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I like to compare them because they are both fruits.
I hear you. I know we are smaller. We have been as large as 250,000 at one point.
I still think it is worth studying the issue with a critical eye. Actually lots of critical eyes.
During the mayoral campaign, both Elorza and Cianci claimed we have to grow our way forward to success to deal with our financial morass that the retirees who've fled the state left us to bear. If you accept this, then we have to flip the sign on the growth rate you cite. How we do that is up for debate.
Portland has had similar arguments made about every bit of public transportation spending along the way. Most recently, it was the tram between Oregon Health and Sciences University locations throughout Portland. It seemed a ridiculous expense and most of my friends opposed it. But you know what, people tell me that thing has been a success.
Doubtless, studying future transportation systems is a laudable effort. But we need to work with real on-the-ground math, and your comparing two wildly dissimilar cities (and relative growth of two dissimilar cities) only leads to bad math. Build a business case based on PVD, not some other place. And if you can build that case, I would be very surprised indeed.
In 1990 about 90% of all trips in Portland were by car. After all that transit investment, the share is now about 85% (and some of the change was due to exploding use of bikes, it wasn't all trains).
Providence actually has a higher share of trips by transit than Portland. We also already have a higher share by walking or bicycling than Portland.
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Originally Posted by Chicago3rd
Portland, Oregon was dragged back into history with one light rail line and now has a thriving lightrail and trolly system (also have a tramline) which they fought and now it is part of a comprehensive transportation plan....the downtown is thriving and density is going up in the city and the areas around Portland.
Portland's streetcars are mostly a symptom of its economic success, not a cause. They have certainly been a boon for the businesses located immediately on the line -- Powell's Books and the Bridgeport Brewery made lucky location choices decades earlier -- and it has probably caused a number of high-end condo projects to take place in that specific neighborhood vs some other locations.
But...
First, development in "the Pearl" was a much, much larger project than just the streetcar too, including environmental remediation of industrial sites, improving the road infrastructure, building new parks, a whole lot of stuff. Do all of that _except_ the streetcar and you still get a hip new downtown neighborhood, just marginally less popular (especially since w/o streetcar it would still be a short walk to downtown, close to the MAX light rail, and served by frequent buses). That took a LOT of upfront money from the city and developers.
The bigger point is that the wealthy people buying those condos would never have moved to Portland if its economy were not generating high-wage jobs to attract them. And those business did not move to Portland or get created in Portland due to the streetcare, not mostly at least. Thinking it did would be like thinking sprucing up Market St in San Francisco is what led to condos there costing millions of dollars, as opposed to noticing that the inhabitants of those condos are commuting to Mountain View and Cupertino every day for their Google and Apple jobs. Portland already had good road infrastructure, a good bus and limited light rail network, much better K-12 ed than Providence, a vastly better city and state financial picture (which not only means more free cash, but easier bond financing), and wasn't merely a second-string city in a much larger metro hub like PVD is. We are to Boston as say, Longview-Kelso WA is to Portland.
The streetcar might, might be a worthwhile investment on top of having all the fundamentals sound. And certainly you can make a city so unpleasant with sprawl and traffic and smog that it harms development. But that isn't PVD's problem....
It is synergy....it takes a little of all to get things moving...forward. For the sake of discussion we need to look at RI as a large city. That is how RIPTA is set up. We have the added benefit of Boston close by and should be picking up more jobs than we are. RI needs an organization that focuses on all the comprehensive needs to get this state on the right tract. We can't go back...
I wish we could trust the governments here so we could at least try and look at this issue and Pawsox with an open mind. But as a new resident....I am now seeing why so many hesitate.
In 1990 about 90% of all trips in Portland were by car. After all that transit investment, the share is now about 85% (and some of the change was due to exploding use of bikes, it wasn't all trains).
Providence actually has a higher share of trips by transit than Portland. We also already have a higher share by walking or bicycling than Portland.
Cox statistics. With the population exploding for several decades....think about Portland without all the additional transportation options! Also just think how much better the PDX area would be if they would have kept public transit expansion up with the population growth.
Houston just got down with the I10 West Expansion 14 lanes plus 10 lanes on the access roads just finished AND GUESS what....it just created more traffic and moved the burbs even further out. The roads are more crowded than they were when they started that expansion.
Location: Earth, a nice neighborhood in the Milky Way
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Originally Posted by neguy99
The population discrepancy you see is that Portland annexed a whole bunch of suburban areas in the 1980s and early 90s, that's what pushed it from 350k to 500k, not any growth within the pre-1980 city boundaries. Since the early 90s there has been significant in-city growth, though much more growth in the suburbs than in the city.
Yes, that's what I guessed in an earlier post. In fact there is a current complaint in (East) Portland because tax dollars from some of those annexed areas are flowing to other parts of the city and those annexed areas are not realizing any significant return. There's a thread on the Portland forum about secession of East Portland from Portland...
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Population density near the transit lines is what matters, not whole city.
Agree completely.
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To make it more complicated you'd want to look at employment and retail/food/entertainment destinations as well. Overal PVD is more dense than PDX, but Portland also covers a much larger share of its metro area than PVD --areas that look very suburban are in the city (imagine that PVD included everything from Warwick to the MA state line).
I don't fully follow what you are saying here but I agree that lots of Portland looks like the suburbs. But I think it is safe to say that if you put streetcar in, other retail/food and employment will come. Look at Davis Square in Somerville, MA for a more local example.
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Number of people along the Portland streetcar (both residents and employees/students/shoppers/etc) is probably a lot higher than the notional PVD route.
In the Pearl that is probably true now but wasn't when the streetcar was put in, at least to my recollection. I recall the condos and the streetcar happening together. They could put condos in the Jewelry district too...
Elorza? The streetcar plan, it its current incarnation, dates from 2006.
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...when we already have RIPTA trollies.
No, we have buses.
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And whatever happened to the study that was supposed to find out why RIPTA was losing big money? It couldn't have been all the free ride giveaways could it?
No, because RIPTA still gets paid for those "free" rides. DHS subsidizes low-income and elderly passes, FHWA subsidizes air quality alert days, and universities with "free" passes pay for them (passing the cost along to students via fees - whether they ride the bus or not). Paratransit is a huge money-waster, costing $27 a trip versus $4.20 for an average transit trip, but it's federally mandated.
Which road infrastructure are you calling out in the Pearl, specifically?
Well, building them from scratch since most of the area was a rail yard. Replacing the Lovejoy viaduct with surface streets and new bridge ramps. Making the streets with train tracks embedded in them safer, lots of new traffic lights, etc.
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I don't know too many people who own those condos. I did have several friends from eastern cities who moved to Portland without jobs, however. In some cases their wealthy, soon-to-be retired parents followed to be close to the kids, and they bought condos in the Pearl in anticipation of that eventuality. But the kids were all in SE and they managed to dream up their own jobs because Portland was not forthcoming with them. Portland still is very much a bring your own job kind of place, even if Intel beckons to the west.
Sure, Portland grew a million people and shot up the average wage rankings due to trust fund kids and their retired parents leaving the Upper West Side for the west coast? Really? For every organic fusion food truck some entreprenurial kid opens in SE or Alberta, barely covering costs, a whole bunch of boring engineers and accountants and HVAC techs are starting good old fashioned jobs in Washington and Clark County.
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You're comparing us to Longview? Really? No. I say that with respect for you, but again. No.
That was a bit dramatic; I admit that the presence of Brown Univ does throw that off. There really isn't a good analogue. Maybe Tacoma - Seattle is a better match, but fundamentally we are a past-its-prime old industrial town that is merely a second-level cluster in a regional economy that has a world-class tech and business hub at its center.
But the reality is that our peer cities are NOT Portland and SFO and Austin. It certainly isn't Boston. By the numbers that matter PVD is a heck of a lot like New Bedford, New London, Worcester, Lowell, Lawrence, etc.
We have the added benefit of Boston close by and should be picking up more jobs than we are.
On the contrary. The pattern all over is for high-skill employment to become *more* concentrated not only into fewer metro areas, but into concentrated parts of those metro areas, at the expense of outlying areas.
If I have a good biotech or software firm, what would I want to locate in PVD instead of Cambridge or Lexington/Burlington given the talent available there?
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