The man who, as a city hall aide 40 years ago, proposed that Portland consider an anti-congestion fee, car-free streets, a citywide bikeway network, a station-based public bike sharing system and bike-specific traffic signals stopped through town last weekend and said something else interesting.
Alan Webber, who went on to co-found Fast Company magazine, still believes in the ideas he held back then: “The good guys win,” as he put it. But in a speech last Saturday he made the case that the convictions of the early 1970s aren’t enough any more, and that Portland needs to set a new, higher target and stick with it.
In some ways, Webber’s Sept. 7 keynote at TechFestNW was a retelling of the familiar but memorable local story of how one generation of mostly white male Portlanders ousted the more auto-centric ideas of an older generation in the early 1970s.
But Webber’s speech also offers a fresh, frank take on how his generation built consensus around those big changes, why they worked and what they mean to Portland today.
