to be fair.

He came in last in a six-way election because Christopher Smith and Jeff Bissonette ran very similar campaigns with similar platforms and ended up splitting demographics such as "the bike vote." If either one of them hadn't run for office, I think the other would have given your boy Charles Lewis a run for the second spot.

"to be fair."

To be fair none of the candidates have a clue on how to run a city efficiently including college drop-out Sam Adams. They only have big dreams of how to play with taxpayer money.

How will they pay for operating streetcars? Can you say more potholes and Sellwood Bridge collapsing?

There is this little thing called a "Local Improvement District". It is already in place (since about 2000)on the East Side; all mapped out and ready to go and it shows the percentages of the assesments that will be charged to each business along the entire route for several blocks on either side of the tracks. So far those of us with commercial property have received 2 revised estimates of the tax. Each one significantly more than the previous one. So get ready for the small businesses to pay for it all, if we don't go broke first.
The big boys have already made their one time, flat rate deals with the city just like Homer did in the Pearl.

Scant transportation benefits.

Of the many iffy transportation schemes in this city, extending the street car is the one that really drives me nuts.

Extending the MAX here and there isn't great either, but I can see what their reasoning is, since they really believe it's an actually commuter tool (debatable).

But extending the street car? Buses can go everywhere a street car can go, and are infinitely more flexible. Once you put in very expensive street car track, it's there. Why not run a bus down that same street. You might find it has poor ridership, and the route should be moved two streets over. Try doing that with a street car once you've laid the tracks.

Dear Deeds et al,
ALL of these arguments and more, were presented "way back when" at the beginning of the Pearl Street car fiasco. That was when some of poor suckers actually believed that "stakeholder in put" would count for something.
Forget it, don't waste your breath. The only way the street car will be axed is if the feds do not provide any money, and "Gor-dum" and Earl the Pearl have been "takin' care of bidness". Bring that pork on home boys! the developer weasels are waiting.

It's sad to see Blumenhauer get away with using the gasoline price spike as an excuse to build more trains. I've heard and read mass transit riders pay 20 percent or less of the total cost of their transit at the fare box. For MAX, it's probably even less what with all the free riders. So, according to Blumenhauer, the mass transit subsidies aren't high enough, and they need to be expanded. Very sad he can sell this line of jive.

Fixed transit on the east side is the key to uniting it with the west side and downtown proper. With the convention center, lloyd center are, rose garden, etc on the east side, not to mention acres of potential, this is an obvious move.

The guy who says "why not buses" is a *****. Seriously bro, get out of your little tiny world and realize that not only are there people who are paid to study transit corridors and identify ridership BEFORE it occurs (there are metrics available, one is bus ridership!) but there are also about a million people in this metro alone that understand that the FIXED INFRASTRUCTURE of a streetcar is superior in terms of driving development than buses. Nobody likes buses, they're bad for traffic, bad to rid, usually bad for noise and as you pointed out, they can move. Why invest in an area if the bus might just get canceled or move two blocks away one day.

There are many reasons to be suspicious, to question the PDX government in particular the new Mayor. Please remember, however, that you know very little and you've clearly made no effort to expand your horizons beyond your front porch. Kindly step out of the way and allow the rest of the world to take your city to the next level. We know you're scared but ultimately, we don't really care.

Thank you for your last comment on this blog.

Ironic that you're posting from Kimpton Hotels.

"the FIXED INFRASTRUCTURE of a streetcar is superior in terms of driving development than buses"

Bro, this is exactly why TriMet, FTA, etc. think spending money on the streetcar is a bad idea. They're in the business of moving people, not driving development.

The streetcar could easily turn out to be a fad development driver, anyway. What happens when the streetcar loses its luster as a hip way to get around?

History is littered with mistakes that happen when cities use grandiose transportation projects to drive development. If history is any guide, once COP makes enough of these mistakes, residents will overreact by rejecting progressive land use planning entirely.

I like that even TriMet staff is calling it out for lack of transportation value:

"Some staff members at TriMet have opposed using TriMet operating funds for the east-side loop, saying that the project has scant transportation benefits and is little more than a subsidy for developers."

Streetcar fanatics in the pockets of developers (Chris Smith): why not propose replacing a long-standing, heavily used bus route on the east side (say, #14), instead of this virtually useless little circulator loop that is a transportation solution in search of a problem?

If either one of them hadn't run for office, I think the other would have given your boy Charles Lewis a run for the second spot.

Streetcar Smith will never get elected to anything. If he thinks all his committee meeting time is going to pay off with some elective office or other, he needs to have coffee with Matt Hennessee.

HEY EARL!

How about pulling a new Sellwood Bridge out of the federal tooth fairy hat?

NONREDNECKUSER:

Don't tax me BRO! Not for a streetcar that's slower than a speedwalking grannie.

"Ironic that you're posting from Kimpton Hotels."

Gee, how can Chris Smith afford a Kimpton Hotel on his computer tech salary?

Besides LIDs, Blumy and Smith will be proposing that parking meters be installed throughout the inner eastside and the Lloyd District and skim all the revenue for the trolley like they did in SoWhat. Then they will rob the right-of-way fees paid by utilities for all the city streets to add to the pot.

The trolley mafia is insidious, and they smile while doing it.

C. Smith, "Sherwood," "nonredneckuser," and company :

Are you aware of a non-biased, detailed, point by point analysis of just how much coal is burned by our streetcars, circa 2008, per passenger mile per year, as compared to diesel burned by buses ?

Do you have access to or are you aware of a study on how much this will increase over the next decade or two ?

Set aside the costs of the infrastructure itself for now, I'm curious here as to fuel burned per passenger mile per year.

Also, keep in mind that I stand to make a bunch of money off of this, as every statistic I can find indicates per-capita taxicab usage is far higher in every single city with large amounts of rail infrastructure. I'm framing the argument, for your benefit, in terms of your beloved "Peak Oil."

The guy who says "why not buses" is a *****.

thanks, bro.

Seriously bro, get out of your little tiny world

size doesn't matter, bro.

and realize that not only are there people who are paid to study transit corridors and identify ridership BEFORE it occurs (there are metrics available, one is bus ridership!)

yes, i know them well, bro. i know a bit about transportation and demand planning myself.

but there are also about a million people in this metro alone that understand that the FIXED INFRASTRUCTURE of a streetcar is superior in terms of driving development than buses.

really? every single person in Portland believes the Streetcar is superior to buses? wow. Go By Streetcar!

If what Streetcar Smith, Sam the Tram, David Bragdon and others really want is more condo blocks throughout the city, why don't they just skip the streetcar (and the sustainability rhetoric) and give a suitcase full of 20s to every willing developer.

This would be much cheaper (and probably more effective).

nonredneckuser, yes, PDC, PDOT are great at studing "transit corridors and identifying transit ridership BEFORE it occurs", like you wrote-not. Their studies that SoWhat would have 40% transit usage for all trips of the district was merely a stretch to allow development to occur in SoWhat before any transportation improvement had to be constructed. They knew there was no funding for even the projects required even if 40% transit usage was achieved.

We are now close to a $390 MILLION dollar shortfall for the identified transportation projects just for those to be partially paid by SoWhat TIF dollars. This amount doesn't even include other projects that PDOT has more recently identified as associated with SoWhat development that is needed to make the district work that can't be financed with TIF dollars because they are outside the boundaries but affect the immediate central city area.

If you are in the "transportation study" industry, how do you pardon this and other transportation planning fiascos that have resulted from PDOT and other regional agencies?

give a suitcase full of 20s to every willing developer.

This certainly would be cheaper in the long run, but it doesn't siphon enough money off to all their little crony friends for Streetcar construction. And it helps aid their whole "sustainability" guise. What nonsense.

The streetcar is such a joke. When I was going to PSU, I used to ride the MAX Blue Line in from Hillsboro and catch the Streetcar down to campus. I eventually figured out it was quicker (15-20 minutes!) to walk from Goose Hollow, especially since the Streetcar loved to just randomly sit half-a-block from the 11th and Taylor stop with its flashers on for 15 minutes. I speculated that it may have been that the little thing ran out of steam going up that tiny little hill. Go By Streetcar!