Welcome to the week. I’m still processing the huge political news and feeling a massive weight lifted from my mind now that the Democrats have a new, capable candidate.
Today’s Monday Roundup is sponsored by The eBike Store (809 N Rosa Parks Way). Portland’s original, all-electric bike shop with top brands and great service.
And with that, here are the most notable items we came across in the past seven days…
Cool it: Trees are powerful when it comes to keeping a city cool and Portland is on the leading edge of “shade equity” trend that’s at the intersection of social, economic, transportation, and environmental justice. (Portland Mercury)
Physical feat: Imagine pedaling as hard as you can for 100 miles and averaging 31 mph the entire time. That’s what a rider did to break the 100-mile time trial world record. (Cycling Weekly)
‘Round and ’round: I like traffic circles and roundabouts and wish we had more of them here in Portland, so it was fun to see that my former hometown of Long Beach, California has embraced the facility. (Streetsblog LA)
A highways-are-really-bad primer: Here’s a cheat sheet with five key insights from Megan Kimble’s excellent book, “City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America’s Highways,” — including the part where she uncovers who the Interstate Highway Program was never meant to fund freeways through cities! (Fast Company)
What leadership looks like: We desperately need our local and regional government to stop throwing billions at freeway expansions and start talking about transportation like the Labour party in the UK. (The Guardian)
Bike trail haters: Someone is so upset that the City of Spokane and a local bike trail group are working together to improve off-road riding that they’ve resorted to vandalism and sabotage that has injured at least one person already. (Spokesman-Review)
Bikes ‘indispensable’ in Paris: No I’m not yet tired of sharing stories about how cycling has become a huge thing in Paris. Or as this global travel publication says, “up there with the baguette, the béret, and the Marinière shirt.” (Conde Nast Traveler)
Olympian effort: Related to the item above, the City of Paris plans a new bike network just to get folks to Olympic venues, and they plan to keep the new bike lanes in place when the sporting games are complete. (Tripzilla)
Portland needs a MAX tunnel: This week’s must-watch video comes from RMTransit, who deftly breaks down why Portland’s light rail system is too slow and why we need a tunnel to fix the problem. (RMTransit on YouTube)
Thanks to everyone who sent in links this week. The Monday Roundup is a community effort, so please feel free to send us any great stories you come across.
Thanks for reading.
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On the topic of shade, I had the thought of something that there’s obviously nothing we can do about – it would have been cool if we hadn’t aligned street grids with the sun! If the grid was rotated 45 degrees, the trees would actually shade the road most of the time. As it is, Going is an absolute furnace even with trees, except in the places shaded by like 100 year old huge trees they aren’t planting anymore.
Or, maybe they can and are planting trees intended to have branches going over the road. I don’t know. I just remember hearing recently that the new trees they’re planting are intentionally not going to get as big as some of the good shade trees we have.
But for sure, anywhere with lots of trees feels immensely better!
One thing we can do right now is stop cutting down large trees where they already exist. Code changes in the past few years made removal of mature trees much easier.
The ODOT or City of Portland don’t follow best practices regarding tree care. The grandest corridor of shade trees in Portland, at McLoughlin at Westmoreland Park is being compromised by maintenance vehicles, little league coaches and snack vendors driving over the roots of the magnificent oaks in the park. That’s a terrible practice that compacts soil and damages both structure and function of the roots. Jeez why is doing the right thing so hard
100% agree! They also treat the amazing trees in Waterfront Park and along Naito like they are disposable.
ask for Johnny Appleseed. nearby native Incense Cedar trees lose less giant limbs than Doug fir trees and have somewhat decent shade. or try Pacific Madrone trees which are native, broadleaf evergreen trees.
I think “haters” isn’t strong enough of a word. This saboteur put grease on a steep rock feature and threatened to use caltrops. That’s sociopathic and potentially murderous.
100 mile TT record: “…the Scot ended up averaging 337 watts to take the national title and the record…” –while traveling at 31 mph for over 3 hours. Imagine if John Archibald, who weighs about 79 kg, were stoking your tandem. It’s frightening.
For only a 20 kg weight penalty a person can now have a 1000 watt motor on an e-bike. I suspect that we’ve gone pretty far down the wrong path in e-bike development. Especially for a purpose built bike with a mid drive, 350 watts is a lot.
The ever loving market has supplied us with a bunch of stuff that is appalling to many bike riders, not to mention legislators. I don’t think we’re going to be able to put that back in the bottle. Maybe there’s a middle way to encourage effectively powered e-bikes that doesn’t involve passing laws that we know will never be enforced.
Who is the new capable candidate?
Kamala Harris, the one endorsed by tons of people and the one who has full cognitive capabilities compared to Biden and Trump. And yes, I’m aware there might be other candidates coming to the fore besides her.
Ezra Klein recently wrote a great editorial about how the Democrats ended up with Biden (party elites ensured there would be no meaningful competition for the nomination, same as in 2016). Looks like they’re doing it yet again with Harris, who I believe is almost as weak against Trump as Biden was.
If Democrats coronate her (as opposed to having some sort of meaningful process with real competition where she prevails), and Trump goes on to win, then they deserve what they get.
The problem is that there’s a lot of us who will also get it, and we really don’t deserve it.
yeah i think Dems should be careful not to make it a coronation. And don’t get met started about the Dem party elites! So frustrating how this two-party system works and how out of touch Dem elites are. It’s a messy time for sure but I think Harris has much much better chance against Trump and given the circumstances it seems like a great move and I won’t be sad if she gets the nomination.
I found Klein’s definition useful:
Who are the Democratic elites? There’s no official list. They are Democrats who have significant influence among other powerful Democrats: members of Congress, governors, Biden administration staff members, donors, media figures, state party chairs, union heads, nonprofit heads.
The polls find her consistently trailing Trump, with a persistently high unfavorable rating. Just like Biden. I won’t go into why this makes sense to me; I’ll just say I hope you are right and the polls are wrong.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4785009-kamala-harris-polls-donald-trump/
FWIW I’m not really someone who bases my beliefs or my vibes on polls. I don’t ignore them, but I also think they are toxic and have too much influence and are notoriously inaccurate.
If you’re trying to predict what people are going to do, and you don’t trust what they say they’ll do (polls) or what’s in the air (vibes), what do you rely on?
I try to read from a diverse set of sources and take in a lot of information – both reported from trusted sources and just in general based on what I see on social media and such on any given day.
Also, I have my own values and beliefs and I trust my gut based on many years of being a human and following news and media and culture.
Polls about make believe pair ups are completely useless unless you are The Hill website which is just a bad Fox News website.
Wait a few weeks when the young vibrant candidate is paired with the faltering 78 year old 34 felon game show host.
Exactly. Let’s check the polls after the next debate, if Trump will even agree to one.
You’re not wrong — though I’ll note that this is just what the Biden campaign said. “Don’t trust the polls; the race hasn’t shaken out yet; we’re going to win in November.” And maybe they were right. I didn’t think so, but we’ll never know.
I could see why Biden was going to struggle, and I can see why Harris is going to struggle. She has an overlapping but different set of issues than Biden, but there are some real vulnerabilities, some of which Jakob touched on below. Especially true if there is no competitive process, and people feel she was foisted on us, yet again.
There actually is a list of Dem party elites. They are the 747 DNC automatic delegates more commonly known as superdelegates.
https://ballotpedia.org/Democratic_delegate_rules,_2024
https://ballotpedia.org/Superdelegates_and_the_2016_Democratic_National_Convention
The DNC has not been very democratic for awhile, but they have definitely hit a new low this time. I don’t like Biden as a person or a candidate, but 14 million people voted for him while he was whatever is wrong with him and only when the people saw behind the curtain did his polls tank. The DNC lied about him and everyone around him lied about him. Vice President Harris lied about him or was too incompetent to notice.
For all the talk of Trump and the repubs trashing democracy some unspecified time in the future, the DNC is doing it right now. Go ahead and blindly vote for the party that lies though, they really do care about us.
JFC…
This is not a coronation, Harris is the sitting VP, totally capable and smart.
What is with you trump fans?
He is now the slobbering old fool who will be 82 years old at the end of his term.
She is already polling better than Biden before she was even the candidate and next week will be ahead of Trump.
She picks Shapiro from Pennsylvania as VP with a 60% approval rating and game over. She has received 800,000 small donor amounts in 24 hours.
NO ONE except partisan hacks cares what happens at the convention.
You need a lot better Fox News talking points….
Is she weak in your mind because she is Black or because she is a Women, which one?
What is it that makes you incapable of having even a grain of good faith talking points? I don’t agree with Watts on much (or at least, I disagree on a lot), but I don’t think I’ve ever seen evidence that he’s a trump fan or Fox News enjoyer.
Compared to Biden, Harris makes it a lot easier to vote for her. But I still don’t like her. I think she’s a bad candidate, for the same reasons I didn’t like her the last time she ran for president. But given the late stage of the election cycle (that’s on Biden and/or whatever influence “democratic elites” had), it’s not unreasonable for her to be the candidate.
You have to realize, there are more options than trump fan and uncritical support for whatever democrat is running. There are a lot of things in between or orthogonal to those to caricatures you drew.
When someone uses Fox News talking points, (shes weak) and pastes articles from right wing websites then I assume they are right wing. Why is that bad faith? He linked them.
Again what is it about Harris you don’t like?
Was it her Medicare for all position?
Her Gender or race?
The election is in 3 months, there is no option except Trump and her except don’t vote or participant. Or you can vote third party or whatever you want and then complain when you don’t get a voice in government.
It’s not complicated.
Not everything Fox News says is a talking point specific to Fox News. The way their propaganda works is to more or less present a bunch of true things mixed with nonsense and lies. But that doesn’t make the true parts “Fox News talking points”.
In the context of finally being rid of Biden, she seems like a breath of fresh air. The same way Biden seemed like a relief because we were coming from Trump. But come on, she dropped out early in the primary! She wasn’t exactly one of the front runners, and not much has changed since then.
Again, she’s a step up from Biden and doesn’t come with the proven baggage that Biden did. But it’s not a Fox News talking point to criticize her.
Except no, there are very clearly other options. I don’t think they would pan out, nor be necessary, but one can argue in good faith that they should try. Doesn’t mean I agree.
No, there are no other options, no one is going to run against her in the next 3 weeks.
Running for President is not some fantasy football league like you and Watts seem to think.
There was never going to be another option if Harris wanted it.
No one was going to run against a capable black women VP.
Thats why everyone jumped on board immediately.
It was a right wing fantasy that democrats would tear themselves apart over race and gender.
Apparently the propaganda worked on the 2 of you.
You do realize you’re like an MSNBC caricature of Dem party partisanship/propaganda, yeah? Trying to accuse others of consuming propaganda is quite rich.
Really?
A Black women too much for you also?
The misogyny and actual racism here among this crowd is amazing.
Yes, really. You aren’t subtle about it either.
BB, you are two letters on a screen, devoid of any gender or race, left only with the content of your character (you could be Ted Wheeler, for all I know. Or an AI chat bot that was only trained on partisan cable news. A cat walking across a keyboard. The possibilities are endless). The way you weaponize misogyny and racism to deflect criticism of your (or Harris’) character cheapens actual misogyny and racism.
It’s shameful.
I take criticism from Jill Stein voters very seriously so this really hurts..
Do you Jill Stein fans have a secret meeting site to protest?
Do the 5 of you get together and chant?
I am curious, I might want to join your cult.
Your reaction to data you don’t like is not to contradict it with better data, but to start insulting the person you provided it.
Plenty of other sources are saying essentially the same thing, but I’m a Trumpy Fox acolyte because you don’t like the facts.
Thank you for the robust exchange of ideas.
If there is a competitive process, she may well win, and will have increased legitimacy as a result. Why not?
If saying that positions me among other Trump supporters such as Ezra Klein, Jamelle Bouie, and all those other right-wing blowhards, then so be it.
If you think the only reason anyone could not automatically choose Harris is her race or gender, you’re not paying attention.
They are pundits, some of them blowhards.
If they are not smart enough to realize that a campaign AGAINST Harris is election suicide they are not paying attention.
Indeed, Klein and Bouie are some of the most progressive voices in mainstream media delivering what you called Fox News talking points.
You still have yet to make the case for why having any sort of competitive process would be bad, not that I expect you will, because I honestly don’t think you can.
I have posted too many times and you just don’t get it.
NO ONE wants to run or should run against a very capable candidate.
The people you mention are just wrong or trying to get hits…
It would be SUICIDE to run against a Black women.
The core base of the Democratic Party are Women and especially black women.
They are the activists.
They are the base.
Enough explaining….
I don’t.
Maybe it would be career suicide to compete with Harris (something Biden himself experienced when he trounced her and continued on to become president). If you are right, and there were some sort of open process, no one would step forward and we could move on.
Harris may be the best Democrats can muster, but all indications are the road will be rougher for her than for someone else (even another woman like Whitmer).
Will Harris get the support of all the Arab Michiganders who swore they wouldn’t vote for Biden because of the administration’s support of Israel? Will voters in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and North Carolina show up to vote for a California progressive?
Even Harris seems to agree that she should have the opportunity to earn the nomination. And there is a perfect opportunity: selecting candidates is exactly what conventions were for until recently.
I don’t hear anyone other than you saying she should just inherit the nomination. That doesn’t mean you’re wrong, but it does mean you have to make an actual case to convince me.
https://x.com/KamalaHarris/status/1815122383415529963
Newsflash.
The entire Democratic Party from Joe Manchin to AOC have endorsed her. She has unanimous support.
Sorry to break the news after 20 posts on the topic.
Klein is a ‘murrican liberal* with liberterian characteristics. Bouie is a “progressive”, on the other hand.
I intensely dislike ‘murrican libertarianism, liberalism, and progressivism so I have absolutely no horse in this pathetic duopolistic race.
*liberalism means something else everywhere else in the world.
Well, of course to you Bouie and Klein are reactionary bourgeois saboteurs. I’d have been disappointed if you thought anything less.
In the USA anyone to the left of Thatcher/Reagan is a flaming communist so your critique rings true (in the context of the myopic exceptionalism of US politics).
Yes as of right now Harris has locked up everyone from the Black caucus to AOC and Bernie Sanders to every person who was mentioned to run against her.
They are Blowhards, laughable takes that are over in 24 hours.
https://rall.com/2024/07/22/no-sympathy-for-biden
Just a counterpoint.
Well, Gretchen Whitmer? Wait, is that too many women?
Biden’s other legacy: He ran on naming an African American woman to the Supreme Court and providentially he was given the opportunity to do it. He chose another African American woman as his VP and won the election with her. He named 12 women to cabinet level posts, a record, and 8 of them were women of color.
Harris didn’t suit some people but she broke the ceiling for some candidate further to left or right to move on through. It made a lot of sense that she was from California on a ticket with a candidate who was old, real white, still a guy, and from a small state somewhere out East.
I was ready to vote for Biden, while he had a pulse, on the basis of what he got right of his own volition or through the agency of the people around him. I’m very interested to see what Kamala Harris has to say now with a clear line to the top job.
Eight hundred thousand small donors got their money down on day one. It was the biggest day ever for the Biden-Harris, now Harris, campaign. Harris will be able to use the financial resources of that campaign, one category where the Democrats show a clear advantage. Polls schmolls, money is speech.
Thank you, anyone who thinks Harris should not be the nominee just doesn’t think women or black women are capable.
This is a no contest except for contrarians who just have to Contrarian..
I reserve judgement a little but it does appear that the sea of Democrats/center left folks who were washing away from Biden are roaring back in a tsunami for Harris. She carries some baggage from the administration but her low profile gives her a window to set an agenda. Who wants an “effective” Vice President and what does that even mean?
Keeping quiet may demonstrate loyalty but it could also be a good long term political strategy. If Harris weren’t an able politician I don’t think Biden would have picked her. Holding statewide office in California is a serious credential.
I supported Biden because as a person who grew up in a conservative working class environment I could see nothing conservative about a person who screwed and lied to everyone that he did business with. I would be happy to hear about any exceptions.
I’m daring to hope for a Harris/Whitmer ticket.
If Big Gretch is on the ticket I’ll get a tattoo.
The BP forum consensus is they don’t want one women let alone two.
Not one person mentioned any issue they disagree with Kamala.
She is just a ‘bad’ candidate, ‘weak’, etc.
In other words, a women.
Its embarrasing.
I mean, I voted for a woman in 2012, 2016, and will be again in 2024.
That woman’s name just happens to be Dr Jill Stein.
That’s one of the great things about living in Oregon. You can vote for whomever you want and it won’t matter one bit. That’s true freedom, unburdened by responsibility.
Aye, a shining example of true democracy!
VP Harris maintained the lie that President Biden was healthy and of sound mind for several years. She is complicit in what is happening right now.
As of 0840 on 23JUL, no one has seen Joe for roughly a week. What is going on?
Aren’t you curious?
Aren’t you angry that the DNC elites including Harris lied to you about Joe’s condition for so long?
Do you ever ask yourself who is making the decisions at the highest level?
It clearly hasn’t been Joe for awhile if ever.
How do you morally gloss over the subterfuge?
He has covid. Unfortunate, but hardly sinister.
He also was mentally sharp and full of health and vigor right up to walking on the stage for the debate so forgive me if I take announcements about his health and abilities with a grain of salt. I am not normally a conspiracy theorist, but a constant stream of gaslighting from White House and DNC spokespeople make it difficult to have any idea what actually is going on.
If it’s just Covid, why can’t they put the prez on ZOOM for a few minutes? Quitting the race is kinda an unprecedented and big deal.
Biden’s holding a news conference tomorrow.
Why wait 3 days after the announcement? Why announce on a Sunday with a letter that anyone could have written. I’m glad they are producing him, I hope it goes well!
The Alex Jones Tinfoil hat stuff you get away with posting is hilarious.
A fine addition to Bikeportland.
I don’t even know who that is. Since you can’t actually contradict anything I’ve said with reality it’s not very helpful (as pointed out by several others) to simply make snark statements that only you understand.
Internet Brain can get anyone. It’s so weird. We live in a really stupid time.
No. You are factually wrong. One can not like her and it could have nothing to do with being a woman or black. You’re just being an absolute unmitigated troll.
This isn’t really the place for people to get into the nitty gritty of presidential candidates. That’s probably why JM just said he was happy to have a new candidate and said nothing further. It’s why nobody is digging into policy or anything. I should note, neither are you, you’re just asserting that she’s a great, perfect, flawless candidate and nobody could possibly be better. The only reason anyone could be critical is because she’s a woman. Even though a lot of the reasons people have been critical to Biden also apply to Harris! It’s nonsense. You need to grow up and learn to recognize healthy criticism. If you can’t recognize imperfections and places to improve, you are just floating in the breeze at the whim of whatever comes your way.
I don’t know. It’s kind of nauseating hearing you come out and at the drop of a hat be abusive and belligerent to anything anyone says that isn’t uncritical support.
Well it’s not really like you had much of a choice. Your party is putting her in front of you and will be told to support and vote for her. I don’t know if her cognitive capabilities really weigh in here very much.
lol. This entire race was about cognitive abilities… namely that Biden/Trump have none and now that Dems have put someone forward that has a lot of cognitive abilities, some folks are freaking out and grasping for straws to continue to divide and malign because that’s unfortunately become the only tool in many peoples’ political discussion toolkit.
The only place I have seen people outside of the usual right wing media grasping for straws to divide and malign Harris is on this website.
Politics 101:
Harris is from California, which, along with Oregon and Washington, will vote for any Democrat.
Politics 102:
Everyone east of the left coast hates California and the George Clooney wing of the party.
Politics 103:
Nominate someone from a swing-state the party needs to carry.
Politics 104:
Will Rogers said, “I’m not a member of any organized party. I’m a Democrat.”
Politics 105:
The Democrats are fully capable of lurching from one self-imposed disaster to another. This will be interesting!
The swing states and their internal polls are what matter; all other states will most likely be won by one candidate or the other and are thus irrelevant. Ranked by 2020 margin:
Georgia
Arizona
Wisconsin
Pennsylvania
North Carolina
Nevada
Michigan
Florida
Whitmer for VP!
If Whitmer turns down the VP position, I’ll happily give up Roy Cooper, the NC Gov who is a Democrat-in-name-only, who seems to give in to every piece of legislation our Republican-majority legislature sends to him – always backtracks on every veto threat. In 2016 and 2020 we narrowly elected him as well as the guy with the orange hair.
Would love a MAX tunnel. Cut/cover tunnel construction is well-suited for MAX due to its lack of faregates. Hopping onboard would as simple walking down as a flight of stairs or a short elevator, no mezzanine required which is a key cost driver elsewhere. Since light rail can do 10% grades, I would bring to the surface at Union Station and put it on a Tilikum crossing like bridge to the Lloyd District, elevated the tracks over streets until it gets to the highway
Your idea is really interesting! The section of MAX I’d really like to see elevated is Interstate Ave. Especially if/when the new I-5 bridge gets built and the Yellow line extended to Vancouver. It would be great to get rid of all the conflicts to speed up trains and run longer headways. Maybe even run 3 or 4 car trains?
Well. The space under an elevated MAX line, anywhere, could be an active transportation corridor. Weather protected, smooth pavement on a very solid grade, maybe even signal priority?
While we’re dreaming, why not have a people moving level above the railroads on the lower E side? Private landowners wouldn’t have to remodel their entrances but could get financial support if they do. Tax increment financing, I don’t know. It seems like the RR would go for it.
Cars already have a way around the RR, and a few bus lines that now hit train delays could be rerouted to take advantage of the connectivity of the upper level. Local deliveries could be mostly by freight bike from the transfer point that we’re going to have, is that a thing?
And all this time I thought it was that on the East side, that was mostly farm land (you know the stuff where they get rid of trees to plant your food) and that explained partially why there’s a lack of trees out that-away.
Turns out it’s really all about DEI . . . yeah, sure
Almost any big tree you see in Portland dates to the time of development. Even the older trees were mostly planted after houses were built. A large amount of tree cover likely correlates with large lot size.
Most Western and Midwestern cities had street trees of elms that formed beautiful arches along streets, but most died out from the Dutch Elm disease; when did Portland’s elms get cut down? In the 1970s?
Portland has lots of elms still, they’re a significant part of the canopy remaining in the park blocks, for example. Elms in the Ladds Addition seem to have more disease problems but some are still there.
Eastmoreland has a fair number of elms but I haven’t observed them as much.
Unfortunately, of the ones that remain some drop out every year, whether from an ice storm or just age. I’ve counted rings on some of the stumps, many are about 100 years old. They have massive tops and I’ve been told that American elms just don’t live that long (for trees). It doesn’t help that their root zones are limited by pavement and foot traffic results in compacted soil.
If you look at parts of Portland that are west of 82nd Ave (I.e. have been a part of the city for 100+ years and don’t fit the urban/rural divide narrative that you’re leaning into) you still find that the tree canopy and lack thereof matches historical red lining practices: https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/map/OR/Portland/context#loc=10/45.5133/-122.6575
Red lined and yellow lined neighborhoods were poorer and tended to contain more immigrant communities or people of color than other residential areas in the city. These historical geographies continue to be reflected in Portland’s demographic and socioeconomic makeup, and these neighborhoods have many fewer trees than other parts of the city that have been more affluent over the last hundred years.
Especially Richmond and Ladd’s Addition, both of which were yellow and red, not to mention Buckman and Sunnyside (mostly red). All of which have decent tree cover.
A huge amount of Portland was yellow or red, despite having overwhelmingly white populations. The race/redline connection was much less pronounced in Portland than elsewhere.
https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/map/OR/Portland/context#loc=12/45.5045/-122.6129
Richmond, Ladd, Sunnyside, and Buckman all have comparatively dense tree canopy compared to FoPo or outer East Portland neighborhoods. But they tree coverage is nowhere near as dense as blue neighborhoods like Laurelhurst or Irvington, or the green West Hills neighborhoods. https://insights.sustainability.google/places/ChIJJ3SpfQsLlVQRkYXR9ua5Nhw/trees?hl=en-US
What your map viewer shows is that Laurelhurst and Ladd’s (at least) benefit from wide parking areas with big trees. I can see no difference between red areas of Richmond and Colonial Heights (blue), or between Ladd’s (yellow) and Laurelhurst (blue).
There may indeed be a relationship, but it’s not as clear cut in other neighborhoods. Tree cover seems to be higher in the specially planned neighborhoods than in the others, and looks pretty uniform across the inner SE and NE regardless of redline designation.
A much simpler solution to MAX’s problems isn’t to spend billions of dollars on tunnels, but to just close down many of the stops downtown. Stops aren’t needed every couple of blocks like there are now.
There, I’ll collect my consultant fee for saving the taxpayers billions for that poor idea.
Trimet flirted with closing stops but I think at least one has been reopened.
I’d be willing to create super blocks or re-time signals to allow four car trains but that would be hard to sell. Neither idea solves the problems of tight radius turns or the bottleneck at the antique Steel Bridge. The fragility of the bridge and the steep slopes on the W side also require slow speeds in that area.
We’re sweating the seismic issue on the I-5 bridge but the Steel has the same issue and it carries freight rail, passenger rail, and motor vehicles besides being the jugular vein of Trimet. Oh yeah, a few bikes and peds cross there as well.
In hindsight the Steel Bridge with its small radii for heavy rail at both ends looks like a strange choice. The engineering challenge was to build a bridge of minimum length and keep a flat grade. Nobody was thinking about 100 car trains ticking slowly across Eastside grade crossings.
It would be great if we could divorce transit operations from the needs of private freight rail companies and their really old bridge. The productivity of the resources we’ve put into light rail is throttled by the number of trains that can pass one spot on the map.
Someone didn’t watch the video.
They should do that too, but as argued in the video, the Max moves so excruciatingly slow through town, that wouldn’t make much difference. With better spacing and the ability to get up to higher speeds, there could be a bigger impact as well as allow more frequent service (the tunnel gets around the Steel Bridge bottleneck).
Yes, you can save a lot of money by not doing anything (and not improving anything).
Yes, replacing the steel bridge as a critical choke point and point of failure in the system is at least as important as getting the trains off the street in downtown.
TriMet is already kind of doing this. They closed the Kings Hill/Salmon and Mall/SW5th stations. I think they’re closing the Skidmore Fountain station as well.
Closing a few stops will help improve travel time but doesn’t change the fundamental problem, which is the number of conflicts with other traffic MAX encounters running on the street, and the fact that trains have to go 15mph and wait at red lights. A tunnel – or some other type of grade separation – would enable trains to run much faster and more reliably between stops.
What the everyone seems to be missing is that the fundamental problem with Max is that it was designed to get a large number of people into and out of downtown. This doesn’t reflect how Portland works in 2024, which limits the utility of the system. A tunnel would definitely speed travel through downtown, which would be great, but it won’t change the fundamental problem that many people who used to travel downtown daily now do so occasionally or never. A world class subway isn’t going to change that.
Travel patterns evolve, and Max may again become more useful, but right now the system as a whole feels like it’s been designed for a different time. Which it was.
So tired of this argument.
Where people want to go isn’t some immutable force of nature. On the contrary, the economics of urban agglomeration are the same now as they have been for all of human history: up to a very high point, getting more people to live/work/play in shared, dense spaces is what makes human societies work. It’s almost tautological to say that more people want to live in cities than suburbs/rural areas; “no one goes there, it’s too crowded”.
The alternative is everyone bunkers up in their single-family suburbs, with giant pickups and AR-15s, thinking everyone’s “out to get them” and “we’re on our own”, that we live in a zero-sum world (despite about 200 years of history refuting that, instead of interfacing regularly with people who aren’t like them and yet are living their lives peaceably, anyway.
Either of these are the result of choice, not set-in-stone, inexorable end-states.
And once again, the fact that housing prices are higher in, e.g., The Pearl than Vernonia, building more housing, and strongly incentivizing business growth, downtown is a two-birds-one-stone solution.
I’m not “making an argument” that people aren’t going downtown, I’m making an observation (one backed by data). It seems obvious (to me, at least) that a system geared towards getting people into and out of downtown is less useful when there are fewer people going to and from there.
Why do you find this line of reasoning objectionable?
Of course it’s not an end-state — the urban/suburban pendulum will keep swinging. As I said, it’s entirely possible (likely, even) that people will start going downtown again, and when they do, Max will become more useful than it is today.
I am not claiming that downtowns are somehow bad, or forever dead, only that ours is not used as much as it was a few years ago, and this weakens a downtown-centric transit system.
And yes, let’s build more housing downtown. I’m all for it.
Do you not see how you are making an argument, if not explicitly than implicitly? If the system as it stands today is inadequate to the region’s needs, the options are a.) invest in it, and gear regional development to fit the system, or b.) essentially abandon it–or at least not invest in it–and pretend that we have no way of making it more useful. How one could read you as saying anything but (b), I have no idea.
If all you’re claiming to do is state the facts about low MAX ridership, I’d recommend you save your metaphorical breath. We know this; certainly, I (and others, of course) have pointed out here and elsewhere that the MAX has been stagnant, at best, for the past decade, not just post-COVID, not just post-Measure 110.
This suggests that whatever the cause of poor MAX usage is, it’s not something acute, like the increase in work-from-home or an increase in public drug usage and associated homelessness. We–as a city, region, and state–have a large amount of control in this situation, and it’s simply unhelpful and distracting to act as though we’re at the whims of fate.
“A downtown-oriented transit system is ill-suited for a time when many people have left downtown.” Is that an argument? I don’t think so. I’m not suggesting any particular remedy, and I wasn’t delving into the deeper issues TriMet faces trying to bring back riders who have simply given up on the system in a world where many people clearly prefer Uber and Lyft.
If we’re to take our fate into our own hands, how do we get more people to return to downtown? Converting office space to housing is one idea that people are talking about. That’s difficult and expensive, but possible, for reasons well discussed here and elsewhere. Owners of vacant buildings can start the process any time.
Do you have any particular policy ideas in mind?
I’m really loathing your pretense of neutrality, here.
“A downtown-oriented transit system is ill-suited for a time when many people have left downtown.” If someone says this, does this sound like they’re arguing for investing in that downtown-oriented transit system, or divesting from it? I admit that it could be interpreted either way, but this is the U.S.; what would you impute this person’s meaning to be?
As to policy ideas, TIF for any downtown development proposals–much as they don’t always work out–can be useful, at least for high-density, high-value-per-acre projects such as are the only ones likely for the center of any metro area, even ones as weakly-centered as Metro Portland.
On the same line, ensuring that tax-assessed values match market-assessed values for higher-value real estate (especially residential properties). I keep waiting for the scandal of over-taxed poorer residences and under-taxed wealthy residences to break nationally, but mother of all surprises, I’m still waiting.
Similarly, not expanding the urban growth boundary seems important. We can pretend that not expanding it is simply going to cause either leapfrog development or simply stop any new kind of development, but that shines a light on over-prioritization of car access across the Metro; or a low desirability of the Metro, as a whole, as a place to live/work/play, respectively.
Tolled freeways, or other forms of congestion mitigation, are another idea. If a lot of people are merely using city-center highways as a means across a metro area, rather than get into it, creating real incentives for them to use transit instead are obvious. The farce of Governor Hochul abandoning congestion pricing in NYC ought to set a precedent on the role such tolling has to play for any metro region. If your response to that is, “transit in Portland is too slow”, voila, a MAX tunnel to speed things up. Likewise, bus stop consolidation for local services (I know of many stops not even 200ft apart), and express buses where the MAX doesn’t currently go.
“A downtown-oriented transit system is ill-suited for a time when many people have left downtown.”
“Of course it’s not an end-state — the urban/suburban pendulum will keep swinging. As I said, it’s entirely possible (likely, even) that people will start going downtown again, and when they do, Max will become more useful than it is today.”
I’m not making an argument for or against investing in Max. That’s an evaluation you can make using my observation as one input among many. Maybe we want to invest now so we’re ready when the pendulum swings back (which it will). I honestly don’t have an opinion.
As for your specific suggestions:
I agree with not expanding the UGB; Kotek was dead wrong to force that through. I’m less on board with subsidizing wealthy downtown developers, but we seem to make a habit of it. I’m on the record, multiple times, of supporting tolling (so long as it doesn’t divert traffic onto local streets that I bike on). And, lo-and-behold, several hours ago, I wrote just below this spot “we should build a tunnel”. If TriMet wants to build more express buses, it should. I support more investment in transit, even though I don’t think it will accomplish what people want it to (and, from an emissions standpoint, may actually be a step backwards).
So it sounds like we are at least in the same ballpark in terms of what we think we should do, with the main difference being you support giving more subsidies to private landlords than I do.
As usual, when it comes to what we should actually do, we pretty much agree. So why all the loathing?
“….I support more investment in transit, even though I don’t think it will accomplish what people want it to (and, from an emissions standpoint, may actually be a step backwards)
So it sounds like we are at least in the same ballpark in terms of what we think we should do, with the main difference being you support giving more subsidies to private landlords than I do.
As usual, when it comes to what we should actually do, we pretty much agree. So why all the loathing?”
Well, which is it? You support doing these things but you don’t think they’ll help? Or you don’t think they’ll help, and so, waffling aside, you don’t actually support them? If you do support them, why, if you don’t think they’ll help?
It shouldn’t be just on principle; I try not to support things purely on principle if I don’t think they’ll help, and I’d not hold someone else to a commitment they think is unhelpful towards whatever goal; inconsistency is no one’s friend. Mean what you say, and say what you mean.
And as for the “subsidies to private landlords” quip, I have before and do still strongly support the establishment and empowering of public housing development, and absent that, the only way to disempower private landlords is to make their properties less valuable, i.e., by building lots and lots of housing (while preventing, e.g., private equity from snatching it off the market). I’ll note–as I try to whenever it makes any sense–that we’ve been behind on housing construction for decades, now. We have more ground to make up than almost anyone realizes, especially in regions which have grown as quickly as Portland.
I don’t think a tunnel will attract many new riders in the short term. I’m not sure it will help in the long term either, but I might be wrong (for example, automated cars may not pan out, or they’ll be too expensive, or people will fall in love with transit), and when it comes to things related to climate, we’re in a try anything situation, so I’ll try anything that has contact with reality, which building a rail tunnel does.
RE Public housing and private equity: yet more areas where we agree! (Though I’d go further and ban short term rentals of stand-alone units).
I think the only areas where we actually disagree is the possibility of automated cars, and the possibility of rebuilding Portland in the image of Paris. We can each have our own fantasy, and while I am pretty confident mine will come true (I can ride a robotaxi today in a number of American and Chinese cities, so it doesn’t feel like a huge leap of faith), it is not in any way contingent on me convincing you of anything. Maybe you are likewise confident about your vision, in which case, great!
The current MAX system could be doing a really good job of getting people from one side of Portland to the other, but downtown is the biggest bottleneck right now. It may have once been downtown-centric, but all the expansions of lines have made it a different system. It _should not_ take twice as long to take the MAX from Gateway TC to Beaverton as it does to drive. If we want people people to take public transit, we need to make it much faster, and more convenient, than driving.
Then we should build a tunnel. We’re not going to pay for it either way, and if we can get someone else to foot the bill, why not?
I absolutely agree. But I can’t see how, outside of some specific corridors, this can happen. Once you have to transfer, you’ve lost the speed and convenience game, and I can outpace most city buses on my bike without trying very hard.
So we agree on the “what”, but I’m very unclear on the “how”, unless we rethink what a transit system fundamentally is. I think transit broadly considered has a bright future, but I think our current way of doing it is in terminal decline.
Thanks, Monty P!
Given the light rail resources that are on the ground, the center is the best place to start making a radial layout more useful. People going downtown only see half the delay. For people going from Intel to the airport, or vice versa, it’s maddening.
We live in an economy that turns about $100 billion a year, depending on where you draw the border. If we don’t burn through our borrowing capacity expanding freeways, we could bypass the Steel Bridge and speed up light rail.
Downtown Portland may not function as it has in the past but the location and the built environment will probably remain useful for a while. Transit that we don’t build will never win out. We won’t know how Portlanders feel about really good transit until we turn it loose.
I’m just curious if you watched the video? There’s interesting points relating to Portland block size, how that relates to the train size, and ultimately capacity. The MAX has to fit within the car infrastructure system of the street-level, even if it has its own lanes and light priority. A tunnel would allow larger or more cars, and it wouldn’t have to wait at red lights. The video also points out that there are too many stops in downtown; I agree with that.
And as he says at the end, it would only cost a few billions, similar to Vancouver BC or Seattle, which are just like Portland, apparently.
Yeah, Seattle with density approaching 9k/square mile in the city. Vancouver propbably almost 20k/square mile.
And our little utopia at 4k/square mile–and going down as we speak!
exactly the same!
Goodness knows that that’s how Seattle/Vancouver have always been. They started as singular square-mile blocks of 9k/20k people and have simply propagated outwards from those initial blocks. Yes, that’s how it worked; they weren’t also 4k/sq.mi. at some point in their history, and grew beyond that density, nope.
You people are absolutely bird-brained.