Streetcar neighborhoods lure young, creative types to Oregon city, but face criticism

[M II A II R II K]

Should Atlanta follow Portland with T-SPLOST?


July 22, 2012

By Ariel Hart



Read More: http://www.ajc.com/news/transportati...d-1482443.html

Raised in Florida suburbs, J'ena SanCartier and Philip Losasso know Atlanta well — as the traffic jam they dreaded on their way to somewhere else. Relocating from Florida last year, the artist and software developer never considered Atlanta. They flew 2,500 miles away to a new home in Portland. Now, instead of highways, they travel via streetcar. And that's how they like it. No: "love it," in SanCartier's words.

- Multiply their story by thousands and you get a pretty good picture of one way Portland differs from Atlanta: since 2000 it has excelled at attracting young, educated, so-called "creative class" workers. The dominant reason, according to one narrative prevalent among city planners, is that young folks gravitate to high-energy, walkable, eclectic neighborhoods where they don't need cars — and that projects like Portland's streetcar help create those neighborhoods.

- Architects of the Atlanta Beltline, a $602 million chunk of the July 31 regional transportation referendum, hail it as just such a cityscape-altering project. They even hired the man who wrote the Portland streetcar's plan to write a plan for the Beltline. "Portland, Oregon, is the model in the U.S.," Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said in 2010, upon winning a grant to build a streetcar line that he called the "spine" of the Beltline. "We have strong evidence that infrastructure creates jobs and stimulates economic investment."

- "If every city and town in America tried to replicate what we're doing in Portland you'd bankrupt the country," said John Charles, a free-market opponent of the Portland streetcar. "It's all propped up by state, federal and local subsidies." In nine days, voters across 10 metro Atlanta counties can help make the Beltline happen with the T-SPLOST vote. Or they can decide it's not for them. As they weigh their votes, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution took a tough look at Portland's experience to answer two key questions: Did the streetcar produce the benefits its fans claim for it? And, if so, would what worked there necessarily work here?

- In the 1990s Portland's Pearl District was a partly disused rail yard dotted with warehouses, gritty and forbidding. But artsy and adventurous types gave it a go, moving into some of the cheap or abandoned spaces. Then heavyweight developers and the city decided the area had potential. Developer Homer Williams and the city knocked out an agreement: His team would build condos, lofts and apartments, and the city would run a streetcar through the area. Today the streetcar, which opened in 2001, drops shoppers, tourists, workers and residents at the district's dozens of shops, restaurants, bars and residential buildings. The four-mile line cost $103 million to build, with the largest pieces being $30 million from city parking fees, $19 million from property owners along the line, $17 million from federal grants, and $20 million borrowed against future property tax revenues. The city also funded some improvements such as parks and gave tax breaks for building affordable housing.

- Portland officials are under no illusion that a streetcar can succeed on its own. Streetcar riders are pedestrians first. That means that buildings along the line must present a friendly face to the street — full of windows and doorways that provide glimpses of inviting spaces, and not forbiddingly tall. Portland has enacted strict zoning laws to make sure development along the streetcar conforms. One payoff for the city is denser development that places less of a burden on taxpayer-funded services than spread-out suburbs do. "It costs money to extend infrastructure," said Catherine Ciarlo, Portland's transportation director, whether that be roads or sewers. In fact, Portland's strategy for years has been not just to encourage denser development through initiatives like the streetcar, but to flat-out prohibit development beyond an encircling line called the Urban Growth Boundary.

- The holy grail for many cities these days is the group some researchers call "young creatives." They're educated, relatively affluent and consume less in the way of government services than children or the elderly. In the race to attract them, Portland is doing much better than Atlanta. Within the last decade, Atlanta saw a 10 percent increase to Portland's 24 percent, said Joe Cortright, a researcher who studies the demographic of 25-to-34 year-olds with college degrees. Why? Neighborhoods such as the Pearl, where you don't have to have a car, are one reason, Cortright said. "Transit is sort of part of a package of things that talented young people are looking for in cities." Sam Blackman, 36, owner of a Portland video company called Elemental Technologies, bore him out. "I don't know if the streetcar on its own is a recruiting tool," he said . Nevertheless, he said, it would be "very, very difficult to recruit the top folks to the suburbs these days. They just don't want to be driving 45 minutes."

- Across metro Atlanta, many Beltline opponents don't much care what people in Portland like. "We have chosen a land-use pattern," and it's not dense, said Baruch Feigenbaum, an analyst with the free-market Reason Foundation. "From my perspective we should be producing the transportation system that people want." Even some transit advocates who support the Beltline shy away from the Portland analogy. "Let's face it," said Ashley Robbins, president of Citizens for Progressive Transit, "Atlanta's not Portland." Eighty-one percent of metro Portlandians commute by car, and in the city itself 6 percent commute by bike, an astronomical number. In metro Atlanta, 88 percent commute by car and the next largest group is telecommuters. But Atlanta does have pockets of dense, walkable space, including some neighborhoods that would be linked by the Beltline, such as Inman Park, Georgia Tech and Poncey-Highland. In parts of Atlanta, a quarter of commuting is done by transit, according to the Atlanta Regional Commission. Even more people would use transit, Beltline advocates argue, if more options existed. Studies predict the Beltline would draw 11,800 passenger trips daily by 2025.

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[llamaorama]

Whatever, it's the typical right wing opposition to transit in general. I just skimmed the rest of the article after a point.

IMO, Portland's streetcar serves a purpose in circulating people around the downtown and adjoining urban neighborhoods. Unlike a bus it's hop on, hop off, and for visitors or infrequent transit users there's no question where the route goes. Without it, the Pearl District might not have been as successful. The selling point of living in the city is access to things.

To be fair, Atlanta's Beltline is different. If Atlanta was really replicating the strategy Portland used it would put a streetcar between Downtown and Midtown on surface streets with wide sidewalks and bike lanes to fill the gaps between MARTA stations and shuttle people without the unpredictability of a bus.