Cascade President John A. Charles, Jr. Submits Testimony to Metro Council on its Transportation Demand Management Strategy and the 82nd Avenue Transit Project.
Cascade President, John A. Charles, Jr. delivered pointed testimony last month to the Metro Council urging against two major transportation actions aimed at prioritizing transit and punishing people in cars throughout the region.
At the April 23 meeting, Metro passed a new Transportation Demand Management Strategy (TDM) and advanced three locally preferred alternatives (LPA) for major transit projects, including the 82nd Ave. Transit Project, the Tualatin Valley Highway, and the Montgomery Park Streetcar Extension.
Charles reminded councilors that Metro has been trying to “influence travel behavior” since the early 1990s, and the promised reductions in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) never materialized. Metro’s own performance measures show that 30-year goals have never been met, so they extended the timeline to 45 years. Yet, Metro continues to build new plans on the same fantasy metrics that have never materialized.
“Driving is not a luxury,” Charles emphasized. For most Portland area families, driving is a necessity and a key factor in employment, wage growth, and running a household. Instead of recognizing this, Metro designs policies to make driving harder despite decades of evidence showing these strategies do not change travel behavior—they just make daily life more expensive and difficult.
After 35 years of missed targets the region deserves more than aspirational planning; it deserves transportation investments grounded in reality. It’s time for Metro to require empirical evidence before adopting “behavior‑modification” strategies as a basis for major capital projects. The region deserves transportation investments that improve mobility and economic opportunity for real people.
Read the Testimony by John Charles
Click HERE for the PDF version
Naomi Inman is External Relations Manager at Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization. As a staff journalist and writer, Naomi helps Cascade make the case for free-market policies through media affairs and publications.
John A. Charles, Jr. is President and CEO of Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization. He researches, writes, and presents testimony and analysis on state and local issues important to the freedom and opportunity of all Oregonians.
Jane McInturf
I live out in east Portland. Metro has been trying to modify driving out here for years. Folks don’t want pavement down the middle of wide arterials, preventing left turns. They don’t want more bike lanes when the only ones out here riding bikes are people with DUIs or homeless or a one lane 82nd Ave. Common sense is truly needed.
Colleen
Metro has been failing on the other issues they have been entrusted with also.
Here is one example:
The Lift Buses are a lifeline to the elderly and disabled. Recently, they have new rules for the people they are serving. The elderly and disabled effectively now have to go out to where the busses will park to wait for almost an hour for the ride – parking lots that have no shelter or accommodations:
The bus drivers no longer are allowed to go to the elderly or disabled person is and bring them to the bus.
The bus will pick them up within 1/2 hour of the time that it has been scheduled – and the person must be there waiting within five minutes of the bus’s arrival.
If the elderly or disabled person misses their bus, they get ‘dinged’ and it goes against their record.
Did Metro, who oversees Trimet, forget about people who need this indispensable service while trying to force people who do not need Trimet to use Trimet?
Sounds like a bunch of little kings there at Metro.