Possible tolls of the Interstate Bridge - Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA

[OCGuy81]

I read this article this morning, sent to me by a friend of mine who lives up in Portland.

http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/02/washington_legislature_columbi.html

Summarized, the Washington State senate approved a measure that would allow tolls to be charged on the I-5 Interstate bridge as a means to pay for the much needed reconstruction.  Seems like this is going to make the bottlenecks that occur there frequently even worse.  On my last trip up there, I often took the I-205 bridge just east of Portland Int'l into WA state.  I think a lot of people will follow suit if this is happening.

[nexus73]

Even though I do not live in PDX, I do recognize that the truck traffic on the I-5 corridor carries the goods we get here on the southern Oregon coast.  Rather than pay a toll, I would rather see both states add a dime to the gas tax to pay for the project.  We already have the gas tax collection machinery to work with.  Adding a toll collecting bureaucracy will be more expensive and of course there's the problem of folks moving their drive to I-205's Glenn Jackson Bridge.  I-205 gets a real workout already during rush hour so why cause a problem to get worse?

ODOT still does not realize that even with a new Columbia River bridge, that I-5 in PDX will be bottlenecked due to the I-5/I-405 area being a freeway with too little capacity.  The cost of fixing this was estimated at $100 million a couple years ago.  The amount of government spending on just the studies for the new Columbia River bridge is more than that!

On the Washington side, an old airport in Vancouver has caused grief for bridge design.  Rather than close down the small airport and open another one in northern Clark County, the airport was allowed to remain and the result has been a compromised bridge design.

The folks in Vancouver don't want the light rail coming in from PDX and their NIMBY attitude has also caused friction with the Oregonians who want to see light rail get a place on the bridge.  Considering that PDX-Vancouver is all one metro area, this opposition to a cohesive light rail network is not seen by me as a positive.  PDX-Vancouver is only going to get bigger as the decades go on so it's time to wake up, smell the coffee and realize that it's the 21st century!

There's a saying that a camel is a horse designed by a committee.  This bridge proposal is sure proving that in spades!  It's also become quite the political football with two states, two cities and the Feds all kicking the can around.  I'd rather have ONE man like a Robert Moses handling such affairs as one man's mistakes will never be as bad as the amount that many men (and women) will make.  Then add in the years of delays, studies, hearings, court time, environmental reviews and such to see how just getting to the point of the ceremonial shovel in the dirt will take longer than it did for us to win World War II.

I bet China is laughing their asses off at us.  We can't become what we used to be (the undisputed king of the jungle) until we go back to the methods that got us there.

Rick   

[OCGuy81]

What's funny is people will burn $5 worth of gas driving to another bridge instead of paying 0.75 for a toll!

[Tarkus]

From what I had heard in all the Columbia River Crossing proposals, the toll was going to be much more than $0.75 and would be varied based on time of day ("congestion pricing").  It'd probably be more in the $3-4 range.  At that point, simply on principal, I'd consider driving to I-205.

All that said, though, I oppose replacing the Interstate Bridge.  For just about 5% of the cost of the Columbia River Crossing (CRC) project, the Hayden Island Railroad Bridge to the west of the Interstate Bridge could be rebuilt.  That rebuild would eliminate virtually all reasons to raise the Interstate Bridge (which is one of the main reasons its replacement has been suggested), and would not require implementing tolls.

Additionally, the project will ultimately do nothing to actually alleviate congestion.  The bottleneck on I-5 is the Rose Quarter area.  And TriMet really does not need to be expanding their light rail system.  They're already going broke, cutting bus lines, and can't maintain their existing trackage.  Given that they're already having to massively subsidize the ridership (it's in excess of $17/boarding with the Westside Express system), building more lines is not going to get them back in the black.

A large part of the problem is that the "usual suspect" bureaucrats of Portland are obsessed with glorifying themselves by building "iconic" projects with which they can be identified.  The CRC is one, Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail and its bridge is another.  Both projects are expensive boondoggles that will do little to actually improve transportation in the metro area and ultimately, should be killed off.  The two projects are estimated to cost $5.5 billion, and many consider that to be a generous underestimation.  Independent reports have the figure being closer to $12-15 billion, and according to the State Treasurer, the toll revenue on the CRC will not even come close to paying for the new bridge, plus the net effect will be that shunpikers will clog I-205.

[sp_redelectric]

Even though I do not live in PDX, I do recognize that the truck traffic on the I-5 corridor carries the goods we get here on the southern Oregon coast.  Rather than pay a toll, I would rather see both states add a dime to the gas tax to pay for the project.  We already have the gas tax collection machinery to work with.  Adding a toll collecting bureaucracy will be more expensive and of course there's the problem of folks moving their drive to I-205's Glenn Jackson Bridge.

An increase to the gas tax would likely require a statewide vote...and...would go down in flames.  The rest of the state does not want to pay for Portland's problems (even though I-5 serves, what, 75%, 80% of the state's population within one hour?)

As for the "tolling mechanism" my guess is that WSDOT would simply implement "Good to Go!" on the Interstate Bridge - the same system used in the Puget Sound area.  There's been some rumblings about TriMet using electronic fares and some suggestions that TriMet piggyback on the Orca card used by the Puget Sound transit agencies.

ODOT still does not realize that even with a new Columbia River bridge, that I-5 in PDX will be bottlenecked due to the I-5/I-405 area being a freeway with too little capacity.  The cost of fixing this was estimated at $100 million a couple years ago.  The amount of government spending on just the studies for the new Columbia River bridge is more than that!

This is a silly argument...  Are you seriously suggesting that we do nothing until we can fix everything?  That's the attitude that has gotten TriMet into trouble - we won't bother with incremental fixes to the transit system, it's light rail or nothing.  And of course TriMet can only afford one light rail line at a time, so it not only doesn't do anything to the other services but it even goes as far as cutting other, unrelated services just to get the one light rail line it wants.  No, we can't fix every highway problem...but it'll be easier to fix the Interstate Bridge than "Malfunction Junction" (I-5/I-84 interchange) which won't have WSDOT as a funding partner. 

On the Washington side, an old airport in Vancouver has caused grief for bridge design.  Rather than close down the small airport and open another one in northern Clark County, the airport was allowed to remain and the result has been a compromised bridge design.

It's not just any airport, it's the oldest airport still in existence west of the Mississippi River, that is also part of a National Historic Park (Fort Vancouver National Reserve).

Believe me...I think it's absolutely silly that Amtrak trains have to make a sharp left turn at the Steel Bridge (at a whopping 6 miles per hour), just to access the rickety Union Station (that is undergoing it's third roof replacement in ten years, and is seismically unstable, and has extremely horrible HVAC systems), just to cross back over the Willamette River to head north.  Why not a new, modern Amtrak station on the east side that would shave many minutes off the travel time?  Because Union Station is a damned historic structure.

Just as Pearson Field is.

The folks in Vancouver don't want the light rail coming in from PDX and their NIMBY attitude has also caused friction with the Oregonians who want to see light rail get a place on the bridge.  Considering that PDX-Vancouver is all one metro area, this opposition to a cohesive light rail network is not seen by me as a positive.  PDX-Vancouver is only going to get bigger as the decades go on so it's time to wake up, smell the coffee and realize that it's the 21st century!

Not all Oregonians magically like light rail.  Folks like me who have seen the destruction light rail has done to neighborhoods as well as transit options away from light rail.  Light rail is not some "21st Century" idea...in fact there is NO 21st Century transportation option out there.  Light rail is an evolution of a transport mode from the late 1800s...just as buses are the same.  Freeways are an evolution of highways, from roads, from gravel and dirt roads.  Vancouver isn't even 200,000 residents - why must light rail be forced as an option?  There are many cities that are much, much larger than Vancouver, that are successful, not gridlocked - and don't have light rail.  And just how would light rail work in Vancouver - confined to barely more than a mile or two of track in the downtown core?  Yet come with a huge price tag of hundreds of millions for those measly two miles of track that would MAYBE have 10, 15,000 travellers a day - or 10% of the current traffic on I-5.  In other words - it wouldn't provide much in the way of a solution.

I'd rather have ONE man like a Robert Moses handling such affairs as one man's mistakes will never be as bad as the amount that many men (and women) will make.

You must love TriMet...an agency effectively run by just one man - and one unelected man, mind you...who is appointed by the Governor of Oregon...in which folks 350 miles away and have never seen the system have just as much say as the folks who use the system 300 days a year.

[nexus73]

Well SP, you make an interesting point or two as well as some not-so-good arguments.  You are right on the gas tax being a hard sell and given how the new bridge project has turned into a real fiasco, I'd rather sell Oregonians on a gas tax to put a new bridge in Brooklyn...LOL!  Dismissing the bottleneck I mention in the way you do is a poor argument though.  You would not rebuild an engine and then not put in the oil would you?  Highways are systems that need systemic approaches.

The old airport in Vancouver has some sentimental value to you.  However it's in the way and it's not exactly a tourist destination like Crater Lake or even a casino.  It's an airport!  This is a value judgement and my value is highest for modernizing the transportation system instead of preserving relics of the past that have low utility value.

Oregonians do or do not "magically" like light rail but let's face it, mass transit is needed in major urban areas.  Imagine the crush on the streets, roads and freeways without it!  A completed network of mass transit will do for PDX what a completed network of Interstate highways did for the US of A.  Or would you rather have the patches of freeways we had for an Interstate system 50 years ago to be the current system?

So much opposition to making things better has been part of PDX for decades.  From the shot-down Delta Dome project (1960's) to the Mount Hood Freeway (1970's) to the amount of wrangling it took to get I-205 finished (1980's) to this new Columbia River bridge, when it comes to getting things done, the Rose City turns out to be full of thorns.

Rick

[xonhulu]

An increase to the gas tax would likely require a statewide vote...and...would go down in flames.  The rest of the state does not want to pay for Portland's problems (even though I-5 serves, what, 75%, 80% of the state's population within one hour?)

Personally, I'd rather see this supported by taxes instead of tolls, but you're dead on about the likelihood of a gas tax increase passing.

It's not just any airport, it's the oldest airport still in existence west of the Mississippi River, that is also part of a National Historic Park (Fort Vancouver National Reserve).

Just because it's old doesn't mean it's historic.  There were some minor, mostly local, aviation firsts there, but IMO it's biggest claim to fame has to do with the Russian Transpolar flight that ended there, and the monument commemorating that can handle that without the actual continued operation of the airpark.  Anyway, Pearson Field still exists mostly because it has powerful friends -- pure politics.  It should be removed to help restore the vicinity of the actually historic Fort Vancouver park (part of its runway is on the National Park property), and because of its proximity to PDX, in addition to the design changes it's forcing to the CRC.

[Kacie Jane]

What's funny is people will burn $5 worth of gas driving to another bridge instead of paying 0.75 for a toll!

Driving I-205 end to end instead of I-5 adds only 9 miles.  I-84 to I-205 is shorter, only 7 additional miles.  So we're talking only 1/3 of a gallon for most passenger cars, far from $5.  And the toll is likely to be far more than 75 cents.

So the people doing the extra driving are actually smarter in this case.

[Landshark]

Oregonians do or do not "magically" like light rail but let's face it, mass transit is needed in major urban areas.  Imagine the crush on the streets, roads and freeways without it!

Looking at ridership statistics, the crush on the streets would be minimal, especially if the money used on expensive mass transit was applied to roads and significantly more affordable forms of mass transit like the bus. 

[nexus73]

Oregonians do or do not "magically" like light rail but let's face it, mass transit is needed in major urban areas.  Imagine the crush on the streets, roads and freeways without it!

Looking at ridership statistics, the crush on the streets would be minimal, especially if the money used on expensive mass transit was applied to roads and significantly more affordable forms of mass transit like the bus. 

What stats do you refer to?  All I know is when I'm in PDX and have used their mass transit, the buses and trains have been very well-packed.  Also, calling mass transit "expensive" the way you do comes across as an attack on mass transit.  Transportation infrastructure as a whole is expensive.  There are no cheap roads, freeways, tunnels, bridges, bus systems, rail of any sort, seaports, airports, subways and so on. 

Let's get real Landshark.  Cities NEED mass transit.  Just look at LA 90 years ago when Pacific Electric's light rail was going strong and a bus system was in place.  They went away from the light rail to freeways but now they're back with all sorts of rail lines as well as subways right in the heart of Freeway Country.   

We need all the transport we can get our hands on and then some.  There's this thing called The Future that is always coming down the pike...LOL!  Build it and they will come.  Don't build it and they will congest what's there. 

Rick

[Landshark]

Oregonians do or do not "magically" like light rail but let's face it, mass transit is needed in major urban areas.  Imagine the crush on the streets, roads and freeways without it!

Looking at ridership statistics, the crush on the streets would be minimal, especially if the money used on expensive mass transit was applied to roads and significantly more affordable forms of mass transit like the bus. 

What stats do you refer to?  All I know is when I'm in PDX and have used their mass transit, the buses and trains have been very well-packed.  Also, calling mass transit "expensive" the way you do comes across as an attack on mass transit.  Transportation infrastructure as a whole is expensive.  There are no cheap roads, freeways, tunnels, bridges, bus systems, rail of any sort, seaports, airports, subways and so on. 

Let's get real Landshark.  Cities NEED mass transit. 

We should get real,  AND DO THE MATH!  Lightrail and aerial trams in Portland are a massive misallocation of transportation funds!   A sane mass transit system, in Portland, is by bus.   

I am not anti-mass transit, I am anti-stupid transit.   

[Alps]

You're  not understanding that mass transit doesn't turn a profit in the same sense that our highways don't. They're all subsidized by tax dollars and all have a role.

[xonhulu]

There are also a lot of benefits to light rail that aren't measurable by dollars.  Things like removing cars from downtown where parking is limited, cutting down air pollution by removing cars from roads, etc.  Granted, there are a few non-monetary disadvantages, as well.  But I think overall, MAX is a good system that serves a useful purpose.  I've even benefited from it a few times.

Some other aspects of Portland's/Oregon's mass transit systems I'm not as sure of.  It sounds like the WES is a flop.  There have been calls for Willamette Valley high-speed rail, but it's hard to imagine there'd be much need or use of it.  I personally wouldn't want to be dropped off in Portland without my car -- that would require me to radically change my mindset of travel.  But times are changing, and if it were more cost effective than driving I could change my mind on that.

Back to the main topic:  IMO, there's nothing wrong with reasonable tolls on the interstate bridge.  All the major crossings of the Columbia were funded that way.  Even the original Interstate Bridge had a toll on it for awhile.

[nexus73]

Hello Chris!  Here's a link to a LandLine article that talks about how tolls can be extra costly.  LandLine is a magazine put out by the OOIDA (Owner Operator Independent Driver Association).

http://www.landlinemag.com/Story.aspx?StoryID=22970

After reading it, you may see why I fear tolling the Columbia River Crossing.  Two bureaucracies collecting tolls will add cost that doesn't need to be added.  Look at the Golden Gate Bridge and it's tolling authority.  That's been around since the Great Depression and it's not going away any time soon.  That's a whole lot of salaries and pensions for the front line workers as well as for equipment and administration. 

There's no extra expense to collect an increase in the gas tax in either Oregon or Washington.  I believe if the math is put out there along with a promise to repeal the increase once the bonds for the bridge are paid off, that there will be a better chance to pass such a measure, assuming people want the bridge in the first place.

I'm just afraid that in the end we're going to get the worst of all possible outcomes in terms of costs, design and actually solving I-5 traffic flow in PDX.  What should be an engineering problem has become a political football with all the negatives that implies. 

Rick   

[NE2]

Hello Chris!  Here's a link to a LandLine article that talks about how tolls can be extra costly.  LandLine is a magazine put out by the OOIDA (Owner Operator Independent Driver Association).

By which you mean propaganda put out by truckers who don't want to pay for the damage they do to the roads

[kkt]

I'd rather see higher gax taxes pay for the roads too.  I'm not really happy about having automatic tracking devices monitoring movements of all vehicles along long stretches of road.  So far, the toll records are not being used to track suspected criminals, but how long will that last?  What if they are subpoened?  I can just see exceptions starting first for terrorism, then terrorism on the word on the President with no warrant required, then drugs and deadbeat parents, then any felony, etc. etc.

Besides, the toll collection systems cost a lot of money, while increasing the gax tax has no incidental costs.  And increasing the price of gas at the pump may help motivate people to buy more efficient vehicles, more than having to pay tolls.

Actually I'd like the see the gas tax be a percentage of the gas price, not a fixed number of cents per gallon.  That way as there is inflation and the price of gas increases, the legislature doesn't have to act every few years to increase the tax to match.

[bookem]

Two bureaucracies collecting tolls will add cost that doesn't need to be added.  Look at the Golden Gate Bridge and it's tolling authority.  That's been around since the Great Depression and it's not going away any time soon.  That's a whole lot of salaries and pensions for the front line workers as well as for equipment and administration. 

Point taken.... the Astoria-Megler Bridge was only tolled for the first 27 years of its life (tolls were actually removed two years ahead of schedule), but the price tag on the CRC is so bloated any tolls placed upon it wouldn't be going away anytime in the near future.

This project would be much more affordable (and palatable) if it were done in phases as funding permits (the upgrade of the railroad bridge that Tarkus suggests above would be an excellent early-phase project).  As for the mass transit angle, I find it strange the two most populous cities in the region aren't connected by any sort of truly high-capacity transit, whether it's commuter train, BRT or LRT.

[Landshark]

You're  not understanding that mass transit doesn't turn a profit in the same sense that our highways don't. They're all subsidized by tax dollars and all have a role.

Are you talking to me?  I advocate mass transit above: the bus.   Bus rapid transit makes the most sense in an area like Portland.   

[Landshark]

There are also a lot of benefits to light rail that aren't measurable by dollars.

The same benefits can be had, at a significantly lower price, with busses.    Portland's lightrail has been nothing more than a corrupt handout to connected developers. 

[nexus73]

Hello Chris!  Here's a link to a LandLine article that talks about how tolls can be extra costly.  LandLine is a magazine put out by the OOIDA (Owner Operator Independent Driver Association).

By which you mean propaganda put out by truckers who don't want to pay for the damage they do to the roads

Those truckers pay PLENTY.  Remember, they use diesel at the rate of around 5 MPG and they'll go hundreds of miles in a day when doing long-haul.  My proposal is to raise the fuel tax in place of tolls so all we're paying for is the bill to build the road.  Why pay for a tolling bureaucracy? 

Rick

[Tarkus]

My proposal is to raise the fuel tax in place of tolls so all we're paying for is the bill to build the road.  Why pay for a tolling bureaucracy?  

If we are indeed going to build the CRC, I'd agree there.  Especially when all tolling is going to do is push traffic onto I-205, and thus clog up I-84 and other surrounding roadways with Vancouverites.  A lot of the big tolling advocates (e.g. Earl Blumenauer, who called the notion of tolling with congestion pricing on the CRC "exciting") had been hoping to also toll the I-205 bridge, but doing so is effectively illegal.  

Portland's lightrail has been nothing more than a corrupt handout to connected developers.  

Precisely.  In fact, there's a lot of internal Portland/Metro documents that refer to the concept of "Development-Oriented Transit".  Essentially, a city like Portland will create an Urban Renewal Area (URA) around a planned light rail/streetcar line, letting big developers like Dame-Williams and Gerding Edlen pay virtually nothing in property taxes on giant (and expensive) condo/apartment buildings for decades.  They then proceed to erroneously attribute the "growth" to the light rail/streetcar line rather than the massive tax giveaway, and try to foist the scheme elsewhere.  In the process, the property tax money is robbed from public safety and schools--en masse

Rather than building the infrastructure where it is actually needed, and in such a way that it will minimize disruption, they instead take "build it and they will come" to an extreme, essentially whoring themselves out to developers to build some sort of delusion of "sustainable" grandeur.

No doubt that if there is a light rail line extended to Vancouver, there's going to be a URA scam right around it.  Tim Leavitt is the biggest flip-flopper there is.

As for the mass transit angle, I find it strange the two most populous cities in the region aren't connected by any sort of truly high-capacity transit, whether it's commuter train, BRT or LRT.

Technically, Amtrak runs from Union Station to Vancouver.  However, it costs $8-13 one way.

The MAX Yellow Line (the line that would be extended to Vancouver with the CRC) is not ideally situated either.  It runs at-grade in the middle of N Interstate Avenue for most of its length, at an exceedingly slow rate.  The existing express bus service offered by C-Tran is vastly quicker than any Yellow Line extension would be.  If they really wanted a solid rail link between Portland and Vancouver, it would be vastly cheaper (and more efficient) to slightly subsidize the existing Amtrak service (which travels over the aforementioned bridge) than to extend the Yellow Line and build the CRC.

The MAX system, in theory, could have been good.  But its routing and stop locations, in many places, are situated primarily to enrich developers' wallets rather than actually serving as transportation (see the Blue Line through Beaverton).  With the widening done to US-26 in recent years, I can now drive from Western Washington County to the PDX airport in about 40 minutes on average.  It takes me almost 3 times that to take MAX there.  

[nexus73]

Thank you Tarkus for explaining the developer-light rail link.  It's a shame that such a setup is used to justify infrastructure construction and layout.  Stories like that just add to the burden of trying to build and repair our state's and nation's transportation systems.

Rick

[xonhulu]

If we are indeed going to build the CRC, I'd agree there.  Especially when all tolling is going to do is push traffic onto I-205, and thus clog up I-84 and other surrounding roadways with Vancouverites.  A lot of the big tolling advocates (e.g. Earl Blumenauer, who called the notion of tolling with congestion pricing on the CRC "exciting") had been hoping to also toll the I-205 bridge, but doing so is effectively illegal.

I still agree -- taxation is the best way to pay for and build infrastructure.  Tolls could maybe supplement this, but it's unrealistic to think you could fund the entire project this way.

Rather than building the infrastructure where it is actually needed, and in such a way that it will minimize disruption, they instead take "build it and they will come" to an extreme, essentially whoring themselves out to developers to build some sort of delusion of "sustainable" grandeur.

Your last phrase is sort of the key to their mode of thinking.  On that issue, they have a little of my sympathy, because they are envisioning a future with dimishing oil, which is an inevitability.  However, I don't think mass transit is the key to that future; rather, it lies with alternative "clean" energy sources.

The main advantage of mass transit is the elimination of congestion in key areas.  You only sell a system by demonstrating it has some advantage over private cars, and avoiding issues like parking and being stuck in traffic are the main selling points.  Whenever I've used MAX, it's for these reasons alone.  Otherwise, as you and others have pointed out, your private car will usually get you most places in the city faster and with less hassle.

Now there are some city-dwellers who solely use mass transit and do away with all car-related expenses entirely.  Given how much I pay for gas, insurance, registration, upkeep, etc., there is some appeal to the thought of being free of those, but realistically for most of us the car is virtually a necessity.

The MAX Yellow Line (the line that would be extended to Vancouver with the CRC) is not ideally situated either.  It runs at-grade in the middle of N Interstate Avenue for most of its length, at an exceedingly slow rate.  The existing express bus service offered by C-Tran is vastly quicker than any Yellow Line extension would be.  If they really wanted a solid rail link between Portland and Vancouver, it would be vastly cheaper (and more efficient) to slightly subsidize the existing Amtrak service (which travels over the aforementioned bridge) than to extend the Yellow Line and build the CRC.

I'm not familiar with the Yellow Line, but I have thought that they could do with fewer stops on some of the other lines, especially downtown, where the stops are something like 2 blocks apart.  For instance, we will often disembark at the Salmon St stop and walk the little bit to Jeld-Wen Field instead of waiting for the stadium stop a couple of blocks away.  Clearly, those 2 stops could've been handled by one.

The MAX system, in theory, could have been good.  But its routing and stop locations, in many places, are situated primarily to enrich developers' wallets rather than actually serving as transportation (see the Blue Line through Beaverton).  With the widening done to US-26 in recent years, I can now drive from Western Washington County to the PDX airport in about 40 minutes on average.  It takes me almost 3 times that to take MAX there.  

You realize your first sentence applies to just about every function of government, and for that matter a lot of society in general?

But I get your point.  It's why I almost never ride Salem's buses.  They aren't bad, but the network isn't all that extensive.  I figure that taking the bus will about double-to-triple my travel time for whatever my trip's purpose is, factoring in the bus making stops, waiting for the bus at stops, and needing to walk the few blocks to get to my ultimate destination.  Seriously, if the weather's o.k. I'd actually prefer to walk from south Salem to downtown (about 8 miles round-trip) than bus it; at least then I get a good workout.  But others are willing to adjust to that schedule, and it doesn't bother me to get their cars off the streets that I drive.

Still, for the limited function I have used MAX for, getting to Jeld-Wen or Rose Garden from my brother's house in Aloha, I like that it's there.

[Alps]

You're  not understanding that mass transit doesn't turn a profit in the same sense that our highways don't. They're all subsidized by tax dollars and all have a role.

Are you talking to me?  I advocate mass transit above: the bus.   Bus rapid transit makes the most sense in an area like Portland.   

The problem is perception. Rich people don't like taking buses (in general terms). Light rail is seen as a lot more acceptable for the upper classes, if they would use mass transit at all. Again, please note this is very broad, but it explains why bus routes cover poorer areas and some of the richest and/or up and coming neighborhoods have light rail installed or in development.

[Kacie Jane]

Oregonians do or do not "magically" like light rail but let's face it, mass transit is needed in major urban areas.  Imagine the crush on the streets, roads and freeways without it!

Looking at ridership statistics, the crush on the streets would be minimal, especially if the money used on expensive mass transit was applied to roads and significantly more affordable forms of mass transit like the bus. 

Mass transit != public transit.  Buses are public transportation, but not mass transit.  Seattle's articulated buses seat only 56-64 passengers, with possibly a hundred standees crush-loaded uncomfortably.  This pales in comparison to any sort of light or heavy rail service.