What can Portland teach Los Angeles about transportation?

I recently spent a long weekend in Portland, Ore. The trip was for fun, but it was hard not to look and sometimes marvel at the many things that Portland does well on the transportation front and wonder if they can be applied here.

Of course, comparing the Portland area to the Southland is a bit unfair. The city of Portland has a population of about 537,000 (about 10% larger than Long Beach) and the metro area has about 2.1 million people. Los Angeles County alone has about 10 million people.

In other words, they've got the advantage of being smaller and in the world of urban planning, smaller usually translates to getting things done faster.

CYCLING

Census Bureau numbers from 2006 show that 4.1% of commuters in Portland use bikes to get to work compared with six-tenths of one percent in the city of Los Angeles. Portland transportation officials say that their own surveys show that actually 6% of the city's residents are pedaling to work -- tops in the nation for a large city.

I'd be skeptical of that number ordinarily. But on a Monday afternoon I sat on my rental bike watching the number of bike commuters heading out of downtown on the Hawthorne Bridge at rush hour. It was one bike after another on the bike lane on the bridge. Upon reaching the east side of the bridge, some cyclists used a special bike exit ramp to reach a bike path running along the Willamette. Amazing.

The funny thing about Portland is that the area really doesn't have a tremendous number of miles of separated bike paths. Instead, the city has put bike lanes and routes on streets with lower volumes of traffic and emphasized connections. In other words, someone actually went out and came up with a strategy for cyclists to get from Point A to Point B.

Here's an example: I rented a bike on the northwest side of Portland. The city's bike map helped me easily navigate to the riverfront bike path to the Hawthorne Bridge, which has bike lanes on both sides of it.

When a cyclist arrives at the east side of the Willamette River, the bike lane within several blocks peels off busy Hawthorne and instead puts cyclists on parallel residential streets. Again, there were plenty of signs and street markings (see photo below). And, again, there were a ton of cyclists on the street going both directions.

The funny thing is that many cities here have designated bike routes -- you see those little green signs everywhere in Pasadena, for example. I think the difference in Portland is the emphasis on connectivity. It's also a geographical and cultural thing. Commutes are shorter and residents clearly are into cycling.

Maybe that is a reflection of the fact that the city and region have invested in biking. Cheryl Kuck, a spokesperson for the city's transportation bureau, said that as more people have taken to biking, the city is mandated to keep spending money to keep improving facilities.

"If we have users at 4% to 6% or beyond [of all commuters], our capital budget has to create funds for that user group," she said.

And that, rest assured, is a foreign concept here.

LIGHT RAIL

Perhaps the biggest difference between Portland and here is something you notice within minutes of walking off a plane: A light rail line stops at the far end of the Portland airport's terminal building. For $2.05, you can buy a ticket and be on a train that takes about 40 minutes to reach the central business district in downtown.

Driving is undoubtedly quicker. Still, I took the train at 10 p.m. on a Friday night -- the airport at that point was pretty dead -- and I'm guessing 40 or so people boarded the train at the airport. The line was completed in 2001, making Portland the first city on the West Coast to have a train running to the airport. In the last fiscal year, 1.2 million people took the train to and from the airport, according to TriMet, the local transportation agency.

It's worth noting here that the proposal to bring the Green Line to LAX doesn't actually take the Green Line to LAX. The train would stop out near Parking Lot C, where passengers would transfer to a people mover that the airport is supposed to build.

Three light rail lines enter downtown Portland from the suburbs and next year a fourth will arrive. All have opened in the past seven years after decades of planning. In many cases, the trains run right up the middle of the street -- stations are literally on the curb. They run slow and stop often in downtown and it doesn't appear to be a problem in terms of people-train-car conflicts.

The other novel approach taken by Portland was that the city drew a square around downtown and declared that the "fareless zone." If you only ride the train or the bus within that zone, it's a free ride. The idea was to encourage people to use the trains and buses for short trips within downtown. It's a bit of a controversial notion and the policy is under review -- some feel it encourages some not-so-pleasant types to ride -- but you can't beat the price.

A couple of other notes: The trains have bike hooks. And the train goes to some novel destinations. In one case it tunnels under Washington Park -- but has a stop there. Take the elevator up and you've got hiking trails, the zoo and the Children's Museum just steps away. There's a good post at The Times' Outpost blog with plenty of tips on how to spend a weekend in Portland.

DOWNTOWN PARKING

One of the worst things about downtown L.A., I've always thought, is the number of parking lots. The big, empty spaces create dead zones where there's nothing going on except parking. And, the lots have made it difficult to create the kind of critical mass of people that in turn attracts the kind of businesses that create a thriving downtown.

Downtown Portland is much smaller than L.A. While it certainly has parking lots and garages -- but nothing on the magnitude of what you see in L.A. As it turns out, this is the result of some smart things Portland did going back to the 1970s.

Back then, air quality officials in Oregon began cracking down on car pollution. They imposed tight rules on emissions and told cities to start finding ways to get people to drive less. With that kick in the rear, Portland initially created a plan that capped the number of parking spaces allowed downtown. The idea was to encourage more people to take mass transit.

The city also turned two streets into a "bus mall" -- two one-way streets that mostly served buses -- and zoned the city in such a way that buildings closest to mass transit were given strict limits on how much parking they could build. The above drawing shows the new light rail line being added to the mall.

I cannot emphasize enough how different this is from Los Angeles, which has the exact opposite policy: New residential and commercial buildings have minimum amounts of parking they can build. There is no maximum.

Even relaxing the minimums here have been controversial: When the city of L.A. planning department tried to do it last year for buildings on transit lines (including bus routes), an upswell of protest put the plan on hold. No one believed people would buy new residential units without parking. They envisioned those new residents parking cars in their neighborhoods.

"We have no minimums anywhere in the central city," said Jessica Richman, a senior planner in the Portland Planning Bureau. "We could do it downtown with a strong transit system, transit is free. I don't think L.A. has the transit system to match, but it's also just kind of that mentality that is typical in America that everyone needs a car. People [in Portland] do say if you build something without parking, people will compete for scarce on-street parking. It's definitely a stick approach, but we also try to build in the carrots to make it easier for you not to drive."

If you walk around Portland, you'll notice something else: Zipcars -- the company that specializes in short-term car rentals -- has a vehicle parked every few blocks in parking spaces the city has dedicated to the firm. It goes back to that idea that Portland is trying to help provide people with alternatives to car ownership.

THE STREETCAR

Of all the transit-related things that Portland has done, perhaps none have gotten more attention than the city's revival of the streetcar in 2001. The line has since been expanded and runs in a eight-mile loop on city streets. In traffic. In incredibly dense neighborhoods of new and gentrified buildings where there is, remarkably, not that much traffic.

The line runs through downtown and connects a new neighborhood along the Willamette River to the relatively new Pearl District and on to the older northwest side neighborhood. The streetcars are about the same size as one of Metro's articulated buses.

The streetcar runs at about the same speed as a bus. Stops are typically one to three blocks apart and like buses, the streetcar has that magical gift of missing virtually every green light because it's always stopping. In exchange for lack of speed, however, the streetcar is basically a hyper-local service that is very convenient to reach for anyone living or working near the line.

Like the light rail and buses, the streetcar is free within downtown. Unlike buses, people riding the streetcars can enter any one of three doors and they can buy a ticket on board. That does help speed the proceedings. Because many people are riding for short distances, the streetcar has few seats but a lot of room for standing and it runs at curb level.

Proponents of the streetcar say it has attracted millions of dollars of development along the route (that's a new condo building and park in the Pearl District, at left). They say that streetcar tracks, unlike bus routes, signal to the community that such areas are worthy of long-term investment. And they say the streetcars are quieter and more attractive than buses. There may be something to this. There are certainly people in the L.A. area who say some major streets -- such as Brand Boulevard in Glendale -- took decades to recover after losing their streetcar lines.

A couple of other things worth knowing about the streetcar in Portland: about one-third the cost was paid for by residents who live near it via an assessment. And businesses continue to subsidize it through sponsorships. The Community Redevelopment Agency has been studying building a streetcar line in downtown L.A. but it's likely going to require a heavy investment from the private sector to do so.

"The best part of it is that it's relatively cheap and it leads to a much more compelling pedestrian environment -- and real estate values go up because it's permanent," said Tom Cody, a principal with the developer Gerding Edlen, which is building projects in Portland and L.A. "People who are critics say let's put in a DASH system, but a DASH bus can always go away. A streetcar if done correctly, comes with landscaping, shelters, trash cans and because it's putting eyes on the street it makes neighborhoods safer because people are on the street."

THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX

Most recently, Portland opened an aerial tram that connects a new neighborhood of high-rises along the Willamette to the state's health campus that sits 500 feet higher and on the other side of a freeway.

In terms of mass transit solutions, I'm not sure that it's a great example of practicality, but it's hard not to be impressed with the willingness to do something different -- particularly to the tune of $57 million (the Oregon Health & Science University paid about $40 million of its cost).

There was a study in the early 1990s that looked at ways to connect Dodger Stadium to Chinatown. A tram was one of the options reviewed, but the study concluded it couldn't carry enough people to handle crowds before and after games.

The most noticeable thing about Portland, however, is its willingness to embrace density. Neighborhoods near mass transit are filled with high-rise development. It's clear that Portland has embraced the idea that if mass transit is to survive, a lot of people need to live or work near it.

SO, WHAT CAN L.A. LEARN?

A couple of days after returning from Portland, I dialed up Gail Goldberg, the chief of the city of Los Angeles' planning department. Goldberg knows Portland well -- in urban planning circles it's often used as an example -- and one of her sons lives in the Pearl, the old manufacturing district now filled with new high-rises and old buildings converted into housing.

She focused on a few issues: redevelopment laws in Portland are, as she understood them, more flexible in terms of providing incentives to get developers to build what the city wants them to build. And she thought that business improvement districts in Portland had shown more willingness to spend money improving their communities.

On the transit front, Goldberg said "I like that they understand the value and are willing to have free service in the downtown area. Whereas here, we're worried about how to pay for everything, so everything has to be be self-sufficient and we're not subsidizing everything. They've somehow learned [in Portland] that it's not a subsidy, it's an investment and that obviously gives them other returns.

One of the last things Goldberg said in our conversation was I think the most insightful. She said that things people see in Portland in 2008 are really the result of smart decisions made as far back as the 1970s -- the region's decision to adopt an urban growth boundary, investment in mass transit.

"The thing about Portland -- like Vancouver (in British Columbia) -- is that they had a great plan adopted 20 years ago and the City Council sticks to the plan," Goldberg said. "And that's how they got here -- that willingness to stick to the plan."

What do you think, Bottleneckers? What do cities such as Portland do that we can learn from down here, both on the transportation and planning fronts? Leave a comment and in a few days I'll put the best ideas in a new post.

-- Steve Hymon

Streetcar photo: Julie Sheer / Los Angeles Times

Hawthorne Bridge photo: Dana E. Olsen / The Oregonian

Bike commuting photo: Christopher Reynolds / LAT

Bike marker photo: Steve Hymon / LAT

Red streetcar photo: Portland Streetcar

Portland Mall rendering: Portland Mall

Gondola photo: Julie Sheer / LAT

Comments

[Rob Stewart]

I'm from Vancouver, and although the city is only somewhat larger than Portland - and smaller than Seattle - what makes rail transit so much more viable here is the density compared to Los Angeles. Vancouver has miles of single-family houses like LA, but also has a number of high-density town centres within the city and metro region, clusters of highrise apartments, offices and shopping centres, that make rapid transit more accesible and more viable. Los Angeles is enormous, but the low density in nearly all regions necessitates the car. Take a look at Vancouver's new urban planning system; it's not perfect, but it's far more transit-friendly than what you have in LA. While it's true there is an elevated rail system in LA now, I cannot help but wonder how effective it is on a city-wide basis. Los Angeles has enormous tasks ahead when it comes to resolving dependence on the automobile.

[Dan W.]

I posted this on the other thread, but it is more appropriate here.

Go Portland!!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/us/14streetcar.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin

Here is a link to a great article in the New York Times today about the revival of interest in many cities in using streetcars to revitalize areas.

I imagine the Purple Line going to Santa Monica and the Pink Line connecting Hollywood and Century City via Santa Monica Blvd and La Cienega Blvd. However, there are lots of areas where streetcars might be the way to go. Broadway downtown has been mentioned as a possibility.

How about a streetcar from Union Station on Sunset all the way to the strip?

How about a streetcar for Ventura Blvd?

[Toni Magic]

Portland is building up its boulevards with mixed use housing; that is commercial on the ground floor with housing above. This is a smart way to accommodate density and also encourages people to walk by building services close to where they live. Buildings like this are going up in some places in LA, like on Wilshire and Hollywood Boulevards, but in a lot of places they will just build housing with no retail. The most glaring example of this is two new condo projects that went up at the intersection of Sunset and Santa Monica in Sunset Junction. These buildings have no retail on the ground floor and they are in the middle of a very popular shopping street. I think LA needs to require ground floor retail on new projects in certain areas. I believe Portland already has zoning like this on the books.

[Michael Ballard]

I will be finding first hand how cycling is in Portland next year on a tour of US 99, though in my research, I have found that the cycling maps they have are unmatched by anything put out down here. They not only show the standard bicycle lane/route/paths, but also show traffic controls, hills, shoulder width, and how busy a road is. I've been through the city on surface streets, during rush hour, and was suprised how good traffic flow was, even in downtown. It seems sad that Los Angeles, the city that had the best rail transit systems in the US (Los Angeles Railway, Pacific Electric Railway), has to learn from other cities how to put in rail. Los Angeles, you're behind! Get going!