Widening I-5 in Portland apparently made traffic congestion worse Oregon’s Department of Transportation (ODOT) is proposing to spend half a billion dollars to add two lanes to Interstate 5 at the Rose Quarter in Portland, with the hope that it will help relieve traffic congestion. But practical experience with freeway widenings in this area shows […]
Backfire: How widening freeways can make traffic congestion worse Read More »
When gas prices stopped diving, Americans again began to drive less The most fundamental point in economics is that people respond to incentives. Make something cheaper to buy, and people will buy more of it. Make something more expensive, and they’ll buy less. That’s plainly the case when it comes to driving, and one of
The high price of cheap gasoline Read More »
What City Observatory did this week It’s time to get serious about climate change. We published a guest commentary from City Observatory friend Ethan Seltzer, who takes a critical look at the largely rhetorical approach that the Portland region is taking to the increasing serious menace that is climate change. Globally, the International Panel on
The Week Observed, February 22, 2019 Read More »
To change the world, we need to change the world… Editor’s Note: Ethan Seltzer is an Emeritus Professor in the Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University. He previously served as the President of the City of Portland Planning Commission and as the Land Use Supervisor for Metro, the regional government. He
Time to get real about climate change Read More »
Widening I-5 actually increased crashes, instead of reducing them, and an even wider freeway won’t be less congested if crashes don’t decline. We’re going to dig deep into Portland’s proposed freeway-widening controversy today, and in the process we’re going to get into some very wonky traffic engineering details. Here’s the background: the Oregon Department of
A wider freeway won’t reduce traffic Read More »
What City Observatory did this week 1. Measuring Anti-Social Capital. Thanks to the scholarship of Harvard’s Robert Putnam, the idea of social capital has become firmly entrenched in the policy lexicon. Putnam and others developed some innovative measures of social capital, looking at voting, volunteering, and attitudes about civic affairs and behaviors of personal engagement.
The Week Observed, February 8, 2019 Read More »
Streetsblogger extraordinaire Angie Schmidt is not happy with Uber and Lyft. They’re not really the ones to blame. Are Uber and Lyft to blame for growing urban transportation problems? Streetsblog’s Angie Schmit makes a strong case that they’re the villains her February 4 article starts out tough: All the bad things about Uber and Lyft in
Angie’s List: The problem isn’t ride hailing, it’s the lack of road pricing Read More »
Spending half a billion dollars to widen a mile of I-5 will have exactly zero effect on daily congestion. The biggest transportation project moving forward in downtown Portland isn’t something related to transit, or cycling (or even bringing back shared electric scooters). It’s a proposal to spend half a billion dollars widening a mile long
Rose Quarter freeway widening won’t reduce congestion Read More »
The number of security guards is a good measure of a city’s level of “anti-social” capital In his book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam popularized the term “social capital.” Putnam also developed a clever series of statistics for measuring social capital. He looked at survey data about interpersonal trust (can most people be trusted?) as well
Measuring “anti-social” capital Read More »
What are cities worth? More than big private companies, as it turns out: The value of housing in the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas ($25.7 trillion) is more than double the value of the stock of the nation’s 50 largest publicly listed corporations ($11 trillion). Market capitalization is a financial analysis term used to describe
The market cap of cities, 2019 Read More »
