Where is the state transportation package?
With just three full weeks left in the legislative session, panic is setting in among advocacy groups and lawmakers alike as Democratic party leaders continue to negotiate behind closed doors on a long-awaited transportation funding package.
Instead of sitting on their hands, a notable group of Democrats — including Portland Senator Khanh Pham and Joint Committee on Transportation Co-Chair Chris Gorsek — attended a press conference on the Capitol steps in Salem this morning to unveil their vision for the package. It includes $665 million more than the $1.9 billion investment framework released by party leaders back in April.
This new proposal is from a group of Democrats that are decidedly more progressive than party leaders when it comes to transportation policy. Their vision, which they call the SMART (Safe, Modern, Affordable & Accountable, Reliable Transportation) Framework is based on a memo sent back in April to members of the Joint Committee on Transportation by House Representative Mark Gamba, a Democrat who represents Milwaukie.
Gamba and Pham are members of the Joint Committee on Transportation Reinvestment, a new version of the Joint Committee on Transportation (JCT) formed to oversee the new bill. They are both freeway expansion skeptics and have been solid voices for major transportation reform for years. Joining them in support of the SMART Framework are: Senators Gorsek, Floyd Prozanski, Lisa Reynolds, Courtney Neron Misslin, Jeff Golden, and Kathleen Taylor; and Representatives Rob Nosse, Thuy Tran, Willy Chotzen, Travis Nelson, Farrah Chaichi, Sarah Finger McDonald, Tom Andersen, and Lisa Fragala.
Their SMART Framework looks to raise about $2.5 billion and marks a very strong contrast to the austere proposal shared by a conservative wing of Republicans in early May. Pham, Gamba, and the proposal’s other supporters say the time is now for Oregon to increase funding for transit and ensure robust services statewide — while also making streets safer around schools, investing in ODOT’s urban highways that continue to plague cities with their unsafe designs, and invest more in bikeways, rail, and electric vehicle rebates for bikes and cars.
Joining lawmakers at this morning’s event were representatives from AARP, a school board, a transit worker’s union, and a transit agency.
Democrats enjoy a slim supermajority in Salem, but are reportedly working with a select group of Republicans to hammer out a bill. When they released an update on their package late last month, some transportation and environmental advocacy groups panned the plan’s provisions — which include a cap-and-trade scheme that would fund freeway expansions — as “cap and pave.”
Compared to the Joint Committee’s framework released in April, the SMART Framework includes: a higher gas tax increase; a 2% sales tax on new car purchases and 1% on used cars, instead of a 1% user fee (with sales taxes not being tied to the Highway Trust Fund, thus allowing lawmakers more flexibility in how the revenue could be spent); and a larger increase to the payroll tax that funds transit which would result in no cuts in service. Another difference from the JCT’s framework is something I hinted at back in April: a different approach to the bike tax. Democratic party leaders want to increase Oregon’s existing bike tax from $15 to $24.50; the SMART Framework would instead establish a new, Bicycle Privilege Tax of 0.8%. This progressive approach would replace the regressive, flat-fee structure of the current tax.
These revenue sources would allow the SMART Framework to raise $39 million more per biennium for off-highway bike and walking paths than the JCT’s initial framework, fund Gamba’s $6 million e-bike rebate plan, and more.
The provisions in SMART respond to the type of investments advocacy groups have called for in order to focus more of ODOT’s spending on safe streets, maintenance, and non-driving modes; instead of the traditional focus on freeway and highway megaprojects.
“The SMART Framework is accountable to the Oregonians who have spoken up by preventing cuts to transit service, fully funding our Safe Routes program to get kids to school safely, and by providing the resources necessary for cities and counties across the state to fix their local streets,” said Sen. Pham in a statement.
And Rep. Gamba added that now is not a time for transportation austerity. “We have underfunded our transportation system for decades now, and that continuing to do that will result in bridge closures and highway deaths,” he said. “Kicking the can further down the road will make it even that much more painful to recover. We have an opportunity to do the responsible thing and make our streets safer in the process.”
Whether or not Democratic party leaders heed this advice is hard to tell. But once they do release a bill, they won’t have much time to haggle over it and there are bound to be compromises to get something passed before the end of session on June 29th.
Download the SMART Framework one-pager for more details:
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It seems very strange to increase the sales tax on bicycles to fund a rebate program for people to buy bicycles…
I hear you Bjorn, but don’t think that’s what is going on here. The bicycle tax wouldn’t fund the e-bike rebate program. The bike tax funds the Oregon Community Paths program, which builds off-highway biking and walking paths.
Those dollars are completely fungible, so that separation is a bit of a fiction.
If the bicycle tax is dedicated to the Community Paths Program by law, then it would not be “fungible” at all. It would be a dedicated funding source.
Perhaps reading this will clarify the situation for you:
https://www.wweek.com/news/2025/05/27/portland-city-council-hits-the-links-to-find-spare-change/
In short if the legal dedication is in the city charter or state constitution, then you are right. If they’re not, you’re wrong.
Huh? That’s not how it works Watts. Very often sources of revenue are dedicated to specific programs and projects. Or am I missing something about your comment?
“That’s not how it works Watts.”
That is exactly how it works. If I want to spend a million dollars on bike rebates, I need to get that money from somewhere. I might create a tax on car tires that will raise a million dollars, and I might say I’m doing it to fund the rebates, but the two are only tied in some rhetorical sense.
I can adjust my tax or my rebate program independently. If I want to spend more money on the police, I could reduce the amount I am spending on bike rebates, and my budget is still balanced. Suddenly, my tire tax is now helping pay for the police.
Money in has to equal money out, and there are very few rules (our constitutional restriction on spending gas tax funds being one of them) that limit how I slosh money around internally.
It’s kind of like I have a $20 bill in my wallet that is dedicated to bike parts, but if I spend it on beer, I can replace it later with a different $20 bill later, or forgo the bike parts this week.
If the state government adjusts taxes to raise revenue by a specific amount and says it’s for a particular purpose and then subsequently spends approximately the same amount on the stated purpose, it seems fair to describe the situation as the tax adjustment “funding” the expenditure, as Jonathan did, despite the fact that the actual funds were commingled. If the revenue generation mechanism and the spending get much out alignment, you might have a point, but specifying a mechanism for funding a given expenditure is a legit governing move (one that I, in general, think we should expect of our government).
About Bicycle Excise Tax
The Oregon Bicycle Excise tax was established by the Legislature in 2017. The Bicycle Excise Tax is a flat tax of $15, to be collected at the point of sale. Revenue from the bicycle excise tax goes into the Connect Oregon Fund to provide grants for bicycle and pedestrian transportation projects.
https://www.oregon.gov/dor/programs/businesses/Pages/Bicycle-excise-tax.aspx
Not completely fungible, but not exactly going into anything specific either. Grants are where the NGO higher ups make their money.
A progressive tax would be a huge improvement over the current regressive MAGA-style flat tax. In fact, I would be very much be amused if “urbanists” started complaining about having to pay a 0.8% on their $8,000 bougie electric urban arrows. The icing on the cake would be if some of that luxury bike tax were plowed back into a rebate for more working class bikes/e-bikes (don’t care which).
My only complaint is that tax is obviously not progressive enough:
How about:
0% – up $1500
0.4% -1501-2000
3% – 2001-2000
6-9% – 3001+
Even better would be to just give low-income people funds to buy free bikes funded via luxury bike purchases…but we live in ‘murrica.
Is there anything you don’t complain about?
Hope you have zero dollars saved, otherwise you are hoarding wealth and therefore a capitalist.
Weird (and complainy) response to soren’s thoughtful comment.
Though some people with savings are capitalists, not all are. Ideology matters to those without an equivocation bent.
It sounds like your identity is “not capitalist”, despite participating in and drawing sustenance from a capitalist system.
Which is fine by me. You are not a capitalist.
These terms are totally squirrely anyway. Most people who call themselves socialists (not necessarily you) really mean “capitalist with a bigger social safety net than we have in the US.”
By that definition, I too am a socialist, though it’s not a declared part of my identity.
“capitalist with a bigger social safety net than we have in the US.”
Also, those in the US who have a personal safety net supported by family wealth have a tendency to believe themselves socialists.
I don’t understand (the point of) this comment.
Are you suggesting that people with robust personal safety nets don’t or can’t recognize/believe that social safety nets should also be robust?
Have you joined in with certain other contributors in believing anything you don’t like is somehow “MAGA”?
With a national sales tax on everything already in effect, we’re going to do this now?
Unlike many of my fellow Oregonians, I’m happy to see people from other states here, but if you want to pay sales taxes, there are plenty of states in any direction you care to go where they will be happy to charge you one.
Every other state/jurisdiction with a sales tax is typically 5% or more, so as long as Oregon adopts a lower sales tax than that, we would still be at a competitive advantage while actually being able to fund more government services.
If drivers want people on bikes to get out of the way, they should pay for separated bike infrastructure. We’re still failing to address decades of deferred increases to the gas tax, subsidizing car overuse by over half of the per-mile cost. Until drivers pay for what they get (or get only what they pay for), everything will continue to get worse.
Taxing bikes and pretending we have a “user pays” model is silly relative to how heavily we continue to subsidize cars.
We basically do have a users-pay model of road funding, even though roads benefit everyone in our society, including people who don’t drive.
Roads disproportionately benefit people who drive. Moving goods would be much more efficient, cleaner, and safer if it were done on rails. And heavy freight disproportionately destroys roads.
If we actually cared about benefit to everyone in society, we’d cut all the automaker infrastructure welfare and shift it to rail.
“Roads disproportionately benefit people who drive.”
Do they? Does a driver get more benefit from roads than a bus passenger or a bike rider? If so, why?
And, as you touched on, we all benefit from good and services delivered by roads, perhaps those unable to leave their houses most of all.
We all benefit from the larger society that is held together by roads.
Whether rails would be better is beside the point, but my feeble mind is unable to see how that could work.
Roads for moving goods and people around certainly benefit everyone, but we have more road capacity than we need to realize those benefits. We have so much road capacity, and so few alternatives that most people simply cannot get around without buying, maintaining, and driving their own vehicle.
For those who don’t meet the financial barrier to afford that, opportunities are missed, and the economy suffers for it. “Roads” in general are good, but they only benefit everyone equally when everyone has the same level of access.
Yesterday I walked along a street near my house. I saw other people walking, biking, and driving, as well as two buses carrying passengers along it.
It’s unclear to me why those in cars had more access than I did, or the other people I saw there. It is true that taking the bus is in many ways an inferior experience to the other modes, but it is also true that my crappy econobox offers an inferior experience to my friend’s wife’s Mercedes with its blessed heated seats.
Except for a few odd cases, we all have equal access to the roads, certainly more than we do to, say, schools (restricted by age) or even libraries (which require going to a sometimes distant place rather than, in the case of streets, just stepping out of my home). And, except for a few online services, neither of those can be accessed without first using city streets.
Well yeah,of course they do. You could remove 75%+ of the roads in Portland and transit users and freight wouldn’t be impacted at all. Most roads exist for the sole benefit of motorists.
Its only in the last 60 years of human society that we’ve become dependent on cars.
Here is a map that shows how rail works.
http://transitmap.net/portland-1943/#jp-carousel-5124
CC_rider. Fantastic points. Imagine looking at cities for over 7000 years, where compactness/density, pedestrian plazas, mixed use development, organic growth based on people’s need were all thrown out the window for one new individualistic mode of transport.
We’re living in a historical blip. Cities like Paris and Barcelona are dramatically re-allocating space to people just as that space was dramatically allocated to cars in the 50s.
European cities have narrow streets because in the “old days” this would help thwart armies invading cities. Remember movies with men lined up shoulder to shoulder in very wide formations? The narrow streets would break up those formations.
I urge you to examine that assumption, do a bit of research and reread what I wrote above a little closer.
This is patently false. The risk of invasion is not a historically relevant aspect of roadway width, how the roads are used in every day life are. Medieval roads were narrow because it’s cheaper to have a narrow road and most traffic was on foot.
There are specific cases where military motivations have impacted roadway width – Haussmann specifically created modern Paris with wide boulevards to allow the army to clear up Paris Commune style revolutions – but that says nothing about why Paris had narrow streets to begin with, and the need for internal order is probably more relevant in most city’s history than the threat of outside invasion.
Nevertheless, “facilitation of movements of invading armies” could be an additional reason to oppose ODOT’s freeway widening project.
And, following the same reasoning, bicyclists and pedestrians.
Well, no. If they solely supported pedestrians and cyclists, they could be tiny paved paths for a fraction of the cost. Don’t be silly, the roads exist for cars.
Sorry, I didn’t mean solely bicyclists and pedestrians, I meant bicyclist and pedestrians and cars. There are not many, if any, streets in Portland that are closed to all modes except cars. Urban highways, for example, are closed to non motorized vehicles, but used by transit.
Why do most roads exist? To benefit cars. Period. They wouldn’t exist if not for cars, ergo that is the reason they were built. The fact that (with great resistance) other modes are allowed to use them is besides the point. Crows use the road to drop nuts on to break the shells, and utilities are often buried under them, those are just side effects.
Language can be fuzzy, but when someone says
“Most roads exist for the sole benefit of motorists.”
I think this should be read as “but for motorists, we wouldn’t have all these roads”. Which is obviously true. CC_Rider can correct me if I misunderstood.
Rome begs to differ.
Pedestrians use sidewalks because we had to create separate spaces to try and keep them safe from motorists.
PBOT isn’t repaving roads for the benefit of cyclists. Cyclist benefit is ancillary at best and cyclists are given the gutter of the road when they are given dedicated space.
Following that same reasoning, they also exist for the benefit of bicyclists and pedestrians.
I’m aware of the trolley based history of inner Portland, but I did not know (and probably still don’t) that freight was also distributed throughout the city by rail, or that there were no cars here in Portland’s early history.
Claiming Portland of the 1920s as an example of a city based on rail is the same as claiming that today we are a city solely reliant on buses.
Hi Watts: Looking foward to seeing you ride your bike across the Ross Island Bridge at rush hour.
And that’s just ONE small example of a road that exists for the sole benefit of motorists. There are many others – too many to list here.
You are disingenuous, as usual.
I’ve done it, even once or twice before they consolidated the walkways onto the north side (it used to be less than half as wide as it is today).
Wouldn’t recommend it, though.
Buses (though not TriMet), trucks, and motorcycles make regular use of that bridge, in addition to cars. I sometimes see pedestrians there as well. So not even an example of a road (or bridge) that exists only for cars at all.
If you look at old maps of Portland, you’ll find pretty extensive freight rail distribution systems, particularly in the central east side and the modern Pearl. There’s also examples of trolley companies doing some freight distribution as well (Pacific Electric in LA comes to mind, but I’ve also seen pictures of freight being delivered on PRL&P tracks here locally).
By 1920, motor vehicles would have been significant parts of a local goods distribution network (displacing horse-based modes), but I’m sure if you had the numbers on how each good sold in Portland arrived at its final destination, rail would be the bulk of the journey, and it would be fair to say that the distribution system was essentially built on rail transport. But that has less to do with Portland and more to do with the lack of other options for shipping goods any appreciable distance.
I think it’s fair to say that “the modern roadway network is for cars” – as the bulk of the cost associated with roads (paving, repaving, traffic control, widening, etc.) is primarily in service of the car.
We have a partial user pays model for road funding, but I’d hesitate to say it’s “basically a users pay model”. At the national level, the Highway Trust fund has been bailed out more than once, and at the state level ODOT gets a significant amount of revenue from registration fees (which do not neatly map on to road use), and some revenue from the general fund and lottery funds.
I think the bill would be a lot more appealing without the inclusion of any new type of sales tax. Oregon voters are especially wary of letting the camel’s nose into the tent regarding sales tax, as any seemingly small sales tax put in place now will be difficult to prevent growing larger in the future.
Instead of a tax on the entire vehicle, I’d like to see a push for a tax on tires specifically, as this seems like an ideal way to offset the loss of money brought in from gas taxes caused by EVs. It also fairly targets the vehicles that put the most wear and tear on our infrastructure – heavy and high mileage vehicles have to replace tires more often and therefore pay their fair share. And you can apply this tire tax to bicycles too if necessary.
Hi Tom — You don’t by chance own a tire shop in Vancouver, do you?
But I’m so tired of being taxed..
.. sorry couldn’t help it.
I’m not tired at all. Tax me and tax other people like me and redistribute to low-income people — especially to those who do not live in the USA* and need it the most.
*I do realize that this is ‘murrica and that having empathy for “those people” is about an unamerican as ossau-iraty cheese made by mondragon worker-owners.
He’s not tired, he’s tired. See?
That’s a pretty circular pun.
You don’t have to wait to be taxed, right now you can send all your income to numerous reputable organizations that will redistribute your money to those in need.
GO GO GO!!!
I most especially recommend the Watts Foundation. And yes, they accept cash.
To the best of my knowledge, there is only one deeply flawed org that enables ultra-low-cost no-strings-attached transfers to very low-income people. That alone says something about how the so-called “west” views redistribution.
It’s darkly comical that so many ‘murricans view redistribution as unimaginable and wrong. I live in a dying-empire* full of toddlers that never learned how to share.
*maybe civilization works better here
So here is a lesson on tire wear. These examples of my own vehicles. My 2012 Ford Focus (3000 lbs.) burned through the original tires in 24,000 miles. My 1997 Legacy GT (3000 lbs.) had to replace the summer tires after 35,000 miles. My 5500 lbs. F150 gets about 55,000 miles out of the AT tires I run. The tiires on the two cars were considered Extreme Summer Tires. These are a softer tires which is better for fast cornering. The Michelin Pilot Sports that came on the Focus are very sticky and expensive. If I had replaced them with the same tires it would have cost me more than the tires for my pickup.
Most tires (not all) will have a milage warranty. They also have a load rating. The milage warranty is the same across all load rating.
If there was a tire tax, then you’d probably opt for more durable tires on your lighter vehicles. Given the same model of tire, they should wear out slower on lighter vehicles because physics.
You mean the way the gasoline tax has encouraged people to drive smaller and more efficient vehicles?
When gas prices get high enough, people do trend towards smaller vehicles. Look what happened in the 1970’s. Gas taxes today just aren’t high enough to have that effect.
Endless taxation of a needed resource (like it or not, gasoline is a necessary resource in the here and now) without providing an alternate in the form of safe and even moderately timely public transportation is not a tax, but a punishment that hurts those who can’t afford it.
We already have what is by most accounts a superior alternative — EVs. I would happily support a much higher tax on gas and diesel — we need to stop using it and electrify transportation ASAP.
As always I respect your optimism. The grid we have now though is all it’s going to be and I don’t foresee it getting any better or stronger. Another hot summer is almost here, what are the odds of rolling black outs and subsequent heat related fatalities happening as the wealthy try their best to keep their various electronic devices, bikes and cars going?
Are you seriously holding that a robust electrical grid is impractical but petroleum extraction, refining, and distribution is easy? Gas taxes need to go way up. If the climate damage associated with petroleum fuels was reflected in costs borne by the end user, I think a lot of things would become electrified pretty quickly. And we would figure how to generate and distribute the necessary electricity just like we erected gas stations where needed to power all our ICE applications. Or built railways to haul coal around before that.
Hi Micah,
Yes, that is what I am saying and I say that because a robust grid does not now exist and there are zero indications anyone in government (in Portland and the greater PNW specifically) or the utilities themselves are budgeting or preparing to upgrade the current system.
I’m just going to drop some of the bigger events that made the news in the last little bit….
https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2024/12/soaring-data-center-electricity-demand-could-trigger-northwest-blackouts-industry-insiders-say.html
https://www.wweek.com/news/2025/05/07/city-council-rejects-pge-plan-to-run-new-transmission-lines-in-forest-park/
https://www.koin.com/news/oregon/heat-related-death-list-multnomah-coos-klamath-jackson-washington-county-07122024/
https://www.oregonlive.com/weather/2024/01/portland-power-outages-77000-homes-without-electricity-as-new-storm-looms.html
https://wfca.com/wildfire-articles/power-lines-and-wildfires/
https://abcnews.go.com/US/2-power-substations-attacked-washington-state-7k-lost/story?id=95812232
The grid is old, weak, vulnerable and being given over to tech corporate interests while not being upgraded.
That the climate crisis is caused or exacerbated by fossil fuels does not magically mean that electricity will be there to save the day as the trends are looking like it will not be.
Like it or not, fossil fuels are transportable and storable in ways electricity is not (at least not yet).
Also, as far as the end user paying for the costs of ICE use, I (and all of us I’m guessing) are paying for it. I feel it in my lungs, on my skin and it burns my eyes at times. I realize people want to remove that from daily life, but as I’m using the resource I understand I’ll suffer the ill effects of it.
With electricity, the end user is physically removed from the coal plants that pollute only the immediate vicinity, hydro power that kills the natural fish and the laughable wind power that slaughters migratory birds while not really reaching a point of being carbon neutral and let’s not discuss what to do with them when they’ve reached the end of their lifecycle.
So hang on, it’s going to be an interesting ride as we as a society desperately try to upgrade to EVs that can’t supported by the current grid. The time of change is happening now and the grid is staying the same.
Hi Jake9, thanks for the reply!
You point out many challenges faced by our electricity distribution system. And yes, fossil fuels present advantages to electricity for many applications. But the impediments to upgrading the electric grid are political, and I expect they will be surmounted when the need to do so is big enough. Electricity demand is growing in lots of areas, not just for transportation, so we will have to deal with the distribution system at some point. I don’t think society will just fall apart because we can’t get it together to put up some transmission lines. We should pressure our decision makers to tax fossil energy to provide economic incentives to reduce emissions and use cleaner technology for HVAC, transportation, manufacturing, chemistry, etc. We have already emitted way too much carbon.
“We should pressure our decision makers to tax fossil energy to provide economic incentives to reduce emissions and use cleaner technology for HVAC, transportation, manufacturing, chemistry, etc. “
You did and you won. You got the PCEF fund. It’s not doing any of those things. More money is not the answer since it will just go to some something else besides crisis mitigation.
“But the impediments to upgrading the electric grid are political“
So what’s stopping dark blue Oregon, Washington and SoCal from doing the desperately needed upgrades? The evil republicans? The MAGAs?
Tell me what is the problem if you can. It’s been one party blue rule for decades so why hasn’t it been done?
The people in power now have been in power for decades. Kotek is a perfect example of this, if she hasn’t cared or tried while a representative or as Governor, when will she?
You say it’s political (and I agree), but it is also budgetary. The upgrade will cost a lot and take a long time and it’s probably already too late to start to get it done before it collapses. Of course, that will make the rebuild easier, but kind of a bummer for people experiencing the collapse.
It might sound like I’m anti-electrification, but I’m not. I agree the world you’re describing sounds great and I think EVs are a healthy mix, but I’m not blind to the overall problem that the grid hasn’t been replaced and there is no evidence it will be.
Portland and Salem will keep voting in the same people who change the status quo. As I said, hand on because it’s going to be a wild ride.
Good point, Watts. We need to vastly increase the gasoline tax so that people notice the amount of gas they are burning.
I’m all for it. The higher the better.
That’s pretty funny Watts.
I am pretty sure you don’t need this explained, but I’ll do it anyway for posterity. My main point was that Jim (nice first name btw) Calhoon’s lesson, which I interpreted as showing that vehicle weight doesn’t contribute to tire wear, was fundamentally flawed because he was comparing completely different types of tires.
You did not read the last part of my statement about load ratings and milage warranty. When a manufacture develops a tire it will be designed with a life span based on milage. When that tire goes into production it has to be made in several different load ratings to account for the varying weight of the vehicles it could be mounted on. Most passenger cars run on load range B where 3/4 and 1 ton trucks run on load range E (10 ply for the older generation). The only difference between the load range B and E is in the sidewall construction not the tread. My point with my examples is to show that a softer compound tread like a summer performance tire will wear out faster than a harder compound tire.
All bike taxes should be waved until Trump tariffs that affect bikes are removed and clearly not coming back.
https://www.bikeradar.com/news/trumps-tariffs-will-be-devastating-for-us-bike-industry
https://www.peopleforbikes.org/news/bike-industry-update-on-tariffs-2025
Oregon has some of the best transit in the country and yet numbers are down. Ask a moms with kids if they want to use transit or drive? By and large, if they are being honest, most will say drive because it’s safer.
Tax the cars. Oregon won’t actually fund transit…but it will have more money..,
Oh god – really? I ride Trimet all the time and it’s just okay. If it’s the best in the country, then the rest of the country truly has terrible transit.
Just go north and check out the new train lines and stations in Seattle. Makes one wonder what all the billions of dollars TriMet took of our tax dollars really did with it.
TriMet is very good for a Portland-sized economy, but really shines in a suburban context ironically. Milwaukee is about the size of Portland, and MCTS within Milwaukee proper is basically as good as TriMet is within Portland proper, but there is literally no suburban transit provider in 2/3rds of suburban Milwaukee, and getting anywhere outside the core urban areas is legitimately impossible. Here we have a world-class interurban light rail (Hillsboro to Portland at least) that is reasonably competitive with driving for at least some trips.
Here’s my ranking of Portland sized regions’ public transit I’ve personally ridden transit in:
1. Minneapolis/St. Paul
2. Portland
3. Cleveland
4. Milwaukee
5. Denver
6. Indianapolis
7. Columbus
8. Nashville
I might prefer Cleveland to Portland, or I would if the subway track conditions were better. GCRTA is really quite nice. I’m a Denver hater to my core, and that’s probably a pessimistic ranking based mostly on my Denver RTA experience riding in Boulder County specifically.
Obviously NYC, Chicago, SF, DC, and LA are way better than Portland for transit, but we do alright here at least. As long as you don’t buy the hype that Portland transit is somehow world class, I find it to be adequate to good.
Well it’s not really the “best in the country” if moms with kids are too afraid to use it because they don’t feel safe.
Chasing the “safe feeling” is to chase a wild goose. The easiest way to feel safe on transit is to take it, and realize that it IS safe.
Contrast that with the intrinsic Russian roulette you get every time you get behind the wheel and join the roads with others, and it’s obvious we’re not dealing with rational calculation when people say they’re too scared to use transit.
Ah yes, the rationality of not knowing what intrinsic means or the actual odds of Russian Roulette to shame people into being locked in a metal tube with the most unhinged members of society. Where do I sign up.
Driving is objectively less safe than riding transit by any reasonable metric. People don’t ride transit because it’s slow, doesn’t go where they are going, or it’s not something their accustomed to
Why is the Progressives’ answer to every problem MORE TAXES? The embarrassing local implementation and wasteful and ineffective use of the panoply of recently enacted taxes (PCEF, Housing Bond, Homeless Tax, Preschool Tax) are prime examples of the poor governance and simplistic thinking we seem to repeatedly embrace in Portland (and therefore Oregon). It’s time to realize that more $ from taxpayers is not the answer.
Because we’ve collectively spent the last 50 years slashing taxes and lowering government capacity. You could argue that the impetus for at least some of those taxes and bonds is the fact that property tax revenues were permanently crippled by Measure 5 and 50 in the 1990s, but the impact of the retreat of the Federal Government in supporting housing, economic development, and other key aspects of urban policy shouldn’t be understated either.
Tax burdens are still historically low compared to even the early Regan years. Why is the reactionary take always that taxes are too high even when evidence points to the contrary?
Depends on where you’re at in the tax burden strata, no? What was the tax burden of the top 10% relative to GDP during Regan and now? What was the effective tax rate of the bottom 50% historically relative to now? Has there ever been a time where a greater proportion of the populace had a negative net tax contribution than now?
If you don’t pay the homeless tax, the preschool tax and own an old home or rent an old place, you’re not seeing the burden at all, you just blab about it. If you’re seeing a couple thousand here, a couple thousand there, a property tax bill 4x your neighbors, all on top of the income tax, the capital gains tax at the income tax rate, we’ll I guess I’m of the belief you’ve earned the right to bitch about it while surfing redfin looking to leave.
Tolls. We need tolls. Tolls on state highways, tolls on bridges. Set them at the exact level needed to pay for necessary upgrades (or replacements in the case of bridges) and otherwise to the exact level to fully maintain the highway or bridge in perpetuity, and no more.
This could include congestion pricing, which can be balanced by reduced tolls (or no tolls) off of peak hours.
Electric vehicles don’t pay gas tax, so we’ll need tolls eventually anyway. Might as well do them now.
Smart move to engage the union. However, there are even larger Oregon state unions who want to pave roads with union labor. Until that mismatch gets ‘hammered’ out there won’t be much progress on smart transport. Anticipate OR Dems ramming through the same old transport package after paying out the Republican hold outs with freeway funding to Newberg.
Le sigh… same as it ever was…