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.
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.
– Thursday, 2009 May 28 @ 7:22 PM | 2 Comments -