I’ll bet it was a barrel of fun.
The city of Portland has had, for a few years now, a policy of encouraging people (by the simple expedient of relaxing zoning) to build higher-density housing on major throughfares. It’s a sensible idea, because if you get people living close to major thoroughfares, you’ve actually got a fighting chance of making mass transit into a reasonable alternative to the now-traditional American custom of tossing a wad of automobiles into the already impressive (by Portland standards) rush hour traffic.
North Interstate Ave, which used to be a major throughfare years ago, has a new(-ish) trolley line running down the middle of it, and so the city wants to let people take advantage of it. About half of the area around Interstate Ave has already had zoning relaxed to the point where there’s not really any zoning at all (zoned to allow 100ft buildings is still zoning, but 100 feet is still quite a large building; it’s pretty short compared to the huge condo towers that are going in (and being snapped up like a particularly yummy dessert) south of the Ross Island bridge (a place that’s only adjacent to a major thoroughfare in that you can look out your windows and see the traffic back up on I-5) but those buildings are right next to downtown, not across the river and a mile and a half north of the Steel Bridge,) and now the city is moving to relax zoning on the other half of the area around Interstate Ave.
For some reason, the word hasn’t gotten out, and the clock is ticking down to the make or break decision from the planning committee.
This is not a particularly good thing, because Portland contains a small, but very yappy contingent of anti-trolley lunatics, and when they catch wind of something that might actually put more people onto the trolleys they go absolutely apeshit about it. And they’ve started to catch wind of this proposal. At the last minute. Which makes it a CONSPIRACY!
The (last?) public meeting was supposed to have taken place tonight (I didn’t got because I don’t live up there – *my* neighborhood is along the “it will cost A MINIMUM OF US$266 million/mile to build” proposed trolley line.) and I’m wondering what happened. I wonder if the kooks were out claiming that relaxing the zoning was an EvIl CoNsPiRaCy™ to *force* people into moving next to the trolley line (this appears to be one of the standard libertarian planks, because zoning is BAD if it’s used to protect farmland, but GOOD if it’s used to keep density down to the point where it makes it difficult to get a good return on investment on a trolley line,) or if they did a measure 37 and brought in some Elderly Widow™ to complain about how the horrible state was making it possible for her to sell her property and make a fortress out of US$100 bills?
Sure, people can rant about zoning on weblogs (*cough, cough*) and they can lie to the local anti-transit newspaper about how the neighborhood board hates those evil trolleys, but it doesn’t have quite the same impact as actually watching the spittle-flecked tirades about how streetcars steal our precious body fluids. I wonder if anyone brought a lawn chair and some popcorn to watch the fireworks?