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Let’s up our game in regional transportation planning

Last time I talked about the need to get more assertive in thinking about the long-term infrastructure needs of the city of Portland and the region. While water and environmental facilities should be considered, the transportation network is the one we all think about every day, and it’s where the biggest issues will be in the future.聽 The increasing congestion of the last few years has been a wake-up call, and it will only get much worse with a projected large population increase in the coming years.

Metro is beginning the planning process that will lead to the development of the , which is very timely. However, in order for us to really figure out how to avoid further deterioration in our future mobility, it is important that the process be even more visionary than it has been in the past

Although the Portland region has been a leader nationally for how to do this kind of inclusive regional planning, there are other places that recently have embarked on even broader and more sophisticated processes to address the future of transportation.聽 One of those is San Francisco, where ex-Portland Planning Director Gil Kelley launched a 鈥渟cenario planning鈥� process that fully embraces current technologies for forecasting and displaying the implications of different land use/transportation futures.聽聽 This, in turn, will enable a much more robust and accessible assessment of what’s needed to develop realistic plans for the future.

Given the scale of the problems and challenges we face, Metro needs to up its game and, with the active help of the regions residents, determine how we’re going to provide the best mix of transportation systems for the region’s long term health along with the means to pay for it.