March 7th, 2008 · No Comments

In the Portland area, land-use issues and light rail are inseparable, says Eric Hesse, coordinator strategic planning for the TriMet system. The city has established an Urban Growth Boundary to protect surrounding forest and farm land from sprawl. That means less land for development, Hesse explains. And that means higher density where development is permitted, which means efficient mass transportation to tie these concentrations together.

Seeing, And Breathing, Is Believing

A new extension of the municipal streetcar line serves high-density hou

Photo: Portland Trimet

sing in the South Waterfront. Portland likes to run some of its urban rail on the streets where people see it and use it, Hesse says.

That city must be doing something right. Only six U.S. metropolitan areas — all of them much larger than Portland — have a higher per-capita ridership than Portland. While per capita vehicle mileage rises across the nation (at about 2.3 percent a year), in transit-minded Portland vehicle use is actually declining. And with it, greenhouse emissions.

Photo by Geoffrey Marvel

So it goes in city after city, as America runs to jump aboard the trolley. Next December Valley Metro will start rolling in Phoenix. Seattle will open a downtown line in 2009. Dallas, Houston, Baltimore and Denver are expanding. Charlotte’s new rail line is running ahead of ridership projections. So is Salt Lake City’s. Washington, D.C., which already has a magnificent Metro system, is adding street rail.

But even with an urban rail renaissance underway, the United States is running behind the times. Every city in France with a population of 100,000 or more is currently building or planning light rail, says Austin’s Dave Dobbs, a longtime environmentalist who publishes an urban rail advocacy website called Light Rail Now.

And as China squints toward the future through the most polluted skies on earth, three dozen Chinese cities are building new urban rail; dozens more are adding to existing systems. (In ten years, Shanghai’s subway system will rival that of New York.)

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