By: Dylan Rivera
Oregonian
July 31, 2008
Link to original article
Instead of spending billions on highways, would it make sense to build toll booths or city streets to reduce rush-hour traffic?
Should we expand mass transit to reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions?
Oregon's highway planners aren't asking such questions but they should be, Gov. Ted Kulongoski said Wednesday.
The same way electric utilities entice consumers to conserve to avoid building a new power plant, transportation planners could encourage people to drive less to avoid building costly highways.
"Under the old way of thinking, the solution to a traffic bottleneck would be: Build more lanes and invite more cars onto the highway," Kulongoski said. "Under a least-cost model, we look for solutions that cost less and have a smaller negative impact on the environment."
Kulongoski's proposal was one of dozens of ideas that came up during a sustainability and transportation conference at the Portland Art Museum. The two-day seminar, "Meeting of the Minds," gathered 250 of Oregon's most influential policy and business leaders to brainstorm and absorb recent research about cities, transportation funding and climate change.
The governor revealed some details of a transportation finance package he plans to make his top priority in next year's legislative session. A committee of business leaders and government transportation officials has spent months coming up with ideas for Kulongoski and the Legislature to take up in January.
Phase out hybrid credit?
The committee will recommend that state tax credits for gas-electric hybrid cars, such as the Toyota Prius, be phased out, Kulongoski said. They would be replaced with credits for all-electric cars and plug-in hybrids the industry is testing, which could run at 100 miles or more per gallon.
Oregon will convert 10 state-owned standard Prius hybrids to use electric plug-ins, he said, and pledged to make the state's fleet a showcase of the Japanese company's most efficient cars as they become available to save money on gas, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and boost the state's green image.
The governor also wants to set a target for reducing the miles Oregonians drive.
But even before the governor's pledge to improve transportation planning, Clackamas County Chairwoman Lynn Peterson said she was frustrated with the rules highway engineers play by.
Peterson, a former highway engineer, told the conference that state and federal standards prevent good planning and encourage big, expensive highways when smaller roads or other solutions would suffice.
A case in point: the proposed $1.2 billion Sunrise Corridor connecting Interstate 205 to Damascus, where Metro targets future growth, Peterson said.
"How am I as a county commissioner supposed to react when I'm told I need an eight-lane freeway to Damascus -- which is to nowhere at this point, for $1.2 billion -- that actually doesn't solve the needs of my industrial users at the interchange?" she asked.
Roads, bridges and rails
Gail Achterman, Oregon Transportation Commission chairwoman, said the state's transportation system is in crisis. Bridges are cracked. Shortline railroads are so worn that trains must slow to 20 mph. The state still depends on the gas tax for highway maintenance, a fund with a bleak future as cars become more fuel-efficient.
"Someone once said a crisis is a terrible thing to waste," Achterman said. "I'm excited about this crisis."
Toyota, Portland General Electric and the Oregon Department of Transportation are among the chief sponsors of the gathering. The Japanese carmaker sponsored a similar conference last year in the San Francisco area.
Impressive goals and visions were the order of the day. Toyota executives touted a 2010 rollout of plug-in hybrid cars for commercial fleets and planned mass production of hydrogen fuel-cell cars.
Michael Meyer, a Georgia Tech professor, said policymakers shouldn't focus so much on fuel efficiency, but instead reduce driving by encouraging mixed-use development and demand traffic reduction strategies such as tolling.
Even such a gathering of policy wonks and business leaders underscored the difficult road transportation funding faces.
Conference organizers distributed small electronic remote controls and asked participants to respond to an array of questions throughout the day. In the morning, when asked to pick the most critical issue to the state among a list of topics, 28 percent voted for economic development and 25 percent picked education.
Transportation came in third, with 15 percent.
Dylan Rivera: 503-221-8532; dylanrivera@news.oregonian.com
