Council approves streetcar plan; southeast wants connections
The Portland City Council last month approved the Streetcar Systems Plan, with partisans asking for it to be expanded or shelved entirely.
The plan designates about 70 miles of streets as potential future streetcar routes, based on factors that include potential ridership, the potential for high-intensity re-development of adjacent property and degree of community acceptance. The recommendations were winnowed down from an initial list more than three times as large over a period of two years with extensive public involvement.
Routes are divided into two categories: “Concept Corridors,” and “Comprehensive Plan Corridors.” The former, which tend to be located closer to streetcar lines that either already exist or are under construction, are perceived as being more likely to be built first.
Concept Corridors include the following: SE Belmont St. from the Morrison Bridge east to 39th Ave., south to Hawthorne Blvd. and east to 50th Ave.; NE and SE Sandy Blvd. from Seventh Ave. to Hollywood, and SE Tacoma St. from the Sellwood Bridge to McLoughlin Blvd..
Comprehensive Plan Corridors include continuation of the Belmont Corridor eastward along Belmont to the Gateway district, and also southeastward along 50th Ave. and Foster Rd. to 122nd Ave.
Speakers from St. Johns and east Portland argued that their communities were in great need of the economic development stimulus that streetcar lines would confer and that the Comprehensive Plan routes shouldn’t be left as an afterthought for the future.
Some speakers from areas near Concept Corridors argued for their swift completion. Anti-rail transit advocates Terry Parker and John Charles claimed there was no evidence that streetcars produced the benefits attributed to them.
Parker called on Council to consider trolley buses instead. Portland Planning Commission member Andre Baugh cautioned Council to be sure to guard against small businesses and lower income residents being forced out of their communities by rising property values produced by streetcars. Some Buckman neighborhood leaders have expressed similar concerns.
Some activists, particularly in southeast, called for the reinstatement of routes that had been rejected in the process.
One of these, Kenny Heggen of the Woodstock neighborhood, argued that a route along Southeast Woodstock Boulevard is necessary for “connectivity” between other lines, as well as having its own advantages.
“Woodstock has such potential,” he told Council. “It has young people and older people in need of alternative transportation. It’s crucial to connect as many neighborhoods and business districts as possible. Connect my neighborhood to others and I’ll sell my car!”
Owen Ronchelli, chair of the process’s advisory committee, said the use of two categories was not intended to indicate that one was inferior to another, and indeed that a system without the Comprehensive Plan corridors would be incomplete.
Committee member Chris Smith said the division indicated “corridors that are ready now versus corridors that need work. If a streetcar were placed on Foster Rd. today, it wouldn’t work.”
Mayor Sam Adams, who had initiated the project as head of the Office of Transportation, said he personally favored pushing the Comprehensive Plan corridors forward for more consideration.
Commissioner Amanda Fritz, in a lengthy commentary, told Parker,“We’ve already made the decision to extend the streetcar. It’s part of City policy.” However, she also conceded to Charles, “We do need to consider cost- benefit. We need to look at which corridors should be built and which don’t make sense.”
She singled out the hard-working volunteer Southeast Work Group under the leadership of Richard Ross, which provided an extensive evaluation of potential corridors, and said, “I know how many hours volunteers spent on this.”
East side streetcar advances
With the Portland Streetcar East Side Loop extension now under way (see below), there are still issues to be decided, but not necessarily by the group that has been working on it.
At last month’s meeting of the Loop Advisory Committee, made up of both citywide streetcar supporters and interests in the Lloyd and Central East Side districts, consultant Rick Gustafson noted several outstanding issues.
Perhaps the largest of these is the fare structure of the car. When it began, 85 percent of the streetcar route was in the downtown Fareless Square, and even most of the people who rode it deep into NW Portland “neglected” to pay. This cannot continue once the extension opens. Planners propose to have people pay fares in boxes on the cars, Gustafson said, but there would be serious delays if all of them did it at every stop.
Current plans call for selling all-day passes for $2, and for TriMet and the streetcar to honor each other’s passes; a key ingredient to achieving the ideal of a “seamless” system involving transfers between all modes of transportation. This will require a new operating agreement with TriMet; the existing one expires this year.
“It’s a huge issue, but it’s beyond the scope of this committee,” Gustafson told the Loop Advisory Committee.
Another issue is parking management. Central East Side is already a Permit Parking District, in which employers pay for permits allowing themselves and their workers to park on the streets indefinitely, and everyone else is limited to two hours. However, enforcement is not 100 percent efficient or effective, and with the arrival of the streetcar there will be a greater incentive for outsiders to use the area’s streets as a park-and-ride lot.
The obvious alternative – parking meters – is, for some, a cure that’s worse than the disease. Wayne Kingsley told the advisory committee that Central East Side Industrial Council chair Dan Yates has declared parking to be the district’s number one issue.
Gustafson wondered aloud if, after seven years of work, there is still a reason to keep the Loop Advisory Committee. Committee member Chris Smith suggested retaining the committee, but have it shift to a less frequent meeting schedule, and have some of its members incorporated into the streetcar’s citywide advisory committee.
Streetcar construction continues
Meanwhile, as anyone who has traveled SE MLK Jr. Blvd. or Grand Ave. can attest, work on the streetcar is continuing. What is currently happening is the relocation of underground utilities that stand in the way of the streetcar.
Track work should begin in January, consultant Kay Dannen said at a meeting last month. At that time, she said, crews will work on three-four block sections for three weeks at a time before moving on. Work will go on from 7 am to 4 pm weekdays. During this time construction may consume on-street parking and up to two lanes of traffic on the section under construction. Completion is scheduled for April 2012.
While the B-C couplet is stalled
Work on the proposed Burnside-Couch couplet is “not moving along as rapidly as we had hoped,” project manager Chris Armes ruefully told the Central East Side Urban Renewal Advisory Committee last month.
The project will make E. Burnside St. one-way eastbound between the Burnside Bridge and 12th Ave., while routing all westbound traffic onto NE Couch St. The city had hoped to begin work on Couch in August, but the Oak Basin Sewer Project uncovered “unanticipated issues, Armes said. “We’re hoping we can do everything in one construction season” next spring,” she said.
Hear all about it on Keep Portland Moving
For these and other construction projects, the city Bureau of Transportation has developed a universal outreach and information program, Keep Portland Moving.
As Ellen Vanderslice explained at a meeting last month, the program has a single website, ,
www.keepportlandmoving.org
where you can get up-to-date information about construction projects that affect traffic.
You can also subscribe to regular email reports on particular projects. The Business Smart Trips program can provide affected businesses and property owners with advice on how workers and customers can best get in and out, as well as individualized assistance.
For information on this part of the program, call 503.823.5345.
New programs at Hooper
There will shortly be some comings and goings at the Hooper Detox Center, Central City Concern Director Traci Manning told the Central East Side Urban Renewal Advisory Committee last month. Next spring the non-profit agency plans to move its 48-bed Medical Detox program, a long-term, voluntary program lasting five to eight days, from its current location at Hooper, 20 NE Couch St., to a new site in the ground floor of the old Ramada Inn across the street from the Rose Quarter.
The Sobering Station, or “drunk tank,” where seriously inebriated people found on the street are taken by the police or CCC’s CHIERS van, will remain at Hooper. In place of the Medical Detox program, Manning said, the agency will set up a locked crisis and treatment program for the mentally ill, who are currently “inappropriately housed at hospitals and jails.”
Laurelhurst battles Fat Jack’s
The Laurelhurst Neighborhood Association is united in its opposition to the proposed Fat Jack’s country-western bar, and even more so the sex shop that could replace it. They are divided over what to do about it.
The space at 3370 NE Sandy Blvd., once home to the popular Poncho’s Mexican restaurant, was most recently the La Fortuna Latino nightclub and a source of problems with rowdy and drunken late night behavior. For this reason, and a history of problems at other venues managed by co-owner Tracey Doss, Laurelhurst residents were concerned.
However, things escalated in July when, during a session to negotiate a Good Neighbor Agreement, he mentioned the possibility that Fat Jack’s might give way to an “adult entertainment” venue if it wasn’t successful.
Exactly what was said, and what should be done about it, was a matter of considerable dispute at the September Laurelhurst general meeting, which Doss did not attend.
One close neighbor, Kay Bridge, said she heard Doss state that he would put in adult entertainment if Fat Jack’s did not show a profit in 90 days. She urged Laurelhurst to take an unequivocable position in opposition.
Zach Kenny, another neighbor, felt Doss was simply stating that a sex- related business was an option. He felt the bar owner intended to make Fat Jack’s work. Kenny felt there was virtually no chance that the Oregon Liquor Control Commission would deny Doss a liquor license at least initially, and felt the neighborhood would be better off with an agreement that would set limits on club activities. “I was actually surprised at how much he was willing to do,” he said.
Eventually Bridge’s position prevailed as the association voted overwhelmingly to oppose the license.
Doss did not return a phone call from The Examiner, but according to reliable sources he has broken off negotiations with Laurelhurst. Portland Police Chief Rosie Sizer has recommended against granting a license here based on Doss’s previous record. OLCC staff’s recommendation was unknown at press time.
