The press-lead rush to widen a freeway into Portland fails to make incentive for more scalable and sustainable transportation and lifestyle choices. In fact, it subsidizes the opposite. More single occupant cars honking into the city, slurping oil (ah, the expensive teat of Iraq).
On two recent mornings, I've woken up to read
articles posted on the
Oregonian online which tell us of the urgency in widening the Interstate 5 freeway in North Portland.
There is a choke-point here, we are told. Commuters' nerves are at stake! What will happen to the economy if trucks can't get through!? (Maybe they'll travel at night when the commuters have gone to bed in Vancouver?)
Consider Seattle
I moved to North Portland after living in the traffic gridlock hell that is Seattle. In Seattle, the people who live in the suburbs
sing the same song; we must widen the freeways at any cost so we can get in and out of the city faster. These expensive roads shall be paid for by all, through the tax system, and those who live close to the jobs
in the city will suffer our passing.
The funniest part of all this highway building, is that even with all those lanes, you still get traffic jams at almost anytime of day or night.
Insert picture of Seattle traffic here.
One of my memories of Seattle is I-5 being a parking lot, even late on a Sunday night. When people in a large city have no choice but to drive everywhere (e.g. for a loaf of bread), its amazing how poorly it scales.
The Folly of Excessive Freeway Building: Subsidized Sprawl
There are a couple of problems with the logic of endless freeway building. First, it has been shown that building more freeways encourages more driving. "Build it and they will come", is the slogan. Second, as soon as the cars get past one bottleneck, they will hit another, until finally, the blocks of downtown are an unlivable hell of honking, pollution, and gridlock (see: Downtown Seattle) for much of the day.
Portland: Utopia
Enter Portland, Oregon, a famously-progressive city with modern transportation alternatives such as
light rail and a
streetcar system. Portland does city design right!
Wait a second, if Portland is so wise when it comes to the limitations of car-based transit (see: Los Angeles), then why is it considering spending 4-5 billion on widening the I-5 bridge at the Oregon/Washington border, when there are other,
more pressing needs?
Is there a dedicated bus lane over the existing, six-lane bridge? No. Is there a carpool lane over the bridge? No. Does the light rail that runs through North Portland enter Vancouver? No, but it comes
very close.
Everybody is a Critic, So What is My Solution
My solution to the North Portland I-5 traffic problem is to make a point
not to fix it. Let the single-occupant commuters rot in it. Create an incentive for other, more scalable transportation options and lifestyle choices. Finally, make another option available. There is negative incentive to take the bus; not only does it, too, sit in traffic, but it only comes when it wants to, and it makes a lot of stops. Instead,
the light rail should be extended to provide service to Vancouver (where most of this I-5 traffic originates), and the bridge should not be modified until it actually needs it.
The path of building roads until people stop complaining is never ending, and makes for a very unlivable core city, encouraging people to live in the suburbs (Got to have some quiet from all that traffic!). In short, widening I-5 at this point goes against what Portland supposedly stands for.
Vancouver, BC Validates My Position
If you doubt my approach of
not building huge freeways in the city center, just compare downtown Seattle with Vancouver, B.C. Vancouver is much more livable, and they've made a point of not running any major freeways through the center. Many more people live
in Vancouver, so you feel safe
walking around at 2am. Much of downtown Seattle is a shady ghost town at night. All the suburbanites have fled the office buildings. The few homeless people are much more noticable.
Pick the Cheapest, Greenest Option
As Jill Fuglister of
CLF puts it, lawmakers considering what to do with the Columbia River crossing should choose the
cheapest, greenest option.
