12 Axioms

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axioms and their projects

ban the word ‘suburban’ acculturate parking use light rail to build community build neighborhoods with public schools build a high-speed intercity rail system invest in freight railroads to stimulate our economy raise dramatically our expectations for our bicycle system foster pride in the oaks bottom and ross island wildlife refuge return our ghost highways to thriving streets civilize our freeways extend our streetcar system plant and prune street trees with caution and care

and to summarize

nurture the portland conviction that we control our own future

One Environment, One Ethic and a Few Fertile Projects

In the past three decades, Portland’s best moments are characterized by projects so pregnant with potential that that they beget a series of responding projects that transform a place, expand opportunities, and generate new enthusiasm and resolve. These are projects that epitomize that which we value, and drive us to act aggressively in our own and collective best interests. These are projects that are rooted in a unique yet catholic heritage.

. . . it is an ethic derived from an agrarian ideal based on conservation, collaboration, and common sense . . . It is an ethic that defines progress as a consequence rather than as a challenge.

Senate Bill 100 provided something remarkable. It proposed that Oregon was one environment, diverse but sharing similar needs, opportunities and responsibilities. It offered an approach that would apply one comprehensive ethic for the preservation and enrichment of that environment.

This ethic was grounded in the inclinations of Native Americans who have lived in Oregon for thousands of years, of settlers who came and farmed in the 19th century, and of citizens who subsequently built surprisingly urbane cities in an isolated territory. It is an ethic derived from an agrarian ideal based on conservation, collaboration, and common sense. It is an ethic that tempers individual egos and preserves individual rights. It is an ethic that uses and enriches resources. And it is an ethic that defines progress as a consequence rather than as a challenge.

Each of the following projects has merit. Collectively they may be linked as complementary actions providing a more profound benefit. For example, replacing the Marquam Bridge, reorganizing the regional infrastructure that parallels the Willamette, reaching across the River with a few common interests, and reopening a handful of schools on its west bank would make whole a portion of the community that has been fragmented for generations.

These projects assume the premise that, if armed with the right principles, we can proceed to fix and improve any aspect of our environment‌with confidence, efficacy and success.

Greg Baldwin

Why we have the temerity . . .

Bold ideas are often wrong and are nearly always criticized. Even ideas favored by a majority are likely to be criticized by a vocal minority. As a result, “planning” today tends to be merely the implementation of ideas which are comfortable and for which sources of funding can be easily identified.

Real planning ought to begin with dreaming about a future which lies decades out, even if no clear path leads there. However, in today’s political climate, such planning may be a luxury granted only to people like us, who can afford to be wrong and to be criticized. No one will recall us, or refuse to reelect us, or fire us.

So why try to plan things that we may never be able to achieve? Two practical reasons: first, money miraculously seems to be attracted to worthwhile projects effectively presented. Second, a plan can prevent the foreclosing of options, as intermediate decisions are made (e.g. not building on a right of way needed for a longer-term project).

But the most important reason is that we cannot let current circumstances limit our vision. Planning that begins with a dream enables us to control our own destinies and to choose our own futures.

John Russell

. . . we cannot let current circumstances limit our vision.

Planning that begins with a dream enables us to control our own destinies and to choose our own futures.

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ban the word “suburban” Semantics matter. The use of two words, urban and suburban, denotes differences. In regions that permit sprawl, these differences can be pronounced.

But in our region we don’t approve of the notion of singleuse areas. Instead, our adopted 2040 plan encourages the creation of regional urban centers in what had formerly been suburbia.

We all share the same transportation system; we all enjoy the same parks regardless of the municipal names on them; we all shop all over the region; and we all share the responsibility for services, infrastructure and planning.

So let’s use another word that can describe our commonality: metropolitan.

Projects: • Build our regional centers as the foci for urban communities.

• Build and operate our transportation systems, parks and institutions as regional urban assets.

2

acculturate parking Asphalt parking lots in the downtown constitute blight.

The 1972 Downtown Plan recognized this fact by calling for the construction of public parking facilities that would accommodate the parking needs of the downtown but still have ground-floor shops. The right to use asphalt lots was deemed by the 1972 Plan a “conditional use” for which a permit needed to be renewed annually. The threat of non-renewal prodded landowners to be more active in developing their properties. But we’ve become complacent. Operators now do not fear non-renewal of permits.

We need to construct new public parking facilities that allow the non-renewal of permits without constraining the supply of downtown parking spaces.

Projects: • Eliminate surface parking.

• Develop more below grade parking where possible, or concentrated above-grade parking.

3

use light rail to build community Just as one can’t build a tall building with 2x4’s, one can’t build a transportation system for a large urban region like Portland by relying only on the automobile. Portlanders have been sufficiently far-sighted to build the light-rail system that will allow our city to grow without becoming strangled by automobile congestion.

But while other cities concentrated only on the ability of rail to deal with congestion, we have also capitalized on its potential to spawn development and redevelopment.

The consequence has been that while other rail systems are designed to serve only the commuter, ours has been conceived and executed to also attract the shopper, the visitor, the family and the student, with better destinations.

Projects: • Add LRT to the Transit Mall, and use its addition as the stimulus for comprehensive public and private co-investment.

• Connect Vancouver with Portland at both I-5 and I-205 crossings.

• Connect downtown and Southeast Portland with a new river crossing for rail, bikes and pedestrians with a Caruthers Bridge or a new Marquam Bridge.

• Connect PSU and WSU (in Vancouver) by LRT. Both schools have designed their campuses around the promise of LRT, and both are committed to working together to strengthen a unified metropolitan region on both sides of the Columbia.

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4

build neighborhoods with public schools Schools are essential ingredients for thriving residential neighborhoods. In many respects, they are the “there” there. In an ideal urban community, every child should live within walking distance of an elementary school.

However, since 1970 the Portland School District has systematically closed all six of its elementary schools in west Portland near the Willamette, partly because of demographic changes (which are now being reversed), and partly because administrators have lacked more than a single model of school size. Similar school closures have harmed all Portland neighborhoods.

Projects: • Construct a new primary school adjacent to Portland State.

• Construct a new primary school serving CTLH and North Macadam.

• Construct a magnet high school proximate to OMSI that serves SE and SW Portland.

• Force a marriage between PPS and the Bureau of Planning to review the status of schools in all neighborhoods.

build a

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high-speed intercity rail system America will sooner or later join the other industrialized nations by constructing high-speed passenger rail connections between cities sufficiently close that the trains are faster in time than airplanes or automobiles - like Chicago to Milwaukee, San Diego to Los Angeles, Dallas to Houston and Portland to Seattle. These trains need dedicated rights of way, because they cannot achieve the required speeds while sharing tracks with freight trains.

Projects: • Join with the State of Washington to plan the align- ment from Portland to Seattle. • Lobby Congress to purchase the alignment and construct the system.

invest in freight railroads

$1.2 billion $400 million long beach

seattle

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to stimulate our economy Economic activity doesn’t happen where freight moves through an area. It happens where freight movements stop to change modes of transport among trucks, ship, rail cars or airplanes. Portland’s very existence is owed to its location at the intersection of sea travel with transcontinental and coastwise railroads. Our future is tied to the value of two additional factors: the intersection of Interstate 5 with Interstate 84, and a thriving air cargo facility.

However, our rail circulation patterns and yards are outdated and inefficient. Our competitors in Los Angeles and Seattle have invested public money to clean up the residual spaghetti of 100 years of piecemeal rail development, to create sophisticated inter-modal rail hubs. Portland has yet to make a similar commitment, and it is suffering in competition with these now modernized markets.

$0 million portland

Projects: • Support the Port of Portland plan for freight

improvements.

raise dramatically our

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expectations for the bicycle system Portland, the nation’s number one bicycle city, needs to aspire to be more like Amsterdam.

Amsterdam’s phenomenal bicycle usage is not the result of cultural genetics or a conducive climate. Rather, it is a result of a conviction by the City of Amsterdam that increased bicycle usage was essential to preserve the city’s livability.

Portland has succeeded dramatically in the last decade or so. The number of bicyclists per day on the Hawthorne Bridge has increased ten-fold. But we’ve reached a plateau.

We can attain what Amsterdam has been able to accomplish only by that same sort of deliberate and conscious public decision.

Projects: • Send a delegation of transportation leaders to Amsterdam.

foster pride in the Oaks Bottom

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and Ross Island wildlife refuge Portland is blessed with such urban wildlife habitat gems as Forest Park and the Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge. With the acquisition of Ross Island (on the City’s wish list since the Olmsted Brothers’ Report of 1903) adjacent to Oaks Bottom, we can bring the ecology of the Willamette River to the heart of the city.

Projects: • Eliminate the rock crusher on Ross Island.

• Remove sections of the railroad berm in Oaks Bottom and replace them with trestle bridges, to restore the natural flow of the Willamette River into Oaks Bottom.

• Use informational signs to make Oaks Bottom visible and purposeful.

return portland’s

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ghost highways to thriving streets Before Interstate 5 was built, the north/south traffic through Portland traveled on McLoughlin, Barbur, and Martin Luther King Boulevards, and Interstate and 82nd Avenues. Before Interstate 84 was built, through traffic traveled on Sandy and Powell Boulevards.

Tragically, when the new freeways were built, no money was allocated to retrofit the old through-roads for their new roles, even though each of these arterials is still a State Highway and therefore the responsibility of ODOT. Projects: • Invest in these ghost highways: Sandy Boulevard (US 30B); McLoughlin Boulevard (OR 99E); Barbur Boulevard (OR 99W); Macadam Avenue (OR 43); and 82nd Avenue (OR 68). • Rebuild the western bridgehead of the Ross Island Bridge to remove its regional traffic from CTLH, and reinvest in Powell Boulevard (US 26).

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civilize our freeways Freeways, though necessary for urban life, can act as barriers to the connections that are the foundations of urbanity. Although it makes little difference that one cannot cross I-84 more than once in five miles through parts of Eastern Oregon, it is critical that we can cross I-405 in downtown Portland ten times in one mile.

Some of our freeways, notably I-405 and parts of I-5 in north Portland, are designed to be easily crossed. They are narrow and are depressed below grade. Others, notably I-5 in the Central Eastside and I-205 in southeast Portland, are built to be barriers.

As our freeway systems are expanded and modified, we need to insist that highway engineers pay attention to how one crosses their creations.

Projects: • As the Marquam Bridge is lowered and/or replaced, replace or rebuild I-5 in the Central Eastside to enable the reconnection of that community with the River. In the process, improve arterial connections to the Central Eastside.

• Bridge I-5 between CTLH and North Macadam to improve pedestrian and vehicular access.

• Make new connections across I-84 between the Lloyd District and the Central Eastside.

• Make better use of the unnecessary width of I-205.

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extend our streetcar system Each component of a transportation system (sidewalks, bike lanes, automobile lanes, streetcar lines and light-rail lines) fills a unique role. The streetcar’s niche is that it extends the reach of pedestrian travel. Streetcars can thereby bring together all parts of our Central City.

And as conclusive evidence of its perceived value, the streetcar is Portland’s metaphor for “I’ll do it myself.”

Private initiative has been the critical component in its design, development and execution.

Projects: • Extend the streetcar to the tram between North Macadam and OHSU. • Extend the streetcar to the Central Eastside, Lloyd District and Lake Oswego.

plant and prune

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street trees with caution and care Other, more mature cities of the world have long ago learned how to let their urban landscapes entertain and inspire. These cities feature flowers, and they prune their trees to keep them scaled to fit into the designed composition of their streets.

By contrast, Portland has used street trees extensively for only a generation. We’re still learning that street trees are like teenagers: you love them dearly, but you can’t let them grow wild. Without constant care and careful species selection, street trees can overwhelm our streets.

Constant and conspicuous care completes the performance and inspires better maintenance by others.

We need to tend our urban public gardens the way we tend our prized private gardens.

Projects: • Reshape or replace the Transit Mall sycamores.

• Re-evaluate both the number and the pruning of the trees in the South Auditorium District as part of an effort to revive its vitality.

• Prune and thin the mature trees in our older parks to increase sight lines (i.e., to see across the Park Blocks from the Historical Society to the Art Museum).

• Use flowers to reinforce seasonal change and to invite conspicuous maintenance.

and to

nurture the portland conviction

summarize

that we can control our own future Passivity (“things are going to hell and there is nothing we can do about it”) is a self-fulfilling prophecy and the death of a city.

Activity (“let’s do it!”) is also a self-fulfilling prophecy, and is the peculiar Portland attitude that has gotten us to where we are.

Let’s Do It!