Construction on SR 9B Continues to Advance

[thelakelander]

Any idea of how much revenue that will bring the city verses the the public costs to support such new development?  If it brings more than it costs to pay the annual public things needed for it (new school, JSO, fire, libraries, parks, roads, road maintenance, etc.), then I'm all for it.  I'm a fan of the budget surplus.

[thelakelander]

Oh, I know.

[tufsu1]

sarcasm is often hard to comprehend...guess I should try harder next time

[Ocklawaha]

Ock, Portland's Urban Growth Boundary is inside of those areas you mentioned and is widely cited as one of the most successful examples of limiting sprawl in America. I'm going to side with the experts here....

Exactly, it IS inside the boundaries because it would be pretty insane to try and include the mountains that I mentioned. For anyone that hasn't been there, Mount Hood, for example, rises far above the timberline, meaning there is not enough air for the trees to grow. Here are a couple of maps that illustrate what I've been saying.


This map illustrates the constraints of nature on 'The Rose City'.


The official Urban Growth Boundary.


Those lower hills on the left of the Topo map image are illustrated in the foreground of this photo. The connection via aerial tram is the same thing we did in Medellin

ABOUT THE TRAM

Crucial link: The Portland Aerial Tram and the crucial link it provides between Marquam Hill and South Waterfront has leveraged private investments of almost $2 billion in the South Waterfront District.

Economic growth: OHSU's (Oregon Health and Science University) expansion is spurring extensive development of the South Waterfront district, which will lead to some 10,000 new jobs.
Urban renewal: The tram reconnects adjacent neighborhoods to the river and helps create a vibrant new live/work district for Portland.

Connection is essential to great health care, discovery and learning: The tram quickly links doctors, nurses, engineers, scientists and students. This critical synergy creates a collaborative environment in which promising discoveries can quickly be translated into new therapies, and in which tomorrow's caregivers will have access to all of OHSU.

A central gateway: Fast tram service to Marquam Hill, ample parking and good public transportation links at the Center for Health & Healing on the South Waterfront adds a convenient, centrally located point of entry to all OHSU services.

TRAM FACTS
Cars: Two 79-passenger cars, both ADA-compatible
Capacity: 980 people/hour in each direction
Speed & ride time: 22 miles/hour; 3 minutes
Frequency: Departs every 5 minutes during peak hours
Owners: The tram is owned by the City of Portland. OHSU and the city will share responsibilities for ongoing tram operations.

Downtown Portland - Elevation
Marquam Hill - Elevation 577 feet
If you want to walk to Council Crest on the trail from Marquam Hill, you'll rise to 1,100 feet, a climb of 523 feet.

EFFECTS OF URBAN FREEWAY REMOVAL:


Harbor FREEway in Portland before removal


TODAY,  A new report, published jointly by the Institute for Transportation and Development and EMBARQ, offers brief retrospectives of five urban roads from around the world whose removal (or, in one case, cancellation) illuminates "what can be done when a highway no longer makes sense." From waterfront parks to street-level boulevards to robust transit systems, the answer is: a lot.


Harbor Drive is the name of a street in Portland, Oregon, which was formerly a freeway that carried U.S. Route 99W along the western shore of the Willamette River in the downtown area. While a segment of the road still exists today, the majority of the route (the stretch between the Steel Bridge and the Riverplace Marina) was demolished in 1974, to make way for the Tom McCall Waterfront Park. In doing so, the city of Portland became the first major city in the United States to actually remove an existing freeway; the removal of Harbor Drive is widely considered a milestone in urban planning.

THE EFFECT OF GOOD TRANSPORTATION PLANNING?

MEDELLIN, COLOMBIA â€" The Medellin Metrocable, an aerial tramway system regarded as a model of urban integration for other mountainous Latin American metropolises, is providing a better life for marginalized populations of this Andean city who previously lacked easy access to downtown and other economically vibrant areas.

The opening a year ago of a second Metrocable line to service the Comuna 13 slum has enabled the inhabitants of that overcrowded, scarcely-paved community high in the hills west of downtown to feel a part of Medellin, Colombia’s business hub and second-largest city.

Cities like Rio de Janeiro and Caracas where millions of inhabitants of hillside slums are poorly integrated into the rest of the metropolis have already shown an interest in the Medellin system, which was built with French technology at a very low cost.

The Comuna 13 line spans a distance of 2.7 kilometers (1.7 miles) and is capable of transporting some 25,000 people per hour along the 11-minute route.

Several support pilings, which rise from steep mountainsides, support the steel cables on which 90 eight-seat cabins move at an average speed of 16 kilometers (10 miles) per hour.

At the foot of the mountain, the Metrocable links to the Medellin Metro, enabling commuters to work downtown and avoid interminable climbs up or down the mountainside of as many as 600 steps.

In the 1980s and ’90s, Medellin was considered the world’s most dangerous city with an average of 6,500 murders a year.(OCK NOTE - Yeah, but DAMN IT WAS FUN!) The bloodiest urban chapter in Colombia’s decades-old armed conflict occurred on the streets of the capital of Antioquia province and Comuna 13 was the most violent area of all due to the combined effects of drug trafficking and leftist guerrilla and far-right paramilitary activity.

The security presence in that slum, currently home to 130,000 people, was non-existent until the late-2002 “Operation Orion,” a massive military-police sweep that left dozens dead and gave authorities renewed control over that district.

“We’re repaying a social debt we had for many years … because the state lost credibility,” Jose Fernando Jaramillo, architects’ coordinator for the Comprehensive Urban Project in Comuna 13.

The municipality, under then-Mayor Sergio Fajardo, invested close to $45 million to build the second Metrocable project, which followed on the heels of the first successful line that serviced Santo Domingo Savio, a marginalized community in northeastern Medellin.

The Medellin municipal government plans to spend a total of $361 million to remodel Comuna 13, taking advantage of the Metrocable’s impact.

Thus far, a modern library, public parks, sporting complexes and health facilities have all been built, while some of the rundown public schools in that sector have been renovated.

“I’ve lived here for 25 years and this was a totally inhospitable place. The access routes were roads. There was a lot of violence up until Operation Orion, when the state came in and began investing in these very marginalized neighborhoods,” Luz Marina Giraldo, a local community leader, told Efe.

Comuna 13 “now has more dignity and the quality of life has improved. Before there was practically no hope; for me this is a miracle,” she added.

Medellin currently is planning to install two new lines with the aim of incorporating more marginalized community into the life of the city.

The Metrocable, a system that can be set up in different places around the world thanks to its low cost and structural versatility, has gained recognition as a valid model of social and urban integration.

http://www.youtube.com/v/_kjfz6bNgm0?version=3&hl=en_US

[CityLife]

No not exactly. You claimed the sprawl was limited by the natural features. When in fact the UGB is well inside of those natural features. Thus it is the UGB limiting the sprawl, not natural features as you hypothesized.

[Ocklawaha]

Been there, done that. Ill stick with what I said, the maps speak for themselves.

[Non-RedNeck Westsider]

Too bad our planners used I-95 as the West & South UGB, State St (with a little nugget cut out to exclude the courthouse) as the North UGB and the SJR as the East UGB. 

[thelakelander]

Ock, I see Citylife's point. The mountains are within the development boundary. They're no more a deterrent to sprawl than the Atlantic Ocean or our marshes are locally. However, an urban development boundary would definitely stop the outward growth in areas where there are no natural features to limit it.

[cline]

^Bingo

[CityLife]

Ock, the aerial map you posted literally shows the UGB and how it has prevented sprawl. If you go to Google Maps and look at Portland, you'll see that there is plenty of developable land east, west, and south of the UGB. The UGB stops at the Columbia River because the other side is Washington State, but if it wasn't, there would be no Vancouver, Washington.

Just to finally put a nail in this coffin, the UGB extends about 15 miles east of Portland. While Mt. Hood is about 50 miles from Portland. There is plenty of developable land between the UGB and Mt. Hood National Forest, yet there is no sprawl.

[Ocklawaha]

Ock, I see Citylife's point. The mountains are within the development boundary. They're no more a deterrent to sprawl than the Atlantic Ocean or our marshes are locally. However, an urban development boundary would definitely stop the outward growth in areas where there are no natural features to limit it.

Actually it doesn't stop it Lake. Portland has experienced a 16% DECLINE in density since the Urban Growth Boundaries were put in place. They also have a expansion element to the boundaries that negate an absolute end to sprawl. Further, they have found that growth hasn't dropped off at the edge of the boundary. Two lane roads have become 4 lane roads, utility poles have replaced trees and shopping centers have filled rural land, but it STOPS at the foot of the mountains. If you want to lay the two photos of the maps I posted over each other, I think you'll see the barrier that the mountains have created. Like Pittsburgh, this causes the city to expand in narrow constrained corridors ideal for mass transit. You are correct that our own wetlands provide a barrier to development of sorts, but we've seen Florida's rampant abuse of it's natural resources where the dollar is ALWAYS greater then the Manatee.

Miami-Dade's growth boundary which also includes stopping at the edge of oblivion in the Everglades, is much more effective, constrained by the sea and the sea of grass, they can only go up.

We are all saying the same thing City Life, all I'm saying is that the mountains STOP urban sprawl in Portland, growth boundary or not, you can't build on unstable, vertical land. Certainly you don't jump state boundaries with development, but an aerial of Vancouver, Washington, illustrates the same constraints of geography.

In Portland, development has climbed the west 'hill's' which includes 'Council Crest' at 1,100 feet, this was an early STREETCAR development with homes for the nabob's of that era. So the boundary DOES include some of those hills, but as the climb becomes steeper, development becomes less economical.

East of Portland as you have observed is a steady climb as far as Gresham, which is an independent municipality of some size (with it's own boundary), further east the climb increases to Sandy (with it's own boundary), beyond Sandy it's oxygen mask territory for the weak at heart. Boundary expansion will always be on the land with the least resistance, the basalt and piedmont alleviation, coarse gravel and mudflow deposits of the Gresham-Portland area will make for easier expansion, Jumping east of Gresham is unlikely.

The volcanic nature of the surrounding mountains (which also equals earthquakes) has been taken into consideration as well, one of the expressed purposes of the Urban Boundaries is PRESERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES. Many of these volcanic sites are local nature parks.


I wonder how many of these volcanic vents they included within the growth boundary?

[CityLife]

Ock, I see Citylife's point. The mountains are within the development boundary. They're no more a deterrent to sprawl than the Atlantic Ocean or our marshes are locally. However, an urban development boundary would definitely stop the outward growth in areas where there are no natural features to limit it.

Actually it doesn't stop it Lake. Portland has experienced a 16% DECLINE in density since the Urban Growth Boundaries were put in place.

Portland's UGB was put in place 40 years ago. At the time, they weren't trying to box in ALL future development, just set a limit on where they wanted future growth to stop. The UGB was likely established 5-10 miles outside of development at the time, so naturally with that room to grow, overall density would decline. Additionally, gentrification is well known to reduce density. Not to mention young people are less likely to have kids. So with Portland being an urban mecca that has gentrified, and has a lot of SINKS and DINKS, it would also likely lose some density in its established urban neighborhoods.

The altitude of Sandy is 1,000 feet, Troutdale 200 feet, Estacada 426 feet, and so on. I scanned topo maps and there is plenty of non-mountainous land outside the boundary. If there wasn't a UGB there would be a ton of leapfrog development east, south, and west of the boundary.  Especially with Beaverton west of the city, The 2 major universities to the south, and Mt. Hood and the mountains to the east.

The only real negative that the UGB has had is that it has enabled growth to spill over the Columbia (where it ends) and into Washington State.

Imagine if Jacksonville/Florida had enacted a UGB where 1-295 is in the 70's. You'd have a much different Metro Area.

[Fallen Buckeye]

The thing that makes the mountains and hills more of a deterrent to sprawl than say marshes is the stability of the soil. The side of a hill is prone to landslides and slippage especially in a place like Oregon that receives a ton of rain. In hometown, which is a couple hours Southwest of Pittsburgh, we get all kinds of problems with roads slipping. I remember they tried to build a town center into the side of a hill once and had a 90 foot retaining wall collapse.  That's in an area where the hills only have between 300-700' of relief. That's why these cities like Pittsburgh, Portland, Charleston (WVa), etc. are so oddly shaped. It is much more difficult and expensive to build and maintain development up the side of a steep hill, so development has to happen in the valley or on the the hilltop.

[Ocklawaha]

CHECK THIS OUT:  http://youtu.be/K1qY8nPqcCw

Exactly my point Fallen Buckeye, all of these photo's are taken in the 'hills' around Portland, Oregon. The truck in the mud slide illustrates the difficulty in building on the unstable hill or mountain sides.

Estacada? Hell's bells I only lived a couple of mile away in Boring, I'd love to see them try and plop a house down around the old Eagle Creek Trestle a remain from the interurban era.

[Charles Hunter]

When did SR 9B get moved to Oregon?  Thread drift anyone?