Politics Democrats have owned this state for decades - what do we have to show for it?

[SlyPokerDog]

How much money has South Carolina or Georgia spent on public transportation? We have spent millions upon millions on our system, and it doesn't work. It's at capacity and it barely dents our traffic problems. I rode Max for years, and it's completely full. The park and ride parking lots of completely full. It doesn't make a bit of difference. The bus systems are horribly designed and it takes hours to get anywhere.

In Munich, they have an an above ground train that circles the perimeter of the city and then they have underground trains that run throughout the inside of the city. You can get anywhere in the city in 30-40 minutes. In Portland you have to ride downtown to get anywhere, so it would have taken my wife 1.5 hours to get from SW Portland (only 10 minutes from downtown) to Hillsboro. Similarly, it would take me around 1.5 hours to get to Hillsboro from PDX.

The trains are too small. The parking for the trains is too small. And we have spent tooooooooons of money on this system.

Fuck more public transit.

We need a 3rd interstate bridge and a 205 type freeway on the west side of town. We need to bypass traffic out of the downtown core.

 

[donkiez]

How much money has South Carolina or Georgia spent on public transportation? We have spent millions upon millions on our system, and it doesn't work. It's at capacity and it barely dents our traffic problems. I rode Max for years, and it's completely full. The park and ride parking lots of completely full. It doesn't make a bit of difference. The bus systems are horribly designed and it takes hours to get anywhere.

In Munich, they have an an above ground train that circles the perimeter of the city and then they have underground trains that run throughout the inside of the city. You can get anywhere in the city in 30-40 minutes. In Portland you have to ride downtown to get anywhere, so it would have taken my wife 1.5 hours to get from SW Portland (only 10 minutes from downtown) to Hillsboro. Similarly, it would take me around 1.5 hours to get to Hillsboro from PDX.

The trains are too small. The parking for the trains is too small. And we have spent tooooooooons of money on this system.

How much money have European cities invested compare to portland? I would wager it's many times more than us. Europe also has a very mature public transportation system ours is still being added to. In Europe long trips like Hillsboro to PDX will still take a decent amount of time. Again, I am a daily trimet user I don't drive at all. I disagree with your assessment of how inconvenient, packed and slow it is.

 

[Natebishop3]

The only times I ever saw the Max trains full up were when Blazer games let out.
Now, if the trains are full and the traffic is still heavy, imagine how heavy the traffic would be if Max had to shut down.

You definitely don't ride during rush hour. It's packed. But it still doesn't make a difference. Our roadways that haven't been improved in decades are also at capacity. So all those hundreds of millions of dollars that were spent did not alleviate the problem.

 

[Lanny]

How much money has South Carolina or Georgia spent on public transportation? We have spent millions upon millions on our system, and it doesn't work. It's at capacity and it barely dents our traffic problems. I rode Max for years, and it's completely full. The park and ride parking lots of completely full. It doesn't make a bit of difference. The bus systems are horribly designed and it takes hours to get anywhere.

In Munich, they have an an above ground train that circles the perimeter of the city and then they have underground trains that run throughout the inside of the city. You can get anywhere in the city in 30-40 minutes. In Portland you have to ride downtown to get anywhere, so it would have taken my wife 1.5 hours to get from SW Portland (only 10 minutes from downtown) to Hillsboro. Similarly, it would take me around 1.5 hours to get to Hillsboro from PDX.

The trains are too small. The parking for the trains is too small. And we have spent tooooooooons of money on this system.

I've been told that the people that planned the original light rail later feel like they goofed in not having a parallel train that traveled faster and made fewer stops, thus eliminating the milk stop run for those that needed to get to major stop-off points faster.

 

[Natebishop3]

How much money have European cities invested compare to portland? I would wager it's many times more than us. Europe also has a very mature public transportation system ours is still being added to. In Europe long trips like Hillsboro to PDX will still take a decent amount of time. Again, I am a daily trimet user I don't drive at all. I disagree with your assessment of how inconvenient, packed and slow it is.

I was a daily rider as well. Hillsboro to downtown and back, every day. Feel free to ride the blue line during rush hour if you don't believe me. Try to find a parking spot past 8 am during a weekday.

 

[TBpup]

Health care will continue to be an issue when you have so many people not taking responsibility for their health. So many of my Dr clients tell the same story time and time again. Patient after patient coming in wanting a 'pill' or a Rx instead of eating healthier, exercising, and taking steps to try and be healthy. Of course there are also those who can't help their situation but for a large portion, it has become a lack of effort and they just don't care. So to ask others to pay for their deteriorating condition when they don't really care about it themselves will never work from a fiscal standpoint.

Pre-existing conditions are another hot button. You absolutely take care of those who are say born with a medical condition or are involved in something beyond their control. But again, I'm told of countless examples of people who drink, smoke, do drugs, eat a horrible diet and don't exercise, etc and then want the large majority of their care paid for by people who are paying in to the system and not using it. IE, Paying the exorbitant medical costs for lung cancer when someone has smoked a pack a day or for liver disease for someone who has drank all of their life seems destined to be a plan that will go bankrupt. Covering health care for someone who eats Ho-Ho's and Ding Dongs every day and refuses to exercise and eventually gets so fat they go on disability (an ex sister-in-law) is not good use of health care dollars or Soc Sec because it is stretched too thin as it is.

 

[Lanny]

You definitely don't ride during rush hour. It's packed. But it still doesn't make a difference. Our roadways that haven't been improved in decades are also at capacity. So all those hundreds of millions of dollars that were spent did not alleviate the problem.

By improving the roads, I presume you mean widening them 'cause the freeways don't have any pot holes. To widen roads, you're going to have to spend a fortune buying up homes and businesses along the route. Then you're going to be faced with worse air that will give a lot of people medical problems.

I see the only solution as being either we all switch to electric cars or we vastly improve our mass transit.

 

[Lanny]

I was a daily rider as well. Hillsboro to downtown and back, every day. Feel free to ride the blue line during rush hour if you don't believe me. Try to find a parking spot past 8 am during a weekday.

I've never had a problem on the Blue Line, parking or finding a seat on the train. I used to ride it round trip to and from every Blazer game. Of course, I qualified for the handicapped seating, which, admittedly, helped. I would sometimes park at the 185th stop and other times at Beaverton Central.

 

[donkiez]

I was a daily rider as well. Hillsboro to downtown and back, every day. Feel free to ride the blue line during rush hour if you don't believe me. Try to find a parking spot past 8 am during a weekday.

So you are judging the whole system on rush hour rides? Europe has a rush hour also, I've have to stand on PDX and Euro trains during busy times. It's not a big deal. I've never missed a train during peak hours .trimet busts ass to add more trains during events also. Blue line is just fine. My only complaint would be all the downtown stops, like Lanny said an Express line would be nice for bypassing downtown.

 

[Natebishop3]

By improving the roads, I presume you mean widening them 'cause the freeways don't have any pot holes. To widen roads, you're going to have to spend a fortune buying up homes and businesses along the route. Then you're going to be faced with worse air that will give a lot of people medical problems.

I see the only solution as being either we all switch to electric cars or we vastly improve our mass transit.

Mass transit CAN work, but our system is not efficient. One thing that Brazil did was create Bus only super highways to get buses around the city quickly, much in the same way that rail systems work. There are ways to do it.

But they should have built a freeway that runs from Wilsonville out to Hillsboro and then into downtown or Vancouver. There were a few freeways that were even planned but never built.

The thing that makes our system inefficient is that you have to go downtown to link up with anything. There isn't a train that runs around the exterior of the city.

 

[Natebishop3]

So you are judging the whole system on rush hour rides? Europe has a rush hour also, I've have to stand on PDX and Euro trains during busy times. It's not a big deal. I've never missed a train during peak hours .trimet busts ass to add more trains during events also. Blue line is just fine. My only complaint would be all the downtown stops, like Lanny said an Express line would be nice for bypassing downtown.

What is the point if the system is overtaxed when most people need to ride it?

 

[donkiez]

Mass transit CAN work, but our system is not efficient. One thing that Brazil did was create Bus only super highways to get buses around the city quickly, much in the same way that rail systems work. There are ways to do it.

But they should have built a freeway that runs from Wilsonville out to Hillsboro and then into downtown or Vancouver. There were a few freeways that were even planned but never built.

The thing that makes our system inefficient is that you have to go downtown to link up with anything. There isn't a train that runs around the exterior of the city.

I agree our freeway system is not efficient. We could have planned it better. A lot of that is our geography though, the west hills bottleneck a lot of traffic. I-5 should not interchange in the city either and we need more bridges to Washington. Vancouver politicians are to blame for the bridge isse as much or more so than Oregon though, they boondoggled us bad on our last plan.

 

[donkiez]

What is the point if the system is overtaxed when most people need to ride it?

Over taxed is not unuseable. It's still fine in my opinion but could always be better.

 

[SlyPokerDog]

I agree our freeway system is not efficient. We could have planned it better. A lot of that is our geography though, the west hills bottleneck a lot of traffic. I-5 should not interchange in the city either and we need more bridges to Washington. Vancouver politicians are to blame for the bridge isse as much or more so than Oregon though, they boondoggled us bad on our last plan.

No, we're at fault for there not being a new I-5 bridge. Washington and Vancouver wanted one but we insisted on including light rail on it. Vancouver doesn't want Max. They don't want to go into business with Tri Met.

We should have agreed to that and maybe someday talk about a light rail and pedestrian only bridge like Tillicum. Actually PSU had an excellent plan of converting the existing interstate bridge into light rail and pedestrian only while building a massive new auto bridge next to it.

We fucked that up.

 

[Natebishop3]

I agree our freeway system is not efficient. We could have planned it better. A lot of that is our geography though, the west hills bottleneck a lot of traffic. I-5 should not interchange in the city either and we need more bridges to Washington. Vancouver politicians are to blame for the bridge isse as much or more so than Oregon though, they boondoggled us bad on our last plan.

But all of those hundreds of millions could have been spent on freeways that were desperately needed decades ago.

 

[barfo]

There was a time when I heard that MAX was a failure because the trains ran empty. Now MAX is a failure because the trains run full?

For those of you who want more freeways. What city with more freeways do you like better?

barfo

 

[Lanny]

There was a time when I heard that MAX was a failure because the trains ran empty. Now MAX is a failure because the trains run full?

For those of you who want more freeways. What city with more freeways do you like better?

barfo

LA, because you can drive faster to the next traffic jam than anywhere else.

Edit: ps And you can look at those horrific traffic accidents as you creep by with all the other rubber neckers.

 

[e_blazer]

There was a time when I heard that MAX was a failure because the trains ran empty. Now MAX is a failure because the trains run full?

For those of you who want more freeways. What city with more freeways do you like better?

barfo

I spent a couple of weeks in Albuquerque in October and couldn't help but notice how their freeways through town are typically 4-5 lanes in each direction compared with Portland's typical 2-3 lanes. What's up with that? Albuquerque's metro area population is less than half of Portland's. As a planning consultant, I have sat through numerous meetings with City and ODOT representatives who have said the general mantra on freeways that we can't build them fast enough to keep up with population growth. Well, no duh if you keep channeling transportation funds to light rail expansion. Remember that the first section of I-205 was funded by redirecting money from the proposed (and horribly named) Mt. Hood freeway. When was the last time they added lanes on the freeway system? I guess they're planning to add a lane to a stretch of I-205 between Tualatin and Oregon City in the next couple of years, but there's been precious little effort to make even a token effort at expanding the system. Now the plan being discussed is the idea of monitoring our cars and taxing people for the privilege of using the freeway during peak traffic hours. Brilliant! Spend nothing and tax people for the gridlock created by doing nothing.

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

Better mexican food.

 

[andalusian]

For those of you who want more freeways. What city with more freeways do you like better?

San Diego (and I like Portland a lot, but it sure feels like a 40 years old that still tries to rock the skinny jeans with his pot belly hanging over).

 

[MarAzul]

You need a new West Side Freeway to Replace I-5. Starting at about Brooks, crossing the Willamette at about Newberg where the river turn East, runs up around the hills past Forest grove and crossing the Columbia near Kalama. Get that through traffic to hell out of down town. Then rip down the God awful strips of concrete running along the east bank of the Willamette and enjoy a beautiful river running through your City.
After you do get the through traffic out of town, perhaps you need some more Columbia crossing but you have to wonder why? Why set up your system so that so many people want to live in Washington and work in Portland?

If you are traveling or trucking from the south to the North, Cal or southern Oregon to north of Portland, Portland is one hell of a impediment ( either direction). Your Max doesn't do shit for this.
Sit on I-205 heading north passing through Portland but parked instead in mid afternoon and watch the Max go by. Damn near empty with the track taking up as much ground as the 205 lanes North.

Want out of town? Take a train instead of drive? Now try to get to the damn train station! Not too many people want to ride that Max that owns SW6th ave. It is a shit hole there these days. Not many cars though!!!

 

[MARIS61]

For most of my life, Democrats have straight up owned this state. What good have they done? I'm genuinely asking. What have they done with that power that has made this state better?

I'm not saying that any of the bums that the GOP has trotted out could do better, but we keep electing and re-electing the same people, meanwhile this state is horrible in many of the areas that Democrats are supposed to be champions.

Education? Horrible.

Health care? Horrible.

Mental illness and homelessness? Horrible.

Someone please tell me what positives the past 30 years of Democrat governors has yielded. I'm looking for actual examples.

Oregon Livability (1987-2022)

Although Krooked Kitzhaber made bank from Tom Steyer bribes through his wife.

 

[MARIS61]

A high minimum wage?

You're thinking of Portland, which has not yet attained Statehood.

Kate Brown committed a felony when she implemented her vote-buying wage-raise for Democrat-heavy voting districts while stiffing Republican-leaning communities.

Maybe someone will file a lawsuit?

https://www.oregon.gov/boli/WHD/OMW/Pages/Minimum-Wage-Rate-Summary.aspx

 

[dviss1]

For most of my life, Democrats have straight up owned this state. What good have they done? I'm genuinely asking. What have they done with that power that has made this state better?

I'm not saying that any of the bums that the GOP has trotted out could do better, but we keep electing and re-electing the same people, meanwhile this state is horrible in many of the areas that Democrats are supposed to be champions.

Education? Horrible.

Health care? Horrible.

Mental illness and homelessness? Horrible.

Someone please tell me what positives the past 30 years of Democrat governors has yielded. I'm looking for actual examples.

My son HAS healthcare because of democrats.

Republicans voted 50x to repeal his healthcare and take us back to the days where pre existing condition meant something.

Knute Bueler wanted to BLOCK GRANT Medicaid.

Cutting my son's healthcare is what Republicans have tried to do.

Fuck them.

 

[dviss1]

That hasn't helped me at all. In fact, my salary didn't go up one bit, so all it did was raise the cost of everything else. It devalued the dollar for me.

Fallacy.

 

[MARIS61]

Blaming health care and mental illness on the Democrats is not really fair. It's a national problem that is very muddy. If anything I think they are the ones make real efforts to make that better. I am disappointed by our education and homeless issues though, we could clearly do better on both fronts. Business seems to be doing well here, I am currently on a recruiting trip actually, looking to hire more people and move them to Oregon.

http://www.eastoregonian.com/eo/loc...n-to-close-mental-hospital-brings-dxe9jxe0-vu
http://mailtribune.com/news/happening-now/brown-suggests-closure-of-new-psychiatric-hospital

 

[dviss1]

I am currently on a recruiting trip actually, looking to hire more people and move them to Oregon.

This makes the housing problem worse...

 

[MARIS61]

For the price it costs to run TriMet you could buy every taxpayer a car and give them free gas for life.

 

[Lanny]

I spent a couple of weeks in Albuquerque in October and couldn't help but notice how their freeways through town are typically 4-5 lanes in each direction compared with Portland's typical 2-3 lanes. What's up with that? Albuquerque's metro area population is less than half of Portland's. As a planning consultant, I have sat through numerous meetings with City and ODOT representatives who have said the general mantra on freeways that we can't build them fast enough to keep up with population growth. Well, no duh if you keep channeling transportation funds to light rail expansion. Remember that the first section of I-205 was funded by redirecting money from the proposed (and horribly named) Mt. Hood freeway. When was the last time they added lanes on the freeway system? I guess they're planning to add a lane to a stretch of I-205 between Tualatin and Oregon City in the next couple of years, but there's been precious little effort to make even a token effort at expanding the system. Now the plan being discussed is the idea of monitoring our cars and taxing people for the privilege of using the freeway during peak traffic hours. Brilliant! Spend nothing and tax people for the gridlock created by doing nothing.

We have a serious air quality problem right now. I'd like to see more light rail. Every light rail passenger is one less auto passenger.

 

[MARIS61]

No, we're at fault for there not being a new I-5 bridge. Washington and Vancouver wanted one but we insisted on including light rail on it. Vancouver doesn't want Max. They don't want to go into business with Tri Met.

We should have agreed to that and maybe someday talk about a light rail and pedestrian only bridge like Tillicum. Actually PSU had an excellent plan of converting the existing interstate bridge into light rail and pedestrian only while building a massive new auto bridge next to it.

We fucked that up.

Another bridge to WA benefits some Portlanders, but Portlanders need to pay for it. On the rare occasion that I travel in WA I cross up in the gorge.