Local officials, faced with tough choices about a proposed transit connection between Portland and Lake Oswego, got little clarity Monday night at a packed public hearing on the project.
A surprisingly civil crowd of about 80 people was nearly evenly split between opponents and proponents of the transit project. The three-hour hearing was held at Lake Oswego's Lakewood Center for the Arts.
Metro, in coordination with several agencies, is working on an environmental study of the transit proposal. With the Oregon Department of Transportation saying a widening of Highway 43 would be prohibitively expensive, the study is focusing on enhanced bus service or a new streetcar line as the two best options to improve capacity on the corridor.
While the hearing was formally part of the public feedback process for the environmental study of the project, many used the hearing as an opportunity to lobby the elected officials who will ultimately make the decisions about funding the project. A panel that included Metro Councilor Kathryn Harrington, Clackamas County Commissioner Ann Lininger, Multnomah County Commissioner Deborah Kafoury and Lake Oswego Mayor Jack Hoffman listened to the testimony. Metro Councilor Shirley Craddick and several Lake Oswego city councilors sat in the audience.
Opponents of the project focused on its cost of the streetcar, and the impacts it would have on Lake Oswego's downtown area.
Nearly 80 people testified at a public hearing about the Lake Oswego transit study on Monday. "I ride TriMet frequently. I'd love to ride … to downtown Portland and not hit a bumpy road," said David Elton, one of about 40 people to testify against the streetcar proposal. "Am I willing to pay $460 million for that? No. I think this is a great idea, but the time is not right. It's not effective. Not enough people would ride it."
But several of more than 35 streetcar proponents to speak said new developments along the streetcar line would benefit Lake Oswego.
"We can no longer kick the can down the road," said Lake Oswego resident Henry Kass. "We are going to have a million more people in this metropolitan area. And while not all of them are going to come to Lake Oswego, we do want to have a new, young and growing population, and we want part of those folks here with us."
Opponents question cost, new development
Many of the project's opponents focused on the wisdom of using government intervention to spur development in the Foothills area of Lake Oswego.
"The people don't want the streetcar, the Foothills development, the local improvement district or free federal money," said Art Scevola, one of the speakers at the hearing. "Let the markets speak when ready by getting government out of the way."
Tom Maginnis, a self-described advocate of public transportation who said he'd lived in Tokyo, Washington and New York City, said the conditions in Lake Oswego weren't right for high capacity transit.
"Light rail (streetcar) is mainly useful to add value to the Foothills properties, at enormous taxpayer expense," he said. "If the goal is to get Foothills connected to Portland, that could be achieved by a fraction of the cost by connecting Foothills to the existing Milwaukie line by a new train bridge."
The streetcar project is estimated to cost between $379 and $458 million, with local governments projected to be responsible for as much as $83 million of that.
Several speakers at the hearing, including Diane Cassidy, questioned whether a streetcar might actually decrease transit usage in the area.
"The streetcar is not being built for me, or most Lake Oswegans, or people from West Linn or Oregon City," she said. "Lake Oswego is not Portland, nor should it be. Congestion on Highway 43 will not be relieved by streetcar."
Cassidy and others wondered whether people who currently ride a bus along Highway 43 would continue to do so if they had to transfer from a bus to a streetcar before getting downtown.
Other opponents of the project spoke about concerns about the placement of the streetcar corridor itself, much of which would run along the old Willamette Shore Trolley line, near homes and over streams.
"Fisheries would be impacted… species would be disturbed or killed, including coho and Chinook salmon," said Lauren Hughes.
Almost all of the opponents of the streetcar said they favored some sort of improved bus connection to Portland. Many of them said they favored the enhanced bus service, which the draft environmental study estimates would cost about $51 million.
"We keep hearing, if we don't take the federal money, someone else will. That doesn't mean we have to take it," said Michelle Mehrabi. "Is a transportation project more important than educating our children and providing public safety?"
Benefits touted by streetcar proponents
Many speakers who favored the streetcar proposal said the rail system would improve investment and quality of life along the corridor. One of the speakers, Rob Fallow, said it might be a benefit to the schools.
"Lake Oswego taxpayers will get new construction jobs during the development of Foothills, as well as construction of the streetcar," he said. "That will generate construction excise taxes to schools, and might be a potential solution to our looming sewage treatment plant problem."
Jonathan Stoehr, a doctor at OHSU, said hundreds of people in his Lake Oswego neighborhood would use it as an alternative to driving.
"Lake Oswego is not a suburb of Lubbock. It is not a suburb of Omaha. We are a suburb of Portland and people that come to our city, to work and raise a family, expect different services than they do in Lubbock or Omaha. Streetcar is the only alternative with sufficient reliability and speed to change the calculation a Lake Oswego resident would make when thinking about how to get to work."
Several Johns Landing residents spoke in favor of the streetcar as a way to spur development in their community, and to better connect it to the South Waterfront.
"There is virtually unanimous support in Johns Landing, including people understanding we're going to have to pay local improvement district fees for streetcar to come there," said Vern Rifer, one of the members of the study's citizens advisory committee. "They understand they will have a better neighborhood when that's over."
Streetcar proponent Warren Caldwell, 90, questioned those who said they were afraid of negative impacts of the streetcar project.
"I've been in a B-17 over Germany, with flack all around me. Talk about fear – that's fear," Caldwell said.
Longtime Lake Oswego resident Dee Denton pointed out other projects that have brought out mass opposition in the past.
"People were against the water treatment plant. They were against the high school swimming pool. They were against Mountain Park, against the Mormon temple – people came out in droves. They were against the Kruse Way corridor," she said. "People that oppose things have to think about the future."
The public comment period remains open through January 31.