PDX Planning Efforts

[tworivers]

Sorry to start a new thread with an article from the pathetic Tribune, but they seem to be the only ones reporting on this meeting.

Region's future beginning to take shape
Concensus (sic) building to concentrate future growth in urban centers

By Jim Redden

The Portland Tribune, Dec 15, 2008

Potential winners and losers are beginning to emerge from Metro’s two-year study of where and how the region should grow in the future.

Regional leaders meeting last Wednesday expressed strong support for concentrating new development in existing urban centers and along major transportation corridors. They leaned heavily in favor of developing new mass transit lines, including streetcars — a transportation option favored by Portland Mayor-elect Sam Adams to spur growth in the central city.

The leaders were far less inclined to support building new freeways or adding lanes to existing ones. Proposed projects that drew little support included the Sunrise Corridor between Interstate 205 and the new city of Damascus, the Interstate 5 to Highway 99W connection intended to relieve congestion on the Newburg/Dundee area, and the Interstate 84 to Highway 26 connection to serve parts of east Multnomah County.

Such decisions could concentrate future public investment in the already-urbanized areas of Portland, Gresham, Beaverton and Hillsboro, where efforts have long been underway to build dense, mixed-use neighborhoods. Fewer public funds might be spent in outlying, less developed parts of the region.

The gathering took place at the Oregon Convention Center. It was the fourth in a series of planning sessions designed to help form a regional consensus about the direction future growth should take in the greater metropolitan area. It was organized by Metro, the regional government charged with managing growth much of Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties.

The event was attended by elected officials from throughout the three counties, along with several members of the elected Metro Council. They spent most of the meeting completing a lengthy survey on future transportation and other growth-related options. The questions grew out of the discussions at the previous three meetings. The results are intended to help the Metro staff narrow down the focus of two important planning efforts that are under way.

One is the update of the Regional Transportation Plan that is indeed to guide transportation spending in coming years. The other is a study to determine whether and where the urban growth boundary should be expanded in the future. The urban growth boundary is a zone administered by Metro in much of the tri-county area where new urban development is allowed.

Both of the planning efforts are considered important because the region is expected to grow by around 1 million more people during the next 20 years.

The Metro Council is scheduled to vote on final versions of the planning efforts by late next year.

Portland Commissioner-elect Amanda Fritz attended the Wednesday session and said it helped create a “good framework” for discussing such issues in the future. Although Fritz has not yet been assigned any city bureaus, she hopes to be appointed to serve as the council’s liasion (sic) to Metro on the efforts.

Not everyone who attended the session was pleased with the direction it took. A number of officials from Forest Grove felt that many of the preferred options — such as pricing downtown parking to manage congestion — did not apply to their city, which wants to retain its small town feel.

Participants also overwhelmingly endorsed supported the state of Oregon’s efforts to fight global warming. The 2007 Oregon Legislature set aggressive goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in coming years. The targets call for stopping the growth of such emissions by 2010, reducing them 10 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and reducing them 75 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

At the Wednesday gathering, leaders overwhelmingly agreed that the region should be “very proactive” in figure out how to comply with these goals. This is expected to require significantly reducing the number of vehicle miles all residents drive. Vehicle emissions account for 34 percent of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Based on the survey results, the first choice for reducing driving is to expand and improve regional transit systems. The second is to make zoning changes to encourage more development in existing urban centers and along transportation corridors.