How does being a socialist translate into local transportation policy? Thanks to Portland City Councilor Mitch Green’s political affiliation — he’s a member of Democratic Socialists of America — and his candor at a meeting of the city’s Pedestrian Advisory Committee Tuesday night, we now have a pretty good idea.
Green, who represents District 4 (Sellwood and the westside), is one of four socialists on Portland’s 12-member city council who are beginning to flex their muscle for the people. A cover story in the current issue of Willamette Week states, “Portland’s agenda and discourse is largely being driven by a cohesive bloc of leftists on the council—and at its heart are the socialists.”
Like the text on a huge banner that hung on City Hall during a rally Green attended last month, socialist policy often boils down to “tax the rich.” In transportation terms, at least the way Councilor Green talks about it, socialism means taxing everyone (especially car and truck drivers) a bit more for a road system that distributes more access to more people and offers a wider array of public benefits.
It also means; broadening the transportation tax base, charging the most privileged users (car drivers) more, using right-of-way for the public good (instead of favoring private transport), tying transportation directly to land use and housing goals, not catering to desires of rich and powerful City Hall interests, and going big for transit.
But that’s a too simple summary of Green’s extensive views on transportation. The professional economist and first-time council member who also sits on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee spent nearly an hour at a committee meeting Tuesday night and spoke on many topics — from parking pricing to zoning, and from superblocks to social housing. What follows is my recap of his comments at that meeting…
Green’s interest in transportation is animated by the current political tilt of City Council and how he believes it’s primed for big moves. “I believe that we’re in a pretty important historical moment in the city where we need to be building infrastructure, and we need to be building institutions that are broadly inclusive and unabashedly so,” Green said as he laid out his vision in an opening statement.
In standing up for people (he wants to make Portland a “refuge for people who look different”) and transportation issues (biking, transit, road taxes) that might be targeted by powerful interests (at the national or local levels), Green repeated several times that he will stand by his admittedly “controversial ideas.”
“For instance if we figure out an equitable pricing model for transportation,” Green said, “I want to be there to say ‘I’ll take the political hits for you, and I’ll champion this for you, because we need to do this to pay for our things.'”
Green knows pushback on higher road taxes and fees are coming, but he doesn’t want to waste time on those who don’t share his core values. “I don’t need to worry about reacting to every phone call from everyone who hates every little micro decision that we do,” he explained. “I have my values. I will communicate them clearly, and I’m going to stand by those.”
Green’s tenure on council has already included support for higher parking prices and rideshare trip fees. He admitted those stances aren’t politically popular. So why does he support them? Green feels like in many cases the critiques come from the few and the benefits are spread to the many. Here’s how he explained it Tuesday night:
“I think there’s enough people in Portland who want a world class transit system and a world class pedestrian infrastructure system, that they’re willing to pay a little bit more. They understand the relationship between paying for more and making sure that we are enabling our bureaus to do what they do best — which is stay the course on a good plan and not get derailed because somebody at the Benson Hotel called a commissioner.”
Later in the meeting, Green expanded on that last line (which is reference to the Broadway Bike Lane Scandal and former Commissioner Mingus Mapps):
“I think those [projects like SW Broadway and 4th Ave bikeways] are always under threat by the business lobby picking up the phone and saying, ‘I don’t like this, take it away.’ Or you can get a cranky condo owner who organizes a letter writing campaign and gets, like, a plaza taken away. I don’t like that. I’m willing to talk to those constituents and say, ‘No, this is a good thing to commit to.’ I’m going to defend it… The model that we’ve had in this city, where just a few connected people can pick up a phone and stop a good project has got to end. It must end, and that’s what I’m trying to do.”
Throughout his visit with the Pedestrian Advisory Committee, he made it clear he wants to be seen as a champion for walkers and transit users. “I want you guys to think of me as someone who’s willing to stick my neck out a little bit and try something in the hope that it improves the lives of people who are trying to move around this city more safely.”
So what exactly would Green like to do? It starts with a lot fewer cars on our roads:
“Anything we do that is not optimizing getting people out of cars and getting them to a bus stop, or allowing them to walk from their neighborhood to a school with their kids, or do a bike bus, or ride, walk and roll around our city — If we are not prioritizing that —then every other little piddly, marginal thing we do for the climate is much less important, because most of our emissions come from automobiles…
Maximizing opportunities for people get out of their cars is going to always be a priority for me, and I think it’ll save us money in the long run.”
Green also repeated his idea first shared back in February that Portland should ban cars altogether on some streets as a way to reduce ongoing maintenance liabilities. Since then, he’s fleshed that idea out and says he wants to create large superblocks (several blocks where driving is prohibited) in places that will see redevelopment thanks to newly formed tax increment financing (TIF) districts. “It’s a missed opportunity if we don’t see [TIF districts] as an opportunity to steer towards superblocks in east Portland, superblocks downtown and the like,” he said.
Green’s Chief of Staff (and former transportation planner) Maria Sipin chimed in to add that perhaps PBOT should test out a superblocks pilot during the Downtown Sunday Parkways in mid-September. “Why not try this out?” Sipin wondered out loud. “I think downtown Portland is a really good place to start.”
Populism is central to Green’s politics. He sees the idea of taking streets away from a few people driving private cars and giving them to many people with a diversity of uses and public benefits, as an obvious and necessary shift.
Just like his staffer’s “let’s try this out,” comment, Green mentioned last night how he’s “really moved by the tactical urbanism movement.” “Let’s just try some cheap stuff and see if it works,” he said. “And if it doesn’t work, jettison it. If it does work, great. Let’s build the program out of it, and then commit city resources to it.”
“If you’re going to drive a car across town to go to a Timbers game or a venue, you have the means to do so, right? Generally speaking. And you should have to pay some of the cost of the congestion that creates.”
In that spirit, Green threw out an idea for the forthcoming James Beard Public Market. Since the location is adjacent to busy streets like Alder and Morrison Bridge freeway ramps, Green suggested it might be a good location to test mechanical bollards that would keep drivers out and allow the city to test “carfree market days.” “And then just kind of see how people vibe with that kind of space,” he added.
Even the Sidewalk Improvement and Paving Program (SIPP) Green co-sponsored and shepherded through council back in May, is seen as something that can start small and then grow as it becomes more popular. While Green and Councilor Loretta Smith are pushing for $200 million in bonding authority to fund projects in the SIPP program, Green would support an even smaller bite at the apple in the interest of urgency, because he believes, “If we do some part of SIPP, it’s better than doing no part of SIPP, because my theory is that if you deliver meaningful benefits to peoples’ lives immediately, then they they grow their confidence in government.”
Green’s not impatient, he seems to have a calculated urgency borne from frustration with the status quo and traditional pace of change. “For me, the motivation behind SIPP,” he shared, “Was to say, ‘I’m just going to come in right away and see if I can accelerate investment of infrastructure in southwest Portland and figure out how that works politically’.”
He referred to it as “positive incremental progress.” But don’t mistake this for a fear of hooking much bigger fish. Green is a systems thinker. He sees transportation as a web of interconnected policies. Take his approach to parking pricing downtown. In the comments below, he talks about his belief that certain types of parking should be much more expensive, then he connects parking prices to the need to improve regional transit in order to lessen the cost burden on people who live far from the central city.
“My prerogative is that we lobby for the [transit] tunnel. Or we lobby for an elevated, downtown, grade-separated thing. Whatever it’ll take. I’ll take either.”
“I think that we need to invest in and be pretty aggressive on things like dynamic pricing for parking downtown,” Green explained. “Recently PBOT raised parking fees and we’ve already gotten a lot of pushback in our inboxes over that. But I’m going to hold the line for that, because there’s an ability-to-pay question: If you’re going to drive a car across town to go to a Timbers game or a venue, you have the means to do so, right? Generally speaking. And you should have to pay some of the cost of the congestion that creates.”
Green would then take the additional parking revenue (which he also referred to as “congestion pricing” and “scarcity pricing”) and use it to fund TriMet bus service expansions. “You pair pricing of parking and road use with subsidizing public transit — because it’s a long ways to ride a bike from outer east Portland into the westside, even if you have an e-bike, I recognize that — but we have an opportunity. We don’t have any money, but we have an opportunity politically, to steer TriMet priorities and the city’s land use priorities to building a proper regional [transit] system.”
Then Green connected the need for better regional transit to the larger issue of why the TriMet system is inherently inefficient for longer trips:
“Our system cannot support regional transit because we have at-grade light rail that goes through downtown and a hub-and-spoke model. You just simply cannot get from east Portland to anywhere on the westside in any meaningful amount of time. And that’s why people drive. My wife works at Nike, she would love to take the MAX, but if she was going take the MAX her commute would be an hour and a half one away with all the connections.”
How would Green help Portland make the MAX faster? He’d lobby for a transit tunnel under downtown and the Willamette River — a dream of transit reformers that would speed bus and light rail trips and alleviate the current bottleneck on the 113-year old Steel Bridge. But in true Green fashion, he didn’t just toss out this idea. He’s actually thought it through. “My expectation in the next [state] legislative session is that City Council sets the legislative agenda, not the mayor, which is what happened last time,” Green said. “And my prerogative is that we lobby for the tunnel. Or we lobby for an elevated, downtown, grade-separated thing. Whatever it’ll take. I’ll take either.”
To create space for the politics and free up funding for such a bold project idea, Green said when he and his council colleagues are able to influence Portland’s state legislative agenda, he would, “De-prioritize the big freeway expansion projects” and instead, “invest in updating and rationalizing the TriMet system, because then we get the TOD right.”
“TOD” is transit-oriented development, the idea that transit investments should focus on places with the commercial and housing density required to make transit successful. Going a step further, Green said he wants to pair transit-oriented development with social housing — a model popular in major European cities like Paris where housing is owned by the public and managed for community benefits over individual profits (back in April, Green and Councilor Candace Avalos sponsored a successful City Council resolution to study the idea). For Green, an added benefit of social housing near transit hubs is that it sets the table for a different paradigm for transportation revenue: one that relies less on people buy gas for cars and paying car-related fines and fees; and relies more on transportation as a basic city service akin to water, sewer, or electricity.
Green said he’s “Thinking about pairing social housing with transit-oriented development, with a growth policy that that enables us to to really spread the cost of our infrastructure of a larger base…we’re going to need a growing tax base, and you can only get that if you encourage development in the city.”
Green’s dream of city-owned apartment blocks adjacent to transit hubs could be years away, but a proposal for Portland to use a utility fee approach to road funding is likely coming soon. I’ve been tracking comments from councilors and transportation bureau staff in recent months and the idea keeps coming up. Green made it sound imminent on Tuesday night when he said, “There’s a proposal that is going to come out…. called the transportation utility fee, which is this idea of saying we need a stable revenue source.” “Let’s get rid of the gas tax, because it’s not stable anymore,” Green continued. “And let’s just add a constant fee that we spread out to as many ratepayers as possible to spread the burden out and that provides a steady flow of revenue to PBOT that if we’re willing to bond against it — which I think we should — you can really start to build some infrastructure.”
The arc of the case Green laid out Tuesday night demonstrates his ability to go from specific policy ideas (parking prices downtown) to higher-level problems (inefficient transit for longer trips), connect them to the systems level (land use and housing), then bring it back to a massive challenge (lack of transportation funding) and a way to solve it (a utility fee). It’s rare to have a local elected official who can so confidently connect the dots between these issues.
“It’s hard to turn a big ship on a dime,” Green said at the end of the meeting after describing how he wants to turn the vacant building at SW 4th and Washington into dense social housing. “But what I don’t want us to do is continue to defer and kick these good ideas down the road and pretend like they’re not urgent, because they are.”
Thanks for reading.
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Most cities nationwide tend to be held almost entirely by people who vote Democrat (and a lot of rural county commissions are held by people who tend to vote Republican). As long as the Portland city council remains “non-partisan”, does it really matter what Mr. Green’s political affiliation is? It’s not like anyone from the other 3 districts can vote for him anyway.
For this story, I believe it does matter. I chose to frame it around his political affiliation because I figured that would be fun and it’s something new for Portland to have an elected official from this party who also happens to be very outspoken and interested in transportation.
The DSA is actually not a political party, which is a common misconception. I’m not personally a member but it includes socialist-minded people from across the spectrum, including those who seek to facilitate change outside electoral politics and reject the sort of creeping authoritarianism that you so often find on the left (eg 20th century Marxist-Leninism and on and on).
Thanks Andrew N. I’ve edited the story to reflect that the DSA isn’t (yet!) a political party. I’m new to covering it so I’ll figure it out.
I love how these people refer to anyone with a conservative belief as a bootlicker, while happily ignoring the jack boots worn by the footsoldiers of Marxist regimes.
Your uncomfortable uncle MOTRG swerving hard right into the dinner table again. My god who is calling anyone a “bootlicker”? Authoritarian regimes come from both far left (e.g., Venezuela) AND far right (e.g., Chile) ideologies.
A self-parody that is not aware they are a self-parody.
Angelita Morillo has on bluesky.
“These people” being the DSA? We live under an oppressive, ecocidal system that is built on a long history of, well, bootlicking. In that context what is “conservative belief”? If your thinking goes no further than “they’re authoritarian, too, so my differently-flavored, status-quo-supporting authoritarianism is justifiable,” that makes you just as lazy as the people you’re criticizing. You gotta dig deeper. On the bright side, we both despise authoritarian Leftism. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-fragments-of-an-anarchist-anthropology
You are never, ever going to legislate the end of oppression. it is inherent to a world that makes us physically vulnurable to injury, pain, sadness and death, so please manage your expectations as to how much this “ecocidal” system can change.
A large degree of the inequality your are seeing in America and Europe is due to the long term decolonization of the world’s resources and a return, in the developed world, to a pyramidal wealth distribution that is the historical norm across the world..
If I roll my ankle and fall down the stairs and break bones, is that oppression? No, of course not. Yes, our existence makes us inherently vulnerable to injury, but nobody legislates physics, so that’s a moot point. Meanwhile we live in a country where legislation is creating oppressive deportation schemes, among other things.
Your second statement is essentially telling us to accept the status quo because it’s happened all over the world and we’ve seen similar throughout all of history. Okay, so you don’t mind inequality so long as it’s been around forever and is commonplace? What’s your point?
If your thinking goes no further than “they’re authoritarian, too, so my differently-flavored, status-quo-supporting authoritarianism is justifiable,”
Nobody said that though, did they?
What, you mean people focus on the problems in their own house instead of worrying about hypothetical problems somewhere else, and problems they have no control over? Sounds like a pretty healthy way to go about life, actually.
Hopefully the City Council will heed your wisdom!
It is especially relevant right now given Zohran Mamdani has made a transportation justice paradigm part of his messaging. He’s talked about similar things with closing down blocks in front of schools.
Sure does! I live in D4 and am repped by Green. I did not vote for him but had I known about his DSA bonafides, I absolutely would NOT have voted for him. All of my neighbors were likewise clueless about his DSA affiliation and were surprised when they learned about it.
So I think he’s gonna have a real challenge being re-elected, which is a shame since he seems to be a big advocate for cycling.
I don’t think it was a secret. He’s an active member and was loudly endorsed by the DSA. I’m not 100% sure, but I’m fairly sure it was featured in the voter pamphlet (which is something me and my partner heavily lean on when actually voting)
I don’t understand why you can’t look past the label and re-elect him on the merits of this policy. The article sums it up well “It’s rare to have a local elected official who can so confidently connect the dots between these issues.” — why throw that all away just from his affiliation to the DSA?
Right? What a bizarre world we live in where people argue about esoteric things, and then agree on policy decisions, but then vote based on the former.
“He seems to be a big advocate for cycling,” but he’s a pastafarian! I can’t stand those people! Kill the pastafarians!
Well, to be fair, the noodly appendages can be a little creepy 🙂
Not to mention, his socialist background is the literal reason he is consistently connecting these dots. The status quo and conservative thought are full of magical thinking so it’s no wonder they don’t seem to fit together cause and effect. A principled socialist will see clearly the way organizing everything around wealth accumulation is a detriment to everyone else.
Socialist policies for cars has been the status-quo in the US for 100 years. It has worked pretty well for the cars. I don’t get why people don’t understand the difference between authoritarianism and democracy, but I’m still hopeful the US will try the latter eventually.
Bizarre we live in a world where people are more upset about the label “DSA” than what a politician actually does in office.
Super blocks. News today is that Fred Meyer is closing the Gateway store. Kohl’s at that location is already gone. It’s right next to a major transit center. Seems like a golden opportunity to redevelop the location with something other than a parking crater.
It’s been on Prosper Portland’s (PDC’s) list for redevelopment for decades. Identified for redevelopment as far back as 1996. In my opinion it should become East Portland’s downtown/main street with development all along 102nd.
That’ll never happen with Green, he’s already tried to take tax payer money from PDC to use for his pet projects but was shown he didn’t have a clue what PDC does. The community came out in force and Green and Morillo lost face. I don’t doubt they’ll try to get their revenge.
The combined properties of the Gateway Shopping Center are approximately 25 acres of unsustainable buildings and asphalt. And the Gateway Max is 0.2 miles away. And 7:bus lines presently serve the block. As you indicate, transformative redevelopment seems possible if there’s the will and inclination.
…and the 205 bike path!
About 15 few years ago I was at a meeting of the Gateway Urban Renewal Area and somebody mentioned that Gateway was one of the few areas in the city with no height limits on buildings – maybe redevelop it as a high-density residential community like Vancouver Metrocentre or Arlington VA with 39-story tower blocks?
I’ve heard that, but I just looked at the area plan and it does seem to have height limits, Lowest height allowed is 75 ft and highest is 150 ft. https://www.portland.gov/sites/default/files/code/526-gateway-pd_2.pdf
There’s a lot of CX zoning comparable to downtown (https://www.portlandmaps.com/bps/zoning/#/map/)—it’s been planned as kind of a second major node for a long time, but getting it going takes some doing 🙂 “Superblocks” to me is not the best model (the term is grounded in old school urban renewal projects that tore up walkable places and made large blocks surrounded by more car-oriented streets: https://thewestendmuseum.org/history/era/immigrant-neighborhood/rid-of-the-grid-the-destructive-legacy-of-superblocks-in-urban-renewal/) but patterns centered on (still public!) car-free pathways would be a jam.
Interesting read. This really gets at how words can be co-opted and mean entirely different things depending on the context or time they’re used. The model designers used in places like Stuytown is the complete opposite of what ideas drove Madrid’s super blocks. One prioritizes extremely tall spaced, uniform residential buildings, whereas the latter builds moderately large, mixed use structures that fit organically within the existing city blocks. The only thing they have in common is the limitation of cars toward the center.
Gateway has so much potential, particularly if the city can encourage mixed use, mixed income buildings that don’t exclusively prioritize high-end condos or low-income apts. I really hope some of that (maybe here) can be turned into park.
Since that area has now lost almost all it’s shopping where would all those people shop? The Winco across from Fred Meyers is pretty sub par and what business wants to build anything there now?
I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking TBH. My dad has shopped at Winco for like 20 years. It was his go to. I agree it’s meh. Food Fight is on 112th and Halsey tho. Freddys wasn’t exactly great. I’m also hoping Ross takes a hike. That whole mini-mall situation has to go.
There have been maybe 4-5 large apartment complexes that have gone in the last 5 years (example 1 example 2). I’m not saying Gateway is great, but it’s certainly growing and it has a lot of potential. Remember the Pearl before it was transformed by all those apartments? I mean, look at Foster and Lents now. Amazing. Portland’s goin through some serious growing pains. Maybe with the hiatus on SDCs there’ll be more incentive to build?
“…lost almost all it’s shopping…”
If big stores can’t cut it there, how about a design that supports small scale entrepreneurial businesses like food carts and farmers markets to generate new businesses that can then graduate into small storefronts. How did Fred Meyers start out?
A lot of the street level business locations in Portland are scaled for businesses that are out of reach for most locals. Looking at you, that forsaken 36 story mess that we nuked the SW 10th & Alder cart block to build.
Need to deal with the drug addicts first.
I would love to see them go much further than super blocks with an area like that. What we need is a full Metrotown (Burnaby/Vancouver) style high-density transit-centered housing/retail/park community.
that would be amazing!
Portland voters have been very clear they don’t want businesses or high-wage earners to live in the city. The consequences of that will be something we have to live with until people realize we need tax reform.
Lots of policies that would work at a national level aren’t going to work at the city level. At some point any high earner is going to look around and realize they can save tens of thousands of dollars by moving across an invisible line. And generally moving across that line will get them a cleaner, safer environment to live in. It becomes somewhat of a no-brainer. I truly don’t understand why people who have kids live in Portland because they could much better service in any of the suburbs.
Just to be clear, increasing car fees while maintaining our current level of transit is just taxing lower income people who live farther out who can’t use alternatives to driving.
Portland needs tax reform, along with the county and the state. They need to show they can competently manage the money they currently receive. We need to scrap all of the extra taxes like PCEF because its unpalatable to talk about closing community centers when we are funding dumb climate change projects that will have no impact on anyone but the grantee.
As for the tunnel, a tunnel is not going to solve MAX being slow. MAX is slow because TriMet can’t decide what MAX is. Is it for commuters to go long distances? If so, why does it have a million stops? Is it for short local trips? Why not just use a bus? Is transit for moving people or achieving social justice?
A downtown tunnel is a very typical Portland project though. Its big and looks impressive, will cost a lot, and make no meaningful difference. How many BRT lines could we fund with that money? The biggest impediment to getting people on transit is leaders in this area wont accept that busses are effective even though they aren’t as sexy as trains.
This study contradicts that stance. The tunnel would increase reliability due to the Steel Bottleneck, reduce travel times, resiliency for earthquakes, and increase capacity.
Great point. We need both. But they serve different purposes.
A 2019 study contradicts that stance, any rational observer can conclude that just updating it to reflect work from home would decimate the conclusions. Add in actual MAX ridership numbers, the office vacancy rate downtown, population growth stagnating, apartment development drying up, etc. and there is no logical reason to pursue a project like this other than the fact (see high school bond) that voters are probably dumb enough to “try to” pay for it.
What parts of the study above do you disagree with?
Page 2 – “By 2040 there will be 400k more people and 260k more jobs”. To hit these numbers there would need to be a compound annual growth rate in population of 0.71% and jobs of 1.1%. Since 2019, the population has grown by negative 0.9% annually and jobs have grown by 0.3%. Not exactly close and no sign of turning around soon.
Page 3 – All of it. Trimet is down 30%+/- since 2019 in ridership numbers, just getting back to 2019 levels will be a major achievement. Let alone expansion beyond that.
Page 5 – “In 20 years we will need 60 trains” – We’re 25% of the way to that statement and it isn’t close to necessary. “Overcrowding on fewer trains” LOL, okay.
Page 6 – “The tunnel would increase MAX red and blue lines by up to 27% by 2035” That would suggest a 50%+ increase in ridership from today.
Page 7 – Cost Range: adjusted for inflation it is now $3.7B-$5.6B and we know because it is Portland, it will cost another 50-100% more than that.
The rest general feel good fluff and showing how will just a small contribution of a few billion dollars we can save a few minutes a day.
And since there’s no limits on the profits a company can make from a tax payer paid project, lets say project $4 billion with a 10% profit (they’ll likely get more) is $400,000,000. Gee no wonder the construction companies like big train projects.
Might not be entirely bad given the outcomes. See the MAX construction history below, which have all been built on or before the construction deadline, and on or under budget.
Maybe you’re talking about ODOT who has a history of chronic cost overruns?
Thanks for reading it!
Yes, the population of Portland proper declined from 2020-2023. In 2024 the population increased, as it is expected to do in 2025.
Typically, scientists look at long-term trend lines to gauge overall growth. With pop growth trending upward for nearly the entirety of Portland’s modern history aside from the ’70s and the above 3 years, it’s likely the decline, which occurred in the majority of US cities, was temporary. If the US goes full authoritarian, that’s another story, but population growth remains likely.
True, although the vast majority of people who would take transit continue to have very little functional means to do so due to our exclusive funding of automobile infra up until the late 70s. There are still an enormous number of people who would use transit if it were functional (e.g., rapid, direct).
The steel bridge is the main cause of frequent service interruptions. It’s not just capacity, but the age of the bridge, structural deficiency particularly with earthquake resilience, its frequent freight use and the slow crawl through downtown, particularly with hotter months when the lines expand.
The MAX construction history does not reflect your estimate.
My wife used to take the bus to downtown pre-pandemic. She no longer does because she is worried about drug addicts on the bus and across downtown. So she drives every day, and she is probably not the only one who feels that way about Portland lately.
Before TriMet let anyone ride their system, I’d say about 80% of my downtown co-workers used transit.
After they let anyone on <10% ride transit. Myself being one of them.
I have seen security/fare checkers (whatever their title is) on the Max, but just the other day a group of them got on my bus and didn’t check anyone’s fare. If they had they would have found 4 people on without a paid fare.
It’s not rocket science folks, allowing only fare paying passengers would be a good first step.
This is a pretty good point Solar. One of the benefits of a tunnel downtown would be the option of going to a closed system (at least downtown).
Open loop systems like Trimet or BVG (in Berlin), for example, tend to have a grey-ish zone around some of the transit stations (more so in Portland). Someone better informed on the difference in safety for open and closed loop systems might have some data on this. My hunch is that closed systems like the MTA in NYC or the Metro in DC have more control on who is entering/exiting the system, but it very much depends on the system and context. That said, the likelihood of being injured in a car is several fold higher than being injured on a bus.
I meant that it wont make a meaningful difference in increasing transit use. The hard truth when it comes to the MAX is that the vast majority of Portlanders don’t live close enough to it to use it and its so slow that it can’t be well integrated into a trip with a transfer.
Sure, but we are currently using the MAX has extremely expensive, fixed rail busses. They make a ton of stops and it really defeats the whole purpose of a train. It takes 18 minutes of being in motion to get from SE Park Ave Stations to OMSI/SE Water Station. Its only a 12 minute drive. And that’s going from MAX station to MAX station and doesn’t include traveling to the MAX station or traveling to your final destination.
Point to point, a train should be faster than driving.
BRT is what we can afford and would be a much faster implementation instead of another commuter trolley to the burbs.
Absolutely agree. The MAX system downtown is near useless. This is one of the many reasons in the study above why a tunnel would be ideal. The MAX was built with somewhat of an understanding that it would be an imperfect tool downtown.
Right. It’s the result of the long historical 20th century trend of US planning transit around car commuting. It’s why we have stations along I-205 with very few people using them. There is a huge latent demand for people traveling around and through downtown (see the study above).
Using a bus during peak traffic? There’s a reason why bus priority lane/signals get installed. Transit in traffic is often slower than walking, hence the need for transit with grade separation.
BRT is a great tool, and would be ideal for specific purposes (e.g., along Powell). It’s generally cheaper, but it also has limitations, particularly when you start adding dedicated lanes, station areas, transit signal priority etc. BRT will work similarly to the MAX downtown, but along roads like Powell or 122nd, with signal priority and dedicated median bus lanes (making buses independent of any traffic), it would be a game changer.
But really we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Other countries have created exceptional transit. Examining what works and following their lead seems like one of the best options if we are to develop a successful public transit system.
We’ve had many planners who are well informed about what other countries do work hard to improve our system over the years, and what we’ve ended up with is a system where each trip costs almost $10 to provide and is almost always slower than driving, usually slower than biking, and sometimes slower than walking.
Do you really think you see solutions TriMet or its consultants haven’t thought of? Or do they see implementation obstacles you are overlooking/ignoring/hand waving away?
The best solution armchair planners can dream up isn’t much good if it can’t be implemented in the imperfect, resource constrained, politically fractured, and sometimes dysfunctional world we inhabit.
Or as someone once said “Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.”
Our transit systems in the US (aside from NYC) are abysmal compared to nearly every other developed country and many others around the globe. This is a result of a lot of reasons, including disinvestment, but not for a lack of consultants. My point above is simply to use modes as they work well elsewhere. Not sure I follow you otherwise.
I do think we tend to go for high-cost high-tech solutions when others (e.g., BRT and ciclovia in Colombia) function quite well.
Absolutely spot on. I could not agree more. I don’t think the downtown tunnel necessarily fits this bill tho. Just like in most cities (e.g., Seattle, Chicago, SF, NY), high capacity transit, particularly at its core, requires grade separation for it to function.
“Abysimal… disinvested…better elsewhere…”
Fully agree. And since you agree that solutions aren’t worth much if they can’t be implemented, maybe we should talk about how, on a practical, political level, we can build a tunnel, most specifically where the money would come from. I can tell you where it’s not going to come from, at least for the next 4 years, and perhaps longer if we elect a President Vance (or even a President Harris 2.0; it will take quite some time to rebuild the money machine and clear the backlog).
We should probably start by updating that 2019 study you mentioned above, and see how things look in today’s world (or even tomorrow’s, which is unlikely to be a straight line extrapolation from today).
If City Council is serious about this, they can fund a study update themselves. If they’re not, then let’s move on.
Its slow because it takes a million stops. There is no great mystery here. Its a slow trolley that travels through low density areas for most of its path.
No, they don’t want buses because there’s no money to be made for the construction industry (and others) that builds more underused infrastructure for the overpriced, and inflexible, trains. Just remember, Goldschmidt didn’t bring Max to help the community, he brought it so he and his wealthy friends could make a ton of money off the taxpayers.
A tunnel would be a complete waste of money. Buses can get around obstacles much easier than an ancient fixed-mode transportation system.
Man, this is stupid.
Per your logic, I’m sure glad that all the biggest cities in the world only rely on buses for their mass transit systems, and that no one builds subways, LRT, or trams anywhere anymore.
That already existed for decades it’s called Vancouver and yet somehow Portland still manages to keep high earners living in the city. I like that our taxes are moderately progressive with everyone paying around 10%.
If you want a system that taxes the 1% only 4% of their income and the bottom 20% 14% of their income Washington is right there. To get more regressive than that you’ll have to go to Florida.
You mean the rapidly growing city to our north, the one where people from Portland are moving to? In the past the tax difference was a lot smaller between Portland and Vancouver. Portland is a city with increasing taxes and decreasing services. Its going to cause a death spiral.
My dude, Portland is losing people and businesses to Portland’s suburbs that are IN Oregon. Wealth is fleeing the city. I mostly want to see the huge amount of taxes I pay be used in competent way. I’m guessing you live in a part of the city that the City of Portland cares about, but when I look around I see disinvestment by the city and crumbling buildings and I wonder what I’m paying for.
Someone has to pay for all the twee art and performative programs.
In 2023, 16.4% of households in Portland earned $200k or more, up from 14.2% in 2022. Is that evidence of “wealth fleeing the city”?
That’s not my experience. All of the high earners I know are either planning to leave or have already left. What’s most galling is not the high rate of tax they pay, but the fact that they are the ONLY ONES paying any tax at all. If a cause is worth supporting, shouldn’t EVERYONE support it? And high earners do not benefit at all from homeless services or PFA, so it truly is robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Also don’t forget that high earners run companies. Think a high earner is gonna locate a business in Portland so he can give 5% of his or her income to city gov’t? Think again.
16.4% of Portland households earned $200,00 in 2023, up from 14.8% in 2022. Just because people you know are leaving Portland doesn’t make it true in the aggregate.
Saying that high earners somehow don’t benefit from homeless services is insane. We all benefit when we take care of everyone in our society. Ditto for preschool for all. I don’t have kids, but I still support public education because I think it’s good for society.
I imagine plenty of business owners open shop in Portland for reasons essentially unrelated to tax policy. I recall Hoka opening some corporate offices in Portland in the last five years, despite all the bad press and “horrible taxes” you describe, probably because there’s enough athletic wear that it’s easier for them to find workers in the Portland area than a place like Knoxville or whatever.
Shoe companies open offices here to poach talent from Nike, its totally worth it to have a small presence here, Adidas and under Armour are the same, just larger.
How is anyone at all benefiting from the homeless services which are currently offered which provide no incentive for people to heal but rather encourages them to use drugs and live in tents. The only people benefiting from this are the hundreds of service providers where there should be one–the government.
I feel like I spend all day on various platforms saying this, but PFA is a universal program. High earners absolutely can and do use it.
On the tax reform front: I think the tendency for high earners to leave Portland is vastly overstated. 16.4% of households and 24.6% of families in Portland earn $200k/year or more, which compares favorably to every large suburban municipality (>30k) other than Lake O (source). I suppose this is still 2023 data, so there’s always a chance things have changed substantially, but I reckon that’s mostly idle speculation absent specific sources. Rich people, and rich families, are not exactly fleeing Portland en masse.
Maybe they like walking to a cafe or shop? Maybe they have friends in the neighborhood? Maybe Portland has personal emotional and psychological value to them? I find that most people I know don’t make decisions based solely on the bottom line.
I do agree that property tax and business tax reform is desperately needed in Oregon, and I think most of the reason that Portland ends up with a bunch of bespoke weird taxes is at least partly attributable to the fact that we generally favor public spending, but our local governments faced persistent crises relating to structural revenue problems downstream of our dumb property tax system.
The problems you list here are issues with light rail systems in general, not specific to the MAX. It’s a result of only having the funding to do one thing, and forcing the MAX to be both a local and regional rail system. In European cities with light rail like systems (most common in Germany), a robust intercity and regional rail network allows for much faster – often faster than driving – trips on transit, with the light rail (stadtbahn) providing a fast and reliable local service. For example: in the small German city of Karlsrue to the suburban area of Durlach, you can take either the S-Bahn (4 minutes) or the stadtbahn (17 minutes) to Karlsrue HB (a 9 minute drive). So a good light rail system should really be a local-oriented service, while other modes more suitable to fast speeds are better for regional level trips.
That said, a city-center tunnel is still justifiable for the MAX on speeding it up grounds, even if the MAX remains a relatively weak regional transit choice. The city center is a place prone to delays and complications, and the lack of ability to run longer trains is directly related to the small downtown blocks. Depending on cost, it may not be the best possible option, but I think it should be understood as a strong candidate – probably more important than everything other than TV Highway BRT.
A downtown transit tunnel or viaduct would probably speed up the MAX by 15 minutes on a east to west trip from Lloyd to Goose Hollow. That is a very meaningful difference.
I think this is the wrong question to ask, especially given TriMet’s poor history of actually building BRT projects. The Division-Powell BRT morphed into a service that doesn’t resemble actual BRT in any way. No center busway, barely any dedicated lanes, no level boarding, no offboard fare payment. It’s just signal priority and all door boarding, with a side of stop consolidation. And we are almost certainly going to repeat the process on 82nd. The famed flexibility of bus service just means “flexibility to compromise to favor automotive traffic”.
As someone who loves buses and trains, I think it’s wrong to frame it this way. There are things that rail can do that buses can’t, and it’s not just about sex appeal. Trains can run on more reliable schedules in practice, and are higher capacity, especially per labor hour. It’s debatable how much this matters in the context of Portland in 2025, but at least on the main well-planned trunk MAX routes (Banfield, Westside), bus replacement would be unreasonably expensive and a much worse service.
Yes! The idea of BRT and the process of planning for BRT are two very different animals. We started with a Powell line with separated lane akin to a MAX line, and ended up with slightly longer buses on Division.
I can’t get the link to load for me so I’ll take your word for it, but that number in isolation doesn’t tell us anything. If you lose someone who has a $1mm a year income but a family bumps into that category making $205k a year could make it look like the category is stable.
I’d expect to see the $200k and up category continue to increase as inflation raises wages and prices but those households making $200k a year aren’t going to be living the same lifestyle households in 2015 would have had at that salary.
The City Council better also pray every night mortgage rates stay high. I know its a “good” problem to have, but I know several people who want to leave but have super lower interest rates and moving just doesn’t make financial sense right now.
You can walk to a cafe or shop in pretty much every surrounding suburb.
Right, but our terrible schools isn’t really a “bottom line” issue.
Right, so its not an issue with light rail systems, its an issue with TriMet choosing a “worst of both worlds” approach where we get bus level service at train prices.
How can we justify building a tunnel for a train no one uses? Why keep throwing good money after bad? Use busses. Increase bus service so we build transit to places that people want/need to go. We don’t need longer trains because the ones we have roll around empty most of the day.
We don’t need to replace the MAX, we just need to stop building new ones.
Looking into it more deeply (here’s a link that works) and I see a rise from 14.2% to 16.4% of households making $200k or more in Portland from 2022 to 2023. Average wages rose ~3.5% over the same period (source), which makes up some of this difference, but likely not all of it. Granted, I think it’s fair to assume that wages on the high end have risen faster than the average wage, but I think if it were the case that wealthy households were leaving the city (on net) in appreciable numbers, we should expect a downward or stable trend, not a rising one.
I dunno, when I look at the distribution of cafes in Lake Oswego, I see huge amounts of the city that are not “walk to a cafe accessible”, or at least not to the extent that essentially all of Portland is (even East Portland).
PPS is ranked 10 out of 25 by Niche for school districts. Ahead of North Clackamas, Vancouver, and Hillsboro. Oregon certainly has a struggling public education scene as evidenced by many things, but I don’t think there’s strong evidence that Portland is uniquely bad in the region.
It’s an issue with anemic transit funding and a completely lackluster regional train system on main line tracks. Barely any of that is TriMet’s fault, and though I do think there are significant historical missteps evident in the planning and building of the MAX, it isn’t reasonable to blame TriMet for not making an S-Bahn given the state of passenger railroading in the US.
The MAX Red and Blue lines (the most likely trains to go in the tunnel) combined for over 40,000 daily rides in Spring 2024. Sure, that’s down from the 65,000 in Spring 2019, but it’s still 40,000 daily rides. In my experience riding them, especially on the west side, they are almost always busy enough that an equivalent bus would be uncomfortably full.
I think buses are great, but I do not think that TriMet or our regional leaders posses the gumption to do the logical and cost effective thing for better bus service, which is full-system stop consolidation, as many dedicated bus lanes as physically possible (as in on every road with more than two lanes), and a bus shelter built to provide shelter at every stop.
And we should increase bus service, but outside of the Orange and Yellow lines (which I think border on vanity projects, especially the Orange), most of the MAX fits in very well to an integrated system, and a MAX tunnel would theoretically allow for more bus service, since capital funding and operational funding are typically allocated in different ways and a tunnel would reduce the operational needs of the MAX by speeding up trips. This is all academic right now, since there’s about a 0% chance of the FTA funding a $4B project in Portland right now, but I think there’s no reason we can’t have both more buses and a better rail system.
Inflation in 2023 was 3.4% (https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/)
2023 numbers are now 2.5 years behind where we are now. The Governor is seeing something that disturbs her and she has way more data than we do. She has tax returns which is going to be more meaningful than the ACS.
Yeah, East Portland, with its lack of sidewalks is hella walkable to a cafe. LMAO.
Wow! Niche being so high on us makes me feel better our high absenteeism rate and below national average graduation rates!!!!! Wait, who is Niche and why do they matter? Is this the nerd wallet of schools? Did AI write this article?
Right, but given that we would expect the bulk of movement to happen in immediate reaction to the pandemic and the various taxes (2020), I think there’s little reason to think that somehow the 2022 to 2023 comparison isn’t useful. And I have yet to see Governor Kotek actually produce a report based on tax return data, instead she’s writing letters to Vega Pederson based on obviously incomplete data. Absent some more tangible evidence from the Governor’s office, I will be very skeptical of their claims. And I don’t have access to tax roll data, so will reference the ACS as a heuristic since it’s readily available.
Someone who lives at like 160th and Taggart has two or three cafes within a mile walk. Someone who lives on the south shore of Lake O has one, and almost certainly fewer sidewalks. Portland has obvious advantages over basically every suburban place in the region if you want to drive less. It’s got more transit, better pedestrian and bike infrastructure, and more places in close proximity to everyday needs (coffee, groceries, etc.). There are pockets of this in the ‘burbs (downtown Hillsboro, Beaverton, Oregon City, and Milwaukie especially), but those are usually not the typical places and often have constrained housing options.
Niche is an aggregation site that ranks things. You are welcome to find another source, but the relevant comparison here is still at the regional level. Oregon public schools have well-documented struggles, but if we are talking about household choice at the regional level relating to school districts, I don’t see compelling quantitative evidence that PPS is somehow uniquely bad. That’s not to say it’s great or even good by national standards, just that it’s not appreciably worse than Vancouver, Hillsboro, or Beaverton.
Portland is down 17,000 residents since 2020. We DID see people leave the city. Your assumption that the effect of the increase taxes/decreased livability would have cooled by now is baseless.
How is the data “obviously incomplete” when you haven’t seen it?
Picking random spots on the map to try and prove your point is silly. Someone who lives around 3rd and Evergreen in Lake O has way more options to walk to than the bikini coffee bar thats close to 160 and Taggert. I don’t know why you are fixating on Lake O because thats not where people are going. People are going to Vancouver and in case you haven’t been in a while, its gotten a lot nicer.
In 2023, Portland had 48,478 households earning $200k or more out of 292k households (source). In 2019, we had 45,612 households earning $200k in 2023 dollars or more out of 280k households (source – I extrapolated based on $170k in 2019 being worth ~$200k in 2020). I do not see substantial, convincing evidence that high earners are disproportionately leaving Portland based on publicly available data. Did people leave Portland in the wake of the pandemic? Absolutely. But if you are going to claim that this has been disproportionately high earners because of the various high earner taxes, I would invite you to provide some actual evidence to back that up. Absent that, I think the most reasonable explanation for Portland’s population decline since 2020 is lack of commuting needs paired with still-high housing prices leading middle income residents to move to relatively more affordable suburbs (Vancouver, North Clackamas/Milwaukie, and Gresham). Some of these middle-income households may have chosen this in part based on the higher marginal income taxes, but I think it’s a stretch to say it’s anything other than a small secondary factor.
My assumption is that we would expect to see the greatest amount of change immediately after the taxes and pandemic related macro changes occurred. If someone leaves 5 years after something happens, can you still attribute them leaving to that thing? Probably, but the longer things go on the more we should expect things to even out and for changes to slow down. I guess that’s not based on anything super concrete, but it seems fair enough to me.
This is the article I’m referencing. I read this as the governor is sending a letter and making a political push based on information provided in a presentation by the county for a not-yet-completed tax year collection. That is obviously incomplete data, and should be acknowledged as such. I do not think Governor Kotek is navigating this situation well at all, and if she is claiming that this tax is pushing people from the county or city, it’s worth corroborating that with specific, tangible evidence.
Okay, how’s this? Per OpenStreetMap, Portland has 463 cafes, which you can peruse on a map here. Vancouver has 96, which you can peruse here. In per capita terms, Portland has one cafe for every 1,409 residents, while Vancouver has one for every 2,094. In per square mile terms, Portland has 3.5 cafes per square mile, while Vancouver has 1.9 cafes per square mile. These metrics don’t account for distribution, and both cities have places where you wouldn’t reasonably walk to a cafe, but it would be ridiculous to say that people move to Vancouver for better walking access to nearby shops, cafes, and services. Portland is unambiguously superior by any measure to basically every suburb on walkability in the aggregate. Sure, downtown Vancouver is probably better for this than East Portland, but it doesn’t hold a candle to NW Portland. And East Portland has more to do without a car than Fruit Valley.
I have been to Vancouver, and think it’s fine, but all my friends live in Portland. There are places I go multiple times a week in Portland that have no comparable alternative in Vancouver. I do not want to sit in gridlock on I5 just to do the things I’ve already decided I like doing, and there’s basically no amount of money I could save that would make me do that. YMMV, but I’m quite fond of Portland and am sick of people bashing it with poorly articulated points.
I don’t remember where I read it, but you are correct eawriste, it’s not the number of households in the above $200k category, it’s the amount of revenue they contribute—and that is down.
Dan Ryan, in the emergency Council session Novick called to undo the p-cauc defunding of the Children’s Levy projects, mentioned that the property-tax base from which the Children’s Levy is funded is down 20%. That is what office vacancies downtown do to city revenue.
A note on this: income taxes on high earners tend to be volatile, as a large portion of high earner income comes from capital gains (selling property, stocks, etc.). And given that the receipts from the PSA tax were abnormally high for at least the first year of collections, I don’t think it’s problematic that revenue on the tax is down somewhat. I mean half the hand-wringing about the “massive surplus” the county is sitting on relates directly to the fact that they took in way more money than they expected in the first two years of the program, so a return to expectations should be thought of as a good thing. For the city budget, this is almost irrelevant, as I don’t think there’s much reason to think that the residential property tax base has been eroded through wealth leaving given that the housing market is still pretty hot in Portland.
While this is true (though technically it’s more the knock on price effects on sale that reduce property tax revenue rather than the vacancies themselves), this dynamic is emblematic of a very dysfunctional property taxation system. Since residential property taxes are neutered to the point of being revenue negative relative to inflation, the city essentially relies on the more volatile downtown office market to make up budget shortfalls. Even though this current downtown office contraction is particularly severe, it’s still bad economics to have a system like this, since it reduces public receipts during an economic downturn and prevents the city from effectively managing its own budget. Ideally, we would have a public finance system that acts anti-cyclically to spend more in downturns and less during upturns in the economic cycle to smooth things out better.
Have you tried asking them? Portland is a great place to raise kids. Despite your constant negativity, we live in a world-class city with great parks, schools, walkable neighborhoods, and a general way of life that is very, very hard to find in the US.
You lost me completely at the MAX tunnel part. While I agree the system has some serious shortcomings, the largest on my list is that it’s not grade-separated and has to stop at stoplights / deal with car congestion. The MAX tunnel fixes that problem for a big section of the city. I’m open to the idea that it needs fewer stops, but from what I’ve read and experienced that is not what is keeping the system from being what it needs to be.
Great schools you say? By what measure?
https://www.oregonlive.com/education/2025/01/oregon-math-reading-achievement-among-the-nations-worst-new-scores-show.html
That’s an article about Oregon as a whole, which isn’t really relevant in the context of relative competitiveness of different municipalities in the Portland area. I mean yes, Vancouver exists, but probably more relevant to compare school districts directly. PPS is middle of the road for Portland area school districts (10 out of 25: https://www.niche.com/k12/search/best-school-districts/m/portland-or-metro-area/)
Middle of the bottom isn’t really much to brag about.
There aren’t many objective measures by which Portland schools are in any respects “great” (as claimed). That said, there are ways for a family dedicated to education to make it work if they’re willing to put in the effort.
Most Portland families I know are opting for private school, even the ones for whom it is a struggle. In a way, that may bolster nubaloo’s point — people are willing to pay massive (to me at least) amounts of money to live here even knowing they need to provide what should be core government services for themselves.
And really… given our demographics and available talent, why aren’t our schools top in the nation, or at least second tier? Why do we settle for dead last?
Sure, it’s not much to brag about, but it’s not like people are looking at the Hillsboro school district and saying “this is so much better than PPS, I need to move now”. They probably are for Lake O, but that’s also a famously wealthy place so not exactly some seismic change in the landscape.
The reason why Oregon school struggle are beyond me, I don’t have kids and I only loosely follow school happenings. I do think our school funding structure tends to exacerbate it, but that’s about all I can say with confidence.
“And really… given our demographics and available talent, why aren’t our schools top in the nation”
You answered this in the previous paragraph. Too many people putting their kids in private schools.
Private schools, vouchers, charters, they’re all a scourge to a functioning society. Part of an overall conservative plan to chip away at public education.
Former educator here. It’s a complicated problem, but boiled down the reason our public education system has such poor outcomes is largely due to concentrated poverty, lack of social safety net, and our reliance on local funding. In Germany, for example, public education is largely funded by the federal and regional state, whereas in the US state and local governments fund education. That makes for a huge discrepancy between high- and low-income districts.
The school voucher program, or public funding of private ed is certainly exacerbating the problem, and may be the end of free public school (as we have known it since the 19th century) it in some states like Texas (Education Savings Account).
Anecdotally, I had some super smart students that couldn’t make it to school because their siblings needed babysitters and their parents both worked and couldn’t afford it. In Germany (and most other developed countries) childcare is heavily subsidized, as well as health care, transportation, etc. That makes for a very different experience with people in poverty.
In Oregon, this discrepancy is generally less problematic than elsewhere, since the state is a primary funder of school districts. However, the decoupling of local funding from schools isn’t without its problems, as Oregon has tended to under-fund public schools at the state level (here’s a reasonably good overview).
I think a big problem with all of these discussions about taxes, services, and public institutions is that taxes are not high in the historical context, but every news article covering taxes in Portland gestures at high taxes. Oregon permanently neutered property taxation and decoupled it almost entirely from the land market in the 1990s, Federal income taxes have fallen precipitously since the 1970s, and yet the general consensus is that taxes are just too high to bear. I find this to be sort of baffling, and compared to other countries with a stronger history of state investment in the economy (France, Germany), our taxes are quite low. Despite what Middle of the Road Guy likes to say, these places with economic interventionist histories (not strictly socialist mind you) do tend to pay a high cost for their public services, it’s just that they also don’t have as strong of an anti-tax, anti-economic interventionist culture so it seems to work out better and with more earnest commitment.
This is a historical and cultural problem well above my pay grade and tied to a lot of variables so I’m not really sure. There is some evidence that shows a tendency for people voting Republican to rely on fewer news sources. It’s no secret that Fox, Rogan, Newsmax etc. aren’t great sources of accurate information. Given that PBS is one of the sources of news with the least bias and most accuracy, and given that the government is now defunding it, I’m not hopeful about the future availability of reliable news sources, particularly in more rural settings.
But as with a lot of politics, accurate information isn’t necessarily going to persuade people who have a vested interest in an ideology and/or the status quo. It’s no secret most representatives are largely funded by superpacs, i.e., ultra-rich, and the most critical and convenient thing to exclude/obscure from most news is accurate information on taxation.
“Oregon has tended to under-fund public schools at the state level”
That’s one way to look at it. Another is that we spend more than most states and rank at the bottom of academic achievement (and have the shortest school years… coincidence?). Money does not seem to be the issue. It’s what we do (and don’t do) with it that is the problem.
Per-pupil spending metrics are useful, but not the entire story, since costs vary significantly between states. We spend $5,000 more per pupil than Georgia and rank 31st to their 30th, but labor costs much more here than there, and rural Oregon is much more remote than rural Georgia, adding further transportation costs.
I think it’s likely that there are money and non-money reasons for Oregon’s middling performance, and both can and should be addressed.
“World class city”. Really? There might be some little bubbles here and there but for a lot of Portlanders particularly on the east side it’s anything but world class. Come out to the Bottle drop and harm reduction center (ha) on NE 122nd and have a look at how the other half lives. It’s become a dumping ground for drug addicts and absolutely destroyed any livability that area may have had.
no offense but rent keeps going up in Portland because lots of people want to live here and think its pretty and cool. the line between Portland and outer suburbs may be invisible but people want to live in a place where you can easily walk/bike to a basketball, soccer game, or concert. It’s becoming far less cool for high earning professionals that want to raise a family to move to the suburbs, obviously some still do but at a far lower rate than previous generations. So cry all you want about how “everyone wants to run away from the cities” but it’s just not borne out in numbers, people are willing to pay more because cities have nice public amenities instead of box stores, car dealerships, and Wendy’s everywhere.
Portland’s best long term- high earner- tax base strategy is to capitalize off of what it already has, and where it is miles ahead of other cities, and has a ton of prior experience and is ideally located.
Continue to grow the work-from-home sector and international digital nomad culture by raising the living standard to that of other global cities with one simple trick: remove car infrastructure. Boldly commit to becoming a city where humans can enjoy all of the great things about being in a city, without the anachronistic toxicity of late 20th century transportation.
BTW, I would never choose to raise my kids in the suburbs.
Someone needs to remind them they are the high earners.
The wealthy population of Multnomah County keeps increasing at a steady rate you miserable melt
*citation needed*
In 2023, 15.3% of Multnomah County households earned $200k/year or more, up from 13.6% in 2022, 11.6% in 2021, and 10.0% in 2019 (all ACS 1 year estimates). For the 2022 to 2023 period, inflation was 3.4%, and wages grew by 3.5% (as we have discussed already). Given this, we should expect ~10% of households earning $150k to $199k (the next bucket down) to “move up” into the $200k bucket. For 2022 in Multnomah County, that works out to 3,222 households that are moved up into the $200k bucket “thanks” to inflation. The total households earning $200k in 2023 works out to 52,461, and if we subtract our 3,222 that moved up based on inflation, we have 51,039 households earning $200k in 2022 dollars, which works out to 14.4% – still up from 2022’s 13.6%.
Maybe everyone has left since 2023, but I find that hard to believe, since Portland (to my eye) seems to be doing better now than it was then. Do you have a citation to show that wealthy households are leaving Multnomah County, or Portland en masse?
“I truly don’t understand why people who have kids live in Portland because they could much better service in any of the suburbs.”
Parent here. Here are some reasons I like living in Portland. Sure, I might like neighbors in the suburbs, but those are relationships I’d have to recreate. I live across the street from my kid’s school. I can ride my bike to work, my other kid’s daycare, our doctor, the library, OMSI, several parks, and the Willamette River. I can take the MAX to the zoo or airport. I like, trust, and get help from our neighbors. Daycare for all will make daycare much more affordable (This is a mixed bag right now. We’re currently paying taxes for it, but we’re not enrolled. Despite that, I support the program, and in the future, I expect it will be a big reason for parents to stay in the city.)
In general, I like living in a city with access to places to go, things to do, and people who are doing interesting things. In a few years, my kids will be able to ride their bikes or take transit to do their own things. I won’t have to chauffeur them everywhere or buy them a car for them to be able to do basic activities.
What ideas do you have for tax reform other than repealing specific taxes you disagree with? I’d like to see property taxes revisited. The property tax revolt measures seem to have caused those specific taxes and created a real distortion in how different parts of the city and new construction are taxed. I’d also like to see the kicker ended so the state can build a reserve.
“Is transit for moving people or achieving social justice?” What parts of transit in Portland do you think are social justice? Isn’t moving people so they can access the city social justice?
“The biggest impediment to getting people on transit is leaders in this area wont accept that busses are effective even though they aren’t as sexy as trains.”
Buses aren’t as effective as trains unless you build them like trains with dedicated ROW which means eliminating SOV lanes and/or parking on existing roads. The biggest impediment to getting people on transit is gas is $4/gallon. Pitifully cheap to drive 20-30 miles, and parking is free or cheap at your destination. Also, most of the city and region is dominated by low density single family detached houses. You can’t make the math work on building high frequency mass transit to low density residential areas. It doesn’t matter if that transit is buses or trains.
Odd to me when people say they don’t understand why families live in the city instead of the suburbs, particularly for folks who ride bikes. Density is actually wonderful when you have kids. I can walk or bike to basically everything my kids need: school, library, grocery store, doctor’s office, shopping, farmer’s market, the list goes on. Every time I head to Costco or a specialist’s office that requires a trip to the suburbs I’m amazed at the folks who need to trek miles with no tree cover just to walk to a grocery store. And that is if they even have sidewalks! A friend of mine moved to the suburbs and even though the park is a 1/2 mile away they have to walk on the shoulder of a street with a 40 mph speed limit to get there. No thanks!
Nice that Green understands it’ll take a transit tunnel downtown to achieve that vision, with high-speed trains from every quadrant of the city arriving and departing every 5-10 minutes.
But how to pay for it? Forget about taxing the rich to pay for it – it’ll take EVERYBODY to chip in if it’s going to become a reality. And Portlanders already feel as though they are paying too much in taxes.
Still, I’m here for these ideas and I’m glad Green is floating them.
I really believe that the reason people are upset with the tax burden here (and it’s important not to weigh the opinion of online complainers too much) is because we haven’t been providing enough actual services and QOL improvements in exchange. Decades of tinkering around the edges has crept up tax rates and not really moved the needle on a lot of things in a way that’s felt by people. A MAX tunnel is a project that can really unlock a huge benefit for the city, and if done well will feel like a bargain even if rates go up to finance it.
It’s ironic that socialists never actually want to pay for things they want.
They have that in common with the right, as the recent failure to fund ODOT shows.
If you thought about things beyond short one liner quips, you would at least realize that part of socialist thought is that we ARE paying for the things we want. The money that the rich have is excess that belongs to the people as a whole, because it is the surplus value of the working class. Taxing a tiny fraction of it to redistribute in the form of infrastructure and services that benefit everyone is the least we can do.
So should homeowners like yourself sell their homes and redistribute that income to people who don’t own homes?
Isn’t that the least homeowners could do to benefit everyone who does not own a house?
That’s not socialism, that’s a caricature and a misunderstand by people like you.
“Oh, you like collective good? How about you singlehandedly sacrifice things for other people in a way that won’t be very effective?”
It’s a stupid comment, and I think you know that.
Ah yes, “socialism just hasn’t been done correctly!”
Are you talking about all the other developed countries in the world which have high speed trains, universal health care, family paid leave etc. and are considered “social democracies”? Or are you talking about a fictional country that is easy to imagine to benefit a straw man argument? Because the US is the only developed country without a robust social safety net.
Social democracies are not socialism by any standard.
Sweden, the Netherlands, etc. are all extremely capitalistic countries.
Sweden and NL are the type of socialism that I think a lot of folks want in the U.S. Those are what I have in mind when I talk about socialism… where there’s a very strong social safety net and much more equality and more people are paying more taxes to make it all work.
Sweden IS NOT a Socialist country.
You are completely confused about what Socialism is.
Mitch Green is not advocating socialism at all. He is a progressive, NOT a socialist.
Words mean things and you seem confused by what they mean.
Thanks but I don’t think I’m as confused as you think. Green is a member of Portland DSA. I understand that he’s a progressive and his party card says Democrat. I think it’s accurate to say that Green’s views are inspired by socialism and since he is a member of Portland DSA it’s worth noting his socialist leanings and how they might impact his policies.
And I didn’t say Sweden was a socialist country. I’m saying they have some socialist policies that are popular and that I personally think are worth exploring more here in the states. Your response just validates my understanding that it’s hard to have these conversations when people are so wedded to rigid interpretations of these various labels. I personally am not and I have a more fluid definition of this stuff.
I agree with you. We need a much stronger social safety net but that is NOT socialism. I just spent a month in the Czech Republic where they lived under Real socialism for 40 years.
They Now have a thriving society built on Democracy and Capitalism with a robust social safety net. It is NOT Socialism.
Definitions are important.
cool. I do not care what we call it. I just know that we need more socialist influences to our capitalist system if we want to fix these problems and it seems to me like members of Portland DSA are saying most of the right things to get us there.
Sigh.
Government control of a very large part of the economy is the epitome of socialist policy. It’s also bizzare that you somehow believe social democracy is not related to socialism when many early socialists called themselves social democrats, and just about every social democratic party in existence affiliates itself with socialist political groups. In many respects, you sound a lot like the Stalinist zealots that turned Eastern Europe into a prison state by claiming that only one-party Stalinism is the true “socialism”. My “socialist” family members in Eastern Europe were imprisoned and tortured by those very same Stalinists, BTW.
The above is correct but your absolutism is not completely correct.
Likewise it is also not true that:
Apparently nuance is just as un-amurrican as socialism.
Yes, it isn’t particularly surprising that people don’t pick the countries of large diverse populations that have aspects of social democracy like Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, India and Argentina. I guess it is the poor services, rampant corruption and struggling economies that turns folks off.
Its like there just might be reasons that the root success of those countries lies in their size and demographics.
This is exactly my point BB. As far as I can tell no counselor is actually arguing for the redistribution of property. They’re simply arguing for policies that exist as reality and work well in most developed countries already:
Like MOTRG, arguing against a straw man via semantics is a good way to ignore or sidestep actual working policies.
Do you agree or disagree with the above policies that work in social democracies and why? Because these things are largely absent in the US.
They work in social democracies BECAUSE of capitalism.
Visit former Soviet block countries, they have better social safety nets now than they did when they had Socialism!
What policies above do you agree or disagree with?
I agree with most of them but they are NOT socialist ideas by any means so I have no idea what your point is unless you are really confused by what Socialism is.
Please name a socialist country you would like to live in?
Great! We mostly agree on the policies.
The semantic argument is irrelevant.
“As far as I can tell no counselor is actually arguing for the redistribution of property.”
Ummm, thats what taxes are and as far as I can see all the counselors are arguing for even more redistribution of property.
You have no idea what socialism even means. If we had a real socialist government you would not OWN a house.
it is pretty simple and your viewpoint is stupid and you know it.
It is not ancient history, no one in the eastern Soviet block countries up until 1989 owned private property.
I’m a mutualist and owning a house is a classic example of the kind of ownership compatible with this type of socialism.
Despite the fact that my family were beaten, tortured, and imprisoned by Stalinist “security”, we did in fact own private property in a Soviet block nation. It’s always very illuminating to have ‘murricans who never lived under Stalinist rule expound on what this was really like.
“The money that the rich have is excess that belongs to the people as a whole, because it is the surplus value of the working class.”
BB’s point (this one in particular I should caveat) isn’t at all stupid. Your own quote proves it’s not. Wealth is seen differently by many. To a lot of people, a homeowner with stable and relatively high income such as yourself is considered wealthy. It is completely fair for the wealthy (in this case yourself) to be asked to sacrifice for the good of the many. You are asking it of others wealthier than yourself, it’s only fair it be asked of you.
And let me guess, the rich are those that have more than you. But there are others you have more than, so are you not also rich?
Where is the line?
God, you’re annoying. I’m a socialist; raise my taxes! Make sure they’re being put to good use, too, sure (a tricky thing, no doubt), but go ahead and raise my taxes!
For a “middle of the road guy”, you sure aren’t very middle-of-the-road.
Honestly I am pretty moderate, you just don’t like the questions because you know your answers will show you to be a hypocrite on some level.
MOTRG, the pattern of comments I have seen would suggest your politics are either right or far right. Where do you get your news/information? What views make you identify as a moderate and how do you define moderate?
unsurprisingly, the middle of the road my look far away when you’re a self identified socialist.
I, personally, can see more than a narrow slice of the world and don’t get distracted by silly strawman arguments like yours. I know what median income is. I probably make more than median income, but just barely, and that’s why I expect some taxes.
It’s easy to miss important details when focused on a big picture.
Have there ever been any societies that moved towards socialism without force?
Define rich.
It would be great to have real congestion pricing emerge and the fact that these fees would likely further erode property prices downtown would complement Green’s vision of bargain-basement CRE prices leading to redevelopment, residential conversion, and SOCIAL HOUSING. That being said, I suspect that some urbanists would not support congestion pricing that targets central Portland because it would likely further depress central Portland traffic (less “activation”) and market-rate development (less “profit-driven” development).
I also noticed this take on bsky from an urbanist in response to this piece:
I’d love to see evidence of “incoherent feral lefty” people opposing taxing private car usage. In fact, most “incoherent feral lefty” people advocate for the exactly same approach that Green mentions above:
I will also add that the description of potential left-leaning allies as “incoherent feral left[ies]” is de rigeur behavior for YIMBY and urbanist advoccates/organizers in their chats/timelines.
There was a ton of bashing of congestion pricing in NYC from the left, which is probably what Aaron is referring to.
Honestly, did not see much outright bashing but I did see many lefties concerned about equity..kind of like this:
Also, only USAnians* would believe that congestion pricing is not a socialist policy given that many of it’s major proponents globally are at least nominally “socialists”. It’s possible for something to be a progressive/lib policy and a socialist policy (after all liberalism and socialism have some overlap historically and even today — despite this being heresy for the red network).
*just for you, Will
Thank you! I have such simple needs
Soren, I honestly have no idea what the majority of this means. When you use jargon as a sort of ideological litmus test for in and out groups, the substance gets muddied. Instead of identifying types of people based on labels, can we simply look at the policies and see if they are based on working examples elsewhere or evidence?
If you’re looking to advocate for a type of “socialism” (where some policies are certainly worth examining), I think these type of posts might be doing the exact opposite.
A lot of posts bash Soren. I say, hats off to him!, his esoteric, buzz-worded posts make me feel like a mouth breathing, knuckle dragging ‘murrican more than anyone else here. No one does it better!
For real Eawriste, the faux-intellectual condescension really does my head in…and I might often agree with Soren if worded differently. Maybe? Who knows?
Maybe…just maybe…I don’t care if you agree with me or not.
I also do not care. Shit, we’re agreeing here! This isn’t working, or it is, goddamnit I’m confused. #murrican
I like words, but sometimes jargon can be really strenuous. I think there may be some things that we agree about but I don’t always feel like sifting through it.
Some folks on Bike Portland use acronyms in a loose way, like the person the other day who mentioned an “ice engine”, a thing I had never heard of. Ok, now I got it, but how about spelling the words on first use?
CRE is commercial real estate, and YIMBY is yes-in-my-backyard which is a self-identifying label. Soren’s post is spot on in my opinion. What other jargon are you seeing?
One step away from taxing bicycle use, since it’s private also.
Are you a chat bot with the system prompt “make bad one liners that sound like my profile pic looks”?
lolz John. Dear ChatGPT, Design me an overly confident, no nonsense, one-line response that will get many upvotes from people who hold right-wing views, but confuse damn near everyone else due to its lack of substance.
Are bicycles private property that use the public space? C’mon…you just don’t want to answer because you know it makes you a hypocrite.
A bike is personal property hth
Oooo we’re gonna get him confused. “Huh? Personal property is different from private property”? Poor guy.
Still using the public space.
A car is personal property also – you guys seem fine with taxing that .
I’m one of Morillo’s constituents (and voted for her) and I sent her an email in the spring along these lines: please be pragmatic in your governance. We need Portland to be an example of effective progressive governance, not the poster child for progressive disfunction. I love Green’s ideas, but let’s get the broken windows taken care of first before we reach for the stars.
That’s the problem with these ideologues – they focus on national/world issues instead of local ones. I’m not saying all of the idea are bad, but they fall victim to scope-creep in their roles. They need to stay in their swimlane and focus on the local issues.
What are the ideas you like from the counsel members who hold these views? What are the ideas that “fall victim to scope-creep”?
Here’s what I don’t hear from Green… a world class transit system requires world class security to keep law abiding citizens safe while they utilize transit. But then again that runs counter to official DSA stances on police and security.
Tri-Met’s lack of recovery in ridership since Covid and George Floyd has as much to do with riders not feeling safe as it does with changing work patterns and the current status of downtown Portland. What do all well regarded transit systems in Europe have beyond better service levels? Unlike Tri-Met they are clean and safe because even in those European socialist leaning countries they don’t tolerate criminal behavior on platforms, bus stops, let alone on the transit vehicles themselves. Build a safe and clean transit system without the criminal element and ridership will rebound.
This isn’t strictly true, though it depends on your personal definition of safety. In a recent DSA working group publication, they recommend unarmed rider ambassadors over armed security. I am personally of the opinion that riding TriMet is pretty safe, but I recognize that is heavily skewed by the fact that my home bus line (the #14) could be unusually good. I don’t see compelling evidence that a lack of armed security on transit is keeping people away, and I think having extra folks around in an official capacity helps with the feeling of security for riders.
I generally agree that our transit system is in a sorry state relative to basically any European city, but this is a problem that long predates Covid and is more related to class politics in the US than any recent happenings. Europe did not have the self-inflicted urban crises that the US underwent between 1950 and 1970, and did not purposefully dismantle their entire transit systems. Middle and upper class riders remained important transit riding constituents, so the systems were continually reinvested in. In Portland, we waited until the 1970s – twenty full years and an entire system abandonment – until publicly funding transit, and by that time ridership losses were essentially permanent. While TriMet has been more successful than the average American transit agency by a wide margin, the legacy of divestment in a key historical moment does still play a role in the public perception of transit. In the US, you’re likely to hear people talk about serving “captive” riders versus “choice” riders, but this would be unlikely to be the way a European city or region would frame transit use and investment. Transit is closer to a public utility in Europe, while it’s closer to welfare here.
I guess this is mostly to say that the reasons that European places don’t tolerate divestment in transit is essentially unrelated to political ideology, and more to do with the cultural framework transit exists in. On this note, we should invest more in TriMet – particularly in making our bus network nice to ride (this includes safe and clean stops and vehicles for what that’s worth). It’s disgraceful that we rely on “BRT” projects to build what are essentially middle of the road local bus services in Europe, and 80% of the benefits of something like the FX2 on Division could be done at pennies on the dollar across the entire network.
COTW
https://www.kgw.com/article/news/crime/victim-convention-center-max-station-attack-dies-assault-unprovoked/283-652a4183-d5b2-4de2-bb54-a925cbe20510
My personal definition of safety is that this doesn’t happen, ever. Call me a radical, but pretty sure this type of stuff makes people not want to ride transit with their “neighbors”.
Police, and police alone, don’t keep you safe. One reason that Portland has had the problems that are now fixed in so many people’s minds is that there are spaces like highway medians and shoulders, and some wild lands unfortunately, that feel abandoned so that they are available for people to squat on and sometimes act out. If transit is abandoned by a large part of the public, of course you’re going to have problems. Talking it down is not helpful.
Thank you for the detailed recap. I will be spending more time with all of the information here. Thanks too to Mitch Green for his hard work and approach – grounded in an extensive knowledge of economics- to tackling Portland’s transportation problems. I was at the PAC meeting and Green kept me on the edge of my (unabashedly nerdy) seat. I’d like to think I have a slightly above a average understanding of economics (not sure). I mostly followed Green’s discussion but had a few questions. I’m sure there are others who are looking to shore up their grasp of economics as it pertains to improving Portland transportation system. Mitch mentioned he’s considered a TikTok series on this very topic I sure hope he or one of his staff peruses this.
Sarah, I zoomed into the PAC meeting and saw you sitting there. Like you, I have an economics orientation and appreciate that Mitch’s knowledge of economics feeds his creative thinking concerning how to fund infrastructure.
Damn, turns out Jonathan was there too! That man gets around. FWIW, I would have written this post much differently had it been mine. I don’t think the DSA stuff is particularly important and probably wouldn’t have even mentioned it. What made me sit up straight was Green’s critique of System Development Charges, and his criticism of the costs “at the margin” that go along with that way of funding. He would drop SDCs as a funding source for transportation. Print that in all caps and flashing neon.
Green is very much representing his district, D4, and his area of town, southwest. He gave more than a shout out to the survey that SWTrails just conducted about Southwest in Motion project prioritization, and he mentioned Shattuck Rd, and the West Portland Town Center in particular.
What makes Mitch such an important voice for southwest is that his presence on Council prevents the rest of his P-Cauc colleagues (of whom he towers above) from vilifying this area of town. I get a hoot out of watching that. (There are a lot of folks who can’t stand, just can’t stand, the idea of spending money in southwest.)
Agree with you on this Lisa 100%. There is so much historical baggage when we use “socialism.” I would rather we pick a random word and avoid the inevitable silly, ideological bickering.
Was his critique of SDCs in coordination with, or different from, the Governor and Mayor’s proposal to suspend SDCs?
I think it is different, eawriste. He thinks SDCs are a poor funding mechanism, and unfair. He wants a broader-based way of funding infrastructure. My impression was that gov just wants to make it easier to build-—I don’t remember an alternative funding mechanism for infrastructure being discussed.
Green wants to fund SIPP with $200M bond.
The criticism of System Development Charges is a mixed bag from my perspective. I agree with Green that they’re not the ideal way to fund infrastructure, but when you’re starting where we are (history of divestment, minus federal dollars, now minus state investment), it’s also not an ideal time to decide that new development doesn’t have to pay in toward infrastructure either. I was hearing that Green knows fully well that SIPP wouldn’t remotely backfill any of that or even other projects waiting in the wings, but I don’t really hear a meaningful alternative to offsetting SDC revenue besides hoping that the state gets its act together in a very comprehensive way.
Lisa and eawriste,
There were two major stories in local weeklies in recent days centered around socialists on city council. I’m running a business here and it would have been silly to do a feature like this on Green without drawing a strong connection to him being a socialist.
I’m also not afraid of that word. I don’t believe in tip toeing around something just because haters have imbued it with negative baggage. When we do that, the haters win. If it causes a bit of bickering, so be it! It’s part of the process of the community maturing and being able to talk about socialism and socialists like adults and letting folks form their opinions about it.
I think part of this difference between us is I am more of a news person first, and an advocate second. I want to publish things that are interesting and that get people talking. I will not shy from controversial words when they can be embraced and covered with with integrity and relevance – which is what I believe I’ve done with this piece.
Thanks.
I get this and it’s what makes me so grateful of the work you’ve accomplished at BP and why I continue to read here.
I mean in the context of people misunderstanding or purposefully misrepresenting social democratic places such as Finland (or most of the developed world), sure. But let’s not kid ourselves about the long history of repressive governments who’ve used “socialism” (e.g., Cuba, GDR, Albania, etc.).
A worldview that denies the complexity, nuance and uncertainty of lived reality makes ignoring the truth a lot more convenient. And the focus on red shirts (or hats) and catchy phrases is a distraction from that.
Thanks eawriste,
We have to acknowledge that times have changes when it comes to socialism. Yes the history and baggage are there, but the words are evolving quickly. The most important city in America is about to elect a proud socialist as its mayor! And like I said, it’s a cover story in the Willy Week this week. It is these recent evolutions that influenced my use of it here.
“the words are evolving quickly.”
Yes — socialist no longer means socialist, it means someone whose brand is a little more edgy than progressives.
I didn’t say that. Please don’t mischaracterize my positions just to further yours.
Terms change. Language is fluid. So yes, I think it’s accurate to say the term is evolving when just a few weeks ago an unabashed socialist received more votes than any Democrat in NYC primary history and locally we have a bloc of 4 city councilors who are members of DSA who are getting notoriety in local papers, including a cover story. That is an evolution where a term/party/political philosophy evolves and takes a step toward becoming more mainstream. That is what I’m referring to.
Here’s a point which isn’t strictly relevant, but is very interesting to me. Fiorello La Guardia, the greatest mayor in the history of NYC and arguably the country, was a former member of the Socialist Party, and was a member of the overtly socialist American Labor Party as mayor. His highest vote total on record was 1.3 million in the 1937 general election is almost certain to beat out whatever Mamdani gets in the 2025 general, given that it’s a total that’s only been topped once (1957 if you’re curious).
At various times in American history, particularly in the lead up to the first (WWI era) and second (McCarthy) red scares, socialists enjoyed limited but significant political success – particularly in municipal politics. New York and Milwaukee were particularly notable on this front, and at least in 1908 (the only year I could find definitive evidence), 9 out of Milwaukee’s 28 or so aldermen were Socialists (picture of them here). I think that 1912 was the high water mark for socialist alders in Milwaukee, but am not 100% sure. Either way, a one-quarter socialist caucus is quite substantial, though not entirely unprecedented (I can forgive everyone for not caring about the ins and outs of early 20th century politics in a city halfway across the country, I just find it personally interesting because I’m a Wisconsinite) .
Anyways, this stuff is sort of irrelevant trivia to some extent, but the waxing and waning of socialist politics in the US has often been most evident on the municipal level, and in many ways these were unambiguous successes. For big-city mayors, La Guardia, as well as Daniel Hoan and Frank Zeidler in Milwaukee are very well regraded historically, particularly in terms of anti-corruption and good governance. I see a lot of knee-jerk anti-socialist reaction that implies corruption, based seemingly on the real and obvious corruption inherent to Soviet politics, but this kind of stuff just seems less relevant in the (historical) American context.
Of course, in the rest of the USA we have no examples of socialism or state-instituted development schemes, aside from the National Highway (US 40), the 1956 Interstate Highway system, WPA, state-owned railways in communist Montana, North Carolina, VA, CT, NJ, Amtrak, TVA, BPA, the US armed forces, VA hospitals, municipal and county hospitals, state universities, state institutions for the blind, deaf, and insane, police departments, fire departments, housing authorities, land division, FAA, Social Security, a state-owned commercial bank in ND, DOTs, planning agencies, public schools, and so on.
Or as Reg says, “What have the Romans ever done for us?”
We really don’t.
Socialism does not mean “government doing something”. It means an economic system where the government (or other societal entity) owns the means of production rather than individuals.
This is not something that mayors or other municipal officials have the capacity to bring about. Whatever you think of Mitch Green, he is not going to overthrow capitalism in Portland.
State owned railways, schools, and hospitals definitely fall under collective ownership of the means of production. As do things like publicly owned utilities. Other aspects listed above like regulatory agencies are not really best conceptualized as socialist, but local governments definitely have been a part of collectivization of certain sectors in a way that is accurately described as “socialist”, at least from an early 20th century perspective.
Fair enough. I suppose the federal reserve is a socialist bank as well. As well as large portion of the military and the socialist fire department.
Yes. This is what socialism is. Just because you don’t not like it, doesn’t mean it isn’t socialist.
In a very real sense, these are all “means of production” of a sort, and so the fact that they are publicly owned means they represent an instance of socialism.
Socialism–like capitalism–isn’t a black-and-white thing that a country solely is or is not. Most socialists (myself included) don’t think that the government needs to own all the means of production, just that the level of government involvement in the economy through direct, public control of assets which is useful is higher, rather than lower.
Stop being so ideological about this stuff.
I’m not ideological about it at all. I want to do what works on a practical level, and I don’t really care what you call it.
Ironically, one of the early socialist critiques of capitalism was that it prevents the formation of a free market.
PS: From Owen to Tucker, utopian socialists have always hated the 4 monopolies of money, land, tariffs, and patents.
I’ve often commented here that for those who are appreciative of socialism/communism they should go into the military for a few years to experience what that lifestyle is like. Oddly enough, not everyone gets to be on the planning committees or be tasked to draw or write poetry in peaceful contemplation all day.
I love this thread because if you step back and try imagine what an extra-terrestrial might glean about the word ‘socialism,’ you’re gonna read radically different ideas from every single person.
Socialism is:
1) a historical ideology that was considered fairly normal in the beginning of the 20th century.
2) maybe it’s public agencies?
3) a philosophy where the “means of production” are state-owned?
4) maybe just the lifestyle of a bunch of army men…
5) a madlib or container word whose primary purpose is to promote semantic arguments for people who hold various ideologies
Going wildly off topic for a second, but that was part of my “ Space Anthropology “ class down at Cabrillo JC. The class (simply amazing) was the anthropology of extraterrestrials and the emphasis was in seeing events and objects without earthly bias and to learn how to describe them objectively without including one’s own reality.
Thank you for the happy flashback!
As to what “socialism” is, unlike JM I don’t think the word had changed in meaning, I think its relation to other events has changed. So instead of being associated with the Red takeover (and resultant bloodbath and later mass starvation) of White Russia it’s more associated with trendy wealth and trying to be fair.
Admittedly, had I grown up in the early 19 teens as I’ve grown up now as a mostly blue collar life I suspect that socialism as it was then would have had my support over the brutal and raw exploitative capitalism of the era.
My mom enjoyed singing “Union Maid” to me, my sis gave me a handmade “better dead than red” shirt and my Grandfather had pulled a rifle on union (mob) representatives when he owned a gas station in Nevada way back when. So I’ve had complicated feelings on socialism.
If you think that’s bad, wait until ET wants to understand critical race theory, what woke is, or the meaning of fascism!
You’re confused. The military is totalitarian, that’s orthogonal of socialism.
Seriously?!?
I grew up in a socialist commune out in rural bumf*ck nowhere and saw that fail, I worked in the interior of Communist China and saw how that was a failure of obscene proportions and I’ve been in the federal and Oregon army and saw how it compared to both.
Yet you tell me from your theory and books and hanging out at get togethers with fellow middle class urbanites that what I have seen and experienced is not what I think it is?
Just ridiculous.
You’ll need to at least give some examples or discuss or comparison to be taken seriously on this.
It means socialist and I’m sick of these condescending comments from people who frankly don’t know what the world means or have an interest in downplaying it’s rising popularity.
If people didn’t have the lasting mental baggage of cold war propaganda, most of them would hear about socialist ideas and agree they’re great.
My comment was a joke.
That said, what has happened where people have tried to implement real socialism isn’t propaganda, it’s history, and it’s grim.
It’s pretty shocking how modern socialist believers utterly gloss over that well documented (and horribly grim) history and refer to those that have knowledge of that history as “haters”
What if political parties and philosophies change and evolve over time? Isn’t it possible that socialism as an organizing principle as practiced today in 2025 can be different than it has been historically?
Ideas evolve. People change. Nothing is static, it all happens in a dynamic context.
I remember when “gay” and “queer” did not have any sexual identity connotations at all. I learned in history that the Democrats supported slavery, left the union and then waged war on it. I understand that political parties, philosophies and even word’s primary meanings change over time.
I want the DSA to split off and form it’s own political party, I hope for their success.
What is ironic is that in socialism, there is only one party and no need for elections.
I could not buy rice in China as I was not a member of the communist party. They took communism seriously. I respect the pain, sacrifice, hunger and ability of those people to endure and so I take socialism (the debate between communism and socialism is esoteric and merely a sliding scale of misery debated by those in more comfortable places) seriously now. I see on these comments that many people do not.
I do not think that socialism as an organizing principle can be any different than what it has been historically, otherwise it would not be socialism.
If you want a kinder version of capitalism, or a system with more shared values and shared responsibilities than that sounds amazing and I applaud you. More wealth sent to a government body for redistribution as they see fit, well fine. It won’t be socialism though.
If you want a better system, you had better come up with a word that better describes what you want. Socialism already has a definition and far, far too many people have died and suffered in living memory to hear that word and think of anything but misery, myself included.
When my parent’s commune failed, it was because we could not raise enough food for everyone to eat. We couldn’t self sustain. The adults tried for years, but everyone eventually left to work and raise families. Without the means of production to eat, you can’t even begin discussing socialism. I doubt anyone here is eager to work in the fields. It’s always someone else who should live a life of hardship that sustains the rest in a socialist system.
The question is always, when the Berlin wall fell, who ran to which side?
Social safety net is different than Socialism. One is known to make the lives of people better, the other isn’t.
It is hilarious how little you understand the word socialist or a socialist system.
It is not ancient history evolving ideology.
It means what it means.
State owned everything, that is a true socialist system.
It has been tried for decades in numerous countries and it was rejected.
Sweden IS NOT a socialist country, Cuba is however and it’s worked out poorly.
Read a book.
Hi Jonathan,
From what I’ve seen on Council, the DSA members other than Green are strikingly ignorant of transportation policy. The east side districts had the opportunity to elect several strong transportation folks and unfortunately didn’t vote for them.
Also, I think a lot of what Green says about transportation is not uniquely socialist and certainly not DSA. Remember for every Anna Hidalgo you’ve got a Michael Bloomberg and a Charles Marohn (who are very much capitalists).
My impression of the Portland DSA during the election was that it was much more outspoken on Gaza than transpo, which isn’t to say that the electeds don’t know what the correct transpo views are, and can superficially repeat them, they just don’t have any experience.
Remember, it was Zimmerman, Clark, Smith and Green who sponsored SIPP. I was there testifying, the DSA members seemed like they needed some convincing, even arm-twisting, to vote for it.
So I would give Green credit for being the most well-versed council member about transportation policy because of who he is (and his being an economist really helps), not because he is representing DSA views.
(Although, yes, Green is very much a DSA member, and belongs there, it defines him. I just wouldn’t credit the DSA for his transpo views.)
I hear you Lisa and pretty much agree. I played pretty fast and loose with my framing of this around socialism. That being said, regardless of the nuance you express in this comment, Green’s views on everything – especially as his profile grows and more people get to know him – are likely to be colored by him being a socialist.
I still think this hyperfocus on my use of the word is a minor part of the story! What’s important is the stuff Green believes and what he said at the meeting — all of which I captured accurately and fairly. Whether they are socialist or influenced by socialism is a minor part of this story. FWIW Green himself commented on the story yesterday, saying, “I appreciate this thoughtful effort to connect the dots on my vision for the future of transportation in this city, from the small and hyper local to the systems level. No notes, other than DSA is a not a political party yet.”
So the “socialist/socialism” aspect doesn’t bother him at all.
Sorry to beat this dying dog, Jonathan. I don’t have a problem with the word “socialist” or socialism, at all. My problem was with joining Green’s transpo views to the DSA block on council. That gives the rest of the council DSA folks waaaay too much credit. Green is a much deeper thinker than they are.
Deep thinker or not, Green has to persuade at least 6 other city councilors to go along with him to get anything passed (and it takes roughly the same number of councilors to block his ideas.) Does his “socialist” or “DSA” label help him on that? Or not? Or does it matter?
I’d say it helps him. So far it has. We’ll see going forward, it’s a fascinating political moment. All three of the D4 councilors are top notch, and they are all sponsors of the Sidewalk Improvement and Pavement Program (SIPP) which passed Council (Novick voted against it) and which focuses on East and Southwest Portland. Next stop is the finance committee, headed by D4’s Eric Zimmerman. That’s where a funding ordinance and bond amount will get some discussion. Then to full council for the financing vote. PBOT has helped the effort with a real clear map marking missing sidewalk coverage in red.
Lisa! You’re so lucky dangit. D1 is just so lackluster, and we had such amazing candidates with Timur and Routh. At least the work of D4 councilors on SIPP will likely include some D1 streets.
eawriste, I’m enjoying this conversation, thanks for being there!
I didn’t mention Loretta Smith in my comments above, but SIPP is D1 Smith’s brainchild.
Yes, the Routh loss hurt a lot. You might be interested in watching this analysis of D1 results presented by NorthStar Civic. In it Moon Duchin, who is head of the Data and Democracy Lab (now at Cornell, but soon to be moving to the U of Chicago) and lab head Chris Donnay present the lab’s analysis of the Portland elections.
I’m going from memory, but IIRC, Routh would have won a seat under a different form of ranked choice voting. Routh was the candidate with the greatest number of rankings. She just didn’t get many 1st ranks.
Also, comparing the distribution of votes between Smith and Avalos is interesting. Smith got overwhelming support from a very concentrated D1 location; Avalos had fair support across the entire district.
Back to Duchin and Donnay. I interviewed Donnay for one of my BP ranked choice voting articles. And the Data and Democracy Lab (previously known as MGGG) recommended the single transferable vote in four multi-member districts that Portland is using.
Enjoy!
https://www.stumptownstats.org/blog-2/webinar-portland-votes-data-speaks-06-30-2025
Oof man Loretta Smith. I’m sure you didn’t miss her testimony on the IRQ project. I didn’t vote for her, and the chances of me voting for her in the future are close to nil, despite SIPP.
Interesting stuff otherwise. I wasn’t aware of the STV option. Ugh what a heartbreaker. It’s just crazy Routh was mentioned the second number of times, but ended up behind Smith, who was 4th in number mentions!?! I guess that means 4 more years until 122nd gets considered for PBLs.
I watched it. But what’s-his-name has made the whole thing moot.
I don’t think I agree with the characterization of at least Koyama Lane as “strikingly ignorant of transportation policy”. She’s championing Vision Zero funding, and seems to really care about the topic from what I’ve seen. I don’t think she’s as technocratic or as experienced with transpo policy as Green, but feel that she’s at least got her heart in the right place. And Morrillo rides the bus and definitely campaigned on increased street safety measures. I haven’t followed Kanal much, so can’t say much to that end.
“Green would drop SDCs as a funding source for transportation.”
According to David Hampsten, this largely came to pass years ago when city council raided SDC money as a warmup for PCEF.
The main differences between SDC and PCEF, aside from how they are funded, is that SDC is for only capital projects – building new stuff – and the way Oregon regulates it, that you have to decide ahead of time which projects you will fund over the next 10 years assuming you have enough money generated; PCEF on the other hand can be used for maintenance and operations as well as capital projects, as long as the local authority finds that it fulfills the other obligations of “clean energy”, including helping those who are most vulnerable and impacted by climate change, a set of “multiple, vague, and conflicting” values that all governments thrive on. Both sources can be used to compliment and supplement other funding sources, including as match.
Also, PCEF money is awarded through a robust grant-funding process; much of the money is given to community groups. One category by which grants are judged is by how much they will benefit people of color and other targeted groups. This includes the composition of the applying organization itself, and their subcontractors. Training grants are also awarded, with the aim of training people of color and others underrepresented in the trades.
I’m sorry — I think I meant utility fees, not SDCs. But since we were talking about SDCs, I think my comment is simply irrelevant.
My head is bowed.
Oh, you mean the ULF? Yeah, that’s a clusterf**k, total fubar.
What I hear is the DSA stuff isn’t important, just all the policy ideas and thought that are a direct consequence of the DSA stuff.
How do you explain Charles Marohn?
What does he have to do with this?
Hi Marat,
Charles Marohn is the founder of Strong Towns and coined the word “stroad” decades ago. My point is that what has become standard active transportation policy, globally, shouldn’t be credited to the DSA. The Bloomberg administration began transforming NYC streets decades ago, and you couldn’t find a bigger capitalist.
The Portland DSA doesn’t even have a transportation committee. (A committee on Gaza, yes.)
So I flinch when pro-active transportation views are attributed to a group which is silent on the issue.
It also definitely should not be credited to the kind-of-racist Marohn or some insipid billionaire. Funny enough though, socialists tend to almost universally support public transit and active transportation regardless of how “silent” they appear to someone who does not spend much time talking or listening to them.
I’ve missed you Soren! How do you know who I spend time talking or listening to? You have substituted the word “socialist” for my use of “Portland DSA.” When I looked last week I didn’t see anything on their web site about transportation, nor do any of the DSA council members seem to know much about transpo policy–except for Mitch Green, who seems very knowledgeable. His transpo opinions are surely informed by his socialism, but that doesn’t mean that the Portland DSA has put any time into a white paper, a policy or position.
Interestingly other cities around the country are having issues with DSA supported politicians in their communities. So yes, DSA should be mentioned and should be a warning for others that those that are supported by the DSA are not looking out for the best interests of all citizens that they represent.
I’m reading you don’t like DSA supported politicians, but I’m not reading any specifics why.
What are the “issues”?
How are they not looking out for the best interest of all citizens they represent? Please give examples.
What’s P-Cauc?
Progressive Caucus.
Let’s go Mitch! Really hoping he can accomplish some of this
I talked to Mitch once about some biking stuff and he was super chill. Love the guy!
What’s a word other than socialist we can use? I think a lot more people would be getting behind the policy if it wasn’t associated with a ideological label that carries so much baggage. It means different things to different people.
I think this is a city that could rise above the rest if the tax and funding question was figured out to feel more fair. I personally don’t think individual incomes ought to be taxed more than it is in Portland – the tax burden is already high here (by US standards at least) and effect of where that money goes doesn’t feel felt, so it breeds resentment. I think a funding source (most people) can get behind are big box retailers that mostly extract their profits away from Portland. PCEF shows that this is goldmine. Just 1% has brought in hundreds of millions of dollars more than expected.
Are Portlanders over taxed, yes.
Is the tax money being used wisely and for the purposes originally intended, no.
I think that’s the biggest problem, at least for me, yes all those taxes hurt. Those taxes mean I have less money to spend at local businesses and they need help too.
We see how incompetently the PCEF was raided by the politicians to prop up their pet projects/initiatives. We see what a failure the extra money for homeless has been used. We saw the zoo not give Packy a retirement that was promised. The list goes on and on.
If as a tax payer my money was used for what was intended and wisely spent, not wasted on non performing non-profits and committees, then maybe people would feel better about paying a little bit more to help out our fellow humans in our region. But as it is, that trust was destroyed long ago, and is repeatedly destroyed currently.
As someone who “looks different” I can say that Portland is absolutely NOT a refuge for people who “look different.” It’s a place where white ideologues claim to “center BIPOC voices” and other such nonsense but are actually just using the idea of representing black and brown people to advance their own political ideology. And it appears that they can get away with it because there aren’t enough black and brown people here to speak for themselves and other white people either don’t know any better or just go along with it.
My partner is bi-racial and not originally from here and she says she’s never felt more like an outsider. The condescending treatment from the enlightened and tolerant folks here is really something else.
White collar libs need to go east of 82nd more often lol.
dw, I don’t know if you’re being serious our not but as a east PDX resident I agree with your statement joking aside. Very difficult to feel like we have any representation out here. Lot of talk from downtown and a whole lot of disconnect.
Thanks for this reporting. The Reed and Eastmoreland SE neighborhoods are also in District 4, in addition to Sellwood.
No more taxes. I am middle class and on the verge of selling my house that I have as a rental and leaving the city and county for good due to the sky high taxes and the idiotic ideas of people like this Mitch fella. No more money for bike infrastructure, no money for “superblocks,” no money for new pedestrian plazas — time to get back to the long-ignored basics of transportation infrastructure: fix potholes citywide, repave decimated streets like NW 23rd, and install sidewalks in outer east Portland so people can safely walk places and so kids can safely learn to ride bikes. If taxes go up more, my renters will be needing to find a new place to live, which will be even more difficult as there will be one less rental property on the market. I have friends who have sold all of their rental properties the past five years due to skyrocketing Portland and Multnomah County taxes and onerous ordinances. These Portland city commissioners don’t really care about poor people, if they did they wouldn’t be trying to make it harder and more expensive for lower income people to drive around the city to their jobs and to grocery stores and more.
Mitch really has been out in the streets of his district constantly talking to people and advocating for the things his constituents care about. I have to hand it to him. If you’ve met him, you know he’s a great guy even if you didn’t agree with him on every single thing.