No More Freeways PDX

[Bruce]

I like how the KATU footage shows a driver illegally passing a cyclist while traveling slower than the cyclist. Classic stuff.

http://katu.com/news/local/groups-collect-signatures-to-petition-interstate-5-expansion

[jakeroot]

I like how the KATU footage shows a driver illegally passing a cyclist while traveling slower than the cyclist. Classic stuff.

I'm sure there's more than just what we saw. It doesn't make any sense to me, as a driver, how a car could be to the left of a cyclist but going slower than it.

Driving left-of-center is not a big deal, especially in cities. People do it all the time with all sorts of other vehicles: trash trucks, emergency vehicles, metro buses, etc. In the case of cycling, passing a cyclist is in everyone's best interest because it reduces road rage induced by slow-moving traffic, while simultaneously improving cyclist safety by not having vehicles driving five feet behind them, ready to plow over them in the event of a fall.

[sparker]

A new protest. http://www.kgw.com/mobile/article/news/local/rally-opposes-i-5-freeway-expansion-near-rose-quarter/283-508509459

Any thoughts?

The whole matter of freeways within urban areas has become the subject of what could be best described as tribal ritual.  First, either something like what's happening in Portland occurs:  in this instance, a proposal to alleviate a longstanding bottleneck (it was already one when I lived up there 20-odd years ago) is brought forth -- in this instance by ODOT, which is not particularly known for any propensity to readily deploy new corridors or expand existing ones; to even consider doing a project like this implies there's sufficient data regarding safety and efficiency to back up their decision.  Subsequently organizations like NMFPdx (ostensibly ad hoc but more likely having grown their own institutional roots) voice objections to the project, citing a litany of rationales that rarely vary by venue:  that doing anything that may in some way relieve congestion is anathema to their urban vision; they somehow see congestion as a positive occurrence.  An progression of sorts seems to be omnipresent within their thought processes:  sustained congestion >> disillusionment among the driving public >> less private automotive travel coupled with significantly increased use of public transit.  And as that particular outcome seems to be part & parcel of at least a sizeable portion of their goals, they pounce upon specific aspects of the project (in this case a minor street bridge) to elucidate the wrongs and/or damage to be caused by freeway modification -- trying to beat the drums to pump up localized support for their position.  Legal action may be threatened down the line as well; citing possible damage to the area adjacent to the project (if there's considerable use of eminent domain for ROW acquisition, this is often seen as a delaying tactic).

The second scenario involves actual teardowns of existing facilities; I'm not going to expound on this concept here, as (a) it's not what's happening in this instance and (b) that sort of thing has been beaten to death within the scope of the I-345 teardown thread over in Mid-South.  Suffice it to say that in PDX, the effort by the congestion-relief opposition is to both increase and broaden their ranks by adding a local aspect to the more ideological "core" activists, more often than not consisting of urbanists, bicycle activists, a smattering of anti-capital/commerce folks, and a few anti-mobility environmental actors.  I'll readily acknowledge that PDX has more of these per capita than most metro areas -- but at this point hardly even making up a plurality within the metro region. 

But the one consideration that the activist contingent seems not to have been disabused of is this:  transportation is not a fungible entity!  While the ranks of activists seem to be willing to self-impose the particular bounded rationality intrinsic to a carless existence (regardless of whether that willingness translates to action), such a concept isn't even on the radar of much if not most of the region's residents, particularly when that would require truncation or even cessation of many activities engaged in by the greater populace.  The ability to engage in commerce -- especially the ability to ascertain and take advantage of competitive pricing among vendors -- is significantly curtailed without the ability to both access said vendors as well as transport any purchases to their destination in short order.  And -- believe it or not -- online shopping can only take you so far (satisfactory if you know exactly what you want) -- but there's a lot of items that require a "hands-on" approach prior to actual purchase (disclaimer: I despise mushy bananas!).  But mobility, decried as it is in certain quarters, is much more than mere shopping -- absent saturation-level transit, it allows one to go about their business (either work-related or personal) regardless of where in the area that business is sited.  And despite the best efforts of those communitarians among us, the last I heard rights and prerogatives were still delegated to the individual (to quote Chevy Chase's character Ty Webb in Caddyshack: "Are we in Russia?  This isn't Russia, is it?")

But tribes will be tribes, and some will engage in quixotic combat in an attempt to counter human nature with collective self-righteousness.  But eventually the preaching to the choir will reach its limits, and the aggregate will (as opposed to any collective sort) shall prevail.  I for one applaud the move within some jurisdictions to legislatively demand the phasing out of fossil-fuel vehicles -- but to favor measures to inhibit their replacements seems to me to be profoundly counterproductive; electric (or other) trucks & autos will still need facilities on which to travel; maintaining efficiency of movement will still be a desirable outcome. 

Our species is still homo sapiens; attempting to "morph" the population into homo urbanus communitarius is an exercise in futility well beyond the quixotic!

If anything, PDX needs fewer freeway lane-miles than it presently has.

For its population base, PDX already has fewer freeway lane-miles per capita than most other metro areas (certainly far fewer than any in CA!); much of that is due to major portions of both I-5 and I-205 being 2+2 facilities, although their AADT indicates inadequacy at that level.           

[Hurricane Rex]

I hope they build it anyways. This needs to happen. It needs more lanes than what they are proposing, but this is better than nothing.

On the safety aspect, I want it to be built.

If anything, PDX needs fewer freeway lane-miles than it presently has.

I think it would be wise to add new lanes that aren't general purpose lanes. Portland's freeway network does not have enough HOV lanes.

Agreed but ODOT I'm guessing would rather toll all lanes unfortunately. On a fictional side (I'll be brief) I do have this project in all my tiers but extra HOV lanes are added in tiers 2 and above in both directions. Model after another city for once ODOT.

[Mark68]

And at some point density plays a dirty trick with commute - NYC commutes are longest in US. Hard to imagine 40 minutes trip in 100K area, city is plainly not big enough for that.

Let's go ahead and take the population of New York City, and plop them down in a suburban setting connected by freeways, like Los Angeles or Houston. Then we'll talk commute times.

Unlike NYC, nether LA nor Houston make top 10 worst commute lists.
Here are 2 examples - they don't quite overlap, but NYC is consistently among worst:
http://fortune.com/2016/03/03/us-cities-average-commute-time/
http://wgntv.com/2017/11/01/these-are-the-10-worst-commutes-in-the-u-s-did-your-city-make-the-list/

The Fortune article does put Riverside-San Bernardino on the worst commute times list, and a lot of those commuters do go to LA/Orange County (as evidenced every day on the 91, 60, and 10 freeways).

[Hurricane Rex]

Another anti-freeway group, this time with businesses is growing. Apparently they are to make our plans by the way I'm reading it. God help us. https://www.google.com/amp/s/bikeportland.org/2018/01/31/business-leaders-hear-how-portland-has-fallen-behind-needs-support-to-reach-new-transportation-vision-266163/amp

Link on mobile.

[silverback1065]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/02/06/yep-l/1088205001/

portland was mentioned in this story.  Even cities with incredibly great transit, still have terrible traffic.  What do you guys think about this article?

[kalvado]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/02/06/yep-l/1088205001/

portland was mentioned in this story.  Even cities with incredibly great transit, still have terrible traffic.  What do you guys think about this article?

What is "incredibly great"? Weekday originating rides number in PDX  is just shy of 260K in 2012 - their best year in the decade. That is 130K round-trips.
PDX area population is 2.3 million, that is about 1 million people working at US average workforce participation rate (excluding active military).
Some work from home, some walk to work - and less than 1 in 7 use transit. Probably actual number is below that as unemployed, retired students etc also use transit.
For comparison, Moscow 12 M population has 6.5M daily subway rides - nowhere close to enough. London has 5 M subway rides per 8.5 M population. These numbers are for subway alone.

[Tarkus]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/02/06/yep-l/1088205001/

portland was mentioned in this story.  Even cities with incredibly great transit, still have terrible traffic.  What do you guys think about this article?

What is "incredibly great"?

The perception that PDX's transit is "incredibly great" is really just a show of force by the TriMet/Metro/City of Portland PR machine.  Sometimes, they get caught. 

TriMet is obsessed with the idea of a wheel-and-spoke light rail system that goes in and out of downtown, which doesn't actually fit many common commute patterns in the area, and the lines make too many stops in odd places.  Coupled with the fact that those downtown segments take forever, since they didn't think to use any of the billions of dollars they've spent on the system to grade separate it and alleviate the biggest bottleneck, it takes a long time to get where you need to go using their "pride and joy".  Last time I took the MAX to the airport from Hillsboro, it took 2 1/2 hours.  They've also continually de-funded their bus system for the past two decades, in part to prop up their obsession.

I think the issues are a product of the fact that the infrastructure here is just flat out garbage, and the area simply does not how to handle growth properly.  Everyone's always talking about the "housing crisis" here, but there's also a festering "infrastructure crisis" that is only going to get worse as the former "crisis" dies down.

[Bobby5280]

The ability to engage in commerce -- especially the ability to ascertain and take advantage of competitive pricing among vendors -- is significantly curtailed without the ability to both access said vendors as well as transport any purchases to their destination in short order.  And -- believe it or not -- online shopping can only take you so far (satisfactory if you know exactly what you want) -- but there's a lot of items that require a "hands-on" approach prior to actual purchase (disclaimer: I despise mushy bananas!).  But mobility, decried as it is in certain quarters, is much more than mere shopping -- absent saturation-level transit, it allows one to go about their business (either work-related or personal) regardless of where in the area that business is sited.

I think anti-freeway activists have selfishly lost sight of the basic purpose of city "core" central business districts. The activists think a city's CBD or any other trendy urban area is only there to serve them. They either forget (or ignore) the financial, mathematical fact those zones are built to serve the population of an entire region. Those zones depend on the dollars, not to mention manpower, of people across that entire region. The bicycle riders and pedestrians in the core do not have enough spending money and workforce bodies to sustain all of that.

I frequently visit Oklahoma City, driving up from Lawton. It's easy getting in & out of downtown areas like Bricktown via automobile. And there's a good number of free places to park. If all the freeways inside of the I-44/I-240 partial loop were removed (I-35, I-40, I-235) I would visit downtown OKC far less often. Maybe I'd shift more of my attention to places like Edmond, Norman and Moore. But it's even more likely I would just stay at home.

Building a subway or light rail line wouldn't change much. If I had to drive up I-44, park near Will Rogers Airport to take a train into downtown the train ride part would likely add another hour to my trip time. I would have to leave Lawton considerably earlier to factor in wait times on train platforms, train stops, etc. That would be critical if I was going to a scheduled event, such as a concert or a movie in Dolby Atmos on Harkins' Cine Capri screen. The train ride would add even more cost on top of the fuel and tolls I spent just to get to the outskirts train station. All the more reason to stay at home or go elsewhere in the suburbs. Edmond has a new Dolby Cinema screen up there.

The other truly whacked-out thing from at least some anti-freeway activists is the suggestion to shop online rather than doing business in the city core. I guess they haven't noticed all the closings of brick and mortar retail stores taking place -a record number in 2017. The contagion has been spreading to restaurants, movie theaters and other "get customers out of the house" businesses. "Services Providing" jobs are by far the biggest sector of America's jobs base, 125 million out of 156 million total jobs. Doing as much shopping and business as possible online will eliminate many of those jobs. Retail is taking it in the shorts now. As robotics and AI continue improving a whole lot of white collar jobs will have the digital target painted on their backs.

If these activists get rid of the car commuters, regional shoppers, people who want to party downtown, etc they're going to end up with a city core in decline.

[kalvado]

I think the issues are a product of the fact that the infrastructure here is just flat out garbage, and the area simply does not how to handle growth properly.  Everyone's always talking about the "housing crisis" here, but there's also a festering "infrastructure crisis" that is only going to get worse as the former "crisis" dies down.

My  impression is that PDX is not alone there. It is almost impossible to develop infrastructure with labor costs, property values, NIMBYs and what not.
Problem is that population growth occurs mostly in megacities - where there are problems of housing availability, housing affordability (hello, ever heard of free market?), transit crisis and people being upset over transportation costs... ANd construction costs grow way faster than inflation.

[Bruce]

The ability to engage in commerce -- especially the ability to ascertain and take advantage of competitive pricing among vendors -- is significantly curtailed without the ability to both access said vendors as well as transport any purchases to their destination in short order.  And -- believe it or not -- online shopping can only take you so far (satisfactory if you know exactly what you want) -- but there's a lot of items that require a "hands-on" approach prior to actual purchase (disclaimer: I despise mushy bananas!).  But mobility, decried as it is in certain quarters, is much more than mere shopping -- absent saturation-level transit, it allows one to go about their business (either work-related or personal) regardless of where in the area that business is sited.

I think anti-freeway activists have selfishly lost sight of the basic purpose of city "core" central business districts. The activists think a city's CBD or any other trendy urban area is only there to serve them. They either forget (or ignore) the financial, mathematical fact those zones are built to serve the population of an entire region. Those zones depend on the dollars, not to mention manpower, of people across that entire region. The bicycle riders and pedestrians in the core do not have enough spending money and workforce bodies to sustain all of that.

I frequently visit Oklahoma City, driving up from Lawton. It's easy getting in & out of downtown areas like Bricktown via automobile. And there's a good number of free places to park. If all the freeways inside of the I-44/I-240 partial loop were removed (I-35, I-40, I-235) I would visit downtown OKC far less often. Maybe I'd shift more of my attention to places like Edmond, Norman and Moore. But it's even more likely I would just stay at home.

Building a subway or light rail line wouldn't change much. If I had to drive up I-44, park near Will Rogers Airport to take a train into downtown the train ride part would likely add another hour to my trip time. I would have to leave Lawton considerably earlier to factor in wait times on train platforms, train stops, etc. That would be critical if I was going to a scheduled event, such as a concert or a movie in Dolby Atmos on Harkins' Cine Capri screen. The train ride would add even more cost on top of the fuel and tolls I spent just to get to the outskirts train station. All the more reason to stay at home or go elsewhere in the suburbs. Edmond has a new Dolby Cinema screen up there.

The other truly whacked-out thing from at least some anti-freeway activists is the suggestion to shop online rather than doing business in the city core. I guess they haven't noticed all the closings of brick and mortar retail stores taking place -a record number in 2017. The contagion has been spreading to restaurants, movie theaters and other "get customers out of the house" businesses. "Services Providing" jobs are by far the biggest sector of America's jobs base, 125 million out of 156 million total jobs. Doing as much shopping and business as possible online will eliminate many of those jobs. Retail is taking it in the shorts now. As robotics and AI continue improving a whole lot of white collar jobs will have the digital target painted on their backs.

If these activists get rid of the car commuters, regional shoppers, people who want to party downtown, etc they're going to end up with a city core in decline.

I'm pretty sure the experience of living in Oklahoma is very different from living in the Northwest. Driving around cities in the Pacific Northwest is a miserable experience, with parking being hard to find (or expensive), roads that take you up and down steep hills, and the chaotic environment that comes with being in a densely populated place. You can't just expect to drive around carefree, and you shouldn't.

I'm not sure where you're seeing these strawmen anti-freeway activists, but the demographic that supports non-automobile use generally lives in the city center (or a close-in neighborhood), works in the city center (or nearby), and spends a hefty amount of money at local businesses. In fact, they spend as much (if not more) money compared to drivers, but visit in multiple trips. And the thousands of Portland Timbers and Trailblazers fans who go to the games every week seem to do just fine using transit, their feet, or their pedals to and from the game.

Encouraging downtown patronage also means improving transportation to and from the city center. The only way to add more capacity is to encourage non-automobile uses, not spend a wasteful amount of money on an extra lane that will be instantly clogged like it was before, but with more air/noise pollution and less local connectivity. Most American city cores that embraced transit in the late 1990s are booming now, thanks to the popularity of car-free (or car-lite) living among younger people. Being free of car payments and insurance means more spending money (which is welcome when wages have stagnated and job prospects can be harsh for this generation), which goes back into the local economy instead of being lost to the wind.

One last note: it's much more fun to party while drunk, something that is absolutely 100% irresponsible to do with a car.

[Bobby5280]

I'm pretty sure the experience of living in Oklahoma is very different from living in the Northwest. Driving around cities in the Pacific Northwest is a miserable experience, with parking being hard to find (or expensive), roads that take you up and down steep hills, and the chaotic environment that comes with being in a densely populated place. You can't just expect to drive around carefree, and you shouldn't.

Nevertheless some people (including certain participants in this forum) still float suggestions of greatly limiting highway development in places like Oklahoma City and Tulsa, all to build light rail lines costing untold billions of dollars when there's no proof the rail lines would generate enough ridership to be even remotely self-sufficient. One of the reasons why a metro like OKC is relatively easy to get around is it's fairly de-centralized. The downtown core is not the only attraction. Not everything important in the city is crammed there. That also makes it difficult to build an effective light rail system without having to build lots of different rail lines.

I lived in New York City for 5 years. I used mass transit extensively when I lived there (the subway, city buses and the Staten Island Ferry). There is no point in driving a car to Manhattan unless one has a guaranteed place to park. While driving into a dense city core can be a miserable experience, the mass transit commute experience is not without its own miseries. When I lived on Staten Island my commute to/from Manhattan took 90 minutes each way. Bad weather made those waits at bus stops or walks between different modes of transport even more of a chore. More often than not I spent much of the commute standing (open seats were rare during rush hours), elbow to elbow with other fellow strap-hangers while trying to hold onto all my school supplies crap.

The Pacific Northwest is also well known for windy, rainy weather. Walking and bike riding on a warm, pleasant day is nice. It sucks when the weather is bad.

I'm not sure where you're seeing these strawmen anti-freeway activists, but the demographic that supports non-automobile use generally lives in the city center (or a close-in neighborhood), works in the city center (or nearby), and spends a hefty amount of money at local businesses. In fact, they spend as much (if not more) money compared to drivers, but visit in multiple trips. And the thousands of Portland Timbers and Trailblazers fans who go to the games every week seem to do just fine using transit, their feet, or their pedals to and from the game.

My point wasn't about which camp (downtown residents vs car drivers) was spending more money than the other. My point was the businesses in the downtown core depend on BOTH camps to survive. If it's made impossible for people to reach a destination in a city's core by car then businesses in the core will get hurt both in terms of lost customers and lost manpower.

Encouraging downtown patronage also means improving transportation to and from the city center. The only way to add more capacity is to encourage non-automobile uses, not spend a wasteful amount of money on an extra lane that will be instantly clogged like it was before, but with more air/noise pollution and less local connectivity. Most American city cores that embraced transit in the late 1990s are booming now, thanks to the popularity of car-free (or car-lite) living among younger people. Being free of car payments and insurance means more spending money (which is welcome when wages have stagnated and job prospects can be harsh for this generation), which goes back into the local economy instead of being lost to the wind.

Those younger people are blowing the money they're not spending on car payments, plus quite a bit more, on soaring housing costs. In New York City the number of homeless people has shot up dramatically (over 70,000 now) and many of these new homeless are people with jobs. The problem is costing NYC quite a lot of money since they're one of few cities in North America with a "right to shelter" law on its books.

[Sub-Urbanite]

...all to build light rail lines costing untold billions of dollars when there's no proof the rail lines would generate enough ridership to be even remotely self-sufficient.

Roads 👏 aren't 👏 remotely 👏 self 👏 sufficient 👏 either

[sparker]

...all to build light rail lines costing untold billions of dollars when there's no proof the rail lines would generate enough ridership to be even remotely self-sufficient.

Roads 👏 aren't 👏 remotely 👏 self 👏 sufficient 👏 either

There is no publicly owned and operated transportation system, whether designed to be utilized individually or collectively, that generates enough direct or indirect (the latter historically referring to fuel taxation) revenue to be self-supporting.  Theoretically, mass (transit) systems are supposed to come closer to this state than roadways intended for personal and/or commercial usage; but by the time the mandated specifications for breadth of service are even partially met the capital outlay to achieve this is more often than not staggering!  The political reality is that both road and transit facilities attempt to be all things to all potential users/customers -- but rarely is that even approached much less achieved. 

The perception that PDX's transit is "incredibly great" is really just a show of force by the TriMet/Metro/City of Portland PR machine.  Sometimes, they get caught. 

TriMet is obsessed with the idea of a wheel-and-spoke light rail system that goes in and out of downtown, which doesn't actually fit many common commute patterns in the area, and the lines make too many stops in odd places.  Coupled with the fact that those downtown segments take forever, since they didn't think to use any of the billions of dollars they've spent on the system to grade separate it and alleviate the biggest bottleneck, it takes a long time to get where you need to go using their "pride and joy".  Last time I took the MAX to the airport from Hillsboro, it took 2 1/2 hours.  They've also continually de-funded their bus system for the past two decades, in part to prop up their obsession.

This concept of functionally requiring LR system users to traverse downtown regardless of where in the metro area they need to go, described as a "feature" of the TriMet system in PDX, is duplicated down here in San Jose with the VMT (Valley Metro Transit) LR system, which has, since the first segments opened back in 1990, clearly engaged in this sort of program.  In an attempt to turn the classic housing arrangement on its head (with housing in the city center and employment at the perimeter, opposing the historic idiom), a convoluted configuration was made, with the original batch of lines taking indirect routes to the city center, which was intended to be the system hub.  However, with their infinite lack of common sense, the VMT LR hub ended up at North 1st and Tasman -- out in the employment zone (right in the middle of Cisco Central).  The lower-income residents of the East Side were given very short shrift by such planning -- and those constituted many of the folks who would benefit from a direct path downtown (as the crow flies, from the north/east branch of the LR network, the "Alum Rock" line terminus at the north end of Capitol Expressway, it's about 3 miles from downtown -- but the LR journey requires about 12 miles of travel up to Tasman and First and back toward downtown.  This system was designed to ferry coders and other IT workers from their places of employment to where VMT thought they'd prefer to live -- they expected the original "yuppie" idiom to prevail, with downtown condos the preferred residence of choice.  But they were confronted with great numbers of folks with families whose residential requirements generally precluded small urban apartments.  VMT LR was built on "spec" to an idiomatic but overblown standard; what the planners thought would be ideal overrode what was actually happening on the ground!  LR ridership has, at best, plateaued; and the roller-coaster ride that is the employment data in many of these firms, particularly those engaged in commercial networking, has wreaked havoc on the overall ridership.  But in spite of this, suggestions that the system expand to address already congested regional corridors (particularly the Stevens Creek/I-280 corridor extending west from downtown) have been dismissed in favor of extending the existing lines;  to placate the East Side community, the Alum Rock line will be extended in the next few years southeast to the Oakridge Mall (which has been losing occupants like so many other malls), even though the other (NW) direction goes right by the "Great Mall" in south Milpitas.  Reality has yet to sink in at VMT; if my experiences with PDX Metro back in the mid-'90's are any indication, the same applies up there as well! 

[Bobby5280]

I don't think financial reality or reality in general has set in for these urban "planners" dreaming of moving people from the far flung suburbs into the city core. Housing in downtown areas is getting too damned expensive. Price differences are extreme when talking cost per square foot of living space. Very often people chose the location where they live based on what they can afford. If they insist on living in a high cost downtown location their choice may involve serious compromises, like sharing the space with one or more roommates.

Just this morning while driving to work I was listening to a comedian on the Bob & Tom show talking about his living arrangment (in NYC, IIRC); he and his girlfriend share their apartment with another couple, all of whom work to share living costs. That's effectively 4 roomates. If you're crowded into a downtown apartment with other people you're not going to be buying very much "stuff" to store there, not like you would with a standalone house. That kind of existence isn't great for bringing new babies into the world.

I'm not surprised to hear San Jose is short-changing lower income residents on light rail service. What qualifies as "lower income" in San Jose? Any salary less than $100,000 per year? Limited rail and bus service to "poor" people will be another thing to threaten the manpower base of service industry jobs. The notion of transit authorities designing rail lines to bounce riders through the the downtown core on all sorts of trips seems silly. It will make people hate taking the train and consider other options. But the option of moving to the city core is financially out of reach for many people. That leaves lots of people living well outside the core and still using their cars.

City cores have plenty of their own downsides. They're crowded. The noise can keep you awake at night. I still remember the smells of the commute to Manhattan on ground level and in the subway. Bus exhaust and that orange juice smelling cleaning fluid the MTA would use to partially cover up the smell of piss in the subway stations are both smells tattooed into my memory.

Roads 👏 aren't 👏 remotely 👏 self 👏 sufficient 👏 either

They cost a hell of a lot less to build than a glorified railroad. Mile for mile a light rail line costs more than a freeway. Subways take construction costs way into the stratosphere.

Streets and highways are getting excessively expensive to build and maintain, but for every cost increase that happens with roads the increases will shoot up even worse with rail. There is no such thing as a cost efficient passenger rail line, at least not in the United States.

[Hurricane Rex]

Roads 👏 aren't 👏 remotely 👏 self 👏 sufficient 👏 either

They cost a hell of a lot less to build than a glorified railroad. Mile for mile a light rail line costs more than a freeway. Subways take construction costs way into the stratosphere.

Streets and highways are getting excessively expensive to build and maintain, but for every cost increase that happens with roads the increases will shoot up even worse with rail. There is no such thing as a cost efficient passenger rail line, at least not in the United States.

On a per person who uses the system basis (Portland Perspective): Freeways are less expensive than light rail in almost every place (looking at you Vista Ridge Tunnel).

[sparker]

Roads 👏 aren't 👏 remotely 👏 self 👏 sufficient 👏 either

They cost a hell of a lot less to build than a glorified railroad. Mile for mile a light rail line costs more than a freeway. Subways take construction costs way into the stratosphere.

Streets and highways are getting excessively expensive to build and maintain, but for every cost increase that happens with roads the increases will shoot up even worse with rail. There is no such thing as a cost efficient passenger rail line, at least not in the United States.

On a per person who uses the system basis (Portland Perspective): Freeways are less expensive than light rail in almost every place (looking at you Vista Ridge Tunnel).

I was living in Portland when the shit hit the fan about Vista Ridge; the planners (and the preliminary geological findings) presumed that the ridge was comprised of a few layers of muddy earth over a relatively solid core; when it was discovered that what was in the center of the ridge was basically a pile of individual rocks (shattered shale) that tended to stop boring machines in their tracks the choice was to redesign the route (more or less staying near the surface along US 26) or continue the original planned tunnel, albeit with immense cost overruns.  The latter course of action prevailed, and, of course, the tunnel opened about 3 years behind schedule (but with an added interior station platform serving an elevator to the city zoo up on the hilltop).  Construction involved a lot of "old-school" digging and blasting through the rocks, which of course added time and labor expense to the final tab.   The lesson, which was rediscovered later with the Seattle dig, is that rock formations in the Northwest are never as presupposed (the "measure twice and cut once" mantra seems not to have sunk in with the folks planning these projects).     

[kkt]

Light rail is more expensive than freeway, but it occupies less land and can realistically be tunneled where a freeway would be prohibitive.  And potentially the light rail line can carry more people, although demand is not always that high.

[Plutonic Panda]

The last part is the deal breaker. Demand has to be there and since it is possible to build freeways in this fashion(we have before) if it isn't, than it's against the will of the people.

[jakeroot]

The last part is the deal breaker. Demand has to be there and since it is possible to build freeways in this fashion (we have before) if it isn't, than it's against the will of the people.

Zoning law modifications can create demand where it might be low. These modifications can create neighborhoods geared more towards transit, lessening the strain on nearby roads.

[silverback1065]

Light rail is more expensive than freeway, but it occupies less land and can realistically be tunneled where a freeway would be prohibitive.  And potentially the light rail line can carry more people, although demand is not always that high.

the geniuses here banned that in Indy, now with the amazon hq, they are thinking of changing this.

[hotdogPi]

the geniuses here banned that in Indy, now with the amazon hq, they are thinking of changing this.

Where did you get the classified information of the final decision for Amazon's second headquarters?

[silverback1065]

the geniuses here banned that in Indy, now with the amazon hq, they are thinking of changing this.

Where did you get the classified information of the final decision for Amazon's second headquarters?

no where, apparently Indy is in the top 15 for some reason (according to several news sites).  I personally hope we don't get it.

[Duke87]

If anything, PDX needs fewer freeway lane-miles than it presently has.

Okay I'll bite. Why? Please explain the rationale behind this statement.

it's much more fun to party while drunk, something that is absolutely 100% irresponsible to do with a car.

And this is one perk of transit access.

Most trips, however, are not to a party. Nor does everyone who goes to a party have a desire to consume alcohol. So this is a niche consideration, which does not impact the viability of car travel as a mode transportation in the vast majority of cases.

Don't get me wrong, public transit is great - I have nothing against it and generally support building it out to the degree that it is viable.

But so is car travel. And I just don't see why it is necessary to oppose the buildout of legitimately useful infrastructure. As you say, the extra lane will be "instantly clogged like it was before" - good! That means it'll be seeing a lot of use, and more people will be able to get through where they're going. I fail to see the problem here.