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Old 09-04-2019, 03:35 PM
 
Location: The beautiful Rogue Valley, Oregon
7,785 posts, read 18,736,661 times
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42 is one lane in each direction for most of the run, and will stay that way for the western-most 45 miles or so along the Coquille River. The geology and geography make that stretch landslide-prone and there isn't room to widen the highway.

Port of Coos Bay will have to come up with an import/export scheme that makes it more desirable than San Francisco/Oakland/Stockton or Portland/Longview. The drawbacks are access to major highways/rail/airports.
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Last edited by PNW-type-gal; 09-04-2019 at 04:27 PM..

 
Old 09-04-2019, 06:20 PM
 
Location: Just outside of Portland
4,828 posts, read 7,410,582 times
Reputation: 5115
Quote:
The drawbacks are access to major highways/rail/airports.
That is exactly what I keep telling you all.
Plus Coos Bay DOES have a regional airport with flights to SF and non-stop to Denver.
Why is that, one could ask, if CB is such a decaying or stagnant town?

Why would anyone want to fly from Coos Bay to SF or non-stop to Denver?
Why not fly in and out of Eugene?
Hmmmmmmm


Well.... I appreciate all the constant negativity and "poo-pooing" of my statements about Coos Bay.
I really do.
I'm sure you all have your particular reasons and are having fun telling me I am full of feathers.

But I have to say there is a lot of "short sightedness" and "obstacle throwing" going on.
Whether you want to believe me or not, it's your choice whether you want to take my advice.

Believe me or don't believe me.
I know what I know.
I'm involved in the area in other ways than retiring there, or just living there believing things won't ever change.

I will say, that in the next five to ten years, Oregon can expect to see some MAJOR changes going on in the Coos Bay area.

Last edited by pdxMIKEpdx; 09-04-2019 at 06:44 PM..
 
Old 09-04-2019, 09:58 PM
 
Location: WA
5,291 posts, read 7,585,880 times
Reputation: 8235
U
Quote:
Originally Posted by CaliforniaPlaya View Post
Then is it just not wide enough then to be a major trucking road from Coos Bay to 5? Needs 3 or more lanes or just straightening?

Did that Legett to Fort Bragg drive a few years in a new Challenger - was kind of fun!
The bigger road is 38 further north from Reedsport to Drain. That’s how most people get to Coos Bay from the Willamette Valley and probably how most of the trucking gets to Coos Bay.

The problem is the coast range. It is rugged. The existing roads are blasted though along the sides of narrow river valleys. To convert them into 4 lane freeways would be multi billion dollar engineering projects with massive environmental impacts to salmon streams and habitat. And would destroy most of the houses and small towns that already exist along the existing highways. That is simply never going to happen ever.
 
Old 09-05-2019, 12:22 AM
 
Location: Oregon Coast
15,193 posts, read 8,790,108 times
Reputation: 20220
Quote:
Originally Posted by pdxMIKEpdx View Post
I believe that reason to be is that there is no major east-west route from Coos Bay to I5.

Think about it.
If there was a nice, wide, kind of flat, not to curvy route for a four lane highway or rail from Coos Bay to I5, Coos Bay would be a thriving port city.

Coos Bay is one of the most undeveloped and passed over towns on the Oregon coast.

I also believe that will change in the coming decades.
My family has been slowly acquiring undeveloped property around Coos Bay for about twenty years now, and we have had quite a few investment companies contact us about buying our land.

Coos Bay is smack dab between Portland and San Francisco, the land around it is cheap and undeveloped, it is ripe for big investment.


There are a lot of people that do not want to live in either Portland or San Francisco, and with the right city planning and foresight, Coos Bay could become the "gem" of the Pacific Coast.
If you don't like curvy roads, stay away from the mountains. There are a lot of nice straight roads in Eastern Oregon. But that is not my cup of tea.

FYI, there is a already a very underutilized rail line between Coos Bay and I-5, and there has been one for about a hundred years. The Port of Coos Bay has spent a lot of money rebuilding the rail line to Eugene. I do think rail could be a much greater asset to Coos Bay then it is now. My solution would be to pull the plug on the money losing North Bend Airport. Then replace the Coos Bay - Eugene shuttle bus with a heritage passenger train. The train could bring tourist to Coos Bay, and take coastal residents to an airport that actually has more then just two flights. It should be very scenic train ride, just as good as the one in Tillamook.

Unfortunately Coos Bay's problem is that it is a very conservative, old way thinking city. Most people here, still haven't figured out that the future is tourism, not logging.
 
Old 09-05-2019, 12:25 AM
 
Location: Oregon
908 posts, read 1,652,457 times
Reputation: 1023
Quote:
Originally Posted by texasdiver View Post
Bend is also not on any freeway system and significantly more isolated from population centers than Coos Bay. You have to take 2-lane roads over winter passes for 2.5 to 3 hours to get to Bend from Portland, Salem, or Eugene. Yet Bend is booming like crazy.

In 1970, both Bend and Coos Bay were nearly identical in size with about 13,500 population. Today Coos Bay is about 16,500 while Bend has exploded to over 100,000.

Why do so many more Oregonians and migrants from other states want to live in Bend as opposed to Coos Bay? I would suggest it isn't the highway access.
the mountains of Bend are good for skiing, that is a huge draw, and lots of sun. Coos bay is going to do fine, but as a more sleepy ocean side town. That's fine! some people like that. It's just not well known.
 
Old 09-05-2019, 12:38 AM
 
Location: Oregon Coast
15,193 posts, read 8,790,108 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PNW-type-gal View Post
I don't think a town with 65" of annual precip is ever going to become a hub. I'd see a place like Florence, with a straighter shot into Eugene, as standing a better chance. Although, really, the hills around Coos Bay are prettier with better views as long as you aren't looking at the many clearcuts.
I agree Florence is where the growth is. Coos Bay has only grown about 20% in the last 50 years. And most of that was in the 70s and 80s. Meanwhile Florence has grown almost 200% in the same time.

But that's okay with me. I'm happy if Coos Bay never grows. I like it just the way it is now.
 
Old 09-05-2019, 01:04 AM
 
Location: Oregon Coast
15,193 posts, read 8,790,108 times
Reputation: 20220
Quote:
Originally Posted by texasdiver View Post
U

The bigger road is 38 further north from Reedsport to Drain. That’s how most people get to Coos Bay from the Willamette Valley and probably how most of the trucking gets to Coos Bay.

The problem is the coast range. It is rugged. The existing roads are blasted though along the sides of narrow river valleys. To convert them into 4 lane freeways would be multi billion dollar engineering projects with massive environmental impacts to salmon streams and habitat. And would destroy most of the houses and small towns that already exist along the existing highways. That is simply never going to happen ever.
38, 42, 126, they are all the same. Two lanes with some three lane stretches. Trucks use them all. If any roads get widened, it should be highway 101. That has by far the greatest amount of traffic.

If ODOT ever does widen any of them, I hope they take a lesson from what Colorado did in Glenwood Canyon. When they built I-70 through Glenwood Canyon, they actually fixed a lot of the environmental damage caused by the original two lane road. Oregon should do the same.

 
Old 09-05-2019, 12:44 PM
 
Location: Just outside of Portland
4,828 posts, read 7,410,582 times
Reputation: 5115
Quote:
Unfortunately Coos Bay's problem is that it is a very conservative, old way thinking city. Most people here, still haven't figured out that the future is tourism, not logging.
Logging hasn't been a "future" in Oregon for some time now.

Like I mentioned before, there ARE people in Oregon who are forward thinking and are in it for the long haul people who aren't tourists, people who aren't retirees from California, people who are not NIMBYS, people who aren't the type of people who think that "I've got mine", and time should stand still to accommodate me for the last ten or twenty years of my life.

The tourism industry is ephemeral, generally provides very low paying jobs, and there are only so many "tourists".

With all the capabilities and growth potential of Coos Bay, it's stupid to think that just because of a few obstacles, change will never happen.
I am sure a few hotels and resorts will be built, but in the long run the future of Coos Bay will not be "tourism".

I hope I am alive ten years from now, so I can drag up this thread and have a chuckle knowing I was correct all along, and the Oregon armchair pundits here were totally wrong.

I always have fun digging up old really old threads about Portland and reading the predictions of how Portland would crash and burn.

Last edited by pdxMIKEpdx; 09-05-2019 at 01:06 PM..
 
Old 09-05-2019, 01:07 PM
 
Location: The beautiful Rogue Valley, Oregon
7,785 posts, read 18,736,661 times
Reputation: 10783
Every time I am there I see an export yard of raw logs that looks to be doing okay.

The other thing that hurts Coos Bay and every other small Oregon town which SHOULD be doing better, is Oregon's bust-and-"boom" cycle. I put boom in quotes because Oregon always seems to get hit harder, take longer to recover than neighboring states and, with only a few exceptions, never really gets the full "boom" mode, just sort of a recovery mode. (Leaving out Portland and its suburbs and Bend in this discussion.)

In every bust cycle, people leave the small towns for larger towns and other states - eventually people start trickling back in when the bust ends, but I think what happens is that the people coming back in are older and closer to retired, if not already retired. If you look at Coos Bay's population, it has been right around the 15,500 mark since the 1990s (presently about 16,000 now, so unlike some Oregon cities, it isn't shrinking, at least). The standard complaint about unavailable services and contractors is because people with skills tend to leave during the recession, to be replaced by less-skilled people. How that cycle gets broken, I have no idea.

Driving through Coos Bay last month, I always drive around the side streets as well as the main streets to see how the city is doing - how many shopfronts are empty, what does the commercial district look like? This last time I saw several new small restaurants, which is not necessarily good, as non-chain restaurants have one of the highest retail failure rates. But there are still a lot of empty stores and most of the new development is right on the main road through town and oriented at tourists.
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Old 09-05-2019, 01:08 PM
 
Location: Just outside of Portland
4,828 posts, read 7,410,582 times
Reputation: 5115
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cloudy Dayz View Post
I agree Florence is where the growth is. Coos Bay has only grown about 20% in the last 50 years. And most of that was in the 70s and 80s. Meanwhile Florence has grown almost 200% in the same time.

But that's okay with me. I'm happy if Coos Bay never grows. I like it just the way it is now.
How much more can Florence grow?
Other than endless retirement communities?

I'm glad you like Coos Bay the way it is NOW.
A lot of people do not, and want to see it change dramatically.
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