Your civic model is calling. Will Charlotte’s planner-in-chief pick up?
Former Portland resident Randal O’Toole lays bare all of Portland’s secrets in this excerpt from his new book. As Portland does now, Charlotte will do in 5 to 10 years unless we change:
Portland’s public transit has done nothing to relieve the region’s growing congestion; its high cost has sparked a taxpayer revolt; the developments along the rail lines were themselves heavily subsidized; and those subsidies led a crafty cabal of ex-politicians and developers to milk the system for their own gain.
How do Portland-area residents feel about local light-rail projects? They voted against raising taxes to build more light-rail in 1998. In 2002, they voted against a ballot measure increasing neighborhood densities — as transit-oriented developments do. In 2004, they supported a property-rights measure that challenged the very foundations of Oregon’s land-use planning system. Planners have ignored all these votes and are building light rail with tax-increment financing and other hidden tax increases.
Portlanders were especially upset when local papers revealed in 2004 that the region’s planning had been manipulated by a “light-rail mafia,” led by former Portland Mayor Neil Goldschmidt, that directed rail construction contracts and developer subsidies to an inside group of contractors and builders. Meanwhile, budgets for schools, fire, police, and public health have all been cut, as property taxes that would normally go to those services have been diverted to subsidies for rail transit and high-density developments.
Portland officials spend more than half the region’s transportation funds on transit, but that doesn’t mean Portlanders ride it. In fact, since Portland began building rail transit in the 1980s, transit’s market share of commuting has actually declined from 9.8 percent to 7.6 percent, mainly because the high cost of rail in a few corridors forced the transit agency to reduce bus service in some parts of the region and prevented improvements in others.
I hope O’Toole finds a way to crash the big train fest that will be held in Charlotte in October. All the big light rail boosters will no doubt be there.
Probably even Debra Campbell.
