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Roadside Wire

Residents of transit-​oriented Orenco Station still driving cars to work

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Published on Wednesday, 21 October 2009 02:59

Building mixed-​used, transit friendly communities is still a mixed bag in terms of getting people off of the auto habit. However after 70 years of conditioning Americans to use their cars for just about every trip, change won’t happen overnight. We still believe in Oregon’s efforts in this regard. This story comes from the Portland Oregonian.

By Dylan Rivera, The Oregonian

HILLSBORO – Orenco Station, the award winning neighborhood touted as an ideal of mass-​transit oriented New Urbanism, has failed to persuade a majority of its residents to use mass transit to get to work.

About two out of three Orenco residents drive to work in cars, slightly less than some other suburbs but hardly the car-​free utopia many idealists expect of the transit-​oriented area. Even as the neighborhood has grown closer, block by block, to the MAX light rail station named for it, the use of cars for work trips remains relatively high.

Offsetting that car-​reliance, however, is a finding that Orenco residents also walk to shopping and use mass transit for nonwork trips – to the zoo or symphony, for example – at rates that beat other suburban communities.

Still, the option to commute by car is striking.

Read the rest of the story here.

Comments

0 # Teri Dunn 2009-​10-​21 09:08
Fascinating story from a city long-​admired for its progressive planning (see James Howard Kunstler’s The Geography of Nowhere, for instance). When I lived there about 10 years ago, the Pearl District downtown was just ramping up, anchored by a big employer (Widen & Kennedy, a hip ad agency that had, I believe, all the plum local accounts, from Intel to Nike). There was mixed zoning and restaurants and coffeeshops scrambled to open in the neighborhood. But I understand hard economic times, in Portland as well as the rest of this country, have caused that vaunted revitalization to falter.

Which leads me to my main reaction to today’s article. It’s all-​too-​often about money, folks. The reporter’s remark here strikes me as the most telling: “And during 2008’s record high gas prices, TriMet ridership surged mainly during rush hour.” People will change their habits when there is economic necessity.
0 # Mark_​Maxcy 2009-​10-​22 18:27
Well, the revitalization hasn’t faltered too badly. They’re still throwing up condo buidlings, but instead of condos they’re apartments.

And i think the only way to get people to use transit is to make gas really freaking expensive and to make lightrail that goes down each street. People bitch about how far away transit is, it’s astonishing. And i’m a lazy guy!

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