Mayor Sam Adams

Wednesday, November 04, 2009 was the first day of the Center for New Urbanism's (CNU) three day Transportation Reform Summit. Wednesday morning’s session included presentations by four metro councilors David Bragdon, Robert Liberty, Rex Burkholder and Carlotta Collette, as well as one Senior City of Portland Transportation Planner.

Metro President, David Bragdon opened up the morning’s presentations by framing the conference as an opportunity to think about transportation in a different way; to think about transportation as a tool for community development. Mr. Bragdon stated the current economic climate can be used as a real chance to think about transportation, real estate development, engineering, planning design, economic development, finance and community development as interdisciplinary.

Metro Councilor Robert Liberty followed up on Mr. Bragdon’s opening remarks by placing Portland’s achievements into historical context. He shared what he saw growing up in Portland: increasing pollution, racial tensions, growing sprawl and how Portland was well on its way to become a place that the CNU Summit would not want to visit. Mr. Liberty talked about Governor Tom McCall signing Senate Bill 100 which mapped out goals for how the state should develop. According to Mr. Liberty this Senate Bill set the stage for how Oregon and specifically, the Portland Metro region, plans for growth.

Councilor Rex Burkholder took the floor next sharing Metro’s Update on the Regional Transportation Plan. Mr. Burkholder shared that Metro’s process of crafting the Regional Transportation Plan was shaped by the question “Is the transportation system serving the regions’ needs?” This question allowed Metro to proceed by viewing transportation as an investment strategy to achieve desired goals. The goals had been set through a series of facilitated group discussions with the community.

Metro Commissioner Carlotta Collette co-presented with Thomas Brennan of Nelson\Nygaard as they discussed the high capacity transit plan for the region. Ms. Collette shared the historical context. She told the audience that the grid of proposed freeways in the 1980s spurred the neighborhood associations into looking into alternatives since communities felt that Portland could not build its way out of congestion problems. Light rail emerged out of those discussions. Mr. Brennan then shared the most recent process which was undertaken to plan for future rail in the Metro region.

Stuart Gwin with the Bureau of Transportation concluded the morning with what he called, a dose of reality, by looking at a set of neighborhoods in Portland which are designated as Regional Centers but are not achieving the 20 minute neighborhood concept.

Click here to learn more about Congress for the New Urbanism and the three day summit currently hosted in Portland.