Please tell me they didn’t mean this

I thought we were done with the Streetcar discussion, at least for a couple of weeks until the Council’s vote to dedicate more than $33 million in urban renewal funds and city money to the Eastside project, on September 6. I clicked on the Oregonian‘s editorial today intending to skim it, and move on. I worked overtime at OHSU last night, as we were understaffed and overwhelmed by multiple admissions. Good ol’ O Editorial Board, comin’ through yet again to wake me up and get the blood moving. I will probably need another picker-upper tomorrow, as not enough nurses are scheduled this evening, either…. how about printing something particularly annoying on Monday, too?

The part of the editorial that woke me up faster than the freshly ground Special Dark Roast coffee:

“The overriding question about the $147 million streetcar extension proposed for Portland’s east side is whether it will take the city where it needs to go. And it certainly will. The extension will help to take thousands of new residents across the Willamette River.”

Cough, splutter. The main purpose of the Eastside streetcar is to take people across the river??? I thought it was to take them down MLK and Grand to get from “workforce housing” to Industrial Sanctuary jobs in the Central Eastside. When I first read this line, I thought it meant taking Eastsiders across the river to the Pearl, downtown, and South Waterfront. And considered that rather condescending, that it would be assumed everyone east would want to come west. Then I realized, they seem to be talking about getting people from the Pearl and South Waterfront to the Lloyd Center, Rose Garden, and OMSI. Heaven forbid those folks should have to transfer to MAX, the way many poorer bus riders are going to have to transfer from one bus to another when the Streetcar causes bus routes to truncate to “save money that can be applied to Streetcar operating costs”.

The editorial continues:

“The new loop eventually will connect the Lloyd district to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry via Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Grand Avenue. It will take the streetcar to the east side for the first time, and that, in itself, is very important.”

Take it “to” the eastside, not build it IN the eastside. I am struck by how westside-centric this editorial is.

“This extension will change the mental map of Portland’s downtown. Although the streetcar is not fast, it does act as a “walk-extender,” mentally collapsing distances and convincing people to walk farther than they would have walked without it. All indicators suggest that the east side extension will have this effect, too, and multiply the downtown’s reach of influence. “

Ah yes, that’s what the Oregonian‘s editorial board thinks we need to do: multiply the downtown’s reach of influence.

See the “The West Is The Best” focus? (fans of The Doors, please read that phrase with Jim Morrison’s voice in mind). The alleged main purpose of the Eastside Streetcar is to take westsiders across the river, and to “change the mental map”. Whose mental map, I wonder.

And “convincing people to walk farther than they would have walked without it”? Please. Streetcar advocates told Mayor Potter in the Council worksession last week that the trips couldn’t be speeded up by only stopping at every other stop, “because people won’t walk more than a block”. Do they mean convincing people to walk from the curb to the store?

As if that’s not enough, the next paragraph is very scary. Emphasis mine:

“The new extension will also keep promises to property owners in the Lloyd district and the central east side, two areas with tremendous potential, long poised for growth and banking on the streetcar’s arrival. Zoning changes are going to be needed, too, and there are other problems to address. But if the right groundwork is laid, city studies suggest a streetcar will accelerate residential development dramatically.”

Which may be all well and good around the Convention Center and Rose Garden, which pretty much epitomize the planning maxim that nearby residential density is needed to make commercial areas like the “Rose Quarter” work. But accelerating residential development in the Industrial Sanctuary, even a little, would likely lead to the elimination of its employment character and the loss of many good living wage jobs. Commissioner Sam Adams has promised no zoning changes in the Central Eastside Industrial Sanctuary. Although the Council already “tweaked” some of the standards for development there, allowing a few more residential and home-business uses, I surely hope he will secure promises from the majority of the Council to honor that pledge. There may already to be too much pressure to gentrify the Industrial Sanctuary with the Eastside Streetcar development, without adding to it with zoning changes.

The editorial ends with a couple of thoughts that may sound familiar to readers of this blog:

“True, the success of the first Portland Streetcar, connecting the Pearl District to Northwest Portland, may have been somewhat anomalous. It’s impossible to say what would have happened without the streetcar. What is clear, though, is that developers are quicker to build when a streetcar is coming — and they build higher.”

I don’t think it’s “impossible” to say what would have happened without the Streetcar. After all, much of the support for the new lines is based on studies purporting to show what will happen as a result of it. It would be more accurate to say the studies that evaluate how much of past new development is probably/possibly due to the Streetcar are incomplete or haven’t been done.

“The streetcar has a mystique that translates to marketing appeal, and also helps to create a more attractive street environment. At some point a developer’s confidence turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy, momentum builds and sales take off.”

The “mystique” may be less important than the millions in economic development and related street improvements that decision-makers have chosen to package with the Streetcar instead of spending the money on similar support and infrastructure along bus lines. When you have a property owner who is a member of the Portland Streetcar, Inc., board, saying in a public hearing that he expects to recoup his money paid into the Local Improvement District within six months, it’s pretty clear the “developer’s confidence” is in fact a very sweet deal for some adjacent landowners. Click that link to see a list of the Streetcar board members. It reads like a page from Who’s Who In Development In Portland.

There’s not much mystery to the Streetcar’s “marketing appeal”. Follow the money.