Cities need a diverse transportation system

Readers’ Letters

, Oct 1, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009

JONATHAN HOUSE / Tribune File Photo

A MAX light-rail car parks at Clackamas Town Center transit station during a Green Line test run. Letter writers welcome the new Green Line as a good alternative to driving cars.

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I wonder why people do not think of the other costs associated with car travel (35 years in training, Sept. 10). First of all, we all know that the federal highway system was primarily paid for by the federal government, namely to the tune of 90 cents to the dollar in the 1950s.

Secondly, if one drives a car, one has to pay for insurance, gas, maintenance and sickness through pollution – not to forget the vast amount of resources spent on roads. Cars are a great tool for having the freedom to go where one chooses, but the issue with cars is that they do not scale well with increases in their number.

Bangkok and Delhi were good examples of this until they built other transport options. Hence, it’s important to diversify.

So, if you cannot take a car, you can take a train or a bus or a bicycle. If you have only one method of transportation, then there is greater risk involved – similar to how one diversifies one’s stock portfolio. Nobody keeps all their money in one industry. Similarly, a city should not restrict their transportation options to one mode only.

Vipul Saxena

Spokane, Wash.

Citizen action led to Green Line

Your story about the history of the Green Line left out one important fact: After the defeat of the ballot measures to fund the south-north line, Metro staff came back to the citizens advising on the south corridor project and told us that light rail was no longer an option (35 years in training, Sept. 10). Alternatives to address traffic demands in the McLoughlin Boulevard/Highway 224 corridor could consider anything but light rail.

Your story did not mention how citizens of the Sellwood/Westmoreland, Brooklyn, Eastmoreland and Reed neighborhoods banded together to push Metro to keep light rail on the table. We even organized a conversation with Milwaukie residents to find out that they were not unilaterally opposed to light rail, but would consider light rail if their considerations were met.

From our efforts, Metro planners and elected officials understood that there was still strong support for what was to have been the Green Line from Milwaukie to Portland. Instead, because it was cheaper to build with no right of way acquisition costs, the Green Line became the line from Clackamas Town Center to Gateway and downtown.

Don Clark’s vision and leadership excepted, the decision to build the current Green Line was made possible by citizen action for which we have to wait until sometime after 2015 for the light rail service the residents of inner Southeast Portland had so successfully argued for.

Kevin Downing

Southeast Portland