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Comment by jaredcwhite | Hacker News Reader

So much here resonates with me. I’m sitting in a train right now taking me from a suburb into downtown Portland, OR...an easy commute...only $5 a day gets you unlimited transportation across all of the regional transit services (all part of the excellent TriMet system). I moved here from the Bay Area mainly due to affordability and sane public transit. The Bay Area is an amazing place but it’s imploding under the weight of its own popularity and lack of appropriate regional infrastructure response.

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"I moved here from the Bay Area..."

At the risk of sounding xenophobic, Portland is going to turn into San Francisco soon enough if people/companies keep immigrating from California and New York, and elected officials keep proposing policies modeled after the Bay Area. I'm not saying "stay away" as I enjoy much of the growth PDX has seen over the last few years, especially the fact we have a much easier time finding good developers these days. I'm just concerned that many of our newcomers had it so bad in regard to traffic and costs of living, that their tolerance for those things will, generally speaking, lift up the floor here in Portland.

So, welcome, but please please please push back against freeway expansions, push for more alternative transit, push for more walkable communities, and all that jazz. PDX can't stay small and easy going forever, but maybe we can avoid some of the pitfalls that have befallen other large metro areas.

Fair points. I'm happy to push for all the things you just mentioned, and I certainly don't want to contribute to messing up the good thing you have going. :)

> At the risk of sounding xenophobic, Portland is going to turn into San Francisco soon enough ...

It is already in the process of doing so.

> please please please push back against freeway expansions ...

And this attitude is the reason. I don't know why people think that adopting the same anti-growth, anti-construction, anti-roads attitude that has made San Francisco so unaffordable for regular people will have a different outcome here.

Nothing in my comment was anti growth, the only thing you can point to that's close was anti freeway expansion. And freeway expansion does not ultimately solve congestion. Without massive billion dollar road changes, widening freeways, as is proposed right now in pdx, just shifts the congestion around. We can look at a dozen large metro areas with 16 lane freeways and commute times are still insane. Pump that money into dedicated separate bike ways, increased mass transit, both in the city and to the suburbs. Increase urban density to avoid car commutes.

Again, I'm not advocating anti growth, I'm saying if it's done slapshod we'll be having the same conversations about PDX in ten years as we do San Fran now. 1.5 hour commutes for people living 10 miles or less from work.

Nobody is seriously suggesting a 16-lane freeway in PDX. The freeway expansion that's being proposed is to remove an awful bottleneck on I-5, where it cuts down to just two lanes in each direction near the Rose Quarter. The entire rest of that road is three lanes.

This is on the major US West Coast interstate highway, going through the largest city in the state. I know of 100k person towns in the middle of nowhere that have better highway infrastructure than this.

On everything else you mention, we are in agreement. The increased density of the inner East side is hopefully going to play a big role in keeping costs down and avoiding massive sprawl as the city grows.

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