I think it's pretty clear that "what we already have" is not what the planners have in mind and is destined for the bulldozer.

I wonder how many productive tax paying businesses this boondoggle will push out ?

According to the article, Portland Parks is kicking in over $2M and still has to find "other funding" for another $2M - $3M. So they're cutting back in services, pledging buckets of money to this unwanted project, and still have to dig under some rocks to come up with even more (and who knows what else will get cut when those rocks turn up empty?). I love our efficient local government.

We're never too broke for the condo developers

Never too broke to give money for Leonard's projects either.
Fish gave that third vote needed to pour another $80 million
down that Powell Butte project. . . a project many say not needed,
yet he just doesn't have funds now to keep our city parks in good standing!

clinamen -

One must always remember that Fish is the David Wu of the City Council -- all resume and promise, absolutely no performance.

Brings to mind the act of polishing something nasty and unpolishable.

It's interesting that this gets dome funding from Trimet as a part of the Milwaukie Light Rail project. So if that some how dies, does that funding dry up too? Does the $1 million dollars that Trimet is kicking in come from Trimet directly? Does Trimet even have the extra chanhe to kick in?

TriMet is using PMLR funding.

The stated purpose of environmental mitigation for the new transit bridge is BS because the Greenway is NOT an environmental project.
In fact shouldn't messing with the riverbank require it's own environmental mitigation?

I can't wait to hear the feds are not funding PMLT.

Great article on the DC Metro and the failures of rail planning:

http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/article/failure-imagination-put-metro-wrong-track/375401

Downtown Denizen,

Thanks for the above link.
What I found interesting were the comments and this one in particular:

by hankbrad -
the centralization of business and shopping in downtowns was predominant only for a moment in time, between the onset of rail transit till the arrival of the automobile.

That's the real world in operation. But central planners despise the real world, which allows the lumpish citizens too much chaotic freedom - such as purchasing and using and enjoying automobiles. So their solution, already evident in blue-state fortresses like Seattle, is to make war on automobiles, and to punish citizens for using them.

How? Legislate an end to citizen choices in land use. Emplace an antidemocratic 'growth management act', which forces into being an autocracy of central planners, and transfers land use decisions from owners to said autocracy. Be sure to impose 'Hearings Boards' of unelected appointees, with powers to overrule locally elected planning boards who don't toe the statewide party line.

How? Zoning - force densification of housing to make rail transit less unfeasible. Deny the citizens their choice of single-family housing, by forcing development to occur within existing city limits, and forcing multi-story rabbit hutches with limited parking instead of houses with lawns.

How else? Poison road construction. Refuse to build new and adequate roadways. Replace a useful viaduct with a vastly expensive tunnel with less lane capacity. Design a replacement bridge with bicycle lanes - in rainy Seattle! - instead of adequate auto lane capacity.

There's no end to the ingenuity of organized central planners, whose overall goal is control of citizens by arrogating the American dream away from individuals and vesting it instead in the wise, far-seeing, unelected planners.