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So, back to Randal O’Toole’s Debunking Portland. Everyone would have to admit that a key goal of the whole Portland effort was to reduce the use of cars. So a couple of decades, if not more, into this experiment and how are we doing? Overall Transit Usage is Down “More than 97 percent of all motorized passenger travel (and virtually all freight movement) in the Portland area is by automobile.” “Portland transit usage grew faster than driving in the 1990s,” but “transit’s share declined in the 1980s, when the region’s first light-rail line was under construction. In 1980 more than 2.6 percent of motorized passenger travel in the Portland area used transit. By 1990, that had fallen to 1.8 percent. […]

I walk to work, and I cannot for the life of me understand how people can sit in traffic for hours. I love cars–especially fast cars. Schizophrenic? No, just a pretty even-handed observer of the Smart Growthies’ passion for mass transit and walkable cities and the car-lovers’ and business’ passion for get up and go. I have given up on seeing an absolutely objective narrative of how well or poorly Portland’s Urban Growth Boundary/transit-oriented development experiment has gone. I would note that Randal O’Toole of the Cato Institute, long-time resident of Portland and author of the about to be released The Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook and Your Future, is as systematic an […]