Category Archives: Transportation

Op-ed: Development myths drive streetcar

The following op-ed was published in the Portland Tribune.

For much of human history, mass transit has had the utilitarian goal of quickly moving people from place to place. Even Portland’s early streetcars were designed with speed in mind.

Advertisements touted how quickly people could get around by streetcar. One ad from 1920 boasted that University Park in North Portland was only 20 minutes from downtown by streetcar. That works out to a speed of more than 15 miles an hour.

Times have changed. Modern streetcars have become the pleasure boats of public transit: flashy, expensive and slow.

Today, Portland’s streetcars quietly glide through the streetscape at a leisurely pace. Portland’s new Central Loop covers 3.3 miles in about an hour and a half. At 2.5 miles an hour, that’s slower than most people walk.

If streetcars don’t improve transit times, then what do streetcars do?

Many ascribe the development of Portland’s heralded Pearl District to the streetcar. In truth the streetcar was more of an afterthought. The Pearl’s success began with a few pioneering developments that took advantage of historic building tax abatements to convert warehouses into condos. The success of these pioneering developments attracted other investments and more developments.

After these successes, an urban renewal area was created and the streetcar came along a few years after the birth of the urban renewal area. Development made the streetcar possible, not the other way around.

It’s impossible to find a clear-cut example of where streetcars are the single factor driving development. It’s impossible because streetcars are always just one part of a complex development package. The packages can include roadway improvements, tax abatements, rezoning and environmental cleanup. There is no way to determine whether a streetcar system is just one of many factors that boost development potential or is a vital linchpin without which development would be impossible.

Supporters argue that streetcars and other rail projects provide a magic key that unlocks zoning and uses of an area. They point to the “condotopia” that grew out of the banks of the Willamette River in Portland’s South Waterfront urban renewal area, now served by a streetcar and an aerial tram.

As early as the mid-1990s, however, private developers had their eyes on Portland’s South Waterfront. Yet, every single effort was shot down or stifled by the city’s planning process. One development didn’t follow a city commissioner’s vision for an ideal street pattern. Another development would have exceeded the city’s maximum allowable building height at the time (35 feet, or about three stories).

Even so, Portland’s planning class continues to argue that the aerial tram and streetcar have magically unlocked the ability to build waterfront skyscrapers.

In reality, there is nothing magical about streetcars and trams. City commissioners held — and still hold — the keys to unlock an area’s development potential. If rail and tram expenditures had been invested in roadway improvements, the South Waterfront would be celebrating its 15th anniversary of redevelopment instead of suffering round after round of fire sale condo auctions.

It remains to be seen whether the streetcar’s Central Loop can breathe life into Portland’s Central Eastside, Convention Center and Lloyd District. Large-scale rezoning to unlock development potential doesn’t need a streetcar. Investments in roadway improvements best serve the way the people actually travel, rather than the way we wish they would travel.

A streetcar by itself does nothing without these other key improvements.

Urban legends: Bus fares as lottery tickets

Years ago I heard a story about a city in a “third world” country that solved fare dodging in its mass transit system by having each bus ticket serve double duty as a lottery ticket.  According to the story, riders wanted to pay bus fare in order to get a chance at winning the lottery. At the same time, bus drivers were interested in selling tickets because they got a piece of the action if they sold a winning ticket.

I’ve heard the story (and told the story) for many years, but it had an urban legend feel because no one could identify the “third world” city.

Today, I found the urban legend is true and the city is Curitiba, which is not so third world, and is known as the Sustainability Capital of the World (sorry, Portland, Austin, Chicago, and Madison). The mayor who put the plan in place was Jamie Lerner, who was profiled by Frontline:

Jamie Lerner stands as something of a hero among his fellow Curitibanos. The chief architect of the Curitiba Master Plan, he was appointed mayor during Brazil’s military dictatorship in 1971. When the nation returned to democracy, he was elected to another term. During his 12 years in office, Lerner devised many of Curitiba’s innovative, inexpensive solutions to city problems. For instance, in the early days of the public transit system, to increase its funding and encourage ridership, he made a special city lottery, valuing bus fare as lottery tickets. To combat Curitiba’s growing litter problem, he created more incentives for recycling, including exchanging bottles, cans and other recyclables for food. Lerner believed in implementing plans swiftly — in just 72 hours, he converted the city’s downtown into Brazil’s first pedestrian mall.

Misplaced priorities at the Portland Bureau of Transportation: PBOT’s biggest cuts are to roadway maintenance, cleaning, and roadway safety

This post continues our series on the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s budgeting choices. The last post looked at the biggest line items in PBOT’s budget. This post examines the programs facing the biggest cuts.

As shown in the table below, the biggest cuts are to roadway maintenance and cleaning and roadway safety. Some of these cuts include the following:

  • Reduce the Portland’s “2-inch grind and pave maintenance blanket program” from 42 miles of maintenance to 10 to 20 miles.
  • Reduce maintenance and repair of crash barriers.
  • Reduce retaining wall maintenance from 10 walls per year to 7 walls in critical condition, per year.
  • Reduced staff response to emergency safety concerns regarding street lights and signals where damages occur during the night.
  • Reduce pace of modernizing street lights and street signals.

Some Portlanders may be ready to jump for joy over item #7 which gives the impression that the city has given up on its red light cameras.

Not so fast … PBOT just shift that program over to the Police Bureau.  So we still get the red light cameras and PBOT gets to say they’re cutting costs.

Misplaced priorities at the Portland Bureau of Transportation: PBOT’s biggest programs

In the wake of earlier posts on Portland’s transportation funding woes, I have been asked to look deeper into the budget and what programs are on the chopping block. This is the first of several posts and I’ll begin with a look at the biggest programs in PBOT’s portfolio.

I had two grind through two documents from PBOT: An easy-to-read spreadsheet and a 216 page document written in bureaucratese.  What follows is my first crack at summarizing PBOT’s priorities as expressed in its budget.

The table below shows PBOT’s 10 largest programs by spending–after proposed cuts are accounted for.

The biggest item in PBOT’s budget is CIP – Other. “CIP – Other” are funds that are committed by the city on projects and programs that receive federal and state grants. Presumably, cuts in these programs would have a negative impact on federal and state matching funds.

What’s going on with city-owned parking garages?

The next biggest chunk of PBOT’s budget involves parking garages.  The city owns six Smart Park parking garages. The table above shows that these parking garages eat up $20.3 million of PBOT’s budget (almost 10 percent). According to the 216 page document, PBOT gets only $5.3 million in revenues from parking garages.  So, on net, PBOT is worse off to the tune of $15 million a year.

What gives?

Parking gives. And gives. And gives.

Who does parking give to?

The streetcar, of course.

The graph below, courtesy of Reconnecting America, a transit advocacy nonprofit, shows that a huge amount of the Portland Streetcar’s debt is underwritten by revenues from city-owned parking garages.

We’ll spend some more time on the streetcar in future posts.  In the meantime, let’s look at the rest of the Big 10 PBOT Programs.

Rounding out the Big 10

The next big item is Street Preservation – Pavement Maintenance.  It’s a big program, but not as big as parking garages.  At just over $11 million (including management along with maintenance), street preservation makes up almost 5.5 percent of PBOT’s budget.

Street preservation is going to see its budget cut by $1 million, which represents an 8.7 percent cut. The 216 page document explains where the cuts are going to come from.

This reduces the 2″ grind and pave maintenance blanket program from 42 miles to approximately 10 to 20 miles per year.

That right, the city’s going to save money by growing its paving backlog.

The fourth biggest budget item is Environmental System Maintenance – Repair. This deals largely with water runoff from roadways.  The program will face modest cuts.  Nevertheless, the result will be more homeowners standing on their street corners on rainy days, trying to unplug their storm drains because the number of repairs to catch basins will be reduced from 174 repairs per year to 70 per year from this unit.

Expected Results: Some street corners may experience standing water for a longer period of time.

Sidewalks are the next biggest item.  At first blush, it looks like sidewalks are saved from cuts. The story, however, is a bit more complex, so we’ll save that for another post.

Oregonian reports on Portland’s misplaced priorities: Despite record revenues, Portland’s transportation bureau is broke

The Oregonian seems to have picked up on our earlier posts about misplaced priorities and self-inflicted budget woes at the Portland Bureau of Transportation.

The story so far can be told in four pictures.

  1. Record revenues at the Portland Bureau of Transportation. “Discretionary” money has almost doubled since 2000. The city’s excuse that there it has no wiggle room in budgeting simply is not true.
  2. A paving backlog that stretches to San Francisco.Portland’s paving backlog has grown by more than 500 miles since 1999.  By 2008, Portland had a backlog big enough to pave a two lane road from Pioneer Courthouse Square to San Francisco. Taking the philosophy that a problem doesn’t exist if it can’t be measured, the city stopped calculating the road paving backlog in 2008.
  3. Despite Portland’s deteriorating roads, the city has virtually stopped repaving projects. Over the past 10 years, paving projects have dropped from 127 miles in 2001 to a forecast of about 25 miles this year. That’s a five-fold decrease.
  4. As roads deteriorate, bike lanes and streetcars boom. Virtually in sync with the growth in the city’s paving backlog, the city has put more and more resources into “alternative” modes of transportation.

In Portland, road maintenance takes a backseat to bikes and streetcars

Following up on a previous post, the figure below shows that as Portland’s road paving backlog has grown, the city has expanded bikeways and streetcar lines.

Yes, yes, I know, correlation is not the same as causation.

Nevertheless, the figure demonstrates that the city appears to have sacrificed road maintenance in favor of alternative modes of transportation.

Misplaced priorities: Despite record revenues, Portland’s transportation bureau is broke

The Oregonian reports that the Portland Bureau of Transportation proposes to stop repaving major roads for the next five years as part of its plan to cut $16 million from its upcoming budget. Such cuts would add to an already growing backlog of paving projects.

The figure above shows Portland’s paving backlog has grown by more than 500 miles since 1999.  By 2008, Portland had a backlog big enough to pave a two lane road from Pioneer Courthouse Square to San Francisco.

(I have tried to see how much the Portland’s paving backlog has grown under the current mayor. However, it seems that the city’s transportation bureau has either stopped counting or stopped reporting the backlog.)

A press release issued by the mayor’s office explains, in part, why the transportation bureau must cut its budget:

In the face of lower-than-projected gas tax receipts, the Bureau of Transportation must make permanent, significant cuts to match expenditures to revenues. Impending cuts come on the heels of a decade of transportation cuts for the city.

Notice that the problem is lower than projected gas tax revenues.  The problem is not less money. The problem is less money than expected. It’s a bit like someone booking a cruise because they are expecting a raise only to find the raise didn’t come through.

Despite the lower projections, last year Portland saw the highest gas tax revenues in more than a decade, due mainly to a six-cents-a-gallon gas tax hike that went into effect statewide in January 2011. Going forward, according to financial documents issued in November 2011, the city projects ever increasing gas tax revenues over the next five years.

It seems that Portland’s transportation bureau does not have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem. Even worse, some of the bureau’s biggest spending commitments have nothing to do with maintaining or improving streets:

  • Last year, the mayor set aside $8 million from new state gas tax revenue every year for 20 years (a total of $73.5 million), starting in 2013, to help fund the Sellwood Bridge rehab.
  • Over the next two years, the mayor chose to put $16 million of that new gas tax revenue into building new sidewalks.
  • The transportation bureau is also on the hook for $1.3 million a year for the Eastside Streetcar.
  • On top of that, the mayor has put the city in hock for $3.5 million a year (beginning in 2013) for debt service on the Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail line ($3.5 million a year, starting in 2013, for a total of $55 million).