Chief
12-28-2007, 05:24 AM
http://www.oregonlive.com/editorials/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/editorial/119879971494730.xml&coll=7
Despite a congressional mandate, the administration tries to knock Portland's streetcar system off track
Friday, December 28, 2007
W e like streetcars for a startlingly simple reason. They work. And not just as mass transit. Streetcars serve also as:
Engines of economic revitalization.
Builders of urban livability
Catalysts of civic health.
Since this week brings news that the White House, despite explicit congressional instruction, doesn't understand any of this, we'll explain how.
In a manner matched by no other mode of mass transit, streetcars are smart, smooth and, yes, we can say it in a family newspaper, sexy. They engender high-rise real estate development along their routes. This generates enhanced tax revenues from properties, especially in inner cities, long stalled as underperformers.
By encouraging close-in population density, thus reducing car commuter travel, streetcars enhance our urban airsheds and help reduce our reliance on overseas oil.
By facilitating a more pedestrian-oriented lifestyle, streetcars spur public health, slowing the skyrocketing social costs associated with our newest national epidemic: obesity.
As we said, they work.
Which perhaps explains why more than 60 cities across the country are scurrying to follow Portland's lead and start laying track. Now along comes the Federal Transit Administration -- goaded by the White House Office of Management and Budget -- with a wickedly contrarian view.
They don't like streetcars.
They like buses.
(Memo to the White House: Nobody ever described a bus as sexy.)
In 2005, Congress passed legislation, introduced by Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., to launch a Small Starts transit program to jumpstart more streetcars. Federal officials, clearly flouting the law, carefully skewed the evaluation process in favor of buses. The result: Other cities aren't even bothering to apply.
Portland officials are right to press forward with their request for $75 million, about half the proposed cost of extending the streetcar from the Pearl District, across the Broadway Bridge, to loop south along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Grand Avenue. There it's expected to trigger more than 4,500 new condos and apartments, essentially allowing the vibrancy of downtown to leap the great divide that is the Willamette River.
In Portland, we've found that streetcars run from one booming area in Northwest to another rapidly rising neighborhood in South Waterfront. We've also found that they run to a promising urban future.
The administration should join us and Congress and hop aboard.
Despite a congressional mandate, the administration tries to knock Portland's streetcar system off track
Friday, December 28, 2007
W e like streetcars for a startlingly simple reason. They work. And not just as mass transit. Streetcars serve also as:
Engines of economic revitalization.
Builders of urban livability
Catalysts of civic health.
Since this week brings news that the White House, despite explicit congressional instruction, doesn't understand any of this, we'll explain how.
In a manner matched by no other mode of mass transit, streetcars are smart, smooth and, yes, we can say it in a family newspaper, sexy. They engender high-rise real estate development along their routes. This generates enhanced tax revenues from properties, especially in inner cities, long stalled as underperformers.
By encouraging close-in population density, thus reducing car commuter travel, streetcars enhance our urban airsheds and help reduce our reliance on overseas oil.
By facilitating a more pedestrian-oriented lifestyle, streetcars spur public health, slowing the skyrocketing social costs associated with our newest national epidemic: obesity.
As we said, they work.
Which perhaps explains why more than 60 cities across the country are scurrying to follow Portland's lead and start laying track. Now along comes the Federal Transit Administration -- goaded by the White House Office of Management and Budget -- with a wickedly contrarian view.
They don't like streetcars.
They like buses.
(Memo to the White House: Nobody ever described a bus as sexy.)
In 2005, Congress passed legislation, introduced by Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., to launch a Small Starts transit program to jumpstart more streetcars. Federal officials, clearly flouting the law, carefully skewed the evaluation process in favor of buses. The result: Other cities aren't even bothering to apply.
Portland officials are right to press forward with their request for $75 million, about half the proposed cost of extending the streetcar from the Pearl District, across the Broadway Bridge, to loop south along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Grand Avenue. There it's expected to trigger more than 4,500 new condos and apartments, essentially allowing the vibrancy of downtown to leap the great divide that is the Willamette River.
In Portland, we've found that streetcars run from one booming area in Northwest to another rapidly rising neighborhood in South Waterfront. We've also found that they run to a promising urban future.
The administration should join us and Congress and hop aboard.