Transportation
Sep 7, 2012 at 12:00 pm
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PO Box 86208, Portland, OR 97286
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Mirk nailed the point that it's too slow. I work right outside of a Street Car stop, and I can walk from Burnside to Lovejoy in the same amount of time as the street car. For me, it's worthless. It might be useful for getting kids in South East to PSU, at least the kids who are too lazy to make the bike ride.
What Mirk didn't do a great job of is explaining what "Portland urban renewal money" means and where it comes from. This money comes from property taxes, it is not an additional tax, per se. We preformed a trade-off for this street car, as property taxes are otherwise spent on many things, like schools. $50 million is a lot of money to be wasting.
My own feeling is that the streetcar is about as practical and helpful as having a big doltish rhinoceros lumbering down the middle of the street.
The lottery money probably won't be repaid directly since there aren't many video poker machines in the area, that is a loss at a state wide level.
The rest as the article points out is paid by the federal government. More or less the state paid $20 million in lottery revenue for a permanent piece of infrastructure, admittedly not a very efficient piece of infrastructure.
Ultimately, I think taxpayers get a pretty decent deal. It would be very nice to get faster and more frequent service though to make the thing more usable.
Streetcar was designed to be slow and small so that it fits in with a street with cars, pedestrians and yes, bikes. (Doesn't Amsterdam have a dozen tram lines fanning out from Central Station and not a few bike riders?). And it has certainly been a catalyst for development, especially in what became the Pearl District. If nothing else, the eastside extension will be worth the effort and money, if something gets built on all those vacant and parking lots along Broadway/Weider, in the Lloyd District and Central Eastside. Investors seem to like it, and like it or not we need private money to build out the city.
It would be interesting to pitch an LID as a way to fund a first class cycle track on Williams/Vancouver between PCC/Cascade and the Rose Quarter. Would New Seasons, Emanuel, the Rose Garden, and local retail there step up? Nothing attracts public money to a project like private sector funding. Myself, I would pitch Streetcar in the same corridor along with better bike facilities. For biker that I am (and have been for 60 years), I am a bit Streetcar fan.