Truer Words Ne'er Were Spoken of Portland

In two glorious paragraphs, James Lileks sums up the arrogantly, aggressively, abysmally stupid "rationale" behind the governments'* plans to ram light rail down our throats come hell or high water. He's writing about the efforts of the Minneapolis/St. Paul initiative, but the motivations, the profligate waste of money, time, and energy, and the destruction of perfectly good streets and neighborhoods is precisely the same. (Emphasis in the quote is mine.)

From the macro to the micro: we’re building another line of the light-rail system in the Twin Cities, the Central Corridor line. It will run down University Avenue, which is the most diverse artery in the metro area – it goes from the U through an industrial neighborhood that’s been gentrified here and there, rolls through a nice residential section of St. Paul and ends in an immigrant neighborhood full of the sort of shops and start-ups we’re supposed to applaud, and should. It has parking and two lanes in either direction. The train is coming. The train will cut in half the number of lanes for cars. It will eliminate almost 2/3rds of the parking for businesses, by some estimates – driving traffic into neighborhoods – and replace free parking with metered parking. So it will cost more and be less convenient to shop on the street. Who cares? Really, that’s not the point. The point is to drive a broad concrete lane down the middle, hang some ugly powerlines, and put in a high holy train, because trains are better than anything else and they mean you are a real city that values sustainability and proper urban thought. Look at us! We have trains!  Dong dong dong goes the pre-recorded bell, and it’s almost as if you should cross yourself. In the name of the trolley, the rail, and the holy boast.

I love trains; I do. I think they’re neat. But I’m not a poor person who takes the 16A bus line, and that’s a relief: the bus will be cut back, with fewer stops. Sorry! They could spend the money – good rich yeasty public money – on a fleet of lovely electric busses, and I wouldn’t raise a peep. But busses are déclassé, and you don’t get warm applause at the annual urban conferences for upgrading your bus line, for heaven’s sake. Figure out how to blow a train line through the most congested part of town and drive cars off the road, and it’s a standing O.

The entire post is here.

*City of Portland as well as the multi-county "Metro" regional government.