Portland is thinking about widening freeways; other cities show that doesn’t work Once upon a time, Portland held itself out as a national example of how to build cities that didn’t revolve (so much) around the private automobile. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, it recognized that building more freeways just generated more traffic, and […]
Portland is a bellwether for transportation policy; is it going to take a giant step backward? Last month, the Oregon Legislature passed a $5.3 billion transportation funding bill. A central piece of this legislation is advancing three projects that would widen Portland area highways. HB 2017A makes initial allocations of funding to start (but not
Why we’re talking about Portland’s freeway widening proposal Read More »
Oregon’s DOT seems to be more concerned with making cars go faster than saving lives Yesterday, we took a look at a recent Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) “performance report” on Portland area freeways. One of its main messages–which we found some problems with–deals with congestion. But the report also seems to devote a lot
Dying to widen highways Read More »
Here’s a highway success story, as told by the folks who build highways. Several years ago, the Katy Freeway in Houston was a major traffic bottleneck. It was so bad that in 2004 the American Highway Users Alliance (AHUA) called one of its interchanges the second worst bottleneck in the nation wasting 25 million hours
Reducing congestion: Katy didn’t Read More »
While headlines focus on the nearly-bankrupt federal Highway Trust Fund, state and local departments of transportation across the country are facing declining revenues, maintenance backlogs, and an insatiable desire for funding new projects. As a result, this summer, a number of states are working on new highway funding packages. So far in 2015, eight states
Climate concerns crush Oregon highway funding bill Read More »
