Got here from a del.icio.us tag from kirinqueen. My perspective is somewhat dated (I left Portland in 1983), but when examining mass transportation, you need to remember that the existence of the system itself will keep some people out of cars in the first place. I went to Reed College from 1979 to 1983, and worked temp jobs all over Portland in the last half of 1983. Because of the excellent coverage of Tri-Met's bus system (this was before the light rail to Gresham was built), I was able to get to any of my temp jobs, or do anything else in metropolitan Portland, and did not need a car at all.

Then I took a job in Rancho Cucamonga, California, 50 miles east of Los Angeles, and things changed dramatically...

Arghh! Phoenix is in the process of implementing light rail here, and the term mafia fits perfectly.

The politicians and developers snatched up the land that was going to be used, politicians' own companies were favored in getting contracts to service the rail once implemented, etc.

Emperor;
You seem to be missing the point. It's not the tax payers' responsibility to supply a vast minority of the population with subsidized i.e. unprofitable, transportation.

It is a huge drain on the state's income (that's the money we give them) that effectively takes money away from other more needful projects.

“It's not the tax payers' responsibility to supply a vast minority of the population with subsidized i.e. unprofitable, transportation.”

Roads and highways are a taxpayer subsidized endeavor as well? And they are just as unprofitable when you consider the number of people killed/injured by cars, the amount of noise and pollution they generate.

If some developers have profited inappropriately from the construction of the Portland light-rail system, that is a legal / corruption problem. It has nothing to do with the inherent value of light-rail or mass transit.

I proudly use light-rail and other mass transit in Portland and I hope they build more routes. What would be even better would be if the city blocked off areas of downtown and allowed only foot traffic or bicyclists.

Maybe someday cars will be relegated to rural areas where their fuel inefficiency is offset by the low-density of development.

Maybe someday Portland will look more like a Carfree City than the LA-Orange County mega-city.

Randal O'Toole responds:

There ARE subsidies to highways, but they are tiny -- an average of less than 0.5 cents per passenger mile, compared to 60 cents or more per passenger mile for public transit (and much more for rail transit). Autos are also safer than light rail when measured on a fatalities per passenger mile basis (autos average about 8 per billion passenger miles in cities and 4 on freeways, light rail averages about 11).

Light rail and streetcars are being sold to other cities based on the claim that they will stimulate urban redevelopment. Portland's experience is that they stimulate NO redevelopment. Instead, such redevelopment only takes place when it receives additional subsidies.

My point is that those subsidies are hidden by Portland leaders when they show the city off to visitors AND that the subsidies generate an atmosphere of corruption.

The real irony behind Portland's plans is that Portland is trying to become denser, with fewer miles of freeway per capita and an expensive rail network. What U.S. urban area is the densest, has the fewest miles of freeway per capita, and is building an expensive rail network? Los Angeles. One Portland planning document, "Metro Measured," admits that planners are deliberately trying to "replicate" Los Angeles in Portland. So don't expect Portland to become carless anytime soon. If any portion of downtown were set aside to be carless, all of the businesses in that area would quickly die.