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It wasn't just the car lobby. Folks in charge of state / local DoT's have huge influence. Many people know about Robert Moses, just how politically powerful and

It wasn't just the car lobby. Folks in charge of state / local DoT's have huge influence. Many people know about Robert Moses, just how politically powerful and influential he became, and how he deliberately used civic infrastructure projects as a way to try to redline particular populations. Similar dynamics still go on. Where I live Portland is overwhelmingly the major metro area, but the Oregon DOT is run out of the state capital, Salem, a much smaller and much more suburban community a bit south of the metro area. Despite supposedly being qualified professionals, it's clear ODOT sees things entirely in a car centric way. The only projects they're excited about pushing forward are freeway expansions. Portland is rather emphatic on NOT wanting that, but rather a multi-modal transit network that actually works with the density we have. In recent years ODOT has gotten so tired of the popular backlash on their projects in Portland that they've started playing deceptive games around the public notification process to try to sneak stuff through without pushback. This whole nation just somehow lost its mind over the ideal of a car centric suburban lifestyle. And yes, some of that was straight up racially motivated, in the trend of white flight. But there were lots of things that fed into it imo. And to be fair, there are plenty of people who do like a suburban lifestyle where they live on a culdesac and have to drive to a strip mall for routine errands. But if you look at the overall migration pattern, all the growth is happening in the 20 or so major metro areas, and in particular in the ones that offer the combination of high income jobs and a more urban lifestyle. Yet somehow all these DoT's across the nation are still acting like the dream of the 1950s is their only priority.

secabeen 5y ago
The other thing I've seen is safety-maximalism from the fire departments. They really push for wide streets, flat curbs, and maximum access. There is rarely any impact-benefit analysis evaluating the number of times a fire truck needs a certain amount of space, nor what the likely safety impact would be if the area was more dense, and less accessible. There also is no examination of other second-order effects of the wide, obstacle-free spaces they prefer, such as more speeding, etc.
LegitShady 5y ago
why is your State DOT planning and executing projects in the city of Portland at all? Doesn't portland have its own planning department? The state DOT is car centric because they take care of all the highways and highway bridge structures in your state. Your city's transportation or public works section should be planning and executing public works for multimodal systems within the city. Unless you have some kind of information to explain it, my bet is the Oregon DOT only provides grants for some related projects that the city of portland executes.
- noahtallen 5y ago
  I’ll give you four specific examples in the Portland area: 1. The I84/I5 interchange. ODOT wants to upgrade it. There has had to be an extreme amount of community push-back to get the proposal even half way integrated with the city itself. As it stands now, it includes partial capping and better bike and transit options above ground. However, it still expands car capacity. 2. The I5 bridge across the Columbia River. It needs to be replaced for seismic and age reasons. The community wants there to be expanded infrastructure for non-cars across one of only two bridges across the Columbia near the city. The other bridge was built recently(ish) and doesn’t have any meaningful non-car transit options. The community wants, at a bare minimum, there to be light rail going from Portland to Vancouver, WA included in a bridge project. So far, that hasn’t quiet materialized. 3. There are many roads in Portland still “owned” by the state. 82nd Ave used to be a good example, though it was transferred to the city last year. These roads have notoriously poor maintenance and high traffic deaths since they really aren’t well-designed for urban areas. (Too fast, too wide, too many access points to be a proper highway, etc.) 4. When the initial freeways were built in Portland, the original plan was for there to be several more highways than there are today. You can see many locations in the existing infra where a highway was meant to connect in but was never built. The Mt. Hood freeway is an example. It took very significant community pushback to get those projects cancelled. Here’s my take on this, as a Portland resident. The state of Oregon is willing to spend billions of dollars upgrading transportation infrastructure in the Portland area. Why the fuck does 99% of that have to go to highways? Why can’t, say, 50% of it go to vastly expanding bike infrastructure to reduce the cost of road maintenance? That still leaves 50% of, again, billions of dollars of projects to car projects. I’m not even talking 50% of the state transportation budget, I’m talking 60% of the money they would already be spending in our community. We basically just want more efficient transit methods to get more funding. It’s ok (to me) if the I84/I5 interchange gets improved. It currently sucks and doesn’t feel safe. But I’m not in favor of doing that project without first spending a lot of money or more effective and efficient transportation options. If there’s billions of dollars to be spent on infra, it should absolutely be going to bikes and transit first. It doesn’t really matter who has jurisdiction, to people who live here

secabeen 5y ago

The other thing I've seen is safety-maximalism from the fire departments. They really push for wide streets, flat curbs, and maximum access. There is rarely any impact-benefit analysis evaluating the number of times a fire truck needs a certain amount of space, nor what the likely safety impact would be if the area was more dense, and less accessible. There also is no examination of other second-order effects of the wide, obstacle-free spaces they prefer, such as more speeding, etc.

LegitShady 5y ago

why is your State DOT planning and executing projects in the city of Portland at all? Doesn't portland have its own planning department? The state DOT is car centric because they take care of all the highways and highway bridge structures in your state. Your city's transportation or public works section should be planning and executing public works for multimodal systems within the city. Unless you have some kind of information to explain it, my bet is the Oregon DOT only provides grants for some related projects that the city of portland executes.

noahtallen 5y ago
I’ll give you four specific examples in the Portland area: 1. The I84/I5 interchange. ODOT wants to upgrade it. There has had to be an extreme amount of community push-back to get the proposal even half way integrated with the city itself. As it stands now, it includes partial capping and better bike and transit options above ground. However, it still expands car capacity. 2. The I5 bridge across the Columbia River. It needs to be replaced for seismic and age reasons. The community wants there to be expanded infrastructure for non-cars across one of only two bridges across the Columbia near the city. The other bridge was built recently(ish) and doesn’t have any meaningful non-car transit options. The community wants, at a bare minimum, there to be light rail going from Portland to Vancouver, WA included in a bridge project. So far, that hasn’t quiet materialized. 3. There are many roads in Portland still “owned” by the state. 82nd Ave used to be a good example, though it was transferred to the city last year. These roads have notoriously poor maintenance and high traffic deaths since they really aren’t well-designed for urban areas. (Too fast, too wide, too many access points to be a proper highway, etc.) 4. When the initial freeways were built in Portland, the original plan was for there to be several more highways than there are today. You can see many locations in the existing infra where a highway was meant to connect in but was never built. The Mt. Hood freeway is an example. It took very significant community pushback to get those projects cancelled. Here’s my take on this, as a Portland resident. The state of Oregon is willing to spend billions of dollars upgrading transportation infrastructure in the Portland area. Why the fuck does 99% of that have to go to highways? Why can’t, say, 50% of it go to vastly expanding bike infrastructure to reduce the cost of road maintenance? That still leaves 50% of, again, billions of dollars of projects to car projects. I’m not even talking 50% of the state transportation budget, I’m talking 60% of the money they would already be spending in our community. We basically just want more efficient transit methods to get more funding. It’s ok (to me) if the I84/I5 interchange gets improved. It currently sucks and doesn’t feel safe. But I’m not in favor of doing that project without first spending a lot of money or more effective and efficient transportation options. If there’s billions of dollars to be spent on infra, it should absolutely be going to bikes and transit first. It doesn’t really matter who has jurisdiction, to people who live here