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  #201  
Old Posted Sep 16, 2009, 3:51 AM
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Originally Posted by MR. Cosmopolitan View Post
Portland should really stop dreaming and look at its public transit ridership numbers. CO2 emissions will not be tackled this way, so I sugest...
Reducing CO2 emissions is the only reason for building light rail? You can't be serious.
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  #202  
Old Posted Sep 16, 2009, 5:35 AM
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I personally think this is a great thing for the city, and it is amazing to see the trains running north and south through downtown now.
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  #203  
Old Posted Sep 16, 2009, 6:13 AM
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Don't forget the Milwaukie line's new bridge will carry MAX, Streetcar, 3 bus routes, bicycles and pedestrians. That's a transportation win win for everyone! (including auto usage if you study transportation planning)

The Marquam Bridge being rerouted into a tunnel is a political, media and cultural quagmire after Boston's Big Dig. It will not happen until technology overcomes these hurdles.

Articulated buses were in mass use in the 80's and riders, Trimet at large and local politicians didn't like them for a multitude of reasons. Articulated buses will not return to Portland any time soon on local riders' memory alone regardless of any new technology or application.

There are sociological and psychological reasons for building rail transit (and any other form of traffic calming for that matter) instead of just adding buses or freeway lanes to our public space (as well as overall land conserving, urban space conserving, human habitat protecting and human health and well-being reasons).
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  #204  
Old Posted Sep 16, 2009, 7:14 AM
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Originally Posted by JordanL View Post
The city estimated that the cost of burying I-5 between the Rose Quarter and Terwilliger Curves to be $4.3 billion (almost exactly the cost of the CRC) in 2004 dollars, (which would be something like $6 billion in 2009 dollars).
Would be interesting to see what level of engineering drawings that number is based on.. I highly doubt there were geotechnical studies completed either since those typically follow the conceptual engineering. When detailed engineering plans begin to be drawn, the true scope of the project is revealed and you can expect to cost estimates to balloon.. Add finance and inflation costs to a project that wouldn't even begin construction for another 10 years realistically and you're probably looking at something in the $10-15 billion range.

The CRC project isn't anticipated to be completed for another 8-10 years and it's been studied for several years already. This project would be far more challenging..
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  #205  
Old Posted Sep 16, 2009, 8:23 AM
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Originally Posted by RED_PDXer View Post
Would be interesting to see what level of engineering drawings that number is based on.. I highly doubt there were geotechnical studies completed either since those typically follow the conceptual engineering. When detailed engineering plans begin to be drawn, the true scope of the project is revealed and you can expect to cost estimates to balloon.. Add finance and inflation costs to a project that wouldn't even begin construction for another 10 years realistically and you're probably looking at something in the $10-15 billion range.

The CRC project isn't anticipated to be completed for another 8-10 years and it's been studied for several years already. This project would be far more challenging..
Right but the Robertson Tunnel only cost $184 million to build and that's with wires and track. I don't think the $4.3 billion cost would be that far off. There were a lot of reasons besides technology for the cost of the Big Dig.
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  #206  
Old Posted Sep 16, 2009, 9:44 AM
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Yes I know that MAX has encouraged development along its line more than any bus line in Portland, but still I think that Portland's small and slow bus system doesn’t go well with the massive light rail network and thus both are very under used. MAX's 15 minute frequency and 107000 riders (+-30000 more with green line) doesn’t fit with its enormous size, that should by this time be moving more than 300000 riders to be really efficient in an urban area as big as Portland. There are some interesting urban projects along the line like Orenco station that are good but still too small in size and number to cause a great impact on transportation, and their connection with the bus system (if any) is usually very bad. Portland has successfully putted a great effort on creating the base for a massive demographic change, but still hasn't had the courage and the support to really start it.
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  #207  
Old Posted Sep 16, 2009, 10:20 AM
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Originally Posted by MR. Cosmopolitan View Post
Yes I know that MAX has encouraged development along its line more than any bus line in Portland, but still I think that Portland's small and slow bus system doesn’t go well with the massive light rail network and thus both are very under used. MAX's 15 minute frequency and 107000 riders (+-30000 more with green line) doesn’t fit with its enormous size, that should by this time be moving more than 300000 riders to be really efficient in an urban area as big as Portland. There are some interesting urban projects along the line like Orenco station that are good but still too small in size and number to cause a great impact on transportation, and their connection with the bus system (if any) is usually very bad. Portland has successfully putted a great effort on creating the base for a massive demographic change, but still hasn't had the courage and the support to really start it.
300,000 is over 10% of the entire metro's population (including all of hillsboro, beaverton, gresham, oregon city, lake oswego and millwaukie).

That's completely avoiding the fact that only about 60-70% of the population would be commuting to a job.

300,000 on MAX alone is beyond ridiculous.

And if you honestly think Portland has a BAD bus system for a city our size, you have clearly never been outside of the Willamette valley.
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  #208  
Old Posted Sep 16, 2009, 10:46 AM
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300,000 on MAX alone is beyond ridiculous.
I think that its completely possible to reach this level of ridership without much difficulty. Because Portland is not like any other U.S city, things that are completely out of question in many cities in this country are completely normal here.
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  #209  
Old Posted Sep 16, 2009, 11:07 AM
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Originally Posted by MR. Cosmopolitan View Post
I think that its completely possible to reach this level of ridership without much difficulty. Because Portland is not like any other U.S city, things that are completely out of question in many cities in this country are completely normal here.
That's a preposterous position to take. Especially if you're using it to justify NOT building something.

You're not even making sense.

EDIT:

Also an interesting point... the longest tunnel in the world, under the Swiss Alps, is being done for less than $7 billion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel

Last edited by JordanL; Sep 16, 2009 at 11:43 AM.
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  #210  
Old Posted Sep 16, 2009, 1:13 PM
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That's a preposterous position to take. Especially if you're using it to justify NOT building something.

You're not even making sense.
I wasn't saying not to build it, I was just saying to delay it until we had a proper bus system for a non U.S city the size of Portland.
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  #211  
Old Posted Sep 16, 2009, 9:19 PM
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Originally Posted by MR. Cosmopolitan View Post
I wasn't saying not to build it, I was just saying to delay it until we had a proper bus system for a non U.S city the size of Portland.
now that doesnt make sense, no city does just one thing at a time. That would be like saying we should delay having a proper bus system until we have adequate road and highway system for cars.


Quote:
Originally Posted by JordanL View Post
Also an interesting point... the longest tunnel in the world, under the Swiss Alps, is being done for less than $7 billion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel
To add to this, the tunnel for the Swiss Alps goes through a mountain while the Big Dig goes through a densely populated city...so it is easy to see why the Alps tunnel is much cheaper to do.
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  #212  
Old Posted Sep 16, 2009, 10:42 PM
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Originally Posted by urbanlife View Post
To add to this, the tunnel for the Swiss Alps goes through a mountain while the Big Dig goes through a densely populated city...so it is easy to see why the Alps tunnel is much cheaper to do.
Yeah, they are able to do a decent portion of that tunnel with dynamite.
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  #213  
Old Posted Sep 17, 2009, 3:45 AM
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um, anybody have pix of the new green line? its been open how many days and i havent seen any pix. the green line thread hasnt been touched in like a year
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  #214  
Old Posted Sep 17, 2009, 5:47 PM
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I still think that MAX is much underused, 5% of the commutes to work is ridiculous for such an enormous light rail network, and that's an problem that no expansion can solve.

Public transport shouldn't be a reason to take people out of cars, but more a way of moving people that either can't drive or own a car and people that live and/or work in places where the use of a car is unpractical. That means transit should be demanded by the people and not the other way round.

Being the U.S one of the richest and car-friendly countries in the world the proportion of people that don’t know how to drive and can't own a car is minimal. That leaves the third and most important factor that would make people leave their cars and use public transit. Make the driver's life difficult so that it would beg to have a transit line next to its home, but there's a problem with that measure.

There are far to many people with cars, that means that no politician in its right mind would dare bother them. All this brings me to the conclusion that there are three possible solutions to bring people out of their cars:

1.Portland builds the streetcar East side line, the Orange line, the lake Oswego line, the Purple line, the Goose Hollow line, the Brown line, the Hollywood line, the Pink line... etc, to take people out of cars and eventually light rail would reach 15% of the commutes.

2.Portland politicians figure out a way of making the use of car unpractical without people noticing it.

3.People due to an enormous increase in oil prices, a massive economic depression or by some sort of miracle start to change their thoughts towards mass transit.
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  #215  
Old Posted Sep 17, 2009, 5:52 PM
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Originally Posted by MR. Cosmopolitan View Post
I still think that MAX is much underused, 5% of the commutes to work is ridiculous for such an enormous light rail network, and that's an problem that no expansion can solve.

Public transport shouldn't be a reason to take people out of cars, but more a way of moving people that either can't drive or own a car and people that live and/or work in places where the use of a car is unpractical.

Being the U.S one of the richest and car-friendly countries in the world the proportion of people that don’t know how to drive and can't own a car is minimal. That leaves the third and most important factor that would make people leave their cars and use public transit. Make the driver's life difficult so that it would beg to have a transit line next to its home, but there's a problem with that measure.

There are far to many people with cars, that means that no politician in its right mind would dare bother them. All this brings me to the conclusion that there are three possible solutions to bring people out of their cars:

1.Portland builds the streetcar East side line, the Orange line, the lake Oswego line, the Purple line, the Goose Hollow line, the Brown line, the Hollywood line, the Pink line... etc, to take people out of cars and eventually reach 15% of the commutes.

2.Portland politicians figure out a way of making the use of car unpractical without people noticing it.

3.People due to an enormous increase in oil prices or by some sort of miracle start to change their thoughts towards mass transit.
5%?

You actually believe that there's 2 million daily commutes in Portland that could be transitable? There's only 2.1 million people in the entire metro (including Vancouver).
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  #216  
Old Posted Sep 17, 2009, 6:41 PM
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5%?

You actually believe that there's 2 million daily commutes in Portland that could be transitable? There's only 2.1 million people in the entire metro (including Vancouver).
115000 rides by MAX and Streetcar + 310000 rides by Trimet make 425000 rides which Wikipedia says it makes 12.6% of all the commutes taking out the Trimet rides it leaves 3.4% of the commutes maid by MAX and Streetcar alone.
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  #217  
Old Posted Sep 17, 2009, 7:32 PM
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Originally Posted by MR. Cosmopolitan View Post
I still think that MAX is much underused, 5% of the commutes to work is ridiculous for such an enormous light rail network, and that's an problem that no expansion can solve.

Public transport shouldn't be a reason to take people out of cars, but more a way of moving people that either can't drive or own a car and people that live and/or work in places where the use of a car is unpractical. That means transit should be demanded by the people and not the other way round.

Being the U.S one of the richest and car-friendly countries in the world the proportion of people that don’t know how to drive and can't own a car is minimal. That leaves the third and most important factor that would make people leave their cars and use public transit. Make the driver's life difficult so that it would beg to have a transit line next to its home, but there's a problem with that measure.

There are far to many people with cars, that means that no politician in its right mind would dare bother them. All this brings me to the conclusion that there are three possible solutions to bring people out of their cars:

1.Portland builds the streetcar East side line, the Orange line, the lake Oswego line, the Purple line, the Goose Hollow line, the Brown line, the Hollywood line, the Pink line... etc, to take people out of cars and eventually light rail would reach 15% of the commutes.

2.Portland politicians figure out a way of making the use of car unpractical without people noticing it.

3.People due to an enormous increase in oil prices, a massive economic depression or by some sort of miracle start to change their thoughts towards mass transit.
option one sounds nice....I guess I am not seeing where you are trying to go with all of this...you sound like you are for it, but against it for sake of conversation....not to be rude or anything, but it comes off as a bit pointless...alternatives to driving are needed because if we didnt have alternatives, then we would just have cars on the road and nothing else, which would actually increase problems rather than decrease them.
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  #218  
Old Posted Sep 17, 2009, 8:08 PM
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Originally Posted by urbanlife View Post
option one sounds nice....I guess I am not seeing where you are trying to go with all of this...you sound like you are for it, but against it for sake of conversation....not to be rude or anything, but it comes off as a bit pointless...alternatives to driving are needed because if we didnt have alternatives, then we would just have cars on the road and nothing else, which would actually increase problems rather than decrease them.
I know that I sound quite confusing and I’m sorry for that. I still can't dominate English very well.

I was trying to say with all that, that in my opinion current MAX light rail is still not used on its full potential.

I think that it’s pointless to expand a light rail system that it’s not used on its full capacity so I think that we should make the system more efficient before thinking on expanding it.

To make it more efficient I thought that we should invest more on the bus system, because it’s cheaper and more flexible than MAX and also because it is currently quite underfunded and small.

Then I mentioned other actions that I think are useful to make the mass transit in Portland more efficient and I tried to show how under used the MAX system is in my opinion.

It wasn't for sake of conversation; in fact making all this posts was quite unpleasant for me.
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  #219  
Old Posted Sep 17, 2009, 8:54 PM
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Originally Posted by MR. Cosmopolitan View Post
because it’s...more flexible than MAX

If I may interject...I hear this all the time as a reason of the bus's supposed superiority to rail transit. "If you need to, you can change the bus's route." That's precisely one of the *disadvantages* of the bus in a lot of ways. A light rail line or streetcar is always in the same place. People can count on it. People can plan for it. Developers can build around it. People can figure out easily where the train comes from, where it goes, and where they can pick it up. Buses, by their very nature of not having fixed guideways, don't have those advantages. They are more nebulous. That's one of the reasons they don't attract ridership like rail transit does.

Sometimes, the advantages don't always work out to be advantages. The "flexibility" of the bus is often a good example of that.
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  #220  
Old Posted Sep 17, 2009, 9:04 PM
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If I may interject...I hear this all the time as a reason of the bus's supposed superiority to rail transit. "If you need to, you can change the bus's route." That's precisely one of the *disadvantages* of the bus in a lot of ways. A light rail line or streetcar is always in the same place. People can count on it. People can plan for it. Developers can build around it. People can figure out easily where the train comes from, where it goes, and where they can pick it up. Buses, by their very nature of not having fixed guideways, don't have those advantages. They are more nebulous. That's one of the reasons they don't attract ridership like rail transit does.

Sometimes, the advantages don't always work out to be advantages. The "flexibility" of the bus is often a good example of that.
Which is very true, developers want to see something that has long term effects. Building next to a stop means there will more than likely be a stop there for a long time to come with rail.

Also, to be efficient with rail is to be easily accessible, which in its nature means that it needs to expand...that is like building a line that only has access to 15% of the population of a city then wondering why the entire city doesnt use it. Why would someone from Milwaukie want to drive all the way up to the light rail line just to use it? But it would be more efficient if there was a line that ran down to that portion of the city....think of rail as a spider web, if you cast out your web in different directions it will become more efficient because it will be easier to snag new commuters.
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