People resist social engineering.

First of all, fuck you Blabby.

"Social engineering" is also known as "public policy." We're not replacing the absence of choices with choices; we're shifting from one choice to another. The current industrial/transportation/land use policy in the US is based on the situation at the middle of the last century: we built all the cars and extracted all the oil, so driving was free, and since driving was free, we could just live on any land we wanted.

In the last 60 years though, we've discovered that you can't build enough roads to eliminate congestion, and given the choice, a lot of people will pay to live closer to where they work/recreate. Enabling people to get from one place to another without climbing alone into a large metal box means they take up less space on the way and once they get there. Essentially, the more we allow people to safely get around without driving, the more open roads and parking spots will be, and the more people can live in a city without it turning into a hellhole.

But yeah, social engineering.

COMMUNISTS! BIKE LANES! CHIIIIINAAAAAAA!!!

I, too, am enjoying the circus:

http://gothamist.com/2011/03/09/new_yorker…

eldepeche, you are the unwitting member of a cult. I know you don't believe that, but you are.

More people moved to either Washington or Clark Counties than moved to Multnomah County in the last ten years. Multnomah County has lost tens of thousands of jobs over the last decade.

The planner gibberish about "people moving into dense urban settings" is hogwash. It is a total fabrication bred of wishful thinking not born out by the facts.

People drive cars. 10 years from now more people will drive cars. 20 years from now even more will drive cars. When the price of gas becomes too onerous, we will drive alternative fuel cars.

So when "planners" don't plan for future car trips, they're really being pretty terrible "plannes" aren't they? They're "planning" for a fictitious future based on day dreams, not the future as it will be.

Bikes are fine. But they are a luxury for the young and others with time on their hands. Grown ups with important jobs and families need cars and will always need cars.

You're right, I guess New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Paul MN, Columbus OH, LA, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland aren't experiencing population growth.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,529660…

Fuck you.

Let me break it down for you. In a general sense, specialized people are more productive. Cities allow a person to specialize more, because there are more people around to do the tasks that he doesn't specialize in. Therefore people in cities are more economically efficient, and wages in cities go up, so people move there. This is borne out by about 5000 years of human history, pretty much since we invented agriculture.

Fast forward to the present day. People still want to be around other people, because that is where they can get jobs. But some people would rather not spend a goddamn hour in the car to get to their jobs. Hence, non-car transportation.

Meanwhile, there is an interesting effect by which density ripples outward as suburbs grow and receive infill development. In a couple decades, Clark county will be as dense as east Portland, and all the assholes who have to drive cars to feel alive will be commuting from goddamn Centralia. So have fun.

There is a difference between being able to rationalize something and actually knowing what you are talking about.

Overall the earth's population is moving to "metropolitan areas". Mostly to the suburbs of larger cities. Portland grew by 53k people since 2000. Washington County grew by 82k people. Washington County grew by 18.4%, Multnomah County by 9.7%.

I propose that a "Plan" which posits that in the most new population will live in an urban, rather than suburban environment is wrong based on quantifiable facts and trends. The onus is on planning disciples to prove that their baseless theories are correct.

Says the guy who said I don't know I'm in a cult.

When people get to a "metropolitan area," they don't just sit there. They go to other places in that metropolitan area. Usually business cluster together: larger office buildings are cheaper per square foot of space than a bunch of small ones; restaurants will go in nearby to serve the office workers; &c. This is even without Al Gore forcing people to do it, mind you. Some people will want to live near this concentration of businesses, and some people will want lots of space. We can accommodate both of those types of people.

The funniest thing about conversations like this one is that the guys with car boners don't seem to realize that the more people walk, bike or take public transportation, the fewer people there are driving. You can drive fast on the freeway! You'll be able to find a place to park! This will benefit you!

@Blabby: Stop double counting people. Parts of Portland are in Washington County and in Clackamas County. So maybe you should just stick with using counties as your demarcation.

And one last word:

The status quo is what it is because we put restrictions on the density of development. In Portland, for example, there are restrictions on the height of buildings based on what portion of the underlying lot they occupy. There are restrictions on how many units of housing you can put on any particular plot of land. But it's the people who want these restrictions lifted who are engaging in social engineering.

Also, fuck you.

Not to interrupt, but as a person who actually lives in Brooklyn (hey eldepeche!) and just took a walk along said path, no one around here actually wants to tear up the bike lanes.

We all want more! No one drives in New York—there's too much traffic. We are super pro public trans. as well as biking and have already been hell of urban planned.

This whole kerfluffle is a bunch of old-guard politics in the borough's douchiest and maybe weirdest neighborhood. It's senators and lawyers trying to flex muscle for other, unrelated political gain.

If you want to read up, the L has been following it pretty closely: http://bit.ly/g4OwBA

Alright, I thought this conversation was slightly more about bikes when I started typing my response.

The New York bike battle is entertaining but as someone who spent most of his life in the region, it’s my humble opinion that Portland has very little to learn from it. New Yorkers shout about EVERYTHING. A diminishing minority of New Yorkers drive (less than 1/4th) and the mayor, a Republican, has made his agenda very clear: he intends to have as few cars in the inner city as possible using whatever means at his disposal (congestion pricing, anyone?).

Having a lot of cars in New York, frankly, sucks for noise, air quality, safety and a lot of other things the residents hold dear. If less car lanes means more New Jersey commuters on the train, some people (self included) say: so be it. Devoting and maintaining several hundred miles of asphalt to one highly-demanding mode doesn’t hold well under cost-benefit analysis. One could even call it an entitlement program.

"The status quo is what it is because we put restrictions on the density of development."

That is simply untrue. There are many parts of the city which are overzoned (including right around MAX stops) and do not achieve anywhere near the density which is allowed under the zoning. The planners scratch their heads as to why that could be. Just allowing density doesn't make it happen.

It would be nice if people walking and biking simply made more room for the drivers, but in Portland that is untrue. In Portland, biking facilities degrade the usefulness of roads for drivers by taking parking and taking whole lanes in some places. (This doesn't even include the cyclists who ride down the middle of the driving lane at 10 miles below the speed limit.)

If the bike plan was just about painting bike lanes on streets wide enough to accomodate them without taking parking, I'd support it. Instead its about bioswales and cyclotracks, and forcing some percentage of the city to ride bikes. It's about liberal groupthink fascism.

Graham, the portion of Portland in Washington County is 0.4% of the city's population. I don't think it is throwing off the numbers.

@John Landolfe: You know they're just going to invent car horns for bikes and everything will be terrible again.

Please tell me who the city government is fascistically forcing to ride a fucking bike.

Alternatively, shut the fuck up.

@Fuck_Mc: Oh, it'll always be kinda loud but,outside of a car, we can just use our vocal chords. So it will be much more clear when we mean "hello!" and when we actually mean "get the fuck outta my way."

From the first sentence of the article: "(they aim to double bike commuting rates in five years)"

Portland has some similar ridiculous goal. 20% of trips by bike in 20 years or something equally unrealistic.

A large part of this initiative is coercive. It aims to make more people bike or ride transit by making driving unpleasant in many ways. The new head of the transportation department is a skateboard advocate turned avid bike advocate. I wonder where his loyalties will be? The new head of the Portland Development Commission used to have a blog called "Cars Are Evil." Literally. He did.

I have good arguments backed up by facts and knowledge. Saying "fuck you" is not a good argument. It makes you sound like a 20 year old. I.e. someone who understands nothing at all about public policy and its consequences.

@Blabby: So you're ignoring the unincorporated parts of Multnomah? The population of Portland is 584k, Multnomah's is 727k. If you're going to talk about population growth, keep your units of measurement the same. Otherwise you're cooking the books to make a disengenuous point.

The numbers I gave addressed every objection you've brought up so far.

If this will help you:
Washington County grw 18.4%
Multnomah County (including Pdx) grew 9.7%
City of Portland grew 10.0%

I'd be very surprised if you knew more about this stuff than I do, due to my profession.

Oh, so when you say "forcing people to ride bikes," you mean "altering the balance of incentives between rival modes of transportation." And when you say "making driving unpleasant," you are actually referring to something called "lessening the burden cars put on everyone else." For example, cars kill people. Cars take up space that could be dedicated to other uses. Cars pollute the air. Cars even do these things to people who drive cars.

So when you say, "I have good arguments backed up by facts and knowledge," while at the same time treating cars as the one true mode of transportation and everybody else get the hell out of my way, you are being a stupid entitled prick. Your good arguments are that I'm in a cult, and that guy rides a skateboard.

And no, saying "fuck you" isn't a substitute for my arguments, it's merely a supplement.

By the way, I have two cars and I drive them all the time; I'm just not a dick about it.

@ Blabby

This "daydream" you mentioned in your first comment has a name.

It's called the twenty minute neighborhood, which refers to the concept that residents are able to go to work, drop their kids off at school, buy groceries, go to a coffee shop/restaurant/movie theater/other entertainment venue without having to walk for more than twenty minutes from their home.

If you google that phrase five of the first ten search results mention Portland by name (none of the other results show a city name in the summary). Four of the search results specifically mention bikeability. The second search result, an article from Oregonlive.com, equates this concept with happiness and quality of life.

I guess you live in a daydream come true!

@Blabby, you have mediocre arguments backed up by a significant lack of understanding of Oregon's land-use laws, planning and transportation infrastructure.

The only reason WashCo grew more than Portland in the last decade is because the cheap land is finite in this area, and the last decade saw most of it utilized for development up against the UGB. A lot of that was housing, so more people moved there. At some point they'll be out of development-ready land and Portland and WashCo growth rates will level off.

And it really shouldn't need to be said, but more people on bikes means fewer people driving (and sticking you in gridlock), fewer people parking where there are limited spaces and fewer assholes that will run a red or yammer on a cell phone while they T-bone your Civic in their Denali.

@ Blabby:

This "daydream" you mention has a name.

It's called the twenty minute neighborhood, which refers to the concept that residents are able to go to work, drop their kids off at school, buy groceries, go to a coffee shop/restaurant/movie theater/other entertainment venue without having to walk for more than twenty minutes from their home.

If you google that phrase five of the first ten search results mention Portland by name (none of the other results show a city name in the summary). Four of the search results specifically mention bikeability. The second search result, an article from Oregonlive.com, equates this concept with happiness and quality of life.

I guess you live in a daydream come true!

I'm aware of the "20 Minute Neighborhood" as well as myriad other planning buzzwords. I just don't believe in them. Or more accurately, I don't believe that the government can effectively bring them into existence through spending buttloads of my money, which is what it is attempting to do.

What are Portland's "20 minute neighborhoods"? St. John's, Mississippi, Alberta, Beaumont, Hawthorne, Belmont, Multnomah Village, Sellwood, Hollywood, NW 23rd area, the Pearl, Downtown, etc.

Of that list, only the Pearl was arguably the result of active city planning. All the other neighborhoods developed based on free market forces long predating our local city planning cult.

Portland is great IN SPITE of local planning efforts, not because of them.

Oops. sorry for posting twice.

Oh, Beaumont and Hawthorne, where fuckers like you tried to build freeways in the 70s?

But you knew about that, because I knew it, and you know more than I do. So you think these neighborhoods are great in spite of involvement from people like us, who tried/are trying to move away from auto dependence and toward livability, and whose pressure got those freeway projects cancelled?

Fuck you.

@ Blabby

Thank you for scaring me away from wasting my time on posting comments, which I usually avoid, because I gained nothing from your response other to learn that you are blowhard.

Have a nice life banging you head against your keyboard because you have nothing better to do than dismiss what others have to say. I must admit I somewhat impressed by your complete lack of creativity, as endless naysaying is the opposite of the creative impulses that I hold dear. Goodbye.

eldepeche, read the first paragraph of your comment #22 and tell me you don't sound like a cult member.

The fact that you have two cars gets to my favorite part of the local planning cult: the rank hypocrisy.

oregometry, far from having "a significant lack of understanding of Oregon's land-use laws, planning and transportation infrastructure", I have a masters degree in those subjects.

If you knew about Oregon's land use laws, you'd know that they mandate that UGB contain at all times a 20-year supply of buildable land for all uses, including housing. So "at some point they'll be out of development-ready land" would under law a trigger to allow more land into the UGB. But if local government follows the law, they should never even get to that point.

iliveforartpdx, you addressed your point to me, so I responded to it. Not sure how Portland's stultifying groupthink and centralized planning jibes with the "creative impulses you hold dear" but good luck with it.

You say I want to force people to ride bikes, but can't actually point to any coercion happening. At most you point to neighborhood streets being made more hospitable to pedestrians and cyclists that include traffic calming measures. These streets are all less than 5 blocks from the major neighborhood thoroughfares for cars, with speed limits of 30-40 MPH.

And the measures you point to that make driving less convenient are what anyone with a master's degree in land use and transportation should recognize as "internalizing the externality," forcing people to pay the cost of the harm they inflict on other people.

And the natural state of things is for everyone to drive a car. But I'm the one in a cult.

I guess it would be hypocritical of me to drive a car if I actually advocated for everyone to ride a bike, but I don't, so fuck you and learn to read.

Blabby, you didn't actually contradict anything I said. Yo pointed out nuanced flaws in the wording. But yes, the development-ready land inside the UGB will dry up and the population growth will level off, will it not? We expanded the UGB and then people built stuff there. It's as simple as that, and now it's leveling off alongside Portland in population growth.

Additionally, arguing about Washington County and the City of Portland as apples-to-apples in transportation infrastructure is ridiculous. Washington County had their surface roads tax grandfathered in when we cut-capped property taxes in the 90s and therefore can afford to build smartly for all modes, bikes and cars included.

What we talk about in the City of Portland is a much more limited and hamstrung pot of money that ends up pitting one mode against another. So that's where we come back to the topic at hand.

You claim that 20 years from now people will all be driving cars, but--with your fancy degrees--you certainly know that all the highway lanes in the world won't decrease congestion; building sufficient alternative transportation infrastructure will. That means trains, buses and bikes. Bikes are particularly attractive because the infrastructure is dirt-cheap.

So 20 years from now when gas is $12/gal and we're implementing a VMT or utility model or other congestion-pricing scheme, let me know when you want to borrow a bike to get to work.

eldepeche, driving is how an overwhelming majority of people want to get around. We pooled our money through taxes and built roads for our cars so that we can drive on them. So in that sense we have paid the cost.

There are negative externalities which must be addressed, particularly to the environment. But they won't be addressed by pushing people back to a 18th Century technology like the bicycle or streetcars. They will be addressed by inventing better cars with alternative fuels, and everyone will go on driving.

It is the natural state for 80% to 90% of people to drive a car. You are one of them. Self-righteous chumps can enjoy their "carless" lifestyle between Downtown and east 39th. I'll think of them as I cruise out to Mt. Hood for a hike.

oregometry: "We expanded the UGB and then people built stuff there. It's as simple as that, and now it's leveling off alongside Portland in population growth."

My numbers were from the last ten years, up to 2010. So when did this leveling off occur?

It's happening currently and will continue to do so until the point that we expand the UGB again. The growth in WashCo came from huge tracks of commuter rowhouses and apartment complexes that are now built and being filled.

That growth isn't an ongoing force of population swell but rather a direct result of the opening up of that land.

Additionally, arguing about Washington County and the City of Portland as apples-to-apples in transportation infrastructure is ridiculous. Washington County had their surface roads tax grandfathered in when we cut-capped property taxes in the 90s and therefore can afford to build smartly for all modes, bikes and cars included.

What we talk about in the City of Portland is a much more limited and hamstrung pot of money that ends up pitting one mode against another. So that's where we come back to the topic at hand.

You claim that 20 years from now people will all be driving cars, but--with your fancy degrees--you certainly know that all the highway lanes in the world won't decrease congestion; building sufficient alternative transportation infrastructure will. That means trains, buses and bikes. Bikes are particularly attractive because the infrastructure is dirt-cheap.

So 20 years from now when gas is $12/gal and we're implementing a VMT or utility model or other congestion-pricing scheme, let me know when you want to borrow a bike to get to work.

If nothing else, can we all agree that Cassidy's article isn't very good? It's a disorganized, weirdly precious rant full of un-fact-check-able anecdotes and paraphrasings of faceless crowds of Them.

I'm glad Sternbergh was thoughtful enough to write Cassidy an outline. Poor guy's essay couldn't pass as a freshman English Comp assignment.

Oregometry, the numbers back me up. Washington County and Clark Country are growing faster than Multnomah County or the City of Portland. Any slowing down is supposition on your part. Nothing behind it.

I do know that building lanes doesn't decrease congestion. I don't advocate building more highways for the most part, though solving the I-5 bottleneck at the Rose Quarter would be nice. What I advocate is maintaining the facilities we have and improving them with signal timing (something this city sorely needs). Most of the aggressive bike plans amount to a subtraction from our current auto network. I don't support that.

I can't speak to the funding challenges between Washington Co. and Pdx. But I know they think they can come up with $600 million for a 20-year bike plan, I'd prefer they spent a fraction of that.

When cars get too expensive to drive using gasoline, someone will invent a cheaper system. They will do this because it will make them a billion dollars. Identified need, market response.

eldepeche, "traffic calming" is newspeak for "making driving more difficult." You were using newspeak without realizing it, because you're part of a cult.

Since you have a master's degree in land use and transportation, then I guess I don't have to explain how highways are a massive implicit subsidy to suburban dwellers and don't pay for themselves, and without that subsidy people would live closer to where they work, which means more density. Since we built massive urban freeways, we made it cheaper to live in the suburbs and shittier to live in the city.

Pollution is only one of the negative externalities. Thousands of people die every year in auto collisions. Cars take up a lot of space. One car requires a parking spot at home and one at work, and most parking lots are totally empty at night. Every additional car on the road slows down everyone else in the city. Right now, people who live near your destinations pay those costs for you.

The status quo is a result of policy choices. We have chosen over the last 60 years to prioritize cars over any other method of transportation. If different policies were in place, I probably wouldn't have two cars, and I might not even have one. The point is that people respond to incentives, and there is no such thing as a "natural state" of distribution of transportation choices. If you decide to make it cheap and easy to have a car, lots of people will have cars.

This is also known as "economics." Read a fucking book.

"Traffic calming" refers to slowing down traffic so that cars don't run over bicycles and toddlers and make neighborhoods impassable without being surrounded by a giant metal box. Sorry I'm cramping your style. I understand that it's your God-given right to drive like a prick through my neighborhood; it's just that I hate God.

eldepeche, society agreed to build the highway system. It wasn't foisted on us by some evil force. People like cars. They choose to drive them. They supported and continue to support the creation of a system that makes car use possible.

The creation of the highway system wasn't a dark plot by suburbanites (who didn't exist yet). It was a rational decision made by most of society in good faith. WE choose to make it cheaper and easier to have cars. And thank god we did.

In other words, I'm not going to apologize for it, and neither should anyone else.

None of what you are spewing is "economics." It is debate-club style rhetoric generated by planners who are absolutely NOT good economists.

An economist would tell you that the street system more than pays for itself through facilitating commerce and improving quality of life. Cars are one of the greatest facilitators of personal and economic growth in the history of mankind.

The best part about a cult is the Kool-aid. I think the bicycle cult Kool-aid tastes better than the car-cult Kool-aid. The bicycle Kool-aid is more orangey.

Can't stick around, el. Sorry to be hard on you. It was just something about how you said "fuck you" eight times.

If having streets and highways facilitates commerce and improves quality of life, then what the fuck does mass transit do? As a general rule, unless there is some kind of ridiculous geographical bottleneck, transportation infrastructure is paid for by the government with the understanding that the benefits outweigh the costs.

So now here we are with a transportation system that shifts resources from productive center cities to inefficient suburbs, causes inefficient congestion throughout the center city and reducing the quality of life of most everyone living there. Development policies force people to live farther from their destinations than they would like, and can tip the scales toward requiring them to own a car, which is expensive.

Decades ago, planners (yes, they were planners) decided to make it cheap and easy to get a car, at the expense of all kinds of other stuff. Today, those people are dead and we have to live in the cities they left behind. We get to decide whether we want to continue to make it cheap and easy to get around in a car (although congestion limits how easy it is), or whether we want to try to make it cheap and easy to get around whether or not you have a car.

You act like I'm trying to ruin everybody's day, but not everyone has a car, and if everyone did, the roads would be full of assholes all the time. The goal of transportation should be to move people, not cars. You can move a person in a car (privately owned or shared), on a bike, in a bus, in a taxi, on foot, &c. If we can alter the balance of incentives in a way that causes a greater proportion of short, single-person-only trips happen on bicycles, everyone can benefit. If we can alter land use in a way that shortens all trips, even better.

You are basically saying that putting people into cars should be a goal. But I'm in a cult. Fuck you.

Yeah, that. There's just something about the way you come into every thread about land use or transportation to complain about bikes and how everyone who disagrees with you is in a cult, then throw around irrelevant or misinterpreted statistics and argue from authority that makes me not like you.

Blabby a lot of words but all I hear is
car/suburb=good
bike/city=bad

As a city car driver, I wish more people biked in town. More space for me. Portland traffic is a lot calmer, in part I think because of all the bikes and peds. But you have a narrative to sell.

"No one drives in New York—there's too much traffic."

Hilarious.

I don't really like feeding the trolls, but @Blabby's pretty good at getting a rise out of me.

"Society agreed to build the highway system" -- wait, what? Government building freeways is "society agreeing", while government building freeways is "social engineering"? The construction of the interstate freeway system was every bit as much social engineering as building bike lanes is, but it's also hard to overstate how much more expensive and displacing freeways were than bike lanes. Not to mention the number of neighborhoods--mostly inhabited by politically powerless minorities--that were razed to make way for freeways for mostly white, middle-class suburban commuters.

Also, your attacks on the motives of smart growth advocates ("cult members") add nothing to any conversation, and suggest you're not interested in any constructive argument. You have a tendency cherry-pick the most ill-conceived, flawed arguments of their opponents; do you doubt that I could do the same thing with cranks insisting bike lanes are part of a UN conspiracy? The vast majority of political discourse from either side of any contentious issue isn't worth arguing about.

If you're interested in changing people's minds or learning something, you should change your ways. If you're interested in making people you disagree with upset, keep on doing what you're doing.

I'm curious what you think about http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginal…

Blabby, appropriatley named, kind of lost me with this:
The creation of the highway system wasn't a dark plot by suburbanites (who didn't exist yet). It was a rational decision made by most of society in good faith.

The neighborhood/community my dad grew up in was an immigrant neighborhood on the east coast in the 1930's. The "good faith" people decided to place a highway there, right in the middle of his community;s neighborhood, EVEN THOUGH it went 2/3 of a mile out of it's way to keep it going stright through the city...wiped out the community, to this day people talk about it like it was a crime...so, I don't buy the "good faith" bit. Highways built to grow economies of cities...OK, not exactly evil, but 'good faith" gives credit beyond it's due. The free market ain't free, blaby, it costs to play.

Oh, hey everybody, how have you been since our last cult meeting?

@smirk -- It never occured to me to sue about bike spend. That is a great idea. It can be like suing over land use where suits keep nothing being done for years.

If you love the environment all highway funds should be shifted to rail infrastructure improvement since a ton mile on rail uses 88% less energy. Trucks should only be used for local deliveries.

On another note, why do some people in Portland ride bikes on SE 20th during rush hour? There's no bike lane, and barely enough room for the cars, let alone some moron riding in the dark without lights. Seems like a dick move, but more importantly, very risky.

@Forever Alone: I ride through that area quite frequently and often 20th can be the only thru option. The same can be said for the jaunt of Stark between 29th and 34th or so. It's a bizarre connection because 34th going north dead-ends into Stark, and so you have to spend a couple blocks on a less-than-desirable roadway. The same thing happens at 20th. It's simply the easiest and safest way for a bike to cross Burnside and Sandy.

@Oregonometry - I was trying to think up a better route that didn't involve 20th but it gets pretty convoluted. Just try looking up bike directions on Google Maps from Irvington/Lloyd area to Reed College area, a trip I take at least twice a week (admittedly mostly by car during the winter months). The first time I tried riding the route I quickly forgot all of the turns I was supposed to make. :-\