If there's a uniting cause among regional leaders, one issue looming above all others in cities from the Tualatin Valley to the Sandy River, it's transportation.
The movement of people was brought up more than any other topic in a series of interviews with regional leaders this autumn. By and large, these leaders discussed a range of transportation solutions they wanted for their communities.
The aspirations cross modes and party lines. In one breath, conservative Washington County Chair Andy Duyck talks about wanting to see a new streetcar line and a new expressway. Lake Oswego Mayor Jack Hoffman, one of the region's more liberal mayors, wants see bike and pedestrian improvements in his city, and congestion improvements beyond the boundaries.
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It's a sign that transportation issues have gotten significantly more complex over time. The one-stop solution of adding more asphalt is no longer perceived as viable, even in auto-dominated suburbs, as skyrocketing material and construction costs and looming state emissions rules have forced a rethinking of traditional transportation answers.
"You can't build a building without water and sewer. It's illegal and you can't do it," said Tualatin Mayor Lou Ogden. But, he said, buildings often go up with no thought to transportation beyond a local street. "A transportation network to service that building totally, whether it's rail, transit, roads… you can build a building without having the transportation.
"And therefore we do, and therefore we never get out of the quagmire."
Moving vehicles
On a recent weekend afternoon, traffic was crawling on Scholls Ferry Road in southern Beaverton. A four-lane boulevard west of Highway 217, Scholls Ferry is already overtaxed by cars heading to and from homes, apartments and businesses in and around the Murray Scholls regional center.
And the problem is compounding itself. Progress Ridge, a shopping complex with an upscale grocery, a cineplex and retail stores surrounding a one-acre parking lot, recently opened. The Metro Council just added 600 acres to the urban growth boundary just west of here, near the intersection of Scholls Ferry and Roy Rogers Road.
Yes, streets will have to be widened, says Beaverton Mayor Denny Doyle. "And nobody's afraid of that," he says. But Doyle hopes that offering amenities close in, and smart development plans in the new area, will entice people to stay out of their cars for short trips.
Many suburban leaders, though, are less optimistic about the prospect of keeping people out of their cars in the cities that ring Portland.
Fairview Mayor Mike Weatherby is openly skeptical of the bicycle's ability to improve his community, despite having "ridden a bicycle longer than most people have lived."
But, he says, "I don't kid myself that I'm going to go down to Costco with my bike, or even to load up a week's worth of groceries at Fred Meyer."
It works in inner Portland, Weatherby says, but his city needs vehicle lanes for commuters and interstate freight traffic.
"What's the purpose of going out to bring in industry if you say 'Whatever you do, when you order parts, have it bicycled in?'" he said.
In a respect, Fairview is fortunate – it has a freight corridor going through it. Happy Valley wants one, said Mayor Lori DeRemer, in the form of the Sunrise Corridor, a planned freeway to parallel Highway 212 east of Interstate 205.
"Continued funding for the development of the Sunrise Corridor is essential to economic development and to support the regional decision to expand the urban growth boundary on the east side," DeRemer said in an email.
Hoffman, the Lake Oswego mayor, reads a list of transportation improvements his community needs like he's grocery shopping. The Sellwood Bridge is on it, as is Highway 217. Macadam Avenue and I-205 and the Columbia River Crossing all impact Lake Oswego's employees' ability to get to work, and employers' ability to move people and products.
Walkable vitality
But the Lake Oswego City Council can't do much about congestion in those areas; even its recent attempt to plan for congestion reduction on Macadam Avenue, possibly by building a streetcar, has turned into a regional political brouhaha.
On a smaller scale, improving pedestrian networks is key, Hoffman says, for a variety of reasons.
First, it could help improve the economic situation on Boones Ferry Road, where the city hopes to bolster the Lake Grove area. "We need to make the street pedestrian and bicycle and car friendly to make it really work," Hoffman said. If Lake Oswego does the public infrastructure, the private sector should respond.
"Private investment follows public dollars," Hoffman says. "Of course we have a bad economy. But you have to do it now if something's going to happen in 2020. If we don't do it now, it won't happen until 2080."
If it sounds like hyperbole, consider the history – Lake Grove was once its own city, merged with Oswego in 1959 to form Lake Oswego. The city leaders in the 1970s lived on the city's east side, which got the attention for commercial vitality. Where Lake Grove is a blink-and-you-miss-it collection of strip malls along Boones Ferry, downtown Lake Oswego resembles a thriving small city, in part because of past investments.
Beaverton leaders think improving walkability will make for a more vibrant downtown. They're investments Beaverton is ready to make, with the city moving towards implementing an urban renewal plan to fund a transportation redesign in its downtown.
"We have to work with ODOT… to discuss what we can do to Canyon Road to make sure freight moves through there and it becomes a pedestrian/bicycle friendly avenue," says Mayor Denny Doyle. "We know it can be done."
Doyle, development director Don Mazziotti and consultants have been making the rounds for months, talking about their plan for a revitalized downtown Beaverton. Key among the plans is simply providing drivers with a visual cue that they're in a pedestrian-friendly area, and providing incentives for pedestrians to walk around what is now thoroughly covered in asphalt and concrete.
"If we don't fix Canyon Road, we're going to have a hard time getting anybody to downtown Beaverton to walk around," Doyle said.
Why does it matter?
"The city has to learn to adjust to what the 20 year olds want to see happen, because the world has changed," he said. "People want a downtown that's compact, walkable and bikeable, so that's what we have to do. We can't kid ourselves."
Transit answers
Of course, Beaverton already has the third transportation leg of a lively downtown, with three rail lines and several bus lines connecting it to the rest of the region. Customers have no problem getting to downtown Beaverton, they just have a hard time getting beyond the transit stop when they get there.
Other places aren't so lucky.
In Fairview, Weatherby said he's had no luck convincing TriMet to run transit service north of Sandy Boulevard, near employment areas.
At a recent Gresham Chamber of Commerce meeting, a representative of one company that relocated from Portland complained that his employees can't get to work via transit anymore.
"They've (TriMet) come out and run studies twice," Weatherby said, but TriMet's models didn't warrant any bus service in the area.
Others, like Oregon City Mayor Doug Neeley, talk about restoring the region's streetcar service.
"There might be some real benefit to having a streetcar system that would come down McLoughlin into Oregon City," Neeley said. That would help commuters, as well as businesses in his city's downtown core.
Removing barriers
When Sam Adams is asked about transportation, he focuses on the trip not taken. He doesn't pitch a needed transit project or new bike lanes, but instead talks about reducing freight congestion region-wide by providing for shorter trips for trucks.
Portland Mayor Sam Adams says that it's important to revitalize Portland's industrial brownfields, like those along the Willamette River. "There's a lot less congestion between the industrial sanctuaries of Portland and the marine and air and rail and truck terminals of the region," Portland's mayor says, "than there is from the outer boundaries of the region."
He emphasized that he doesn't think employers and manufacturers should be forced to locate on the brownfields in his city, but he wants prospective companies to have options on where to site.
"Are they going to go to a greenfield development that might mean more congestion, or are they going to have a site closer to do their logistical work?" Adams said.
That means cleaning up the city's industrial sites, a somewhat thankless pursuit under Oregon's land use laws, at least compared to expanding the urban growth boundary for new greenfields.
"If you're looking to locate a business, you're not going to locate it – even if it's centrally-located, where you can avoid congestion – you're not going to do it on polluted land that you end up having to pay for," Adams said. "And yet there is no mechanism in place to deal with polluted industrial land under state law.
"The state law is antiquated," he said, because it doesn't address brownfield cleanup. "Urban growth boundary laws were cutting edge 30 years ago, and now, I think, they're ossified."