Category / Auto Related

by Adron

Physical Discrimination, Unspoken Racism, Interstates, North Portland, Poisons and I-5

Take just a minute and look at this picture. Think about what facts you can clearly observe from this picture.

North Portland I-5 Construction in the 60s.

North Portland I-5 Construction in the 60s.

There are a lot of different things you can see. The most obvious is the clear path where block after block after block has been razed. To the left (west) 3 blocks you can see what is now Interstate Avenue. To the east you can see some other streets including what is now Albina/Mississippi.

One of the things the I-5 corridor did when it was put into place was displace two significant minorities. The jewish population in south and northwest downtown Portland were displaced and in north Portland the African Communities were segmented and displaced. Most of the Interstate was built in a few specific ways. When it was forcefully inserted through the middle of cities, destroying urban areas and communities all over America, there were a few specific tools that politicians use.

One was an unspoken discrimination. By finding the “impoverished minorities” they could easily sway the citizens to vote for paths through areas of a city that were considered blighted. It did not matter to these politicians and their constituents that these supposed blighted areas were peoples’ homes where they lived and owned homes. Yes, actually owned in many situations. But they were forcefully removed by sway of this, with a simple twist of eminent domain (the power to take private property for public use by a state, municipality, or private person or corporation authorized to exercise functions of public character, following the payment of just compensation to the owner of that property).

The definition of course, is relevant, but absurd as the people in these areas that were razed were powerless to stop the Interstates from wrecking their homes, breaking apart their neighborhoods and segregating white from black, jew from christian, even more staunchly than a simple discrimination. The Interstate, in some ways acted as an unspoken discriminatory divide between people throughout the country. Research any interstate in the country, and almost always a city used these build outs as a way to separate people as much as to enable them.

Freedom! …or chains that bind us?

Of course, the largest achievement of the Interstates, more than any other thing has been in creating a country that is tightly coupled to auto-dependency and foreign oil. With more energy and travel time than any other civilized nation between work and home. At one time it might have been a lofty goal, but now it is becoming a more and more clearly marked mistake.

…or kill us…

Another thing we’re finding out more and more, even with efforts to suppress and keep media reports form coming out about this, is the rather at which people are killed (i.e. die from any cause not related to a natural death). I’m not talking about the dozens that are killed in vehicle wrecks, the children that are ran over from offloading high speed traffic on neighborhood streets, or related “vehicle” incidents. I’m talking about from poisons that I-5 gives us via the petroleum vehicles barreling up and down the interstate. Here’s some reading material if you want to see how many are dying, painfully, every year in Portland specifically but also in lands throughout the country.

Did you see?

Originally, before starting to read the rest of the post what did you think when you say this image? Progress? Advancement? Efforts to build big things? Great things? Think again, the Interstate has never been a clear cut advancement for America. It’s always been shrouded in the idea of freedom, capitalism and the free-market. When it reality it is a large scale socialist re-distribution of funds from the haves to the have nots that have locked them into an auto dependent lifestyle. It was a redistribution that has given us massive traffic, lower economic throughput of goods (the railroad system we had in 1950 still exceeds the capability of actual good throughput by at least 2x in almost every part of the country.

Tax Burden? Why do Republicans support this socialism?

One of the largest burdens we have as taxpayers is in maintaining, building and extending the road system. The gas tax supplies ONLY part of the costs of road costs. If you took the entire amount of the money raised by gas taxes and applied it to the cost of the Interstates it would pay for about 95% of the costs. We’re quickly reaching a level though were the gas taxes don’t cover even that much of the Interstate, and we’re only covering about 0.5% of the costs of keeping up the Interstates, but we’re actually not spending the money on the roads but instead on new road construction. That means we’re actually only covering about 0.1-0.2% of maintenance and we’re adding to that by building MORE Interstates.

This fact doesn’t include were even more money goes, into state highways, local roads, etc. We, as a society, with our current infrastructure taxes can’t afford this (technically we’ve never really been able to, we’ve been spending the last 60 years going into debt by selling bonds to China & other nations to fund our expansions).

So when you look at this picture, think of it in a more holistic sense as the thing that’s put us on our current path to financial burdens our children can’t afford. An entitlement lifestyle that has Americans thinking they’re owed a road for everywhere they want to go, and that it be FREE! There’s more to our freeways than meets the eye, and everybody in this country needs to think a lot more about this and become more informed about what this infrastructure has led us into.

Our children’s lives (or deaths) depend on it.

NOTES:

If you read these I’ll have more cross-correlations and holistic views on why these things can be connected to our current plight in America, financially and otherwise.

by Adron

Seattle Loses 17% of Transit Service

Ok, so it hasn’t happened yet. But as one would expect, more cuts are on the table. The Feds haven’t fixed the transit situation with funding options & the local cities & states just keep sucking money out into other solutions. It’s kind of par for the course. Seattle is threatened with a 17% loss in service. Most bus lines would lose one out of every bus. The only lines that would likely remain untouched would be a few of the Rapid Ride lines and high capacity runs during rush hour. But everything else is up for cutting.

What can you do about it as a citizen of Washington and Seattle? Go and message your elected leaders.

The US is seriously losing it’s ground right now, it’s happening fast. This is seriously getting interesting in some scary kinds of ways. Weigh in with your opinion, it may be the difference between standing in the cold, sitting in MORE traffic in Seattle or worse.

by Adron

Some People Live Pretty Uninformed, Such as This Motorist

I’m officially starting a list of misbehaving, in a lethal sense, of any motorist that is risking others’ lives while they barrel around in their automobile. I’ll do the same for anybody that is wielding such a device that can cause instant death. I’m also going to work toward organizing a type of “Neighborhood Watch” to get these drivers ticked, with video evidence & more. I’m sick of hearing about “5 year old dead” because somebody is too busy in their life to pay attention and drive well.

This first video, which I recorded today was of a lady in a 4-door Silver Gray Honda Accord, with license either T38 OSK or T38 DSK.


Crass Uninformed Motorist

There’s just too much death, to not put something together. Many of Portland’s Citizens have been trying to improve things for years now, it’s time to take a step further and let drivers know this is unacceptable behavior in our city, in any city really. If you’re a brave soul and interested in outreach and organizing, let me know. I’m sure I’ll need help with this. Cheers!

by Adron

I Can’t Seem to Stay Away From These Topics!?

Road paving in Portland. There are only a few situations when a road should get paved (or the more likely situation of “re-paved”). Here’s the criteria:

  • It can be (re-)paved with appropriate sidewalks on at least one side of the street minimum.
  • It can be (re-)paved with at least basic bicycle lane amenities and if at all possible, buffered bicycle lane and car parking.
  • It can be (re-)paved with appropriate spaced parking from the corners, with corner protection and drainage to clean the water built in.
  • It can be (re-)paved with appropriate parking for cars, based on short term and long term parking striping.
  • It can be (re-)paved with permission from the community immediately surrounding the street. Do not repave a street like 23rd without the communities permission. There is no need for it to be repaved and the roughness of the road encourages safety through slower speed and decreasing “through” traffic from using a neighborhood street unsafely.
  • It can be (re-)paved if there are amenities for crossing safety added so we don’t have more children die. Already, the cost is too high with just one loss of life attributed to inappropriate road build out in the city. How many have to die to make it a priority for safety amenities? It should be zero, but it’s obviously already higher than that.

Right now Portland is rapidly gaining frustration with the Mayor. The Mayor isn’t informing the public why, how or if it should be paving streets. Instead the city office is just forcing ahead the agenda to pave “100 miles of streets” in spite of and in many cases without any of the above. A pot hole is one thing, a dead child is absolutely something else. A pot hole should not rate above human life. A pot hole shouldn’t even rate above a sidewalk. But alas, these days it seems that the city Government’s priority is around filling the pothole, and pushing people back into cars.

Not sure if anybody else has noticed, but if you have half a brain, Portland has stood out and seen growth over the last 30 years because it DID NOT follow these types of policies. How about we straighten back up and get our heads screwed on right? That’s the spirit!

by Adron

The Whole Columbia River Crossing, The Other Pending Financial Catastrophe

Dammit. I have things to do, but of all the issues facing Portlanders, Vancouverites and in some very indirect ways the general populace of California, Oregon and Washington, feel the need to inform & provide my frustration with the current state of the I-5 Project. The last few rants and ramblings on Facebook have been without much information, just “go call your senator” and what not. I’d mistakenly assumed that people knew the situation surrounding the I-5 Bridge Replacement.

First things first let’s talk about what the I-5 Project is. This project is generally referred to as the CRC or Columbia River Crossing Project. It is intended to replace the I-5 Bridge, add light rail, and dramatically change out and increase the interchange access for local traffic on Jantzen Beach, access to Vancouver, and a number of other interchanges in Vancouver and a few in north Portland. The total price tag is *estimated* at about $4 billion dollars.

Now a few facts that will not change.

  • Trimet == Tri-County Metropolitan Transit Authority. The transit service, that generally serves the three counties of the Portland Metro area excluding Vancouver.
  • C-Tran == Clark County Transit. The transit service that serves the Vancouver area, which generally equates to express service that travels into Portland and drops off people that work in Portland and live in Washington.
  • This project, overall includes Trimet, C-Tran, PDOT, ODOT, WADOT and other agencies working together, sort of. There’s a LOT of politics and disunion already. (and yes, I’m stating that as a fact, the fighting has become public several times.)
  • The project will cost at minimum $4 billion dollars. Not less.
  • The project includes a toll for traffic coming from Vancouver, because Vancouver doesn’t have the kind of money to build a project like this. The majority of funding, in order, will come from the Federal Government, Portland and then everybody else.
  • The project does include light rail, which Vancouver will INDEED fund part of, regardless of the recent vote because Vancouver/C-Tran has already promised this through other means.
  • The project includes pedestrian access.
  • The current design has to change for various legal, safety and regulation requirements around the airfield and river traffic. (The plan itself generally costs hundreds of thousands and includes millions of dollars of work)
  • The throughput lanes remain the same for the entirety of the bridge replacement.
  • The only net new throughput would be the light rail line into downtown Vancouver that would extend to the community college.
  • The rail bottleneck would remain untouched. This costs over a billion in delays and congestion every year to the metro area of Portland, the city of Seattle, and delays downline to San Francisco, Oakland and even Los Angeles. Yes, it is THAT big of a bottle neck and this project does nothing to change this.
  • The road based freight delays on I-5 are negligible by comparison and much of that freight traffic already diverts to I-205.
  • The majority of traffic that turns into stop & go and delays on I-5 between Vancouver and Portland is 70% local travel. The information available also points out that the majority of this traffic ends up exiting the Interstate within a few exist north or south of the Bridge. In other words, the traffic isn’t even into or out of Portland itself, but only to the immediate areas around the Columbia River. (One using deducation, might say we need a local arterial for this traffic)

So now that I’ve pulled together these facts, let’s look at a few other things not related to the CRC, or also known as alternatives. Here’s one that is really well put together.

This is one of the solutions, or alternatives, that has been put forth. But alas, I’ll include the proponents material too. It’s available via the Columbia River Crossing site that has been put up here: http://www.columbiarivercrossing.org/ProjectInformation/ResearchAndResults/AlternativesConsidered.aspx

Yes, there is a website dedicated to the projects implementation. There’s also the Bike Portland blog that has a great write up on it (it’s not anti-car per say, just informative for the most part).  http://bikeportland.org/2011/04/27/video-explains-common-sense-alternative-to-crc-project-52147

Also, while we’re at it, give a listen to this individual. He points out the damage the Interstate has already caused and many of the related issues that we already have to deal with, without making the problems worse by building a massive bridge that barely resolves any of the traffic issues.

So anyway, go learn about it, and PLEASE take a minute or two and call your Senator about this. This project as it is will dramatically decrease what can be done in the future to actually deal with traffic, it will decrease the amount of funds for other things in the city budget too, such as schools, existing infrastructure, etc. This project is going to expand the debt burden for the next generation, i.e. your kids and teenagers you’re raising now will have a significant debt to deal with from this bridge. All of these debts and such and it will provide no new net capabilities.

I’m not against building something. We need to expand infrastructure capabilities and clean up our mess as a society in this area. BUT, this CRC solution as it is laid out adds more burden than it adds solutions. So get out and get vocal in your opposition.

Just call, leave a message, write, or whatever you feel like doing. It only takes a minute or three. They will not argue with you, they will not insult ya, they will take your opinion and then act upon however they see fit to represent us. It DOES influence things if you make your opinion and knowledge available.