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Portland’s Bicycle Transportation Alliance Action Alert on HB 2001

Link. Once again, bikeportland.org has excellent coverage of what is going on with Oregon's Transportation Act and how it has changed from a relatively forward looking transportation bill to this cluster fuck to the all-concrete idiot house. 1000 Friends of Oregon's opposition letter and press remarks have more in depth details of why they are so strongly opposed to the earmarked bill.

Really you have to be shocked by a group of elected officials that wish to spend $192 million for phase 1 of a single bypass that gets well off Portlanders to Spirit Mountain, the Oregon wine country, and the central coast with hopefully less congestion on one small part of their journey. How is that the single, most important transportation priority in Oregon? I understand that that is an important tourism area, but there are far better ways to spend that money currently and I suspect far better solutions to that congestion problem than building an extremely expensive highway bypass.

All said, a billion total to highways, and yet no increase in the percentage of highway funds allowed to go towards pedestrian and bicycle projects. Pretty damn appalling. The bill is on its way to the Oregon Senate now. I wrote my state senator, and if you live in Oregon and care about such things, perhaps you should too.
2 Responses to Portland’s Bicycle Transportation Alliance Action Alert on HB 2001

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While I don’t live in Portland, I find the general stance toward pedestrian projects quite appalling.

The saying “if you build it, they will come…” goes well with most pedestrian walk ways and bike paths.

I saw a documentary about a city in Mexico that was rebuilt from the ground up - the key focus of the project was to create one of the most advanced public transportation systems in the country and include bike lines everywhere. 

Bottom line, it transformed the city entriely and the crime went down because so many were attracted to the pedestrian walkways in the streets that criminals had no place to do their dirty work.

I’d like to hear a good proposition on how cities can move in the direction of promoting more pedestrian projects and encourages people to *demand* such projects.

By .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on May 29, 2009, 08:39 am

Joe -

I think it boils down to the fact that concerned and interested people have to form groups and lobby their representatives.    There has to be strong participation and a will to continue working against the current steamrolling thought process in government that is Car Thought.  There are so many examples of why pedestrian and bicycle projects are beneficial to cities, you would think it would not be so difficult.  Alas, it is simply because this entire country is full of cars and concrete.  Archaic thinking.

If you watch that PBS documentary I linked to last week, you will see how one major decision by a city government can change a city’s direction in this area for decades to come.  Choose a battle, fight it hard.

By .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on June 01, 2009, 10:04 am
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Paul is that guy you see in a coffee shop staring out the window, idly scratching the tip of his nose, and humming the theme to an animated Disney movie while his Apple portable is humming happily in front of him. He climbs, hikes, backpacks, skis and loves the outdoors. If you're not into sarcasm, Monty Python, or puns you may never get a single one of his jokes, which populate his speech like streams of antimatter through dilithium. Oh, and he's a geek.

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