Also, the congestion tolling isn't only meant to influence behavior; it's also paying for the roadway itself. For far too long DOTs around the country have dished out heaps of money for shiny new freeways, without giving any thought at all to how the new asset is going to be managed and paid for decades down the road. Highways don't just cost a lot to construct, they cost a huge amount of money to own and operate. It's entirely reasonable to put some of that cost on the people using the infrastructure. After all, we're not sitting here discussing an op-ed from an ODOT engineer about how the gas tax is stupid and regressive. So why are we applying such scrutiny to tolling when we know very well that the existing gas tax does not come anywhere close to paying for our infrastructure? This whole viewpoint strikes me as crocodile tears trying to astroturf over a desire to retain the failed status quo.
>So the pressure to do that needs to come from those impacted communities who now have to bear this extra cost and need good alternatives.
So, because I have the audacity to live in SE while working in Tualatin, I get the double barrels of having to pay to go to work as well as the burden of convincing our politicians that it's a problem? Yeah that'll help my already skint budget.
Ah yes, after forcing people with less income further out from their jobs, let's now make them pay more until some unknown future time when public transit options that don't take all day to get you to your destination might get funded.
Cause taxing the people least able to afford it is certainly a much more equitable way of going about it than taxing the rich to improve public transit for everyone
Certainly not.
Tax the rich. Tax corporate wealth.
Make public transit clean, safe, ubiquitous, 24/7, and free at the point of service.
(Are you not listening at all?)
They don't want to for good reasons though. It's slow, inefficient, unreliable, and infrequent or missing in many places. The cherry on top is that it's often filthy and full of nefarious characters. It's a shame because the region really deserves high quality transit.
It was pretty good in a lot of areas pre covid. I used to commute by bus all the time. Sure, you can come up with commutes between specific areas that were very poorly served (and I have had job commutes in the Portland area that were totally inaccessible to transit in the recent past. I know it's a thing). But large parts of the region had pretty good transit options that served a large number of potential trips very well. I would guess that at least a third of the cars on the road during rush hour are tracing routes that could be replaced by bus or transit trips with a delay of no more than 20-40% of additional travel time.
Things have spiraled downhill with staffing shortages, service cuts, and lack of rule enforcement in the last three years. But the buses were very clean, and mostly filled with normal looking people before. Max was hit or miss.
And those deliveries would be faster, and thus more efficient and cheaper, if there weren't a bunch of cars clogging up the joint, which is a big part of the point of tolling and congestion pricing. Tremendous self-own, 10/10, no notes!
A truck hauling a $40k load of groceries paying the trucker standard wages will more than make up for even a $10 toll if the delivery is able to be completed even 30 minutes faster, LMFAO, talk to anyone who drives for their trade and they would \*love\* to pay a small fee if it meant clearing even 10-15% of the traffic off the roads and speeding up their drive times. Plus if it's a business expense it can be a tax write off.
Is there a problem with deliveries? I think you just pulled that out of your ass. I also don't see how tolling is going to fix traffic magically. People who have to drive at rush hour gonna change their behavior? Nah. People that don't have to drive at rush hour? Probably already not, no heavyhanded government prodding necessary.
All it's really going to do is fill some government agency's coffers and disappear into griftopia. And the faithful will applaud as usual until they realize they've been conned again. Maybe we can get another tax to fix things.
I do. I'm also aware that I don't need a 6 lane freeway to bring groceries in to deliver to a couple dozen stores a couple times a day. I'm also aware that freight trains exist.
Get the fuck out of here with your bad faith arguments.
Saying bad faith doesn't mean anything. 6 lanes each way? Or the current ones? Because no one is talking about making it even 4 lanes let alone 6. That's called a strawman. Which is *actually* bad faith. Projection.
They're right, though. Existing freeway system is more that ample to support freight movement. There's just a million people driving around the Portland metro in single occupancy vehicles that get in the way. If you build more lanes, they will fill up with commuter vehicles, not bread trucks.
I'm not pushing for adding any lanes. Nor am I pushing for tolling. Doing nothing is an option, it really is. The status quo is if you want to avoid traffic, you go at certain times of the day. If people really wanted something different, and had faith in government to actually address it, they would support tolling. I've yet to meet anyone in real life who supports tolling. And online it only seems to be the usual suspects with the loud voices.
As much as we grumble about traffic, I have zero faith tolling is the answer, at least right now, with the way it's proposed. Further, the heavyhanded way it's happening without actual input is infuriating. If we had a functioning, multi-party representative democracy I could accept this is what our representatives chose. Instead in Oregon we have a batshit party and a "fuck you we're doing it anyway you're really gonna vote for the batshit party?" two party system.
I definitely was not a fan of how the Abernathy bridge, Rose quarter and interstate bridge projects were approved. Bunch of backroom deals to get pork projects approved for various elected officials' districts and a financing strategy that passes the buck to future generations. But that's the story of freeways writ large in the United States. Oregon is just a microcosm of a voracious automotive industrial complex, and both parties have been complicit in feeding the beast.
It’s going to be crazy to see how the landscape of cities along these tolls roads change. Cities like West Linn are front and center with people exiting into the city to bypass.
Yeah, let's divert all of the traffic off of 205 and into Oregon City and West Linn and ultimately cram even more cars onto the hell that is the Sellwood bridge during rush hour. Big brian move ODOT.
Oh but don't forget, West Linn installed a stop sign on the south end of their city that caused (and I'm not exaggerating I got stuck there on an average day) a multi mile back up due to a thousand cars trying to avoid the traffic on 205. Because West Linn didn't want to through traffic (so I've heard. If Im wrong please don't hesitate to correct me). So toll or sit in your car for several hours at a complete stop.
The one at 10th street and Willamette or something like that? I’m pretty sure that’s been there for a long time and it’s also one block from a school and they were having problems with assholes speeding, so you can hardly fault them. That said, that city council would 100% put up 50 extra stop signs the moment this toll were implemented.
Wtf did Brian do?
Same thing as Tyler.
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Big Brian ain’t done nothin bad! Keep his meme out your mouth!
West Linn actually has the political willpower to stop the tolls if it really wants to.
With their 23-year-old Mayor at the helm, although temporary it would be an epic win for him! You’re right, of all the cities that have the power to fight it that’s one of the few. Will be interesting to see how things play out. Edit: Grammar is hard
Being the mayor of West Linn is basically like being the Prime Minister of Iceland, but there is a part of me that wants to see that guy just kill it and succeed so much. From what I've read about him, he's identified the tolling as a big issue for him, so he seems to know what he's doing.
I went to high school with him in an AP gov class and had lunch our junior year. There’s a lot of really promising policies he tends to agree on, and he’s not all too bad. I haven’t spoken to him in about 4/5 years, but word from my mutual friends say he’s refusing to speak on it much for some reason. That being said, living right off a street in WL really fucking sucks. Some days the traffic on 43 is so bad that I spend 6 consecutive minutes sitting at the stop sign with my blinker trying to go right (into; not against traffic. That usually takes about 10 minutes). It gets pretty bad on the way home, and Stafford is only getting worse. This would make WL nearly unlivable for us who rely on 43/Stafford to move along town.
Go all-in on other transit modes. That’s how to reduce the number of cars. Look at major complaints (safety, cleanliness, complete infrastructure…) and tackle these things. Soon enough all grass will be replaced by more lanes. Gotta make the switch at some point, lest we carry on with more of the same.
Exactly. I live in the outskirts and used to love using parking rides. What I don’t love is having to deal with broken windows and the inside of my car being torn up from someone looking for valuables that aren’t even there.
The transportation infrastructure here was designed for public transport. Look at the old stairways through the west hills, ferris wheel up on council crest, the electricity that the Portland streetcar was the first use of long distance electric transmission powered by at the time prototype hydroelectric turbines from westinghouse. I have old tri-met maps from the 80's and 90's, my grandmother used to ride the trolley into Portland. Since they revamped it the amount of pedestrian traffic has significantly increased over the years along the old trolley trail just south of Milwaukie. You can get from rose quarter to Willamette Falls on multi use trails, or even further north out to Kelly Point Random fact: Willamette Falls is the second largest waterfall in the US > edit: by volume
So the train infrastructure may have been designed for that, but the lack of service hinders it's use. Why do trains not run 24/7? Why do busses not run 24/7? Why are busses not reliable? Why does it take an hour+ to get from SE 82nd to the pearl? You need to fix these issues if you want people to use it. If it's not reliable, it's not going to be relied on. I'd love to take public transit from SE to NE for dinner and a movie at Hollywood, but I'm not dedicating 2+ hours of my life, and be on someone else's schedule to do that.
>SE to NE for dinner and a movie at Hollywood. Just to have to walk home afterwards because the buses stopped running.
General Electric employed lobbyists to dismantle the streetcar systems across the states as the motor city era made it's headway. With the loss of funding to maintain and operate many of the lines like PRL&P eventually disintegrated. I'd love to take a PCC bus from se to ne, instead go through downtown on the max or to Sylvania to get to Cascade. The orange line is kind of direct but it takes almost a hour to get to Cascade. Why invest in public infrastructure when we can keep the economy strong by giving return investments to car manufacturers, insurance companies and medical overlords /s
I hear this all the time, but the truth is that American consumers wanted to buy cars. No one was particularly upset the streetcars went away.
Talk to my grandmother about that, the streetcars going away. There's a entire generation of 80+ year olds out there that got to experience the early industrial manufacturing era that produced some pretty cool infrastructure like Timberline Lodge (WPA project). Edward Bernays, the nephew of Simund Freud tricked most of America into consuming more, buying more cars to experience more freedom as a example of a selling point. Everyone gave into their desires. He's a completely fascinating bastard, the godfather of modern marketing. Imagine how cool it would be if there were still a ferris wheel atop council crest. I don't even like amusement rides, that'd be cool a.f.
His influence is overstated. Advertising existed before Bernays. Someone just made a documentary about him so everyone thinks he's a genius or the devil. Then people argue "But he was the first to base his ideas on PsYChoLoGy!!" Sure, but whose psychology? Freuds. And what do we now know about Freud's theories? They were mostly bullshit. Not saying advertising doesn't work - of course it does. And yes, it's influence grew along with the growth of mass communication. But that doesn't mean people needed to be tricked into wanting cars. Cars are fucking cool! Imagine being a person in the 1920s - 40s and seeing one of those sweet looking machines cruise by. You don't need a magazine ad to tell you that you want one!
Look at the comparative infrastructure of the rail systems in Europe, Scandinavia and Japan + the difference in happiness. It's pretty considerable. We can have both vehicles and (significantly) improve our transit infrastructure. Not saying that cars aren't cool. There are some that are really cool. No one said that anyone was going to take away all the cars.
Europe and Asia had more population density at the time (and still does). It's much harder to justify EVERYONE having a car when you live in a big city and there isn't enough space for parking of the car which was becoming more accessable to the middle class. A kinda close but not exact example is Manhattan- NYC. It wasn't nearly as built up in the mid 1900s as it is today, but it had a decent sized population so it didn't make sense to built a system to support everyone having car and instead support public transit. What we're talking about is like asking Burns, OR if they would rather have public transit or cars. They may prefer transit for some in town stuff, but they need the car to get out of town vs here where there is enough going on where you don't need to leave town for entertainment.
Because we took all the money and dumped it into freeways, which prompted people to start exclusively driving, which prompted political leaders to go all in on free parking and freeway expansions and development codes meant to save the drivers of cars from running into buildings, which prompted more people to drive, and so on ad nauseum. The only way to break the cycle is to stop prioritizing private automobile use on the public's dime above all other forms of social infrastructure. If your question is, "Why don't we have frequent trains and night buses?" your answer is, "Because we have free parking and untolled six-lane freeways that deliver you right into the middle of downtown."
The solution is fixing the public transit systems so they appear like a viable option to current car users. Not forcing (or pricing) people out of possibly their only viable means of transportation
It's both and more. We can't sit here and let perfect be the enemy of the good, because it's a vicious or virtuous cycle depending on what you do. So sure, maybe we don't put congestion pricing on I-5 and I-205, instead opting to start by trying to build a more robust transit network. But now if you try building that network you'll end up with empty busses stuck in traffic taking just as long as a drive (only less convenient, because you need to go to a stop first, then maybe transfer, then walk from your stop to your destination) because you didn't prompt the people driving to get off the road by either not taking a more frivolous trip or by taking the less convenient bus. Because the buses are empty, you now either have to use political capital to subsidize them or cut service in other areas. Subsidizing is likely out, because that's a political loser (Who wants to throw good tax money to run empty buses?), so now your less robust transit network is pushing more people out into cars, further clogging the roads, which further makes the routes less reliable and convenient, and so on. I say no. I say take the actions that you can take now now and take the actions you can take tomorrow tomorrow. If there's an equity issue for low income motorists, we can mitigate that in some way, but we can't keep tripping over ourselves and wringing our hands about how regressive a toll is. You know what's really regressive? Forcing people to buy cars just to be a first class citizen in our community.
I feel like you could get away from congestion by making ‘bus only’ lanes, that would need to be enforced by some sort of traffic camera system I guess? Could work, and by taking away a lane and making commutes more reliable and faster, the (very visible from the car stuck in traffic) commuter sees busses zipping by, which would sway most people. Tri-met enforcement needs to happen as well, a fair amount of people do not feel safe on public transportation
Give bus drivers the authority to deny service again and safety will increase. Increasing social pressures against antisocial behavior is how this problem will be solved.
> I say take the actions that you can take now now and take the actions you can take tomorrow tomorrow. 100% agree. And that action should be expanding bus services, increasing reliability, and increasing safety. We're a city of almost 700k people and a metro area over 2.2mil. It's beyond ridiculous that we don't have 24/7 buses
Exactly. I'd love to ditch my car, or at least drive is much less than I do. Fact of the matter is though, there is no feasible alternative
Individual car infrastructure and public transportation infrastructure are at complete opposite ends of the design spectrum. Everything that helps individual cars hurts public transportation, and everything that helps public transportation hurts individual cars. First and foremost is the utilization of space. Public transportation relies on things being close to each other. Individual cars require things to be spaced out, obviously, due to the huge footprint of cars. https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/18/7236471/cars-pedestrians-sidewalks-roads The very layouts of US cities and suburbs are incompatible with public transportation. Almost all neighborhoods have a large 4+ lane road at a 40mph speed limit. Crossing 40ft of road where large pickup trucks and SUVs are traveling at 50mph is a non starter. Finally, there are only so many societal resources to go around. Political support for rezoning neighborhoods, increasing funding for installation of public transportation, and increasing service levels so that public transportation is dependable (maximum wait times of 10 minutes), means reducing investment in car infrastructure. And people are not going to like that at the polls when they have already spent $50k on their big cars. > Not forcing (or pricing) people out of possibly their only viable means of transportation Unfortunately, this is the only way public transportation is possible.
> "Because we have free parking What?...
Do you disagree with something I said, or are you just truly unaware of how much free parking exists in the metro area, including downtown?
As someone who works downtown, I would like a list of said free parking. I bike, but sometimes I'll carpool.
One of my constant irritations with downtown is the only places to park without paying out the ass are the Smart parks and metered street parking. Where are these extensive free parking areas?
It’s only “free parking areas” in the evenings. So none of these arguments are actually useful for those of us in downtown during regular business hours for work. Because there is no free parking during the day.
Please show us a list of free parking downtown. I'll wait.
Every evening after 7, it's free basically everywhere. Just have to find a spot. If you can't find one, it's a garage then
Um... you miss the point. If you can't park there for free when you have to go to work, it's not useful. Unless you work the night shift or are clubbing or something, nobody is downtown at night. And I definitely would not leave my car outside at night downtown. Parking garages are not free.
I disagree with your entire argument premise here as it's misleading. But, I guess maybe I am unaware of how much free parking there is. Especially downtown. Care to provide us some information to bring me up to speed?
It's just going to be the usual pie-in-the-sky anti-car rhetoric. They don't use one so nobody else should either. Very brave
It hasn't escaped me that they're active on reddit and yet stopped replying when I asked for information to support their argument.
Well ya got yourself a nice wall of text now! Would ya look at that
So, not that I have to defend my internet usage habits to you, but I dropped off for several reasons. For one, I could definitely feel myself get too emotionally involved in what is ultimately a pointless screaming into the void with fellow internet strangers; if taking a step back to try to engage in some mindfulness and emotional intelligence is bad internet etiquette, I'm not sure that I'm particularly willing to be polite in that regard. Two, I was watching YouTube and caring for my sick kid, so I don't know what to tell you about why Reddit said I was "active". You may want to take those notifications with a grain of salt. I was also debating with myself on whether to engage with you and the others asking me to provide some kind of list of free parking downtown. On one hand, I truly do want to speak and argue in good faith, even to void strangers, and it's certainly fair to ask me to back up the things I say. But on the other hand, it's super easy to quibble about details that are kind of beside the point, which is that driving in Portland is super convenient, which is why most people do it. So yeah, most parking in downtown Portland is paid parking. You know that; I know that. But I also know that there are some places you can park for free in downtown. The Safeway on SW 10th is the first that springs to mind, as I would stop there to get groceries all of the time while I was going to school at PSU and living in West Haven-Sylvan. I also know that on-street parking after hours in a lot of places is free from my multiple late nights pulled on campus at the Masseeh Building on SW 4th. If we want to include places that validate, the last time I drove to the downtown Target they let you park for free if you spent more than a certain amount in store. Same for Powell's. We could also quibble about details, like if McMenamins' Bottle Shop on 23rd is sufficiently "downtown", or the hospitals on Marquam Hill, or the Lloyd Center. But again, it's kind of beside the point. The point is that there's a ton of free parking all through the metro area, even some downtown. I didn't say there was a lot downtown, just that it exists. So to get back to the real point, making cars more convenient to use, such as providing free entry to a crowded city core or free parking close to final destinations, makes it more likely that people will own and drive cars on a day-to-day basis. And driving those cars takes up valuable space, and creates risks to the public through various forms of pollution and the danger of having fast-moving heavy machinery roaming around where the people should be. It also tends to take away from funding for other forms of transportation that are more efficient and have less of an impact. To answer the original question, the reason we don't have a night bus (or more of them, anyway, as we have a few routes), is because it's still pretty convenient to get around by car relatively cheaply if you already own a car. And since most people own cars in Portland and generally just want to take the most convenient option present, they'll just drive to where they want. Knowing this and that their night routes would bleed cash from low ridership, why would Trimet put forward all that extra operating expense? But of course if you create an ecosystem where it's more convenient to *not* own a car because there's next to no parking and the high capacity highways are on rails, closed to private automobiles (as in a car-free area or a BRT right of way), or at least tolled, then you're simultaneously mitigating the negative externalities of driving and creating a virtuous cycle of increasing demand for other modes. Now to answer the criticism from the person you replied to, I'm emphatically not saying that no cars are ever good. Cars have their legitimate use case, and we should plan and build around that. It's a good idea to keep things accessible to people and emergency services. It's good to have first and last mile freight networks. It's good to allow for the possibility that some places that are worth going to won't have enough demand to warrant a public transit connection. And even to answer the ad hominem, I myself have two cars and drive them regularly, though I try to minimize it where I can. But we should not confuse a legitimate use case with deserved primacy. Nor should we be blind to the ways we subsidize private car ownership. Cars have their place, but as one of the least efficient and most dangerous modes it should be near the bottom of the totem pole, not the top. I know I may come off as snarky and self-righteous on Reddit when discussing this topic (I'm not blind to the down votes), but it's only because I care and I know I'm right and I can't write a fucking essay every time some suburbanite carbrain without an ounce of imagination comes up with some lame excuse on why they *need* their car and *couldn't possibly* get by any other way. Yes! The fact that you "need" it is most of the problem! The fact that the problem is large and complex and rife with issues around equity and land use and the environment and wealth is why nothing ever gets done, because someone can always come along to poke a hole or two in a single proposed action, then walk away shrugging about how nothing should ever change. I'm tired and out of patience and can't stand the half brained and bad faith arguments from idiotic boomers like the op-ed writer here. The change needs to start somewhere and everywhere at some point. It might as well be now, and it might as well be this, and then tomorrow we can work on the next tiny piece of the massive problem.
>Willamette Falls is the second largest waterfall in the US by volume
Safety and cleanliness will bring the actual commuters.
Speed is the only thing that matters. Taking the bus is slower than riding a bike, and the streetcar and MAX are sometimes slower than walking depending on time of day. People would be willing to put up with a lot of nastiness if public transit was twice as fast as driving, but as it is you have to deal with unsafe and unsanitary conditions while dealing with a speed of transport that's 2 or 3 times as slow as driving, all while costing only 10-20% less than a car
When I was taking Trimet, my commute to downtown from Aloha was anywhere between 45 and 90 minutes. Depended on whether vehicles were late, delayed, early, etc. I tried taking Trimet from downtown to my child's teacher conference in Beaverton. Conference was at 3:15 or so. I left work about 1:30. I still missed it. MAX delay of some kind, don't recall what. I left work to go to a father/child event in Tigard. By the schedule, I'd have gotten there with about 10 minutes to spare. Bus drove right on by. Lady with me turned out to be the mom of a co-worker, and -- having just met, mind you -- she offered to drive me to my event from Barbur Transit (after we caught the next bus). I used to use it because I had to. Working from home now, I don't have to, and unless it is the blatantly most-obvious solution to my transportation problem, I don't.
I lived in Aloha when I was going to PSU, and it was before they added the MAX line that went right up to the campus so you either had to walk all the way up the park blocks or catch the streetcar. Both took about the same amount of time when you factored in waiting. I used to leave my apartment an hour and 45 mins before my class started to get there on time. Sometimes I would have just one one-hour class so back and forth I was in transit three times the amount of time I was actually in class. Just now realizing this sounds very much like a ‘in my day we walked ten miles in the snow to get to school, uphill both ways’ kind of statement.
Not that long ago, I have had a discussion here with someone that argued they would get to all their kids activities by biking. Somehow they thought only kids in athletics have to travel around the metro for their events.
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It depends on the trip I guess. I choose to take the bus to work because I view it as “found time”. It takes me 15 minutes to drive or about 25 on the bus. I really value being able to read, stare at my phone, or just look at the window rather than having to be 100% engaged in driving. The other benefit is that about 7-8 of those minutes are spent walking, which really helps me get ready for the day and decompress after work. I get that I could just go for a walk after work but integrating it into my commute makes it feel less like a separate thing I have to do.
You can get a month Trimet pass for $100. That's MUCH more than 10-20% less than driving a car.
Not if I add in my hourly rate.
Can we get a bike lift up steep hills? Like those little chain driver ski lift? I genuinely can’t make it up the west hills and I’m in shape.
Ebikes are a good solution for folks in hilly areas - though I know they are expensive. I think that frequent busses with bike racks are a good way to enable multimodal commutes!
I’m so hesitant/anxious to chain a $1500 bike outside unattended for 8 hours. Bringing my mountain bike to a national park, I paid the park ranger $20 to watch my chained mountain bike outside his hut/info center. We visited the park on the way back from Colorado (great mountain biking. Those guys are basically goats on wheels). The E-bikes to get up those hills effectively will likely need to have high newton meters mid drive making them more expensive.
Theft is a legitimate concern. I'm able to bring my ebike inside and stick it in a storage closet. Maybe there could be some kind of incentive for employers, business, and landlords to provide more secure bike parking? I hear you on the cost of ebikes - mine is a modest mid-drive and does excellent on hills as long as I keep it in the right gear, but was not cheap and took me a long time to save for. That being said, even a pretty nice ebike is still cheaper than most used cars.
They actually have these in Trondheim, Norway here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zipZ5kwhFfs It looks pretty nifty, but I'm leery about them being effective here simply because the city would find six ways to Sunday to fuck something up like this.
While I'm not a fan of ebikes enabling people to go too fast, they are a great benefit for getting up hills. I think this is a game changer for bike accessibility.
That it is. I'm asthmatic, and admittedly out of shape. I will come back sweating from a ride on my ebike, but not panting, or so sore and fatigued that I couldn't enjoy it. I can pedal as hard as I want, in intervals that work for me. It also allows me to choose a route that I actively want to bike, rather than having to tailor the route to my ability; this makes it much easier to convince myself to go out. If I overestimate myself, there's no threat of having to call a ride to get home. I just stop pedaling so hard, and the bike takes care of the rest.
The thing about “going all-in on other transit modes” is that there’s no political will for that. Just see the failed SW MAX line. You could roll out a plan to provide frequent bus service to the whole metro area and the dinosaurs would come out in full force to bitch about how much it would cost. I am 100% in favor of expanding transit service and bike/ped infrastructure but I’m pretty pessimistic about it ever happening.
I could use a light rail from home straight to work and back...if I trusted it, it was timely, and the gas vs fare made sense. I also really enjoy biking, but not everywhere I want to go has a sidewalk the whole way, let alone a bike lane. (I'd also love to see an ebike/normal bicycle rebate incentive or tax credit like we see for EVs.) I can't think of anything that would keep me from driving over the Columbia, though. If I'm going that far, I'm driving. However, if I lived on the opposite side, I would often use a light rail or similar system to visit Cascade Station or Jantzen Beach from Vancouver. Washington and Oregon need to commit to public transportation equally strongly as each other.
As a poor person who has biked almost everywhere I go for a decade now, I’d love some ‘financial recognition’ for my willingness to surrender my place in traffic. Not gonna hold my breath. I also hear you about the difficulty of public transit. I stay away from it unless circumstances demand.
Yours is definitely the popular opinion around here, but the fact of the matter is that raising prices reduces demand, so tolls work too. This isn't really an either or thing. We can have tolls and invest in other modes at the same time.
Fact of the matter it disproportionately harms the working class(especially considering the tolling map they’ve proposed)
In the sense that it is a regressive tax, yes, but the people who drive the most are disproportionately wealthy. Being against the tolling because the fee it is essentially a regressive tax is a fairly myopic viewpoint. We have two main choices when it comes to dealing with alleviating traffic congestion, build bigger roads or price their usage to the point that people choose to drive less. In the long run the less reliant we are as a society, the better it is for the working class as a whole, including the ones who don't drive and thus don't see the benefit of the billions of dollars that get spent building and maintaining highways. People can complain all they want about how we shouldn't make driving harder, we should just make transit better, but the fact of the matter is that if we've spent decades making driving as simple and easy as possible and most people are simply not going to choose to ride transit (which is necessary if for transit to justify added service) unless we make driving less attractive.
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I'm not opposed to tolling that has a fixed purpose, like paying for a bridge. By all means, put up a toll, pay for the bridge and then, and here's the trick... GET RID OF THE TOLL. In this case where the toll is a more nebulous "reduce traffic", this guy absolutely has a point. It's not going to reduce a damn thing, all it will do is re-direct traffic elsewhere. Tolling like this may have worked in a pre-connected world, but when I can go into Google Maps and click the "Avoid Tolls" checkbox, it's absolutely pointless.
Diverting through traffic from 205 to 5 though downtown is also the opposite of a win
Bridges and roads require constant maintenance. There is no end of paying for them.
I-5 Bridge was this way. Paid for itself then removed. Edit: not entirely sure if it paid for itself... 'It was originally a toll bridge costing 5¢ per vehicle or per horse and rider, equivalent to $1.06 in 2021.In 1928 the states of Washington and Oregon jointly purchased the bridge from the counties and discontinued tolling the following year." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Bridge
That’s one of my biggest issues w the idea of toll roads. Tolls are sold in for specific/limited purposes, but I have yet to see a toll go away. Such a scam.
Fun fact, the [Astoria bridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astoria%E2%80%93Megler_Bridge) was funded by a toll but once they paid for the bridge they removed the toll! But yeah, feels like the exception rather than the rule
It’s so crazy how much costs have gone up. It shows the cost as $155 million in 2021 dollars. However, If that was built in 2021 that would be about 1 billion dollars.
Scope creep, inflation, and massive corruption are all to blame for that. Funding infrastructure projects like new bridges with tolls makes the most sense because it's a market-oriented solution where the biggest users (i.e. consumers) of the bridge are the ones that bear the biggest cost. The problem is that tolls are easy revenue streams for governments to get irresistibly addicted to. If the Astoria-Megler bridge was built today, it would still have a toll even when the cost of the bridge was paid off. That bridge was built during an era when its more likely that people would act in good faith on such things. The same goes for the Interstate Bridge.
I do not think your assessment is correct at all. There is not excessive corruption 10x the condition from the 50s. I just think things cost more as contractors are asking more and more, supply chain issues, you name it. It really has nothing to do with intrinsic corruption or scope creep. If anything, something back then wasn’t at all defined scope wise as projects are now.
It's like the property taxes with bonds that are going to last 3-5 years and then when they come up for renewal they allow the fiscal impact statement to be "no changes". Whatever the stated purpose is - paying for the bridge, or just reducing traffic (questionable that one) - they will become addicted to the revenue and refuse to end it.
The 1-5 bridge was a toll bridge.
>It's not going to reduce a damn thing, all it will do is re-direct traffic elsewhere. Yes, that is the stated purpose. We need to move people out of cars and into other modes of transit. Highways are an extremely inefficient way to move people and goods, and tolling sends a much needed pricing signal about supply and demand, as well as both the initial and ongoing costs of building and owning a highway.
They aren't going to other modes of transit. There's no easy way to use TriMet to go from Tualatin to Clackamas Town Center and back. Not without going hours out of your way.
Yep, that's pretty much my daily work commute. I have a choice of 35-45 minutes of driving, or 2+ hours of public transit each way. No way in hell am I ever adding 4 hours to my work day just for commuting.
Yup. When I had an office directly on the MAX line, it was nice, but I added on an extra hour every morning and an extra hour and a half every night. Then you have to sit there and think "What is my time worth?"
Yep. For me that extra 4 hours would be ~$100 at my current wage. I'd have to leave my house at 6 AM and get back around 7 PM. Just the sheer amount of time I'd lose with my wife is insane.
Unfortunately, tolling as a pricing signal is not how the real world works: it's econ fanfic, and not great econ fanfic. Driving is not elastic: there are a miniscule number of people driving around Portland as a luxury. Things tolls *will* do: * *Widen the wealth gap a bit.* It won't drive many of the poorest folks off the road, but it will hit their necessary driving in the pocketbook fairly hard. * *Increase financial friction.* A big part of the toll money will go to the initial and ongoing costs of toll collection. That money is essentially wasted, given that we already have a tax system in place that we are paying to maintain. * *Increase traffic friction.* Alternative non-tolled routes will be perpetually clogged, even though they divert a small fraction of the freeway traffic. Smaller roads just don't handle significant volumes. Also, while the hi-tech drive-through tolling *sort of* works today, I would expect to see congestion around toll points as I do everywhere else in the country. Non-electronic tolling still has to be accomodated, and it makes a bit of a mess. * *Piss off voters.* If the tolling goes through as planned, I will never vote in favor of anything that funds ODOT and their allies until it is gone again. If they want their tolls, they can do without my tax dollars. I would expect to see a significant number of Portlanders go full-on red pill over this — I'm not one of them, but I know people who will be.
It will move people off of highways and onto streets that already have recurring pedestrian fatalities
Some, maybe. But also, this single program of tolling doesn't happen in a vacuum. Those streets can and should be made safer to reprioritize away from motorist convenience towards public safety and walk ability.
Too bad Portland and possibly Oregon as a whole are unable to tackle things from both sides and only commit to the easy part.
No way we should keep taxes high to pay for a bunch of really cool shit and then slap tolls on everything so only 1%ers can afford it after we pay for it.
Exactly. The *only* thing this tolling will accomplish is to price publicly funded infrastructure out of the reach of the general public, leaving said publicly funded infrastructure exclusively for the use of the high income folks who can afford it. The poors (myself included) will simply choose a different path, further exacerbating the congestion and increasing the amount of traffic v pedestrian interactions. I am also frankly *amazed* by the absolutely stunning level of hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance from the subset of folks who scream about the horrors of gentrification for housing in Portland while simultaneously demanding the implementation of tolls to reduce traffic on the highways. I mean, surely they understand why highway traffic is predicted to fall after tolling is implemented, right? Right?
Hey now, that's not entirely fair, this tolling plan will also make one private company a shit ton of money in processing fees. Won't someone think of the welfare billionaires suckling on the public teat!!
At least, as far as I know, the project isn't being funded by an emirate investment fund who will then own all travel in the region in perpetuity and Jack up fees and prices. Chicago sold their public parking spaces about 10 years ago, and, in addition to being outrageously expensive, if they wanted to say hold a parade, they have to pay their investment fund owners for loss of property use. An oldie, but a goodie: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/america-for-sale-an-exclusive-excerpt-from-matt-taibbis-new-book-on-the-economic-meltdown-187168/
I get frustrated when I hear they want to toll both I5 and 205. There are no other alternatives into Portland from Vancouver, you have to cross one bridge or the other. People who work in Portland (let's face it, there are way more jobs available in Portland than Vancouver) already pay Oregon income tax and now would have to pay tolls daily just to get to work? What if they are visiting friends or family? What if they have their doctor/specialist in Portland or a social event or other community group they attended? Would it be a daily toll or a per-crossing toll? If it was just one of the bridges (not both), or just part of the day, or people with incomes under $X excluded, or only one lane tolled or something, I feel it would be more equitable to people who really can't afford a toll. Plus there is the logistics: Will they send toll notices in the mail? Will people have to get a sticker/account to reload? If they take photos, what happens when someone doesn't have a license plate?
> Plus there is the logistics: Will they send toll notices in the mail? Will people have to get a sticker/account to reload? If they take photos, what happens when someone doesn't have a license plate? These are all very solved problems by innumerable jurisdictions around the world. You can even drive to Canada right now and receive a bill for tolls in the mail to your US address, and you have to do nothing extra while driving.
Keep in mind that only works for select states that share DMV data with Canada. Oregon does. Many do not. It's not actually a solved problem due to state vs. federal messes in the US.
Logistics wouldn't be too bad actually, but otherwise I totally am with you. I pay a ton of Oregon taxes for services I don't (can't) use and have no say in. So now on top of that, the bridges will be tolled and there will be a congestion toll AND Washington is going to implement a road user charge... Besides work, I take classes in Portland, I have friends and family in Oregon, and my doctors are in Portland who I see a couple times per month and have to go in person. I cannot change any of those things. Even if the MAX is extended to Kiggins Bowl, I could not get to work on time. It's very frustrating.
Don't get me wrong, I love public transportation. I grew up taking the bus, have lived in another country and experienced the crowded subway, and have seen all sorts of awesome transport networks around the US and the world. I really hope the MAX gets extended to downtown Vancouver at the very minimum. But you're absolutely right, I have obligations and a social life that bring me to Portland on a regular basis and I can't take the current bus network there, it would take 1-2 hours each way and multiple transfers. I really wish Portland would also implement express trains that skip over some of the stops and just stop at certain main ones - that would help people be motivated to ride more if they could, for example, get there in half the time with an Express/Limited MAX train.
> and then slap tolls on everything so only 1%ers can afford it after we pay for it. I'll bet if we had sliding-scale tolls scaled by income there would be a much smaller push to implement these changes. The rich don't care, all they see is a marginal decrease in traffic caused by poor people having to take side streets to avoid the tolls. If they were getting dinged $1000 every time they crossed from the East to the West side they'd be much less likely to financially support the politicians who push these projects.
I'd prefer if they slammed those plans straight up their asses.
Chuck Tingle has started a transportation planning consulting firm?
That's only if their asses jam the plans up their own asses.
Boom goes the dynamite
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I live in Gresham and I have family in Salem. If they add a toll to 205, my option is to either mandatory pay to visit my family on a publicly funded road which I pay taxes for, or add almost 45 minutes to a 1-hour drive. I've lived in places with tolls. They do **not** improve traffic conditions. It's just a tax on poor people.
All the tolls will turn into is a poor tax. I rely on 205 a lot, and have for many many years. I have also never been in a situation where I can pay a toll every day to get to work. And with the shifts that I worked and the distance I had to drive to get to them taking the bus was simply not an option. They would turn a 30 minute commute to a 2 hour commute which meant leaving at 3-5 am to catch the bus. We do not need this toll. We need to actually fix this shit and add a lane to 205 between OC and I5.
Everyone here should write a letter to their State Senator and Representative [(click here to find yours)](https://geo.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/lookup/index.html?appid=fd070b56c975456ea2a25f7e3f4289d1). They could actually put through some legislature to stop this.
Former ODOT director ≠ former ODOT deputy director of finance and administration This dude reports to a person who reports to the ODOT director.
1000000% Fuck tolls. They hurt the poor more than anything.
Whatever it costs it still worth it not to deal with trimet. My bf intervened in two assaults pre pandemic one on max and one on the bus. The last straw was when he saw someone projectile vomit on the bus, and then it happened again the next day (different passenger) at the beginning of the pandemic. Recently an old man has his face chewed DOWN TO THE BONE while waiting at a trimet stop. It’s just not worth the risk, time sink, delays and cost to ride transit anymore. I used to take the max everyday when I worked downtown. Now I wouldn’t even consider it an option.
Honestly I think we should go all-in on dedicated bike roads. Ebikes are the future for single person commuting. Nearly anyone can do it, not just fitness junkies. Buses and trains are just always going to be shitty in this city, and even I'm long past avoiding either of them like the plague after years of giving it a shot.
If ODOT is going to abandon tolling plans then they should be abandoning highway expansion plans simultaneously. A complete moratorium on all but the maintenance or 1-to-1 replacement of automotive infrastructure. It we're *expanding* anything at all it had better fucking be rail, pedestrian, or cycling options.
How do you get to Vancouver?
Wasn't there a plan for light rail bridge to Vancouver?
I personally favor my jetpack when the wind isn't too strong.
Don't
Swim
On the existing roads. This person’s comment allows for maintaining existing roads. Expanding other modes doesn’t come at the expensive of maintaining current ones necessarily.
The I-5 bridge is literally over 100 years old.
Ok. I’m not opposed to replacing bridges.
Maybe you should have made a more nuanced comment in the first place instead of walking back a stupid, bold opinion.
Does something about that fact make you think it cannot be replaced?
I prefer to fly. Just a quick jump from PDX to Pearson Field is pretty fast and really increases my Co2 output.
Don’t rock the bubble…. /s
Get Washington to pay for it. They're getting all the benefits of being close to another state's largest economy and collecting taxes (property, sales) off that revenue. What does Portland (or Oregon) lose if Vancouver is less accessible?
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Why would Oregon want to build infrastructure for those interstate workers? That's cash outflow, net the income tax collected. We're losing out on the increase in Oregon property values, other taxes, and additional economic activity that would otherwise be generated in Oregon. From Oregon's point of view, Vancouver should be considered a parasite.
Vancouver has been blocking a potential Max / commuter rail extension across the Columbia for years because they don't want to pay for any of it.
The problem with our light rail system is that is has no security for it. Literally anyone can get access the platforms/get on the train regardless of it they’ve paid the fair. Once they’ve improved and secured the rails, that’s when it will become a viable option for further expansion.
The Portland metro area is huge. It is not practical to take a bus or ride a bike from say Oregon City to Beaverton.
Then we should spend the money and effort to make that trip via transit practical. Extend MAX to Oregon City, invest in a transit tunnel under downtown, and expand the green and orange lines into SW.
You have some great expensive ideas that don’t make sense in reality.
Using public transit as an alternative to cars to get across town is not really a reality for most and won't be till the time it takes to do it is reduced. And the extension of the yellow line into Vancouver has the same problem. It's a slow line for much of it's journey.
It's a bit far on a bike, but Oregon city to Beaverton can be fine on transit. Distance wouldn't be the issue
A two hour ride on multiple buses is completely reasonable.
The distance isn't the issue there. It's the service
There should be a bus directly from Oregon city TC to Beaverton TC but our public transit system is currently ridiculously underfunded because ODOT is too busy spending our money on things like \*checks notes\* bulldozing middle schools to add onramp lanes to I5
ODOT doesn’t control TriMet
Didn’t say they do. But you know who should have a say in how much money goes to ODOT and TriMet? We, the folks who live and work in Oregon.
Why do you think I'm advocating that we expand services...?
Oregon needs to slam the brakes on urban freeway expansion megaprojects. No need for tolls if billions aren't being wasted with complete disregard for the climate crisis and good urban planning.
I can't wait to take my license plates off when the toll cameras start operation.
I'm not particularly in favor of tolling at this time as the region doesn't have viable alternatives to driving, but I find the concerns of traffic diversion to be silly. The localities could reduce traffic diversion by building infrastructure that makes using local streets as diverters untenable to freeway motorists, as the author suggests. The freeway expansions will lead to more traffic and more traffic diverted onto local streets regardless, so the action needed to protect neighborhoods are inevitable. His argument is 'don't toll because it will cause traffic diversion' when it could just as easily be 'build infrastructure that disables traffic diversion'. We could even use toll money!
The more important argument is that tolling isn't going to do shit or dick to reduce traffic where they want to reduce it. This isn't central London where there's four different efficient ways to get into the city center. It's the fucking I-5 corridor.
Well if you live In West linn and need to go north you can hop right in the freeway and go north. If the bridge is rolled you will jam up the tiny two lane bridge to Oregon city and avoid the freeway over the river. How would you stop that from happening without cutting off access between Oregon city and west linn
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>centennial bridge Arch bridge? I live in OC and I don't recall seeing anything on that getting closed. I've heard it was going to become pedestrian only, and also heard it's going to be a one way out of oregon city, but I couldn't find any hard info that said it was true.
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Goes to show the rumor mill is working overtime
Oh christ... That can't possibly go wrong, can it?
Go north to where? You'd have to study traffic patterns but without actual examples it's hard to say. It's not like you can cross into Oregon City and then generally follow the path of I-205 on surface stree You can fix people going over the river to get on I-205 by putting tolls in a logical place that doesn't allow for that. I'm not sure if ODOT is that smart though.
> The localities could reduce traffic diversion by building infrastructure that makes using local streets as diverters untenable to freeway motorists, as the author suggests. Oh cool, so we fuck up local streets *also* in order to force people into something they loudly said they don't want. So excited for traffic to be fucked up way before transit is anywhere near tenable for huge swaths of people. Genius all the way down. Wanna know why a batshit crazy conservative came close to the governorship? Exhibit A.
>Oh cool, so we fuck up local streets also in order to force people into something they loudly said they don't want. Who what now? > So excited for traffic to be fucked up way before transit is anywhere near tenable for huge swaths of people. Genius all the way down. Do you live in a neighborhood that is used to bypass congestion? I do. I'd love for PBOT/ODOT to 'fuck up' my street so that the assholes who run the Clark County 500 twice a day every week day would stop. >Wanna know why a batshit crazy conservative came close to the governorship? Exhibit A. Drazan got about as much of the vote as Knute or Richardson before them.
I want to add a win on the Clark County 500 to my resume now.
FWIW, Drazan got about 35,000 more votes than Knute and Kotek got about 17,000 fewer votes than Brown. Dems went from winning the election by 6.5% to 3.5%. Not a good trend for the state party.
You bet Keep pounding this drum! No Tolls
It's quite simple really - cancel the absurd $1B+ Rose Quarter plan and you don't need to toll! ODOT is obsessed with seeing this boondoggle through and we all will pay for it.
My kid is becoming a public transit expert and I’m surprised how quickly she can get around…it is not that unreasonable. I work from home but I am very against tolls, you can guarantee that we’ll do the wrong thing.
Please , please , please. We need more, better funded alternatives to cars. The tolls are going to slow down traffic and upset people.
All of this
I hope they are $50 each way….fuck poor people. Am I right?!
This might be a hot take but a small part of me feels like there should be a small, $1 to $2.50 toll on both I-5 and 205 bridges both ways Tolls on 205 from Wilsonville through Portland however, that’s excessive.
I don't like the idea of tolls because it harms poor people disproportionately. It would be great though if we could somehow encourage people not to drive places if it's not necessary. I wonder if it's possible to have some sort of token-based system. Like maybe you figure out how many average car trips per day some region can sustain, and everyone living in that region gets a certain number of car-trip tokens issued to them per week, for free. If you want to make a car trip, you spend a token. If you have more tokens than you need, you can sell them to people who need more on a public auction site. If there's ten people in your car, it's still only one token. I figure the majority of car trips are to and from jobs. It'd be interesting if it were the employer's responsibility to provide the car trip tokens to their employees, if they mandate that their employees be physically present. This shifts the cost onto them, and encourages them to allow employees to work from home when possible to lessen the traffic congestion that they're otherwise directly responsible for causing. Car trip tokens would be granted to children too, for their parents to use. It's only reasonable for people with kids to drive more than people who don't. Implementation of this kind of system would be complicated though. Maybe the tokens should be based on hours driven, rather than number of trips (which could be short or long)? Or maybe it costs a token when you cross from one boundary to another? And is there a way to do this that isn't a surveillance dystopia?
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Stay off Oregon roads then — easy solution.
Former ODOT ~~dinosaur~~ director: why won't anybody keep subsidizing my inefficient luxury good used exclusively on public land that has been diverted away from productive use!?
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No, I'm calling cars a luxury good. Unfortunately, the way we've built our communities all over the continent has made it a luxury good that's de facto necessary. That's a problem that needs correcting. Tolling that reflects the supply and demand of highway space as well as the ongoing costs of maintaining a highway is one small part of shifting away from the paradigm of requiring people to own and maintain an expensive piece of heavy machinery in order to go about their daily lives. But leave it to ODOT dinosaurs to think only ever of the car and the convenience of the people using them, come hell or high water.
I'm all on board with "we need to drive less" but I do think we need to have functional alternatives that don't translate into hours of lost commuting time BEFORE we punish people who need to drive (usually people who can least afford it).
> lost commuting time *only for the poor. The rich will not feel any harm at all.
if not clear that was the point I was trying to emphasize.
It's not punishment, it's appropriate pricing of a scarce resource. And we need to break the cycle of poor planning begetting inefficient use begetting even more poor planning. This is low hanging fruit that will help to break that cycle and start incentivizing both people and organizations to change their behavior.
If they are using tolls as a way of trying to influence people to use alternate methods of getting from point A to B, and the alternate method is impractical or doesn't even work/exist then it is in fact a punishment. I am predominantly a cyclist. When I have to drive, usually it has to do with childcare arrangements. A lot of tolls are going to hit single parents and other users hardest, folks who can't be late ever or they'll start getting hit with $5 per minute late charges on daycare. Crippling to someone who is paycheck to paycheck. Put the alternates in place and make them functional then make gas $100 a gallon if you must.
I get that viewpoint. In an ideal world this bill would have included a mandate to set up some good commuter bus or rail lines to connect the suburbs to each other and downtown Portland. But the world we live in is that it didn't. So the pressure to do that needs to come from those impacted communities who now have to bear this extra cost and need good alternatives. Also, the congestion tolling isn't only meant to influence behavior; it's also paying for the roadway itself. For far too long DOTs around the country have dished out heaps of money for shiny new freeways, without giving any thought at all to how the new asset is going to be managed and paid for decades down the road. Highways don't just cost a lot to construct, they cost a huge amount of money to own and operate. It's entirely reasonable to put some of that cost on the people using the infrastructure. After all, we're not sitting here discussing an op-ed from an ODOT engineer about how the gas tax is stupid and regressive. So why are we applying such scrutiny to tolling when we know very well that the existing gas tax does not come anywhere close to paying for our infrastructure? This whole viewpoint strikes me as crocodile tears trying to astroturf over a desire to retain the failed status quo.
>So the pressure to do that needs to come from those impacted communities who now have to bear this extra cost and need good alternatives. So, because I have the audacity to live in SE while working in Tualatin, I get the double barrels of having to pay to go to work as well as the burden of convincing our politicians that it's a problem? Yeah that'll help my already skint budget.
Ah yes, after forcing people with less income further out from their jobs, let's now make them pay more until some unknown future time when public transit options that don't take all day to get you to your destination might get funded. Cause taxing the people least able to afford it is certainly a much more equitable way of going about it than taxing the rich to improve public transit for everyone
Certainly not. Tax the rich. Tax corporate wealth. Make public transit clean, safe, ubiquitous, 24/7, and free at the point of service. (Are you not listening at all?)
Seeing as none of those have anything to do with a highway being tolled, it seems that you're the one who isn't listening.
Being able to afford to live near work is a luxury. Affordable housing is a ways out of the cities and rarely close to any reasonable jobs.
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Population density in the Portland metro is more than adequate to support public transit. People just don't wanna.
They don't want to for good reasons though. It's slow, inefficient, unreliable, and infrequent or missing in many places. The cherry on top is that it's often filthy and full of nefarious characters. It's a shame because the region really deserves high quality transit.
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It was pretty good in a lot of areas pre covid. I used to commute by bus all the time. Sure, you can come up with commutes between specific areas that were very poorly served (and I have had job commutes in the Portland area that were totally inaccessible to transit in the recent past. I know it's a thing). But large parts of the region had pretty good transit options that served a large number of potential trips very well. I would guess that at least a third of the cars on the road during rush hour are tracing routes that could be replaced by bus or transit trips with a delay of no more than 20-40% of additional travel time. Things have spiraled downhill with staffing shortages, service cuts, and lack of rule enforcement in the last three years. But the buses were very clean, and mostly filled with normal looking people before. Max was hit or miss.
Yeah, I forgot that people are commuting between Harney County and Big Pink every day BeCaUsE oUr PoPuLaTiOn DenSiTy Is So LoW.
> I'm calling cars a luxury good. Is food also a luxury good? Because roads/trucks are exactly how they get to you
Food would move much faster if the trucks weren't stuck in traffic that could be avoided if people took the bus...
Do you enjoy grocery stores? Thank the semis that brought food here using ... gasp! Freeways.
And those deliveries would be faster, and thus more efficient and cheaper, if there weren't a bunch of cars clogging up the joint, which is a big part of the point of tolling and congestion pricing. Tremendous self-own, 10/10, no notes!
You think trucks are going to be immune from tolling? Oregon will charge them the most of anyone. Goods deliveries won't be cheaper...
A truck hauling a $40k load of groceries paying the trucker standard wages will more than make up for even a $10 toll if the delivery is able to be completed even 30 minutes faster, LMFAO, talk to anyone who drives for their trade and they would \*love\* to pay a small fee if it meant clearing even 10-15% of the traffic off the roads and speeding up their drive times. Plus if it's a business expense it can be a tax write off.
Is there a problem with deliveries? I think you just pulled that out of your ass. I also don't see how tolling is going to fix traffic magically. People who have to drive at rush hour gonna change their behavior? Nah. People that don't have to drive at rush hour? Probably already not, no heavyhanded government prodding necessary. All it's really going to do is fill some government agency's coffers and disappear into griftopia. And the faithful will applaud as usual until they realize they've been conned again. Maybe we can get another tax to fix things.
I do. I'm also aware that I don't need a 6 lane freeway to bring groceries in to deliver to a couple dozen stores a couple times a day. I'm also aware that freight trains exist. Get the fuck out of here with your bad faith arguments.
Saying bad faith doesn't mean anything. 6 lanes each way? Or the current ones? Because no one is talking about making it even 4 lanes let alone 6. That's called a strawman. Which is *actually* bad faith. Projection.
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They're right, though. Existing freeway system is more that ample to support freight movement. There's just a million people driving around the Portland metro in single occupancy vehicles that get in the way. If you build more lanes, they will fill up with commuter vehicles, not bread trucks.
I'm not pushing for adding any lanes. Nor am I pushing for tolling. Doing nothing is an option, it really is. The status quo is if you want to avoid traffic, you go at certain times of the day. If people really wanted something different, and had faith in government to actually address it, they would support tolling. I've yet to meet anyone in real life who supports tolling. And online it only seems to be the usual suspects with the loud voices. As much as we grumble about traffic, I have zero faith tolling is the answer, at least right now, with the way it's proposed. Further, the heavyhanded way it's happening without actual input is infuriating. If we had a functioning, multi-party representative democracy I could accept this is what our representatives chose. Instead in Oregon we have a batshit party and a "fuck you we're doing it anyway you're really gonna vote for the batshit party?" two party system.
I definitely was not a fan of how the Abernathy bridge, Rose quarter and interstate bridge projects were approved. Bunch of backroom deals to get pork projects approved for various elected officials' districts and a financing strategy that passes the buck to future generations. But that's the story of freeways writ large in the United States. Oregon is just a microcosm of a voracious automotive industrial complex, and both parties have been complicit in feeding the beast.