I recently spent a long weekend in Portland, Ore. It was hard not to marvel at all the things that city does well on the transportation front. I began to wonder what elements could be applied here.
Of course, comparing the Portland area to the Southland is a bit unfair. It has the advantage of being much smaller, and in the world of urban planning that usually translates into getting things done faster.
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Light rail
Perhaps the biggest difference between Portland and L.A. is something you notice within minutes of walking off a plane: A light rail line stops at the airport terminal. For $2.05, you can board a train that takes about 40 minutes to reach the central business district.
The line was completed in 2001, making Portland the first city on the West Coast to have a train running to the airport. In the last fiscal year, 1.2 million people took it to and from the airport, according to TriMet, the local transportation agency.
By contrast, the current proposal here to extend the Green Line to LAX wouldn't actually take the Green Line to LAX. The train would stop near Parking Lot C, where passengers would transfer to a people mover.
Three light rail lines enter downtown Portland from the suburbs, and next year a fourth will arrive. All have opened in the last seven years after decades of planning. In many cases, the trains run right up the middle of the street -- stations are literally on the curb. They run slowly and stop often in downtown, and it doesn't appear to be a problem in terms of people-train-car conflicts.
Portland officials also drew a square around downtown and declared it a "fareless zone." If you ride the train or the bus only within that zone, it's free.
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Downtown parking
One of the worst things about downtown L.A. is the number of parking lots. The lots have made it difficult to create the kind of critical mass of people that attracts businesses important to a thriving city center.
While downtown Portland certainly has parking lots and garages, it's nothing like the magnitude you see here.
This is the result of some smart things Portland officials did going back to the 1970s. Back then, state air quality officials began cracking down on car pollution. They imposed tight rules on emissions and told cities to find ways to get people to drive less. With that kick in the rear, Portland initially created a plan that capped the number of parking spaces downtown, thus encouraging more people to take mass transit.
