Hales plans to shift focus of city transportation budget
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PORTLAND, Ore. – Portland’s Mayor-elect Charlie Hales said he’s ready to hit the ground running when he takes office next year.
Hales said he’ll begin to sit in on city budget meetings starting Tuesday so he can get up to speed on the budget process and decide which issues he’ll tackle first.
“I think it’s going to be a real adult and orderly transition process which I think people are ready for,” said Hales.
One big change Portlanders can expect: Bike projects will take a back seat to road repairs in Hales’ administration. Hales said bike projects are important, but the city has ignored road maintenance for too long.
“We do still want to keep building choices for people to move around the city, but job one has to be maintaining the streets that we have better than we have been doing,” said Hales.
He wants Portland’s 60 miles of unpaved streets covered as soon as possible before there are any more bike projects.
“We have a lot of potholes, a lot of streets with cracks that need repair, so my transportation budget will prioritize that basic maintenance first before we do anything else.”
Hales also said he expects to rethink the city’s stance on the controversial Columbia River Crossing project. Outgoing Mayor Sam Adams wanted a new bridge across the Columbia River to favor alternative transportation. Hales said he plans to steer the city’s priorities toward interstate commerce.
“We’re going to look at a way to move forward on a version of that project that makes sense and fits our values, and that we can actually build. Because we’ve been planning this way too long. And if we’re going to build something, it’s time to start.”
Hales said he plans to help the city’s budget process by keeping all of the city’s bureaus under his control for the first three months of his administration. That way, all of the City Council members will finish the budgets before knowing which bureaus they will oversee.
“When I take all the bureaus, we’re going to have the whole council do the budget together and in some cases start with a blank piece of paper,” he said.
Hales said that will mean less bickering and political battles before the budgets are finalized.
So, bicyclists want the world paved over? LOL
I thought that was environmentally a no-no.
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What about making bicycles have license plates so there is some accountability? What happened to that idea?
Hallelujah, Yippie-yi-yo-ki-yay, I'm gonna go dance in the street....finally, a Mayor with his priories straight....,way to go Hales...
The thing is that here in Portland, bike infrastructure - multimodal infrastructure are intricately entwined with road maintenance. As a cyclist, I don't like to use unimproved roads just as much as a car user likes to drive on pot holes or a walker or wheel chair user likes to traverse cracked and broken cement. (Not even mentioning bus facilities such as curb cuts and the bus mall, MAX station. All great features of the city and part of the infrastructure that we as both cyclists and car users dance with daily.)Â
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You can't improve a road without thinking about what kind of users are going to be access it. If you just improve a road by slathering on concrete or asphalt or whatever, then you are going to have a clusterf*ck five years down the road when all the roads in town are exactly like Sandy Blvd, Foster or MLK and none of them are accessible to anyone - more collisions and less traffic calming features.
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By incorporating multi-modal features into your urban planning - because come on! We're not the 1950s!! We are establishing the future success of our city by making it adaptable for our changing and growing population so that we aren't forced to go back 5 to 10 years from now and completely re-do the mistakes of our "let's go back to basics Hale." There's a reason why people go to school for a long time for civil engineering and urban planning. It's freaking complicated. If you have to plan for change and growth and development. You have to look at 30 years from now. Not 4 years from now.
I don't understand the focus on paving the unpaved roads. These are not roads that people are forced to take, they are essentially alleys that are fine the way they are. Sounds like somebody has buddies that need a job.
 @RadicalSabbatical I suggest you read this article from the WW. Alleys are only a fraction of the unpaved roads in PDX.
http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-17460-dirt_roads_dead_ends.html
 @RadicalSabbatical "These are not roads that people are forced to take"  Seriously?  So the "alleys" that people have to drive in and out every day are "fine"? I dare you to live in an area of town that has a disproportionate amount of unpaved roads.Â
 @RadicalSabbatical hah! Good point! My co-worker that doesn't really know/care anything about Portland politics only knew about this article and a little back story that I was giving her last night and asked, "does he really have the job or is he working for someone?"Â
Sounds like the new Mayor wont be as big an idiot as the last one. Thats not saying much since Adams didnt set the bar very high.
The city has ignored road maintenance for too long because we've been wasting money on useless boutique streetcars to promote Charlie's consulting firm.Â
Happy to see this article. Next I hope he reverts our garbage pick up back to once a week.Â
 @Newsin ...another program that smells...I am forced to pay full collection rates and to this day all I have put out is one 20 gal. can of garbage every other week....somehow I find this an extreme and not worth my time, effort, money....maybe a dumpster someplace would be a better answer for me...if something is not done soon to reverse Sammy's stupid ideas...what are we to do?  I bet the people near the dumps would love to see this reversal also.....
As a driver, cyclist, pedestrian and transit user, I fine the choice between bike improvements and road repair to be a false and over-simplified one. Well maintained roads are better for bicycling good and bike infrastructure investments reduce the wear and tear on roads by giving people more option to not drive. So its not like spending on one or the other is a complete trade-off.
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I think a better question is what investments make our streets work better for everyone... and by better I mean safer for all types of transportation (iincluding walking and transit), more efficient, and lower impact on our environment (especially air and water pollution).
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Jim Labbe
 @Jim Labbe Well put. Charlie, of course, is gung-ho about building the CRC freeway project to vancouver. It'll be interesting to see 1) whether he keeps his promise to get it started in year one; and 2) how quickly Portlanders realized they just elected a moderate republican pretending to be progressive so he could get this job.
 @VanPDX  @Jim Labbe Expect coal trains this time next year. Perhaps Seattle will be the better place after all.  #interstatecommerce
I am a cyclist, pedestrian, motorist, and a life citizen of Portland. We have one the best bicycle friendly cities in the United States. Shifting the focus to maintaining what we already have is an excellent plan. i am really glad to see the focus shift. As a cyclist I don't agree with a lot of the City's former bicycle projects. I personally think that the green boxes are a terrible idea; especially when cost is considered. I would much rather have a smoother route to work than some green paint and white lines. Sharing the road is the key to success. That includes sharing the budget.
'One big change Portlanders can expect: Bike projects will take a back seat to road repairs in Halesâ administration. Hales said bike projects are important, but the city has ignored road maintenance for too long.'
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'Â Outgoing Mayor Sam Adams wanted a new bridge across the Columbia River to favor alternative transportation. Hales said he plans to steer the cityâs priorities toward interstate commerce.'
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*sniffle, sniffle* (dabs tear from eye)
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..It's a beautiful thing.Â
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Standing ovation!
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The planning all sounds good. But, it is the execution of the plan that will determine the real results. The direction proposed is a welcome change from the freak show known as Sam Adams.
Wow.
Keep pushing ideas like that and the city will recall you.
Because we all know how much Portland hates common sense.
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Maybe he'll scrap the public transportation system too and divert that money to more parking lots and roads.
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 @SuperConcerned Yeah! Those sissies! Out in the pouring rain, ice cold head wind, chugging up big hills with cars and semis passing them a few feet away and the whole time with a smile on their face! On there way to their jobs as an ironworker like myself, or a mechanic like a friend, and a carpenter like another.
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What a bunch of limp wrists!
 @SuperConcerned Bikes were invented BEFORE cars. Roads were built for BIKES before cars were invented.So by your logic, get the hell out of MY WAY
@Dan America @SuperConcerned Horses were around before bikes and they were on the roadways before bikes, so whats your point!!! Never shed a tear for a trike rider getting into a confrontation with a motor vehicle.
It's attitudes like this that make me wonder if I shouldn't get a carry permit for when I'm on the bike. Â
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You could have just stopped at "I prefer to drive a car", but no, everyone apparently has to agree that bikes are too dangerous, and you're just the guy to prove it, huh?
Ok, lets actually think about this. Car use is on the decline in the younger demographics and if we actually planned cities with future generations in mind this project would be the last in consideration. An I-5 expansion for a new CRC is not going to solve congestion problems either, studies have shown that freeway expansions actually just invite more traffic and maintains the same level of congestion. This means we will also have more cars idling or crawling up the corridor compounding the injustice that is the air quality problem in North Portland, where people are subject to asthma rates double the national average, lets also mention the fact that diesel particulate is a carcinogen as well. This is not going to help interstate commerce, nor is the idea that opening up that flow, which it wont, is at all going to hit near to what our economic problems are -- production is high, corporate profits are at highs greater than before the recession, except majority of people are not getting their share of it, in fact this has been the case for over 30 years. If we wanted to strengthen commuting between WA, and OR then build a mass transit system that moves people - don't expand this gash of highway that people are going to slug an hour through on when it can be covered in 15 min on an express transit line.If we wanted to work on local economic resilience, we would be working on the infrastructure that would provide an outlet for people to be liberated from their car, not further dependent on it. Oil is not going to get cheaper, your car is always going to be expensive as shit. If we want to do some social and economic justice,then empower bikes and public transit, make some roads in downtown bike only --people will get places faster, with more money in their pocket when not clogging roads with their cars.How about we tear up some of these roads? Put some gardens in, build some food sovereignty and give communities greater access to cheap, healthy, and nutritious food.Oh and the climate is in crisis, and essentially the future of this planet, and we are doing little to respond to it, putting more cars on the road, and diverting funds to transportation projects that don't account for this future is idiotic.The only explanation for this is simple: Charlie Hales is shill for developers. Next Item: Give back the dirty coal money Hales!
 @Michel Losier BOOM! Nailed it.
What a disgrace. Â Our values? Â Our values are ones that support active transit and livable streets, something that Hales has now made loud and clear he does not support. Â This guy could be a disaster for Portland. Â Do you seriously think driving will be EASIER with a 10 lane freeway bringing thousands more cars from Washington into our city while siphoning revenue OUT of our state? Â Do you have any idea how much your taxes will go up to pay for the construction and maintenance of this mega-freeway expansion? Â
@Hart Noecker So how do cars siphon revenue ?? do they sneak over the river with giant straws ? Actually if the cars are bringing people to work in Portland they pay income tax to Oregon with no benefits. I would venture that they also spend money in -town cause there's no sales tax (yet, Kitzslobber wil fix that now) so stuff is cheaper. If trafffic moves faster over the bridge there's less pollution cause cars are much more efficent at speed than crawling down the freewy at 10- 15 Â mph average freeways are expensive but the vast majority of goods and services, and commuters travel on them. Light rails is ungodly expensive and dependably undependable. Busses are great but they also travel on the same freeways that cars and trucks travel, or crawl , on as the case is now. And you know the most magical thing about a new crossing to Washington,Dude they got legal ganja and you can drive right up there; Shazamm
 @Tonk  @Hart How do cars siphon revenue?  Is that a joke?  Do you have any clue how many billions of tax payer dollars are needed to subsidize roads and gasoline? Light rail is a tiny fraction of the cost of highways and freeways, if you care about being fiscally responsible, then you'd better be supporting light rail over freeways.
 @pdxFTW  @Hart Noecker  @Tonk For the bonus round: Who was Hales working for during his residency in WA?
 @Hart Noecker  @Tonk to Hart Noecker.  ODOT and their city/town brethren are not siphoning revenue from the state coffers, or at least only a very small portion of their budgets.  ODOT has a few main revenue sources - Motor Fuels Tax, Federal Funds (like Obama's stimulus), Weight Mile Tax, Driver & Vehicle License, Transportation License & Fees and the Lottery. The reality is transportion departments rely on vehicle related taxes and fees for their budget.  Would you be willing to offset that revenue with a personal bicycle fee of say $100 or $150 a year?
Light-Rail in it's current model and planning, only has limited opportunity to offset community by vehicles.  If the idea is to get more people off the road and using public transportation, the metro area needs a BART or MTA like system that can get people from to their destination in a much quicker manner.  Taking MAX from PDX to Orenco Station in Hillsboro takes approximately an hour and half, not including possibly waiting times.  One could drive to Salem or Olympia in that amount of time.   Â
 @Hart Noecker Yeah, because the freeway system regardless is totally up to par with demand. I can see where Portland would totally milk the cash cow if people could walk and ride bikes from the east bank to the west. Especially since it rains here 275 days a year. Sam was a child molester but he had values, right?
 @oops First of all, if you want to make an intelligent argument, get your facts correct. A child molester "is a crime involving a range of indecent or sexual activities between an adult and a child, usually under the age of 14." What you're probably thinking of is a pederast which implies a passive partner, but from what I heard, Breedlove wasn't that passive. . . *cough* Dude was 17. You're splitting hairs at that point. It was someone working a job at the capital. He wasn't diddling someone at daycare. We're done with the pedophile business. That's boring. Let's talk politics. Â
Makes me glad I voted for him .......twice. Let the scandal begin hahahaha
Well, Portlanders, I sure hope your new mayor lives up to what he's saying... Â So far, anyway, he's making a l-o-t of sense..! Â Bikes are good, but Portland also still has lots of cars...and there's no indication that these are going away anytime in the very near future...so the streets need attention. Â Â Come to think of it, you bicycle riders really don't like riding on streets with potholes and big cracks, do you? Â Â
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It will be very interesting to see what happens in Portland in the coming months..! Â Â Mr Hales, you have a unique opportunity to restore one city's faith in its local government... hope you can make it happen..! Â :-)
Wow! Congratulations, Portland. Not sure if it was intentional, but you actually voted in someone who appears to have a brain.
 @Lips Hush, you! Let no logical words be spoken...lest the green masses of Portland rise up and smite thee! :D I'm hoping he keeps his promises. The east side especially desperately needs maintenance and paving...we have roads out here (unmarked of course) with potholes that come up to our van's fender. Scary.
 @MissLissaJ You should be glad Sam ignored the eastside. His attention isn't to be desired.
The first smart move by Hales. Bikes and bikeriders need to be on the back burner. The roads were designed for motor vehicle traffic not bikes...Becareful bikeriders your mayor is leaving, the cash is drying up and will now be diverted to more worthy causes....BTW: Sammy has your crying towels!
 @FreerideNOT Keep in mind any people choosing to drive over biking will be one more car you get to deal with during rush hour traffic.  Good times!
 @FreerideNOT You're a fool if you believe that repaving and maintenance won't be a boon to bicyclists. It will be wonderful. As a rider, and driver, I appreciate having smooth roads. You're also a fool if you believe that the city of Portland will stop doing more to better it's cycling infrastructure. They won't. It's not wise, nor even doable, to have all your transportation eggs in one basket, so to say. Diversity in mode share is what makes for a well rounded system.
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My question to you is where is your crying towel? Now that Sam Adams and the "bikeriders" aren't to be blamed any longer, who'll be the whipping boy for the misery of your life?
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 @FreerideNOT I will get that licence, as soon as you explain what a licence is. If you mean a license, I already have one of those. Also have a real nice comprehensive insurance plan to boot. But last I checked, that isn't required by law. Now a real "pull yourself up by their bootstrap" individual could do the leg work and try to change that. But sniveling and blaming is much easier so I doubt anything will change.
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And don't worry about me. I'll be fine. As will most riders and drivers will be fine. I've been on two wheels my whole life, motorized and not, and haven't been hurt yet. And won't. I'm too sharp and aware of the consequences of mixing it up around things that can kill me. BUT THANKS FOR YOUR CONCERN
The roads need to be redesigned.
If the PDX Area is paradise, I wish I had a huge riding lawnmower...
Hell, I'm a cyclist and I have to agree you'll get more bang for your buck this way. Â Maintain the streets and the existing bike lanes, and we'll do just fine.
 @Festivus Thank you for being very sane and practical. The kooks the last time fouled it up.  Again, I agree, cycling to work is GREAT for the 6 percent who do so.  Let's fund accordingly..
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 @Muttley Be careful what you wish for. Cycling projects only receive about 2% of the PBOT budget. To fund accordingly would require a 4% shift in monies.
He is going in the right direction. Â Adams did a good job of messing portland up.
Sam Adams has set back the acceptance of gay people 50 years.
 @hankhandsome what have you done to exand the acceptance of gays?