Commentary

Metro’s Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) claims it will meet state and regional climate objectives by slashing vehicle travel more than 30 percent per person between now and 2045. Meanwhile, its transportation plan actually calls for a decrease in average travel of less than 1 percent per person.  Because population is expected to increase, so too […]

What City Observatory did this week Snow-Job:  Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) threatens to slash snow-plowing and other safety maintenance unless it is given more money, while spending billions on a handful of Portland area freeway widening projects.  ODOT claims it’s too broke to plow state roads this winter, with the not-at-all-subtle message that people

Oregon’s Department of Transportation (ODOT) says it doesn’t have enough money to maintain roads, fix potholes or even plow snow. This is a Big Lie: Mega-projects and their cost-overruns, not maintenance, are the cause of ODOT’s budget woes ODOT has chosen to slash operations, while funneling hundreds of millions to billion-dollar-a-mile mega-projects and consultants Plowing is

What City Observatory did this week Killer off-ramps.  The Oregon Department of Transportation’s $1.9 billion I-5 Rose Quarter widening has been repeatedly (and falsely) portrayed as a “safety” project, but the latest re-design of the project may make it even more dangerous than it is today.  An earlier “Hybrid 3” re-design, added one dangerous hairpin

The proposed re-design of the I-5 Rose Quarter Project now includes two deadly hairpin freeway off-ramps. Just last week, Brandon Coleman was killed at a similar hairpin highway ramp in downtown Portland  The Oregon Department of Transportation doesn’t really care about safety. The plan to widen I-5 through the Rose Quarter, at the staggering cost

Earlier, we branded Portland Metro’s proposed Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) a climate fraud because in falsely claimed the region was reducing greenhouse gases, and falsely claimed its transportation investments were on track to meet adopted state climate goals. Metro’ staff has responded to these critiques, but  proposes only to fix these mistakes at some vague

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak proclaims the primacy of drivers “We are a nation of drivers” Those who don’t own cars, or can’t, or choose not to drive, are second class citizens The transportation culture war is flaring up in Britain.  Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has cancelled the nation’s big high speed rail initiative

What if we regulated new car ownership the same way we do new housing? A recent story about Singapore caught our eye:  In Singapore, you can’t even buy a car without a government issued “certificate”—and the number of certificates is fixed city wide.  The government auctions a fixed number of certificates each year, and the

What City Observatory did this week This is what victory looks like.  Freeway fighting is hard, drawn-out work.  StateDOTs and their allies have vast funding for public relations campaigns to sell giant projects; citizen activists work from a shoestring budget, and have to attend interminable meetings that are invariably organized by project proponents.  In general,