More Fat Roads - It's an Obesity Epidemic!

Portland and Metro want to put SW Barbur Blvd. on a road diet.  The problem is that ODOT owns the roadway and they like the road the way it is.  Is the BMI for Barbur over, under, or at its ideal weight?

Having grown up along Barbur Blvd., some of the time before I-5 was built, the old road has a necessary purpose even today.  It has always been a safe, slower, and more reliable way to get into Portland than using the freeway below it.  For the anti-car crowd, having access to Portland by car is not the goal.  The goal is to put "transit" options (aka rail transport and bike paths) where roads are, in order to give those forms of multimodal transport more room and shove gas-guzzling cars off the road (and planet?).

Consider another option for bicyclists traversing the bridges - get off your bike walk it across on the sidewalk.  A lot less expensive ($0) and disruptive to auto traffic (none) and safe, than closing traffic lanes.  Until cyclists overtake autos in numbers and space requirements, accommodations need to be realistic.  Doesn't anyone have common sense any more?  Let's expand our thinking, please!

Note:  Beware of the word "transit".  You can assume that it includes rail transport unless specifically stated otherwise.  Keeping it general keeps the public in the dark.  Same goes for "Multimodal".

Metro's plan for light rail along Barbur as part of its SW Corridor Plan has not been well received outside the pro-train lobby. The idea of BRTs (Bus Rapid Transit systems) that are catching on all over the world as less expensive, more flexible alternatives to expensive light rail and streetcars has not been taken seriously by Metro.  Could it be ideology that is getting in the way of practical solutions where infrastructure (roads) already exists and cheaper buses run on clean fuel (natural gas and electric) ?  Or is it the entrenched, industrial-consultant-political-developer complex that feeds off the public trough to create these wildly expensive projects in order to line their pockets?  Or is it both?  Probably both, with one faction patting the back of the other with their spare hands in our back pockets.  Even though their goals are wildly different, they see a usefulness in partnering with one another to get their projects done, and it only takes our money, independence and souls to do it.

The reflection upon my situation and that of this army produces many an uneasy hour when all around me are wrapped in sleep.  Few people know the predicament we are in.  

--  General George Washington

January 14, 1776