Portland Architecture

The Hawthorne Bridge: A Love-Hate Relationship

The Hawthorne Bridge is the creaky old senior citizen of Portland's numerous Willamette and Columbia River spans. Nearing its 100th birthday in 2010, the Hawthorne is our city's oldest bridge. I've always considered it my home bridge, so to speak, in that it's the one I use by far the most. It's not only convenient to where I live, but it also has the best pedestrian and bike amenities of just about any local bridge. But it's also the Portland span with by far the most draw bridge openings, which also take longer to complete than any other in town. Since I cross it a few times every week, I have come to think of it as the engineering version of a grandparent I love, but one who's a real nuisance sometimes too.

Yesterday while biking home from downtown around 2PM, I wheeled toward the bridgehead just as the warning lights came on and the guard rails came down. It was time for the Portland Spirit to move tourists upriver. Admittedly, I'm an impatient person, but in situations like this I grumble inside about how one tour company is making scores or hundreds of people wait. Then the wait got longer and more frustrating than seemingly was necessary. Even though the drawbridge only needed to be raised about halfway in order for the Spirit to pass through, the Hawthorne was raised all the way to its top. So what was already about a seven-minute wait now became more than ten minutes. Were I a better person, I'd have accepted this as a Zen-like pause in the day's proceedings. Instead, I ridiculously contemplated flipping off the bridge operator as we finally wheeled by.

Initially I was tempted to make this post a mere rant about how much of a pain the Hawthorne can be and how river traffic seems to get more of a priority than they deserve given the overwhelmingly larger number of people trying to use the bridges. But instead I first decided to talk with Michael Pullen, an old friend I used to work with who now is a spokesperson for Multnomah County about bridges, land use, and other public concerns.

The Hawthorne has about 300 openings a month, Mike told me. That compares to just two or three openings a month for the Broadway Bridge, which sits higher on the river. But the ambiance I feel as a pedestrian or cyclist is the flip side: the Hawthorne is lower on the river than other local spans, so there's a greater feeling of connection with the river, and less of a barrier at the bridgehead without the need to ease back downward so much to street level.

That feeling I had yesterday that the bridge was raising much higher than necessary for the Portland Spirit to pass actually was true. Apparently the Hawthorne is such an antique that the bridge has to be raised to its full height every eight hours, every day, just to keep the cables and lift mechanism properly lubricated. Usually they try and complete those lifts as much outside of peak times as possible. One happens in the middle of the night, for example. But in this case, since the bridge had to be opened anyway and it had been several hours since a full lift, Grandma Hawthorne needed us all to wait while she completed her stretches.

There are two rush-hour times when river traffic can't get a drawbridge opening unless it's an emergency: 7-9AM and 4-6PM. And those peak-hour moratoriums actually required an act of Congress to be approved. Mike tells me that the government's principle is that the river was here before the bridges were, so it has the right of way. That means for 20 hours of the day, one person on a sailboat can hold up traffic with a drawbridge opening pretty much whenever he or she wants.

This question of how low to make a bridge, and the trade-off between a low bridge's intimacy and a higher bridge's fewer drawbridge openings is a relevant one, because we'll soon have a new pedestrian and light rail bridge. I'll bet the city planners want a low bridge for ambiance and the transportation people, who are usually concerned with movement over aesthetics, will surely want one tall as can be (and preferably as ugly and cheap as possible).

So as I both rant against and celebrate the Hawthorne, just how much of our oldest bridge's ways do we want in our newest?

Wrestling With Columbia Crossing

The proposed new I-5 bridge over the Columbia River has been in the news a lot lately, with much debate not only about what form the bridge might take, but whether there should be one at all.

Considering how Portland is and wants to be a pedestrian and transit-oriented city, to keep reducing our emissions, and to honor our history of fighting freeway projects such as the Mount Hood Freeway and others recommended for Portland by Robert Moses, it's natural for many to bristle at building a new bridge. If anything, the argument often goes, there should be a bridge just for pedestrians and MAX trains. But having adequate highway infrastructure, another pro-sustainability argument has been argued, is a way to encourage additional high-density development, which in itself makes a great contribution to greener living.

While I wish it had better pedestrian and MAX accomodation, I'm not sure having more lanes there would make traffic that much better. To me it's the Rose Garden and downtown area that really causes a slowdown on Interstate 5. That's where it not only becomes two lanes in each direction, but also merges with Interstates 84 and 405. You're never going to really change that unless you drastically re-route things and spend billions of dollars there too.

However, the Portland/Vancouver area is looking at many billions of dollars in federal money for the project, and if we add auto lanes, that'll also bring the opportunity for MAX and pedestrian/bike connections. Most all of us don't want to encourage auto use, but quality infrastructure is beneficial to the economy and to the life of the city.

It seems the chance for a landmark design, something we should absolutely demand of a Columbia crossing bridge if it gets built, will probably be severely hampered by height restrictions due to the nearby Pearson air field in Vancouver. Even so, creativity can overcome those restrictions. You can build something flat as the I-205 bridge but still (unlike that banal concrete span) make it beautiful. Architects like Norman Foster and Renzo Piano come to mind as wish-list design candidates, as do engineers like Arup and Battle/McCarthy.

Or by the same token, rather than salivating about a famous designer of today, what if instead we imagined something with the elegance of Portland's St. John's Bridge (pictured above)? I'm not saying we should go for a retro design, but if new modern-looking spans like Foster's Millennium Bridge don't get you jazzed, there are still lots of very elegant if more classic options out there, such as the suspension bridge. What I'm saying is don't forget to make it beautiful, too. Remember, we'd be looking at this bridge for a good half-century at least.

I've read a lot of opinions about sustainability and the bridge, such as how the bridge should be carbon neutral and, again, that it shouldn't be built at all. But where do the majority of architects and engineers stand on this? After all, it's a once-in-a-generation opportunity for a great design that defines and symbolizes the city, but it also is largely, no matter how you spin it, largely about moving cars, which any good urbanist cringes at. To bridge or not to bridge?

Bridge Over Troubled Potter

It's a funny, audacious idea: take the old Sauvie Island Bridge that was recently replaced by a new span, and recycle the structure into a new bike and pedestrian bridge over I-405. It also may be an indication of the risk and reward of Commissioner and mayoral candidate Sam Adams, a proponent of the idea, versus current/outgoing mayor Tom Potter.

The bridge has been discussed for a few years, but originally the idea was to make it a simple, cheap concrete crossing. That's what Mayor Potter still supports, according to an article in today's Oregonian, because it's about $1.5 million cheaper than recycling the Sauvie Island Bridge. But $1.5 million is practically pocket change to a major metropolitan city like Portland, and you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who wouldn't choose, money aside, the Sauvie span for its superior aesthetics and the message it sends about Portland's values.

Potter has every right to oppose an extra budget outlay, but when I read that he opposes Adams on this matter, I couldn't help but roll my eyes. Tom Potter is a good man, no question about it. But this is the latest case where, at least when it comes to the built environment, he just doesn't get it. Adams does.

I mean, a long ugly concrete slab in the central city, to save a million and a half? That's like choosing a kiddie burger over a Big Mac to save a nickel.

At the same time, the fact that Adams, as head of the city's transportation department, may be able to push this through, also may show his danger, or at least the irony of this whole thing. The original discussion about a bike/pedestrian bridge was born of talk about the Burnside couplet, which Adams has pushed hard. The bridge itself is just the kind of project that Adams ought to champion, but the couplet is a rogue project that is about much, much more than transportation; a change this big really ought to come as part of a larger central city planning process coming from...city planners. So in other words, I think the bike bridge battle shows Adams at his best, but it's also inextricably tied to a bad idea.

Adams and Potter are like the eager son and the fatigued father. I'd rather have the son leading in this case, but he could perhaps use just a little of the father's restraint. In the case of this proposed bike/pedestrian bridge, though, I think the island is Potter, not Sauvie.

As always, though, I say this as a conversation starter, not an ending. What do the rest of you think?

Streetcar Desire

Yesterday when I boarded a plane for beautiful Newark (time to visit the in-laws), bleary-eyed by the early hour, the one Oregonian article I had to read right away before dozing off in my cramped coach seat was the announcement by Portland transportation planners of the streetcar's probable future lines.

Granted as an east-sider I'm biased, but it was so exciting seeing routes going down Hawthorne, Belmont, Glisan, Alberta, MLK, and several other main streets and boulevards. Ever since I moved to Portland 10 years ago from New York (I'm an Oregon native though), I've often recalled seeing streetcar tracks from a hundred years ago and felt a strong sad sense of irony that the city had a much more extensive streetcar network in the early 20th century than the early 21st. Of course it's the same in virtually any big American city, but to imagine Portland's neighborhoods with a whole network of streetcars is to me very exciting.

(Incidentally, I'd meant to post the paper's map of proposed streetcar routes into this post, but am having trouble on the in laws' computer. You can view a PDF of the map here.)

I'm also reminded of an opinion article in Oregon Business magazine several months ago called "The Pixie Dust of Streetcars". The author talked about how wasteful it is for hugely expensive streetcars, whose routes can't be changed once the tracks are in, only succeed in replacing buses that we already have. Many of us know that, as that author smartly omitted from his attack, that streetcars are about much more than transporting people from Point A to Point B. You can't look at transit in a vacuum, but rather how it relates to the holistic picture of the city and its neighborhoods. It's a development tool.

That, too, can have a downside, because it's arguably a skewed set of priorities in my mind to choose streetcar routes based on what economic pied-piper effect they might have instead of where people would want the lines and use them the most. Building a line to South Waterfront, for example, before you build one in Southeast, is to me a skewed sense of priority.

Even so, the sense I get of someday living in this city and taking streetcars most of the places I want to go, instead of my car or a smoke belching bus, is really cool.

A Grassroots Bridge Design Process That Trumps The Official One

How ironic that two happenings related to the future of major bridges in Portland, one involving billions of dollars in public outlay and the other a grassroots, blog-driven effort with zero budget, came within a few days of each other last week.

First it was reported that the big new replacement bridge planned for Interstate 5 over the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington will probably have to be completely flat. As a result, practically any stylistic embellishment (or at least that rising into the air) will be quashed. The reason? A little used novelty airport Pearson Field, which is more importantly a historic aviation museum. The airstrip is across the river and just downstream from Portland International Airport, so it's not as if it's an important transportation hub. But if we want to do anything other than pave cement, apparently, we'll have to forget about it so the occasional B-17 bomber can make a fun visit.

Meanwhile, the local weblog PORT, or portlandart.net, has announced the results of a bridge design contest for a new pedestrian/light rail span over the Willamette. Even with no prizes or reward beyond the glory of winning itself, the contest has attracted some imaginative designs, as well as some practical ones. Sean Casey's, for example (above), utilizes what I believe is the existing Marquam Bridge columns as structural support for a new bridge that spreads out horizontally into a garden. Actually, if we have to keep the I-5 bridge flat for an annual P-38 fly-by, maybe this could be a way to show some creativity.

  Another entry in Port's contest (at left) was by Bill Badrick, a frequent reader and poster on this blog who has created numerous renditions of park and transit hybrid bridges. Bill won Port's 'Put Paradise On Top of a Parking Lot' award. Michael DiTullo's was more futuristic, but also seems easier to envision as a real bridge. The curve here is attractive and functional, and the suspension cables reference what is arguably Portland's nicest bridge, the St. Johns.

Congrats to Port on a very cool effort to elevate design ideas in Portland. At least if we get stuck with a slab of concrete over the Columbia, we can daydream about something better for a pedestrian/rail span here beside downtown. And as Port co-editor/writer Jeff Jahn has talked about, there are at least a couple of people in town--one a developer, one a museum head--who have personal connections to a couple of the world's greatest bridge designers, Norman Foster and Santiago Calatrava. Think we could get them to submit a couple drawings to Jeff's blog while we're at it?

Potholes, On the Road and In the Head

In Friday's Daily Journal of Commerce, Tyler Graf writes, "Sam Adams' road-maintenance fee continues to make political enemies. No surprises there."

Huh? Actually, there is a surprise here.

Graf is referring the plan hatched by Sam Adams and Randy Leonard to put through a road maintenance plan for Portland that breaks the intended fee into a three-part affair so it doesn't have to be referred to voters. He quotes Jason Williams of Oregon Taxpayers United, a reactionary anti-tax organization that seems to favor anarchy, closed schools, laid-off police and firefighters, and of course pothole-strewn roads, all in the name of protecting the masses from the evil specter of paying their fair share to keep our civilized society stitched together. Williams is supposed to stand as the voice of reason in this story.

Williams calls the Adams-Leonard move to stave off a referendum, which would probably be voted down because pretty much any tax measure gets voted down, "sleazy". Maybe it's sleazy like allowing the lifeblood of our economy--our public roads and infrastructure--to crumble.

Graf does point out at the end that some of Williams' points are psychotically off base. Like saying both the tram and even MAX are failures. Or that Oregon already has the highest fees for automobiles in the region when it has the lowest.

Maybe it's just me, but I think finding a way to fix Portland's roads is exactly the kind of thing we as a city should step up and do. And if city councilors like Randy Leonard and Sam Adams can find a creative way to get this deal done, then that's great. I'm all for democracy, but Oregon already has way, way, way too many initiatives referred to the voters. I expect my leaders to lead some of the time, not to patronize us with having to get a rubber stamp for the tough decisions we'll vote down if it saves us half a nickel. I doubt Adams and Leonard are making many political enemies out of this road fee, but if they are, perhaps this is the chance for the voting public to be heard without actually voting. Let's tell the naysayers that an enemy of decent roads is an enemy of ours.

A Fareless Flub By Tri-Met?

Yesterday Tri-Met held an afternoon hearing to take comments on a proposal to curb the transit system's Fareless Square downtown, from 24-hour free service in this downtown vicinity (plus some of the Lloyd District) to 12 hours, or none at all.

The argument, says Tri-Met boss Fred Hansen, is that the Fareless Square incites lawlessness and vagrancy, at least late at night. But as the Portland Mercury's Amy Ruiz reported, Hansen wasn't at the meeting yesterday, nor was anyone from Tri-Met except for a hired facilitator.

Worse yet, when pressed for statistical evidence linking the Fareless Sqare to crime, Tri-Met told the Mercury that they don't have any - just anectdotal evidence from police and riders. And the trouble they're trying to address is really only late at night.

Personally, I think this is a horrible idea. Even if you concede to Tri-Met that the Fareless Square has some at least small tangential relation to crime troubles late at night, there are other ways to address this issue then making the majority people who aren't causing trouble on the buses and trains to pay a new charge. How about putting more cops on the beat? Or even playing classical music at the bus stations? Even that's been proven to discourage rowdy behavior.

There's a reason transit fares are fareless downtown. We need to encourage people to get out of their cars, and sometimes that can be a very tall order even in Portland. Heck, if Tri-Met is going to change anything, I'd like to see the agency do something really bold to encourage more mass transit ridership, like making fares half-price or free during rush hour. That said, I certainly don't want to heap too much criticism against Tri-Met, because they've gone through at least the motions of taking public comment, so in theory there's nothing about the process that isn't working here -- unless, of course, they go through with this plan. For that, Portland would indeed pay an unfortunately high fare.

Looking at Sellwood Bridge Prototypes

Multnomah County has, on its Sellwood Bridge website, unveiled six prototypes for a replacement span. “Depending on the type of bridge that is chosen,” the website explains, “a replacement Sellwood Bridge could blend with or completely redefine the landscape of Portland’s south Willamette River area.” I couldn't tell you which of those is more important; is it naive to think it could be both?

A county-sponsored working group comprised of local bridge experts has recommended the six replacement bridge options, and a Community Task Force will weigh public input when recommending options to the Policy Advisory Group, which (after an environmental impact statement) will make the final decision about a bridge type over the course of the next year. In 2009 the ensuing design phase will develop refinements to the bridge type to arrive at the actual design and cost.

The renderings of the bridge types, the website warns, “are not meant to depict the final designs and they do not include design details like color, texture, lighting, etc.” The finished product will also be wider on the west end to give vehicles enough space to queue before turning.

For all I know, this is probably the same way other communities and municipalities choose their bridges. And as the city cautioned, none of these illustrations show the details that will make the bridge uniquely ours. They also should be commended, as the county and city often are, for their public involvement in the process.

Yet somehow it feels like we’re just picking out of a catalog here. I wonder how much creativity, originality and overall design excellence will be possible given such strict parameters about what form it will take. Are these the conditions that Santiago Calatrava and Norman Foster (arguably the world’s most acclaimed contemporary bridge designers) encounter when they set out to do something dazzling?

Obviously nobody that original will be working on Sellwood, and we don’t need a famous name to get a good bridge. But what will it take to get one? Picking a type is not exactly the inspiring step I'd hope would be taken by the county per se. However, it's nice to be asked. One way or another, I'd imagine the county will give us the bridge we ask for. I'm just not sure we're asking for something unique and beautiful.

And it has to be said, however monotonous the sound has become: What about a design competition?

That said, I’d have to go with the “cable-stayed” and the “Extradosed” as my favorites. Certainly it should be possible do create a very fine bridge that functions well and is beautiful as well, without an enormous budget. Who out there is optimistic or pessimistic that it will be?

Are Tram Foes Eating Crow Yet?

Recently the Portland Aerial Tram celebrated its one millionth visitor. As reported by a few different media outlets last week, a ceremony was held recently as an OHSU employee was selected for the honor while descending down Pill Hill to the school's new Center For Health & Healing on the South Waterfront campus for a doctor's appointment. The millionth passenger was also significantly ahead of schedule, for tram ridership numbers have been even higher than expected.

Then there are the awards. Earlier this month, the tram received an award at the National Council of Structural Engineers 2007 Awards in Philadelphia. Previously the project has also won an award from the Structural Engineers of Southern California (engineer Arup, a partner in the design/construction, is based in Los Angeles, as is architect AGPS Architecture) and the Presidential Award of Excellence in Engineering. Oh, and the New York Times published a glowing article about the tram as well.

Somehow all that controversy about budget over-runs, boondoggles, and peeping Toms spying over neighbors living beneath the tram's path, seems to have fallen away like someone doing a half-pike from the tram car. The triumph of misinformation, based on the ludicrously small initial estimate for what such an endeavor would realistically cost, is fading into memory while thousands of doctors, patients, and other riders head up and down the hill, saving gasoline and pollution on every trip. And the design itself? Sarah Graham's vision for the tram had to change over time from her firm's original vision to the reality. But she and the other design/construction partners clung valiantly to a quality work of engineering.

There's only one thing left: Reduce the ridiculously high $4 tram ticket price. Revenues and ridership are both higher than expected. The tram should in my mind be part of Tri-Met's overall transit system for the city and cost the same as a bus, streetcar or MAX ride. Any time a particular mass-transit node is separate from the rest of the system in any financial or ticket-holding sense, I just shake my head. Why do anything that inhibits more people from getting out of their cars? The $4 ticket price tells me this is a novelty ride to milk tourists with, not an everyday thing. I know it's free for OHSU employees, but that just makes other riders having to pay double a bus ride all the more of an exclusive piece of mass transit.

Lake Oswego Streetcar: Two Options?

On Monday a Metro steering committee recommended studies of two options for a future streetcar between Portland and Lake Oswego to relieve congestion on highway 43.

This is one of the only places in the Portland metro area where an existing, fully functioning rail line already exists: the Willamette Shore trolley line. But the steering committee unanimously voted to study and consider both that line and another possible route along Macadam Avenue.

I suppose a streetcar along Macadam would be more accessible for residents, particularly those in the John's Landing area along that street, just south of the South Waterfront. But with the rest of the city waiting years and years and years for their eventual streetcar lines, it seems pretty damn silly to me for Metro to even consider anything but the existing trolley line.

If people aren't happy with the line they already have between Portland and Lake Oswego, maybe we could focus on bringing the streetcar to the east side, not only the proposed MLK/Water Avenue loop but east-west extensions on major arterials such as Burnside, Killingsworth, Stark, Hawthorne or Powell.

Streetcar Vote and Route Fairness

This Thursday the Portland City Council will vote on whether to approve financing for the $147 million Eastside streetcar project. If it goes as planned, the $147 million project will create a loop going up and down MLK Boulevard and Water Avenue with loop ends at the Broadway Bridge and, eventually, a new rail bridge to connect the line with the South Waterfront extension.

It seems highly probable that the measure will pass, but along the way it will cost some more than others. But it will also, as the streetcar has done in the past, act as a development tool that can benefit savvy property owners. No telling how many minutes it will take, for that future development tool to carry passengers from one neighborhood to another—the streetcar is notoriously slow with far too many stops.

In this month’s Southeast Examiner, my neighborhood paper, Lee Perlman writes of a property owner on Southeast 7th Street, Martin Smith, who was the sole opposition voice testifying at a hearing on August 15.

The streetcar line wouldn’t benefit his industrial business (“IG1”), Smith said, but because of how the lines for property assessment have been drawn, he won’t get the one-third discount going to property owners in the district’s Industrial Sanctuary west of MLK Boulevard.

Smith probably has a point that a streetcar won’t benefit his own business much. But Martin, buddy, look above your shoelaces: Your land is about to get a lot more valuable. Sure, it’s a pain to move your business. But wouldn’t many thousands of dollars in profit help you out when a condo developer looks to transform your site?

Part of this issue is one I doubt even many city leaders are willing to admit: the days of the Central Eastside Industrial District, at least as we know it, are numbered. I mean, come on: an industrial sanctuary right across from downtown along prime riverfront real estate? If that makes any long-run sense, I say we just put a warehouse along Waterfront Park while we’re at it.

I must say, though, that I join with Martin Smith in having an objection, but one of a different kind. I’m all for the streetcar. I love the streetcar. But has anybody else noticed that the all-important southern river crossing for this east-side streetcar will happen very inconveniently south for most of us living in Southeast residential areas?

It really seems to me like if there’s a Willamette crossing at South Waterfront instead of, say, the Hawthorne Bridge, that will be far less practical for the many, many Southeasters looking to use the streetcar, and to the great benefit of South Waterfront residents. That’s not fair! We’ve already built streetcar projects twice on the west side and never on the east. Now, when they finally plan one for the east, it benefits residents on the west side in South Waterfront more than people in Southeast neighborhoods that have been here for over a century!

The City Council would be totally insane to vote down the streetcar this Thursday. At stake is $75 million in matching federal funds. But I’d urge the Portland Department of Transportation to re-think the route of that loop in a way that benefits those who have been left out of streetcariana so far, not the condo dwellers in whose homes the paint has barely dried.

Page C3: Transportation Everywhere

While glancing through the Metro section of this morning's Oregonian, I happened to notice one page in particular, page C3, and how out of eight combined features and shorter blurbs, seven related to transit.

The biggest feature, by David Anderson and Marjon Rostami, reported that Washington County is pondering "an urban renewal district to pay for infrastructure." What's next, a bake sale? It's just plain sad how unwilling and/or unable Oregon is when it comes to investing in its infrastructure. This should be a no-brainer to me. If you're on the left, focus on the mass transit and high-density, green developments tied to it. If you're on the right, think of how highways, rail and the rest of the total picture comprise the bloodlines of a thriving economy.

This was especially on my mind after a short trip last weekend to Newport on our usual route by way of Highway 99 to McMinnville (aka McHometown), Highway 18 to Lincoln City and then Highway 101 south to Newport. I have always loved the coast, and we've always gone out of our way to visit the Nye Beach area of Newport, at least until the demise and perhaps ill-fated renovation of our beloved Nye Beach Hotel. But driving to and from Newport this time, I really asked myself if it was worth it after the headaches of ceaselessly heavy traffic. Oh what I'd give to get on a train from Portland to Newport by way of  McMinnville, Grande Ronde, and Lincoln City, to get my car off the road and de-stress. Plenty of others would gladly do the same. Why is this so impossible. Even a bypass of the traffic-freezing eyesores Newberg and Dundee seems impossible without some ridiculous toll. Are we the cheapest society on the planet or what?

Below the Washington County transit story is Dennis McCarthy's piece on how Milwaukie's future light rail stop is now assured of not running downtown, after a committee studying options nixed that one with help from an interested DarkHorse figure (indeed). A light rail stop going down main street sounds pretty cool to me, but the only really important thing is that it stops near downtown and serves what is hopefully an increasingly high density cluster.

Next up is Dana Tims' piece on how Tigard businesses "fear rail project poses obstacle", as the conjunction-free headline goes. "Owners say a proposed median would hut access to their establishments." That's a fair criticism. Is there not a good design solution to this? I mean...

Over in the small brief blurbs, we have news of selection being put off for selection of a developer for the Westgate Theater space. I have a soft spot for the Westgate because I saw many of the great late-70s, early-80s popcorn movie classics like Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark there (not to mention crap like Willow), and it's really too bad the adjacent property, The Round--a high density mixed use, transit-oriented facility--has had mixed-to-disappointing results. Fear not, citizens of Beaverton, we will throw you density's cultural life preserver yet! Seriously, though, I hope they won't get scared and make the Westgate another strip mall.

Speaking of which, Beaverton also has agreed to sell property on Southwest Hall Boulevard to Habitat For Humanity for the construction of five more houses, which apparently was already finished last year. Glad the counting of your chickens before hatching went off okay, fellas. Meanwhile, the thought strikes me: should Habitat For Humanity perhaps try to focus more of its resources on high-density housing for the less well off? That seems more realistic to me given the region's density goals.

There are a couple more blurbs I won't bore you with, but all of this, along with my own experiences recently, remind me of the drum that Randy Gragg and others have beaten: that the state needs to get busy rebuilding bridges, looking at more highways, and repairing the ones we've got, all in addition to a serious investment in inter and intra-city rail. I sure hate having lane closures and all the other construction headaches, and a poor journalist has no business campaigning for more taxes. But I'm revving my engine at those parked in the way of reasonable progress.

Willamette River As Mass-Transit Mode

In Monday's Oregonian, an op-ed by developer Peter Wilcox asks us to imagine, "What would Portland look like like if we made the incredible Willamette River our most visible and sustainable public transportation mode?"

"Creating a public-private system like the streetcar's," Wilcox goes on, "requires only that the city set standards for docks, begin including sustainable river transit in political visions and plans, and agree on ways to go after the same available dock and shore-side facility funds that other cities are using. Given at least 10,000 years of river transport in the Northwest--certainly the first public transit in Portland--we deserve a web of transportation that includes green river transit as well."

Personally, I see no reason other than sentimentality to employ revved-up river transit simply because it hearkens back to the days of Fort Clatsop as our biggest Regional Transit Center. But at the very least it's an irresistibly intriguing question. In a literal sense, what might constitute a river-based means of transporting large numbers of people?

I suppose it could be ferries of some sort, like the one that goes between Manhattan and the Isle of Staten. That's basically what Wilcox calls for, citing a feasibility study commissioned by the Portland Office of Transportation). But aren't also there some more creative ideas out there? I'm not saying we need to make the Rose City something out of The Jetsons -- although I bet the namesake family's "Skypad Apartments" complex might go over well in certain higher density neighborhoods here. (Or failing that, certainly Seattle.) Still, are there ways in which we could better utilize the river without negatively impacting it from an environmental standpoint?

And most importantly at all, can this all be done without making the bridges go up any more than they already do?

City of Streetcars

It's been a few days, but I wanted to touch on Commissioner Sam Adams' speech last week at the City Club calling for a web of streetcar lines across Portland.

The thing I wanted to say was this: Bravo! Woo-hoo! "Flip" yeah!

Sure, it'll be expensive. Portland will have to be as creative about paying for streetcar lines as planning and executing the lines themselves. But as Adams asserted in his City Club speech, this isn't just Portland's future - it's also Portland's past. There used to be a hundred miles of streetcar tracks in Portland, many of which can still be seen in places like the Central Eastside. That was before General Motors and other American automobile companies conspired to purchase and remove the streetcar lines covering most US cities through the early part of the 20th Century.

"What would Portland look like if we implemented solutions to global warming and peak oil?" Adams asked the audience. "It would look a lot like Portland circa 1920, a time when the main means of motion were your feet, streetcars and bikes."

It'll take 30 years, experts say, but I hope I live long enough to see streetcar lines along Hawthorne (my 'hood so I'm biased), Killingsworth, Sandy, Powell and Lombard. (Notice I mentioned all streets east of the Willamette, by the way - the west side has received all the initial streetcars. It's our turn!)

There are also skeptics who say there's nothing an expensive streetcar line can do transportation-wise that a bus can't. I'm not an expert on delineating those differences, other than the streetcar as a proven development tool. But they are different, and somehow rail transit makes for a much better urban environment. And that's what this is all about, right?

One other tidbit about the streetcar from is also worth mentioning. The easiest streetcar line to enact would be to Lake Oswego, since the line is already there in essence for the Willamette Shore Trolley. Just put the cars on the tracks and you're mostly done. But there's whispering that the affluent residents of tony Dunthorpe don't like that noisy streetcar going by, able to transport riffraff past their doors so easily. I remember hearing of something very similar about 15 years ago when I lived in Washington, DC. The DC metro subway line extended throughout the city, except for one place: Georgetown, where power-broker residents kept a stop from being built. Too easy to get there from poor, African-American neighborhoods like Anacostia, they figured. Will Dunthorpe show similarly despicable opposition?

Meanwhile, although every politician and elected official proposes some ideas one supports, and others one doesn't, for what it's worth I'd like to express my unequivocal enthusiasm and support for a network of streetcars in Portland.

Commissioner Sam Adams will lead a free public event to brainstorm future streetcar routes and discuss streetcar system planning. When: 9 a.m. to noon, July 28 Where: Portland State University, Smith Center Ballroom, 1825 S.W. Broadway

The Road to Better Roads

In today's Oregonian, Ryan Frank reports on a new initiative by Commissioner Sam Adams to raise $263 million for paving, bridge and bike lane work. Portland is estimated to have a backlog of over $420 million in needed repairs, from potholes to sidewalks to street repaving. The Portland Office of Transportation also reports that 3,941 miles of streets and 32% of arterials are in poor condition; 22% of bridges are in poor condition and the same for 43% of traffic signals. That last one really gets me, by the way. If there's anything I hate, it's badly timed traffic lights.

Although I was and remain vehemently against the Commissioner's Burnside couplet plan, I support his efforts 100% this time around.

On Saturday I got a postcard in the mail advertising a series of neighborhood town hall meetings that the Portland Office of Transportation will be holding, which I wanted to pass on. They are scheduled for Tuesday, June 19 @ 7PM at the Multnomah Center (7688 SW Capitol Hwy); Wednesday, June 20 at St. Philip Neri Church (a Belluschi-designed one, BTW) Carvlin Hall (2408 SE 16th Ave); Tuesday, June 26 at the King Neighborhood Facility (4815 NE Seventh Ave); Wednesday, June 27 at Friendly House (1737 NW 26th Ave); and Monday, July 2 at Firehouse #12 (4415 NE 87th Ave). You can also go here to participate in an online conversation.

Adams is proposing numerous different ways to pay for the transportation work: a gas tax (which has not been raised locally since 1993 - I find that preposterous given all our funding problems), property owner fees, etc. I don't know which means is best, and it'll be a gigantic uphill battle to get even the progressive Portland area to agree to the spending/taxation increase. But virtually everyone ought to realize that infrastructure is the lifeblood of the economy.

At the same time, there is also the chance to address long overdue state-wide transportation needs.

Last Sunday, two members of the Oregon Transportation Committee, Gail Achterman and Janice Wilson, wrote a letter to the editor of The Oregonian calling for the Legislature to increase funding for transportation.

"Oregon once led the nation with the first scenic highway, the first gas tax and with investments in light rail, bike and pedestrian improvements," they write. But now, "Oregon is falling other states...Once there were no sacred cows in Oregon. Elected officials and citizen commissions debated transportation needs for current and future generations. They were not afraid to think big or to talk about how to pay for their ideas."

Sam Adams is doing just that with the potentially unpopular move of raising taxes to pay for much needed transportation improvements. And crucially this time around, he's targeting transportation funding that we can virtually all agree on. The Burnside couplet has a little more than half of concerned people behind it at best.

Incidentally, I'd love to hear from people as to transportation fixes in Portland they'd like to see. Much of what Adams is proposing is unsexy, unnoticed work such as pot holes and wheelchair-accessible sidewalk corners. But part of what Achterman and Wilson were calling for was for us to dream big. What do we want? I'd of course like to see the east bank freeway moved, more streetcar lines, etc. How about the rest of you?

A Streetcar Named Perspire: Urban Renewal, Rail, Couplet and Planning Considered

Recently Commissioner Sam Adams has advocated for a new Portland streetcar line to the east side of the Willamette River, and to help pay for it the city is exploring expanding or extending the time frame of various urban renewal areas. And there is a sense of urgency to Adams' and others' efforts, because to secure matching federal funds for the streetcar, the city will have to come up with matching funding by an August 14 deadline. The Federal Transit Administration, spurred by Congressman Earl Blumenauer, has encouraged the region to apply for $75 million in matching funds. But how to get our own $75 million to be matched by the feds is difficult for our city's cash-strapped coffers.

However, some are opposed to more or expanded Urban Renewal Areas because they can sap funds from other efforts. For example, Multnomah County chair Ted Wheeler expressed reticence because the county would have to contribute. "We could open 250 beds at Wapato jail," he told the Portland Tribune's Nick Budnick last week. "Given the significant investment the county is making, we should have a direct say in how those dollars are spent."

If you look at the maps of where an east side Grand Avenue/MLK Boulevard streetcar would go, most all of it falls within the current borders of the Central Eastside URA, which extends from the Ross Island Bridge in the south to I-84 in the north, and the Willamette River east to 12th Avenue. The Oregon Convention Center URA extends north from I-84 where the CE URA ends, and extends down Grand and/or MLK all the way to North Portland boulevard.

But the bigger issue is duration. Currently the Central Eastside URA expires in 2018. In order to generate the funds needed on the local side for the streetcar, between $35 and $75 million as I understand it, the URA would have to be extended.

Wheeler is right that something is lost by manipulating URA areas to pay for infrastructure. It's a lot of money that could be used for other budget problems like education.

But Portland has long since gone down the light rail and streetcar path. We've got to keep the faith. And the streetcar is, as the URA fund-generating indicates, a pied piper of investment dollars. Developments spring up along most areas rail tracks happen. Besides, the Grand/MLK area between the Ross Island and Burnside bridges is really an untapped resource. We don't want to scare away all the small businesses in the industrial portion, but these two boulevards are aready zoned for high-density housing but haven't been taken advantage of. A streetcar would change that.

Besides, what's with all the streetcars so far being on the west Side? A few weeks ago I happened to be in South Waterfront on the first day of the new streetcar there. It was empty. Would that have happened with a streetcar on, say, Hawthorne?

Although I agree with Adams on the adding of a Grand/MLK streetcar line, there's just one problem: its attachment to another effort of the Commissioner's -- the Burnside couplet.

I see the Burnside couplet as a 1970s-style effort to move more automobiles. It won't help traffic heading east on Burnside from the West Hills, because there's already the bottleneck of the tunnel feeding into Burnside. Meanwhile, the great "barrier" that some call Burnside will effectively be doubled by making Couch more of an auto-oriented street. I think the couplet plan is contrary to the pedestrian oriented planning that has long been a tradition here. I like Adams, but this plan sucks.

I plan to write a separate post in the days ahead about the couplet plan, but I felt it necessary to bring it into this discussion about Urban Renewal Areas as well.

Whether it's the streetcar or URAs, we also have to remember that neither City Council members nor the Portland Development Commission are planners. Portland has a long history of laudable city planning, and we need to remember that plans like the streetcar or a proposed couplet are not for elected officials or development agencies to put forward without it fitting into comprehensive city-wide plans. It's a shame we haven't had a Central City Plan update that's in step with the Grand/MLK streetcar efforts and the Burnside couplet efforts.

Green Lighting Signal Improvements That Should Have Come Decades Ago

A front-page story in Sunday's Oregonian by Michael Milstein details how local and state governments have undertaken numerous small measures that collectively help offset greenhouse gas levels and, in turn, help fight global warming. Between traffic signal improvements, tree planting and building efficiency measures, Milstein reports, the next few decades years will see these efforts alone reduce carbon dioxide by millions of tons. Of course, that's a good thing.

But one aspect of the report, even amidst the good news of carbon reductions, got me frustrated. According to a sidebar report, Portland transportation managers have recently cut greenhouses gases by adjusting traffic signals. The idea is to allow traffic to flow more efficiently with fewer red-light stops. At intersections like 39th and Division, Martin Luther King between Killingsworth and Broadway, and a stretch of Powell Boulevard, they've tracked traffic around the clock and created new timing plans with the help of computer programs.

At Southeast 39th Avenue, for example, "It shows that all the drivers on an average weekday will now stop 5,051 fewer times at red lights and will together spend 210 fewer hours driving the section of Southeast 39th."

Whoa, stop there a minute. (Or several minutes if you're at the Burnside/Sandy intersection with 12th.) Why did we need the threat of global warming to make traffic lights operate as efficiently as possible?

I'll be the first to admit that when traveling in the city, it's always better to be taking mass transit instead of driving. And frequently that's precisely what I do. My car only accrues a few thousand miles per year. But when I do drive, I want to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible. What driver doesn't? It's always seemed somewhat likely that not all traffic lights are timed together as efficiently as possible, but I always thought there must be people at various local and state departments of transportation working on this problem. And now we learn they've decided to make the stoplight system more efficient because it cuts carbon? How about cutting the years off my life spent stopped at red lights?

I think of all the times I've been in a hurry sometime, passed through one newly-turned green light and, no matter how fast or slow I drive, been forced to stop a block later for an ill-timed red light. Granted I'm probably more passionate about driving than most, but I want there to be a team of top experts working practically around the clock to determine exactly how to get all cars through all of the thousands of traffic lights in this city as efficiently as humanly possible. If they haven't been doing this all along, as in for the last several decades at the very least, then that makes me pretty frustrated.

And as much as I favor any policy designed to reduce carbon emissions and fight global warming, I must confess that I feel even greater motivation simply as a driver. Make these lights work as efficiently as possible -- like you should have been doing for our frickin' grandparents!

Give Amtrak Tracks

An Associated Press story syndicated in today's Oregonian addresses a topic I've long been passionate about: the plight of Amtrak.

Specifically, the national rail system is facing its worst on-time rates since the 1970s. Overall Amtrak is on time 68% of the time. But here on the West Coast, Amtrak's Coast Starlight line between Seattle, Portland and Los Angeles was on time last year just four percent of the time. Four percent!

It isn't Amtrak's fault, though. The problem is that except on the East Coast, where the high-speed Acela Express is very successful, virtually nowhere in the nation does Amtrak own its own lines. Instead, as part of an agreement made in the 1970s that is regularly welched upon today, Amtrak uses freight lines. Passenger rail is supposed to be given a priority, as per the original agreement. That means freight trains weight for Amtrak to pass, not vice versa. But usually the opposite is true.

I say screw these freight lines. The richest country in the world should be able to build its own passenger rail lines. We should have high speed rail between every major West Coast city. Wait, scratch that: We should have had it decades ago! This isn't just mindless spending, either. Infrastructure is the lifeblood of the economy. Certainly freight has to move as part of that, but so do people. Hello?!

What will it take for Oregon, Washington and California to build their own tracks for Amtrak? Why not have the three governors sign on to do something about pathetic rail like without the federal government like they're doing with global warming? After all, getting people out of their cars and into trains is certainly an antidote to our carbon monoxide-choked transportation system.