Month: February 2024
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Housing: Missing Middle or Missing Massive?
Gradually, more people and elected leaders are admitting that more housing density is needed if we’re to tackle housing affordability, and provide equitable opportunities to live in great cities and neighborhoods. But like a swimmer cautiously dipping a toe in a fresh stream, we’re proceeding slowly: It’s been (relatively) easy to talk about “missing middle”…
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The Week Observed, February 16, 2024
Must Read The freeway cap mirage. Don’t like freeways? Let’s just cover up the problem. It’s increasingly popular to try to repair the damage done to urban neighborhoods by “capping” freeways: building a cover so that the road is less visible. While that’s widely seen as an improvement, some are pushing back that its really…
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The Week Observed, February 9, 2024
What City Observatory did this week Three big flaws in ODOT’s Highway Cost Allocation Study. Some of the most important policy decisions are buried deep in seemingly technocratic documents. Case-in-point: Oregon’s Highway Cost Allocation Study. The state’s truckers are using the latest report to claim that they’re being overcharged, but the real story is very…
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Three big flaws in ODOT’s Highway Cost Allocation Study
There are good reasons to be dubious of claims that trucks are being over-charged for the use of Oregon roads. The imbalance between cars and trucks seems to stem largely from the Oregon Department of Transportation”s decision to slash maintenance and preservation, and spend more widening highways. ODOT could largely fix this “imbalance” by spending…
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The Week Observed, February 2, 2024
Must Read How CalTrans cheated on its environmental reporting. Some months back, former Deputy Director of CalTrans,Jeanie Ward-Waller blew the whistle on the agency’s effort to evade environmental laws and illegally use maintenance funds to widen I-80 between Sacramento and Davis. Now the National Resources Defense Council has laid out a strong case that the…
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Climate: Our Groundhog Day Doom Loop
Every year, the same story: We profess to care about climate change, but we’re driving more and transortation greenhouse gas emissions are rising rapidly. Oregon is stuck in an endless loop of lofty rhetoric, distant goals, and zero actual progress Case in point: Portland’s Regional Transportation Plan: It claims to do something about climate, but…