Atlanta Looks To Portland For Ideas – Transportation officials from Georgia take a journey to Portland, OR to find inspiration for anti-sprawl strategies for the greater Atlanta region.

Portland: No sprawl allowed

Unlike Atlanta, city grew inward, not out

By DUANE D. STANFORD
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Like most big cities, Portland is a tangle of traffic, buses, tall buildings and one-way streets. Commuters hustle to work. Taxis dart from curb to curb. High-priced condos press against boutiques and restaurants with white tablecloths.

There is a limit to the bustle, though — a real one.

Get outside the region’s urban growth boundary and life is altogether different. Fertile green farmland. Lush pines and hardwoods. Jagged hilltops.

As Portland Chief Financial Officer Ken Rust put it: "You can go to the edge of the urban area and step into the forest."

Contrast that to Atlanta, where urbanized growth continues to inch its way out, suburbs seem never to end, and trees are swept from the landscape like clutter under a broom.

The differences between the communities don’t end there, as members of Georgia’s Transportation Board discovered during a three-day fact-finding trip to the region about a week ago.

In Portland, packed light-rail trains, powered by a web of overhead trolley lines, crisscross downtown and stretch into the suburbs, dropping off commuters at full park-and-ride lots. Streetcars jingle past commercial districts teeming with new condos and shops. Both systems share city streets with other vehicles. A nearby Amtrak train carries commuters and business travelers daily to Seattle and Canada.

Metro Atlanta’s transit landscape includes MARTA and a hodgepodge of local bus systems, but little else.

Portland’s work began three decades ago with that urban growth boundary. Add to it a regional tax dedicated to public transportation and strict limits on downtown parking, and you’ve got the formula that produced modern-day Portland.

"Sprawl is not allowed here in Oregon," said former State Planning Director Arnold Cogan, now a Portland-area consultant.

It hasn’t always been that way. Even Portland planners admit to what one referred to as the city’s "period of ignorance about transportation."

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WHAT ATLANTA WANTS

$200 million
Estimated cost of streetcar line along Peachtree Street from downtown to Buckhead

$2.1 billion
Estimated cost of a commuter rail line connecting Atlanta to suburbs

$100 billion
Estimated 20-year cost of intercity train line connecting Atlanta to other Southeast cities

WHAT PORTLAND HAS

$55 million
Cost of 5.8-mile streetcar line in once-struggling warehouse district

$1.7 billion
Cost of 44-mile light rail system linking electric-powered trains with 88 bus lines

$185 million
Cost to upgrade 178-mile train track connecting Vancouver, British Columbia, to Eugene, Ore., with stop in Portland

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In the 1960s, having done away with its old trolley system, Portland began a road-building program, which included digging a hole through downtown for a new interstate.

"Like a lot of places, we fell in love with the automobile," said former Portland Planning Director Victor Rhodes, also a consultant now. "We built freeways, and we turned them into parking lots."

Residents revolted, and when the area’s privately run bus transit system went broke in the late ’60s, officials decided they needed a new direction.

Oregon’s 1973 land use act forced cities to set limits on how far out they could develop. The law required communities to cut commute times. Most importantly, the consultants said, it required communities to integrate land use and transportation planning.

Portland was forced to grow up instead of out, creating the densities needed to make transit work, Cogan said.

To further engineer the cultural conversion to transit and ensure a vibrant central city, Portland officials in the mid-1970s put limits on parking downtown. Even now, developers are building slightly less than a parking space for every new condominium, Rhodes said.

The cultural shift took root. Voters recently turned down ballot initiatives that would have rolled back some provisions of the land use act, Cogan said.

Variances common

Dana Lemon, one of three Transportation Board members on the trip, said county leaders in Georgia routinely waive development regulations.

"Variances become so common, the land use plans become useless," said Lemon, adding that Oregon’s laws give local politicians cover to oppose harmful development trends.

Former Fulton County Commission Chairman Mike Kenn, who now runs a private advocacy group pushing road construction as a way to relieve traffic congestion, argues Portland is too restrictive. He said Oregon’s land use policies inflate the cost of living and unfairly limit what people can do with their land.

"What drives development is the marketplace, not government," he said. "The rights of the property owner in this state are preserved. That’s what constitutional law supports here in Georgia."

Kenn argues high densities don’t work because too few people use transit, even when given the choice.
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Portland’s TriMet system, which includes light-rail trains, streetcars and buses, handles roughly 287,000 boardings a day. Of those who ride, about 30 percent use the system primarily for getting to work, according to TriMet. About 1.4 million live in metro Portland, which consistently ranks among the most traffic-congested places in the nation.

Costly options

Options such as light rail are expensive, Portland officials concede. A regional payroll tax in place since 1969 generates revenue devoted to transit programs.

The tax — roughly $6 for every $1,000 in gross payroll — raised $146 million and accounted for 53 percent of TriMet’s operating revenue last fiscal year. Voters from three Portland-area counties recently approved a slight increase in the tax of about $1 per $1,000.

Portland’s business community is split over the payroll tax. Some believe it is a deterrent to businesses, especially those relying on hourly labor. Proponents argue it is more equitable than a corporate income tax.

State Rep. Doug Stoner (D-Smyrna), who accompanied state Transportation Board members to Portland, said projections that the region’s population will grow by 2.3 million during the next 25 years give metro Atlanta an opportunity to set new land use and transportation policies.

TriMet General Manager Fred Hanson, who is familiar with Atlanta, acknowledged much of what Portland has done wouldn’t be easily duplicated in Georgia, adding, "But maybe there are some lessons to be learned."

http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/horizon/1003/20portland.html