Transportation

In last week’s Dead Freeways article and on the blog I talked about freeway godfather Robert Moses’ 1943 plan for the city of Portland. After the article came out, a couple people (nerds) asked if I could get them a copy of Moses’ 89-page, spiral bound plan to look through at their leisure. But I […]

In the course of reporting this week’s Dead Freeway Society article, I talked with local historian Val Ballestrem, who sent along this image of the Southeast Portland of the future (circa 1973)! This proposed image of the Mount Hood Freeway running up Division Street is from the freeway’s Draft Environmental Impact Study—the freeway would have […]

In 1945, freeway mogul Robert Moses recommended the city of New York tear out old Bronx neighborhoods to build the massive community-wrecking Cross Bronx Expressway. But in 1943, the powerful man came to Portland and holed up for two months with his urban planning team in the hotel downtown that is now the Embassy Suites. […]

The Oregon Department of Transportation just put out a public safety ad focusing on how cars are the number one killer of children. Look at these doe eyes! Why is that weird? Because ODOT’s budget is almost exclusively devoted to cars! Seventy-three percent of ODOT’s $4.3 billion bi-annual budget goes straight into building and maintaining […]

Maybe the deepest recession in decades is not the time to embark on building a $4.2 billion bridge—news from the last week shows that tight budgets are making both voters and policymakers consider axing essential pieces of the planned Columbia River Crossing (CRC) bridge between Vancouver and Portland. A primary election shows incumbent Vancouver mayor […]

The mayor hosted the long-overdue groundbreaking of the East Burnside and Couch “couplet” makeover yesterday, applauding the coming changes to the busy, dangerous section of Burnside between NE 3rd and 14th. After years of public process, stalls and re-starts the groundbreaking didn’t actually, uh, break any ground. It was more of a metaphorical groundbreaking, replete […]

After months of debate and vocal protests from a loose transit riders’ union, the TriMet board this morning voted 6-1 to eliminate buses from Fareless Square. “When Fareless Square was started some 34 years ago, it was a bus-only system. We now have four MAX lines that will serve this area once mall service begins,” […]

I just arrived back at my desk from 10 days of visiting various family in rural New York and Maine. It’s a different culture up there than I’m used to in PDX. The souvenir store also sells guns, pork sausage featured prominently in the majority of dishes at the small town potluck (I’ve never seen […]