Washington County (Beaverton, Hillsboro, Tigard, Forest Grove, etc.)

[eric cantona]

Originally Posted by subterranean

Have you been out this way? There is already way too much parking. The existing parking lots are a sea of emptiness.

Assuming this is directed at my comment - please go back and reread. I even underlined the key word. If not, disregard.

[aquaticko]

But parking garages are a much more expensive form of surface parking, and let's be honest, most people who own cars are most likely going to be driving them, even if they're going downtown.

The problem isn't that there's no accommodation of cars near outlying stations; the problem is that there's too much accommodation of them downtown, which is directly connected with the complaints you hear about the MAX being too downtown-focused a system when not everyone's trying to go downtown. How much more might there be to do downtown--work/live/play if there were fewer surface lots and parking garages?

Calgary's CTrain system is very well known for high ridership/good modal split because even though it has the same kind of auto-sprawl residential suburbs that Portland (and LA, and every Texan city, etc...) there is minimal provision of downtown parking despite there being a lot of office density (and with it, good density of amenities), so people are highly incentivized to take transit to get to work.

Getting people to take transit to work is a great way to disincentivize car ownership in other areas of life, because for most of us, having work is essential, and it's also a great way to show how rewarding car-free travel can be...when done well.

[urbanlife]

Originally Posted by uncommon.name

I can't take someone seriously if they think that the US26/I405 interchange doesn't need fixed. That just tells me that you're the kind of person who wishes the world would burn so you just have this bicycles and trains utopia. One of the biggest creators of congestion is poorly designed interchanges and lack of traffic flow (lane mathematics). People who beat a drum and proclaim that we need to get rid of freeways will be the same people throwing up arms over the added surface level traffic that NOT fixing the freeways creates.

You can add-to and improve mass-transit to help with some of our transportation issues, but as the area grows, this 50-60+ year old infrustructure is not going to be able to handle the load. You are never going to force everyone onto mass-transit. Be realistic.

The thing is the West Hills aren't going anywhere and it is unlikely we will see any widening of the US26 tunnel. So what exists for vehicles is probably all that there ever will be, so it makes sense to look at how alternatives can be expanded to help relieve that stress and provide people with an option to commuting that doesn't involve them adding to traffic.

[subterranean]

Originally Posted by uncommon.name

I can't take someone seriously if they think that the US26/I405 interchange doesn't need fixed. That just tells me that you're the kind of person who wishes the world would burn so you just have this bicycles and trains utopia. One of the biggest creators of congestion is poorly designed interchanges and lack of traffic flow (lane mathematics). People who beat a drum and proclaim that we need to get rid of freeways will be the same people throwing up arms over the added surface level traffic that NOT fixing the freeways creates.

You can add-to and improve mass-transit to help with some of our transportation issues, but as the area grows, this 50-60+ year old infrustructure is not going to be able to handle the load. You are never going to force everyone onto mass-transit. Be realistic.

100% agree. Widening the tunnel likely isn’t necessary. It’s the interchanges after you get through the tunnel. They are very poorly designed.

[aquaticko]

But the solution to fixing the interchanges involves things like straightening them, widening them, grade-separating them...all things that we know are both literally and conceptually destructive of cities.

The problem with mass automobile usage is that you have to park your car somewhere, eventually. The solution to that has been the past 100 years of environmentally-destructive, socioeconomically-fragmenting, privately and publicly expensive parking, road, and highway building. 100 years later, and even very thoroughly highway-dense and sprawling cities like Nashville, the Texas triangle cities, and LA, and Atlanta still have traffic.

Cars are just too space inefficient to be the "transit" system a city works with. The only way it works is to destroy cities, and there's every good reason not to do that. I feel like I shouldn't need to elaborate on why it's a bad idea here, but the flip-side of all the negatives are a good start: better resource efficiency (space, materials, money, time, community) is possible with ped/bike/bus/rail transportation systems than with car-based ones.

That can't be a novel thing to say here, and pretending that further entrenching ourselves in what is fundamentally an inferior transportation paradigm is an attitude that deserves not to be taken seriously.

[maccoinnich]

How would a redesign of the US26/I405 interchange even be done?

[subterranean]

Prioritize two lanes north bound and two lanes southbound immediately out of the tunnel. The northbound ramp is already wide enough for two lanes as it is, including through the underpass. It needs barely anything more than paint and some minor changes at the merge point to 405. Use the extra wide shoulder as the exit to Everett/Glisan. Make the far left existing Everett exit as a through lane to temporarily make 405 three through lanes. That shoulder is wide enough to continue straight on through until it merges with the onramp from Couch. Both sides of 405 are over buffered with unnecessary shoulder. South bound is also wonky as hell but could easily accommodate another lane at very little cost.

[colossalorder]

As someone who sits in that traffic crunch all the time i have a simple and cost efficient solution that won't fix the problem, but should certainly help. Put up those plastic knock over barriers that you find in NYC tunnels that keep people from changing lanes. I think a material chunk of that traffic comes from lane cheaters who switch at the last minute before, inside or even after the tunnel causing lane clogs, backups, defensive tail gating, accidents ... and if nothing else just a lot unnecessary of human stress. Bigger picture, it seems like the least busy lanes are the ones that take you downtown (Jefferson and Market exits), which makes me think most people are just passing through and not going to Portland at all. Are there some longer-term solution that can connect the west with desintations north, south and east without crunching into the tunnel.

[dizflip]

Originally Posted by colossalorder

Are there some longer-term solution that can connect the west with desintations north, south and east without crunching into the tunnel.

Yup. Substantially better investment in transit.

[uncommon.name]

Originally Posted by urbanlife

The thing is the West Hills aren't going anywhere and it is unlikely we will see any widening of the US26 tunnel. So what exists for vehicles is probably all that there ever will be, so it makes sense to look at how alternatives can be expanded to help relieve that stress and provide people with an option to commuting that doesn't involve them adding to traffic.

Widening is very possible and has been done on many tunnels around the world where needed. I would say at a minimum, the EB US26 tunnel needs the most focus, but then the actual interchange after the tunnel needs the most work.

Adding an aux lane after the tunnel on each side for NB and SB 405 connection would allow vehicles travelling through and those exiting immediately their own lanes to do so, minimizing the needs to merge and allowing traffic to flow. The suggestion to add some sort of barriers after the pre-tunnel merge point would also help by eliminating merge cheaters, who cause everyone to slam on their breaks to allow them in at the last second. As mentioned, the NB ramp to 405 may already be wide enough to add 1 more lane for aux use. SB is a bit tighter and they would likely need to move some earth and rebuild the Montgomery street overpass. Doing those even before widening the tunnel would certainly help the constant congestion headed through the tunnel.

[dizflip]

More lanes only work if drivers in this region accept the zipper merge, which they do not. I've encountered this issue countless times on the NB I-5 right lane south of the Morrison Bridge where some selfish idiot on the middle lane inevitably blocks you from using all of it. A lot of people do this, and it's baffling. What you end up with is an empty lane while the through lanes are full of cars. Besides, the lanes within the tunnel are already dedicated to the 405 connections, and I think widening those lanes only for drivers to have to merge at the interchange (exactly like the interchange from 405 to WB tunnel) will only make traffic worse.

Also, it's truly bold of you guys to assume barriers will stop foolish drivers from causing traffic. If anything, it'll make these people stop before the barriers so they can merge and cause even more traffic.

[aquaticko]

We're once again talking about investments in transportation infrastructure that, by nature of how low-capacity the mode they're increasing, won't even indirectly pay for themselves. 100 years of evidence of induced demand, and we're still thinking we can build our way out of car congestion. The only way--the one and only--is if traffic volumes remain constant despite increasing road mileage, which we know they don't.

[subterranean]

You're conflating necessary system improvements due to natural growth/poor design with unfettered and unnecessary highway expansion and that's not what most people are arguing for. That's like saying we should stop expanding our sewer system to stop population growth because shit is bad for the environment.

It's not an all or nothing proposition, gradual changes need to be made regardless of your personal point of view because you're not the only person who lives here and all transportation systems need refinement in time. Using poor system design to create traffic is absurd obstructionism and just poor policy and will be shot down by voters when given the chance. Besides, turning entire highways into parking lots for large parts of the day is no better for the environment.

Other options like tolling will make a difference, but there are negative externalities to that as well. Tolling is not going to drive many people to transit or change that many people's life choices, it's going to create additional pressures on our local roads and people will have to make a decision as to whether the reduced time of highway use will be worth the costs. Neighborhoods will see new congestion and we'll see neighbors coming out of the woodwork to express their issues with these newly created congested areas. The system will still have to change. Whether that is through changes to highways or the local network, one way or another the system will still bear the traffic that exists and will continue to grow as the region grows.

A final thought is that Americans have come to expect a certain level of convenience and will raise a stink and vote when those conveniences are taken away. People expect to get places by car in Portland, not just the burbs. Few people live out their lives entirely by transit or by foot/bike. An infinitesimally small number of people change their mode of transit based on congestion alone once they've settled into housing and job choices, and transit is more a philosophical choice based on perceived status for most people. Until we have a truly robust, comprehensive and world renowned transit system, people will not give up their cars. An anecdote in point is I live in a TOD neighborhood and cars still outnumber adults and I suspect most transit areas are the same.

[uncommon.name]

Originally Posted by aquaticko

We're once again talking about investments in transportation infrastructure that, by nature of how low-capacity the mode they're increasing, won't even indirectly pay for themselves. 100 years of evidence of induced demand, and we're still thinking we can build our way out of car congestion. The only way--the one and only--is if traffic volumes remain constant despite increasing road mileage, which we know they don't.

Let me explain this as simple as possible, since you're using Induced Demand in your argument, which does not factor in aux lanes, only through lanes. The US26 Freeway is 3 lanes EB when it enters and exits the tunnel. After the tunnel, it is reduced to 2 through lanes and 1 exit lane technically, since the #2 lane becomes Market Street. Because of this, it creates a bottleneck due to reducing a freeway from 3 to 2 lanes of through traffic. As many studies have shown, the best way to fix flow through is to have an equal number of through lanes, completely through a freeway to freeway interchange, such as this one. Now you run into the dilemma of which direction do you add this aux lane, NB or SB? Well, as both are highly congested, you could add an aux lane in both directions where two lanes continue through the ramp and then one continues through on 405 and the other continues to the first exit past the interchange. This allows traffic to flow better onto 405, where it can be spread back out across 3 lanes again. Most of 405's traffic comes from US26. That's why once you do get onto 405, it is often flowing immediately after US26 was at a standstill.

[aquaticko]

Originally Posted by subterranean

You're conflating necessary system improvements due to natural growth/poor design with unfettered and unnecessary highway expansion and that's not what most people are arguing for. That's like saying we should stop expanding our sewer system to stop population growth because shit is bad for the environment.

The difference here being that there is no alternative to human GI function; you can only have there be more or fewer people in an area. X number of people are going to produce X amount of waste, even assuming different sized people, different methods of output (ostomies), etc.

There is an alternative to driving. It's not a "people drive or they can't go anywhere" situation. Pretending we have to make it easier for people to drive or they just won't leave their homes is--I hope I don't really need to point this out--absurd. Insofar as that is the case, that is our problem.

....Using poor system design to create traffic is absurd obstructionism and just poor policy and will be shot down by voters when given the chance. Besides, turning entire highways into parking lots for large parts of the day is no better for the environment.

This has been the argument for freeway expansion for a long time, and once again, it just doesn't work this way. You build more roads/reduce congestion, people will drive more.

A final thought is that Americans have come to expect a certain level of convenience and will raise a stink and vote when those conveniences are taken away.

My personal feelings about this are largely irrelevant, but I don't care, and really, no one else should, either. When our "convenience" results in the deaths of any number of people locally or globally, through direct pollution, materials extraction, or production I'm sorry, but I don't give a damn if you need to, e.g., wait for a sit in traffic, or wait for a bus, ride a bike in the rain on occasion. I'm not even saying I'm not part of the problem; I do drive on occasion--though not unless I have either no choice, or recreationally as a genuine car enthusiast--and my life is no doubt a little easier because goods and services are made cheaper because someone else is bearing the externalities of the car/truck-based world I live in.

That doesn't make it right, doesn't make it justifiable.

Until we have a truly robust, comprehensive and world renowned transit system, people will not give up their cars. An anecdote in point is I live in a TOD neighborhood and cars still outnumber adults and I suspect most transit areas are the same.

Unless you live in downtown Portland you don't live in a TOD neighborhood. Even places like Orenco Station are only roughly comparable with older New England suburbs of the kind I left a few years ago. The whole Western half of this country has no idea what real TOD ought to look like; the Eastern half has just been too busy squandering the natural advantages of that built form to show what's been lost.

[aquaticko]

Originally Posted by uncommon.name

Let me explain this as simple as possible, since you're using Induced Demand in your argument, which does not factor in aux lanes, only through lanes. The US26 Freeway is 3 lanes EB when it enters and exits the tunnel. After the tunnel, it is reduced to 2 through lanes and 1 exit lane technically, since the #2 lane becomes Market Street. Because of this, it creates a bottleneck due to reducing a freeway from 3 to 2 lanes of through traffic. As many studies have shown, the best way to fix flow through is to have an equal number of through lanes, completely through a freeway to freeway interchange, such as this one. Now you run into the dilemma of which direction do you add this aux lane, NB or SB? Well, as both are highly congested, you could add an aux lane in both directions where two lanes continue through the ramp and then one continues through on 405 and the other continues to the first exit past the interchange. This allows traffic to flow better onto 405, where it can be spread back out across 3 lanes again. Most of 405's traffic comes from US26. That's why once you do get onto 405, it is often flowing immediately after US26 was at a standstill.

Exit lanes here are so absurdly long that I genuinely find them confusing. I've counted literal miles going WB on 26 from the first "exit only" sign to the actual exit, and the ones going EB into the tunnel are likewise at least a mile from the tunnel. I'll feel an urgency to get into the correct lane where no one else feels any reciprocity and lets me in, because at the very least, they know I don't need to go anywhere so soon. This also creates the issue of reverse psychology, where people will wait until the last minute to get on an exit because they have "plenty of time" to do so. The level of sloppy and inattentive driving here makes it less surprising that I see so many more MVAs in the emergency department I work in here than I did in New Hampshire. All the while, you've essentially built roadway which costs money to maintain,and is (if used in accordance to the lane adherence the "exit only" signs suggest) underutilized, while providing extra confusion to people like me who've spent years driving on more old-fashioned, less-forgiving highways which--precisely because they're less forgiving--are safer.

The whole thing about resolving induced demand with widening is that it's not conceptually-rounded. After all, 405NB is two lanes once fully joined by 26EB, Market St becomes 3 lanes before even reaching the light marking the end of the ramp, and 405SB becomes 3 lanes where it meets up with 26EB. Ergo, 26EB needs to become eight lanes to have through lanes matched for each route being connected?

No, you say, this is demarcating ends of freeways/interchanges incorrectly. How do I, the average motorist, know this? How do I know the beginning of an interchange isn't from the very first "exit only" lane marking I see? My car doesn't know the difference between the freeway and its interchange or auxiliary lanes; the tires roll along the tarmac just the same. I'm very open to the fact that I could just be ignorant of how traffic engineers delineate a freeway from its interchanges, but I'd be staggered if it wasn't essentially arbitrary in the vast majority of cases.

The problem with building for cars is they're very infrastructurally-intensive for the quantity of potential transportation they involve, because people both don't neatly delineate where a singular road ends and are abetted in that conceptual sloppiness because of the freedom of movement a car on a road provides, wherever it goes.

You could technically have a rail line built along a dirt road, and meet the transportation expectations of ~90% of the people who take the train completely by having the rail line and a dirt pathway next to it. (Of course in the 21st century, we know better than to be building rail lines in areas where the non-train portion of a potential trip's demand is going to be satisfied with a dirt road; it'll turn to mud and ruts before too long, but then you get into the inherent space advantage pedestrians/bikes have over roads. A 20m wide ROW will accommodate far more people than cars). People aren't necessarily going to expect the same level of transportation convenience because they've left the vehicle (train), so there's no expectation for a rail line to bring you to your doorstep.

By contrast, there's the built-in expectation that a car will take you to your doorstep (much as there was for the horse-and-carriage which the car made obsolete), and so that level of convenience is expected every step of the way. Cars create a level of convenience for their users that makes anything less unacceptable, and we've been struggling and failing to meet that convenience for everyone since the Model T.

I don't mean to suggest in all this that the 405/26 interchange isn't bad/messy/underbuilt. I'm questioning the unavoidable urgency of the situation which rebuilding it would hope to solve. We know there's not an infinite amount of money to spend on transportation projects; why is it going to such low-value (literally; how would we even measure the value of an untolled flow improvement project?) investment as this? In a more rational world, we'd be trying to figure out rip 405 out of what should be some of the region's most valuable land, and what to build to get the most taxable value of what we'd build and develop in its place (might I suggest a city-center tunnel for the MAX?).

[urbanlife]

Originally Posted by uncommon.name

Widening is very possible and has been done on many tunnels around the world where needed. I would say at a minimum, the EB US26 tunnel needs the most focus, but then the actual interchange after the tunnel needs the most work.

Adding an aux lane after the tunnel on each side for NB and SB 405 connection would allow vehicles travelling through and those exiting immediately their own lanes to do so, minimizing the needs to merge and allowing traffic to flow. The suggestion to add some sort of barriers after the pre-tunnel merge point would also help by eliminating merge cheaters, who cause everyone to slam on their breaks to allow them in at the last second. As mentioned, the NB ramp to 405 may already be wide enough to add 1 more lane for aux use. SB is a bit tighter and they would likely need to move some earth and rebuild the Montgomery street overpass. Doing those even before widening the tunnel would certainly help the constant congestion headed through the tunnel.

I know how tunnels are widened, but I don't think there is room for that. Both tunnels are three lanes wide with very little room left over at the tunnel exists. Just the environmental studies that would be needed to would tie up an expansion like this for decades.

It would be easier to just expand light rail on the west side.

[Jakz]

Throughput is limited here by the capacity of I-405 to absorb traffic, not the tunnels or the ramps. A second ramp lane doesn't make a difference unless (a) traffic is free-flowing on the freeway being merged into AND merge lanes are long enough that traffic from the outer merge lane can merge to the inner merge lane and then the freeway lane without causing backups, or (b) the added merge lane becomes a continuous lane on the freeway being merged into.

Neither of these conditions are present, so extra ramp (and tunnel) lanes would be useless.

The only feasible way to increase east-west vehicle throughput would be to provide exit ramps directly from US26 to the primary eastside highways, bypassing the freeway loop. This could look like (a) a tunnel from the Zoo to the west end of the Ross Island bridge, or (b) a tunnel from the Jefferson St. exit ramps to the LLoyd Center. These would be very expensive. But they could provide interesting opportunities to tunnel the light rail lines through downtown. For instance, twin 40' bores could carry two lanes and an LRT track each. Would be a similar scope to Seattle's Alaska Way tunnel (slightly larger).

[subterranean]

Not necessarily true. I’ve taken this route so many times that in my experience, something like 85-90 percent of the time at anything but peak peak traffic is free flowing on 405 after just exiting the congestion on 26, which is the clearest indication imaginable that it’s a ramp/merge issue and not a capacity issue.

[subterranean]

Originally Posted by aquaticko

Unless you live in downtown Portland you don't live in a TOD neighborhood. Even places like Orenco Station are only roughly comparable with older New England suburbs of the kind I left a few years ago. The whole Western half of this country has no idea what real TOD ought to look like; the Eastern half has just been too busy squandering the natural advantages of that built form to show what's been lost.

My census tract is denser than all but 4 in Portland outside of downtown and is set to get much denser yet. It is the literal definition of a TOD neighborhood. It has room for improvement but it is just a matter of time. Your east coast neighborhoods were built before cars. There is no comparison. As you go outward from those densest tracts, the NE sprawls more than just about anywhere. Beaverton, Aloha, and Hillsboro are densifying more than most places in the country, so if you hate it here (you sure like to complain) you’re going to find it worse a lot of other places, except for perhaps your beloved northeast, which maybe you should consider going back to.