Month: February 2021
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The Week Observed, February 26, 2021
What City Observatory this week 1. Revealed: Oregon Department of Transportation’s secret plans for a ten-lane I-5 freeway at the Rose Quarter. For years, ODOT has been claiming that its $800 million freeway widening project is just a minor tweak that will add two so-called “auxiliary” lanes to the I-5 freeway. City Observatory has obtained…
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Revealed: ODOT’s Secret Plans for a 10-Lane Rose Quarter Freeway
For years, ODOT has been planning to build a 10 lane freeway at the Rose Quarter, not the 6 lanes it has advertised. Three previously undisclosed files show ODOT is planning for a 160 foot wide roadway at Broadway-Weidler, more than enough for a 10 lane freeway with full urban shoulders. ODOT has failed to…
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Oregon’s I-5 bridge costs just went up $150 million
Buried in an Oregon Department of Transportation presentation earlier this month is an acknowledgement that the I-5 bridge replacement “contribution” from Oregon will be as much as $1 billion—up from a maximum of $850 million just two months earlier. The I-5 bridge replacement project (formerly known as the Columbia River Crossing) is a proposal for…
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The Week Observed, February 19, 2021
What City Observatory this week 1. Covid migration: Disproportionately young, economically stressed and people of color. Data shows the moves prompted by Covid-19 are more reflective of economic distress for the vulnerable than a reordering of urban location preferences of older professionals. A new survey from the Pew Research Center shines a bright light on…
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Equitable Carbon Fee and Dividend
An equitable carbon fee and dividend should be set to a price level necessary to achieve GHG reduction goals; kicker payment should be set so 70% of people receive a net income after paying carbon tax or at least break even. By Garlynn Woodsong Editor’s note: City Observatory is pleased to publish this commentary by…
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Covid Migration: Temporary, young, economically insecure
There’s relatively little migration in the wake of Covid-19 Most Covid-related migration is temporary, involves moving in with friends or relatives, and not leaving a metro area It’s not professionals fleeing cities: Covid-related movers tend to be young (many are students), and are prompted by economic distress From the earliest days of the pandemic, pundits…
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How freeways kill cities
Freeways slash population in cities, and prompt growth in suburbs Within city centers, the closer your neighborhood was to the freeway, the more its population declined. In suburbs, the closer your neighborhood was to the freeway, the more it tended to grow. It’s been obvious for a long, long time that the automobile is fundamentally…
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The Week Observed, February 12, 2021
What City Observatory this week 1. How housing segregation reduces Black wealth. Black-owned homes are valued at a discount to all housing, but the disparity is worst in highly segregated metro areas. There’s a strong correlation between metropolitan segregation and black-white housing wealth disparities. Black-owned homes in less segregated metro areas suffer a much smaller value reduction…
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How housing segregation reduces Black wealth
Black-owned homes are valued at a discount to all housing, but the disparity is worst in highly segregated metro areas There’s a strong correlation between metropolitan segregation and black-white housing wealth disparities More progress in racial integration is likely a key to reducing Black-white wealth disparities It’s long been known that US housing markets and…
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Congestion Pricing: ODOT is disobeying an order from Governor Brown
More than a year ago, Oregon Governor Kate Brown directed ODOT to “include a full review of congestion pricing” before deciding whether or not to do a full environmental impact statement for the proposed I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway widening project. ODOT simply ignored the Governor’s request, and instead is delaying its congestion pricing efforts, and…
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The Week Observed, February 5, 2021
What City Observatory this week 1. Calculating induced travel. Widening freeways to reduce traffic congestion in dense urban areas inevitably fails because of the scientifically demonstrated problem of induced demand; something so common and well-documented it’s called the “fundamental law of road congestion.” Experts at the UC Davis National Center for Sustainable Transportation have developed…
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Urban myth busting: New rental housing and median-income households
The price of new housing is a poor gauge of housing affordability Increasing housing supply over time, coupled with individual housing units moving down-market as they age, provides affordability New cars are unaffordable to most households; used cars are the source of affordable driving Discovery Channel’s always entertaining “Mythbusters” series ran for fourteen seasons before…
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America’s K-shaped housing market
Home prices are soaring, rents are falling The disparate impact of the recession on high income and low income households in driving the housing market in two directions at once. Job losses have been concentrated among the lowest earning workers, who are disproportionately renters. Meanwhile high earning workers have seen no net job losses, and…
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Again, it’s Groundhog’s Day, again
Every year, the same story: We profess to care about climate change, but we’re driving more and greenhouse gas emissions are rising rapidly. Oregon is stuck in an endless loop of lofty rhetoric, distant goals, and zero actual progress Another year, another Groundhog’s Day, and another bleak report that we’re not making any progress on…
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Albina Then and Now
Albina then and now Basically, Albina was wiped out by Interstate Ave 99E (ODOT) 1951 Memorial Coliseum (City) 1958 I-5 1962 Emmanuel Hospital (PDC) 1970s Blanchard Center (PPS) 1980 Convention Center 1990 (expanded 2003) Moda Center/Rose Garden 1995 But ODOT’s two highways cut all this off from the rest of the city. 99E/Interstate cut the…
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Calculating induced demand at the Rose Quarter
Widening I-5 at the Rose Quarter in Portland will produce an addition 17.4 to 34.8 million miles of vehicle travel and 7.8 to 15.5 thousand tons of greenhouse gases per year. These estimates come from a customized calibration of the induced travel calculator to the Portland Metropolitan Area. It’s scientifically proven that increasing freeway capacity…