It’s time for Portland’s transit leadership to stand up for the region’s vision.

Over the last two years, as the economy shrank, local transit services here in the Portland region have been taking serious criticism. A number of narratives have emerged. One is that TriMet’s investments in rail expansion have come at the expense of the bus system. Another popular criticism is that TriMet places too much emphasis on changing land use patterns instead of transportation. Most recently, Dave Lister issued a kitchen-sink screed to these effects. The idea of the bus-hating, obsessively social-engineering TriMet has become the predominant narrative.

So far, most of these complaints have remained unanswered. Portland’s leadership on transit, transportation, and land use? MIA.

When this metro area embarked on light rail over twenty years ago, it was a conscious decision. Buses, yeomen transit though they be, were limited in their ability to handle high capacity loads and deliver the so-called “choice rider.” Rail, on the other hand, was more efficient and attracted new riders. But beyond that, yes, there indeed was a land-use component to a transit system with a rail core. Rail offered an opportunity to change how we lived in this region, and dovetailed with our vision of a denser urban area and a firm urban growth boundary protecting natural resources. Today, however, we as a region are letting that vision slip.

Have there been mis-steps along the way? Without doubt. Do we need to re-examine our commitment to other modes (like buses)? Yes. If TriMet is to be a credible voice in the region, it will need to meaningfully commit to greater geographic, economic, and social equity. By-and-large, that means the agency will need to pay more attention to capital investments in the bus system than it has for the last decade.

But in addressing such issues, we cannot let our vision of an expansive, efficient, accessible and highly utilized rail-cored transit system go by the wayside. Rail is one of the most critical components to our way of managing growth, and our vision of where this region is headed in the next half-century. We cannot abandon that vision to the rhetorical manslaughter of those who would see transit only benefit their own narrow needs, or worse yet, to those who see it as only a system of last resort for the elderly, disabled, young, and unemployed. We cannot lose ground to those who would use the rhetoric of bus disinvestment as a stalking horse to hide their opposition to our unique land-use system.

It is time for those who support the long-term vision of a denser, more livable metropolitan area to step up and provide some leadership on this issue. Say something. Do something! This cause is worth defending, and that that defense is apparently left up to relatively junior people such as me is shameful.

Is Eugene’s Bus Rapid Transit system, EmX, a model for how to build such transit lines? Only if outward appearances matter more than function.

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) bemuses me. For years, I have watched as bus manufacturers invented a new way of marketing their products as being a lower cost alternative to rail transit systems. BRT was touted as in every way just as good as rail, but at less cost. Although I am a frequent bus rider and an advocate for improving transit, I believed the entire BRT trend was all so much window dressing. Worse, it was being used as a cudgel against rail projects by anti-rail transit activists who found that they could get more credibility with the public if they dressed themselves in the clothing of being pro-bus.

It should come as no surprise, then, that when Eugene opened its own BRT line, EmX, in 2009, that riding it was not a priority. It should also not be a surprise that I was prepared to be underwhelmed.

Over the last year or so, however, I have softened a little on BRT. While I still hold to my criticisms of it, I also see that there could be uses for it as well. For example, BRT might make a lot of sense as a feeder, extending the reach of a rail system into areas where the capacity and scale of rail might be too great. I also could see a role for an BRT system for agencies that do not have the wherewithal to start a rail system yet. High capacity busses have always been appealing to me — I love the articulated trolley-coaches of Seattle and Vancouver, and often feel that TriMet could use some larger vehicles for their more popular frequent service routes.

So when, this Spring, I had an opportunity to ride EmX at long last, I was hoping that I would be pleasantly surprised, and find a model for BRT that might be applicable elsewhere. Instead, I found that the system confirmed every worst fear I had. This is especially true for two main critiques: that it is, essentially, a fake rail system that will do little to attract choice riders, and that it is not even a good working example of BRT.

Outside: sleek and pretty. Inside? Set from a bad sci-fi torture scene.

Shiny on the outside, terrible on the inside. Like most BRT systems, EmX has busses that look pretty from the outside. The equipment has a streamlined look that reminds me a little of the 1930s PCC streetcars. (Ironically the PCC car was designed to look more like a bus.) They look very modern and sleek. While I bristle a bit at the fender skirts hiding the wheels and other touches clearly meant to mock the look of a rail vehicle, I can almost forgive such foolery because the overall effect is attractive. Nothing erodes critique like success, after all.

On the inside, though? Disappointing. Even setting aside the poor choice of colors (a depressing mix of middle grays and muddy greens) and the patches of exposed metal, the vehicle had such an odd mixture of seating locations and combinations. A long set of seats sits high over the central wheel wells, so that passengers there appear to be waiting for a shoe shine. Aisles feel narrow as a result of this squashed arrangement as well. The articulated section — which was unlined on the inside and was rapidly collecting dirt in its accordion folds — held a pair of seats to each side, backlit by two florescent tubes, looking more like an execution chair set from Logan’s Run than anyplace I’d want to sit for a ride. Worst of all were the bike accommodations. Bikes stand in one group, three deep, parallel to the wall. It’s like triple parking; if your bike is a the back, you’d better get the first two out of the way first, or you’re trapped.

Strangely, the dedicated busway only exists in front of the University of Oregon.

It barely qualifies as BRT at all. BRT generally means that busses have their own right-of-way, and EmX was touted as being no exception. Through downtown Eugene, however, EmX operates on surface streets with little discernible signal priority. The private right-of-way — aka designated EmX only lanes — doesn’t begin until the line hits Franklin Boulevard in front of the campus of the University of Oregon. Even here, the signal systems seem incomprehensible; at one location the EmX signals even displayed a clear indication to proceed while perpendicular traffic had a green light. Given that there was no traffic light for EmX, it was only that the bus driver was paying attention that kept us from entering the intersection.

The busway segment on Franklin, strangely, is not two-lane, but rather single, requiring busses to meet at designated points. This despite the fact that there appears to have been sufficient right-of-way to make it two lane in all places. Was this decision really worth it to save a few dollars on the margin? Strangely — or perhaps not so strangely — the busway segment ends at the eastern edge of the UO campus, and EmX must then negotiate a lane change from the center lanes of the road to the outside edge, through mixed traffic. From here into Springfield, where the initial EmX line ends, there is no signal priority, no dedicated EmX or transit lane. The busses fight for space and advancement in with all the other traffic.

Observing this, one has to ask, what’s the point? It’s as if EmX is not BRT at all, but just a high capacity, frequent service bus that has a short section of pretty but poorly thought out busway to make good pictures for the UO brochure materials.

Lest this become one giant dig against EmX and Lane Transit, EmX is, even if poorly executed, a step forward. It is still a high capacity bus line, and it is running on fast, frequent schedules. Service begins early, in the wee hours of the morning, and runs until well late in the night. But if Lane Transit is looking to expand their system — and they are — they ought to rethink their bus interior layouts and colors, and they need to think about more actual busways, or at a minimum signal priority and associated bus pockets at intersections.

So have I lost all hope for BRT, and reverted back to my knee-jerk BRT dislike? No. EmX may have been a tremendous disappointment, but BRT systems elsewhere appear much more useful. Everett’s Community Transit opened its own system, Swift, last year. Although I have yet to ride it, on paper it looks promising, including seven miles of busway and ten miles of signal priority service. (Unfortunately it looks like they us the same busses as EmX, however.) Of more interest, perhaps, is King County Metro’s proposed RapidRide system, which combines BRT elements with TriMet (pre-budget cut) style frequent service. Hopefully both will serve as better models of how BRT can add value to a public transit system, rather than just appear to, as EmX does.

Michael Andersen recently quit his day job as a newspaper reporter to start a mini newsmagazine for the Portland area’s “bus, bike, and low-car” population.

Transportation politics — especially bike and transit politics — can be fascinating stuff, especially to a transportation geek such as myself, but for most people it’s just all so much hot air. At the end of a day, to an average commuter, biker, walker, etcetera, does it really matter that so-and-so said such-and-such to so-and-so at such-and-such meeting? Does it matter to the average citizen what Fred Hansen (or now Neil McFarlane), David Bragdon, or Sam Adams has said? Doesn’t this all miss the point that, for most, transportation is about getting around, not about being a blood-sport to watch while eating popcorn?

Thinking about mostly non-auto transportation this way — as a consumer issue not a political one — is something that Michael Andersen thinks is an important but rarely undertaken endeavor. So after almost a year of toying with the idea, Andersen quit his job as a journalist at The Columbian this spring to concentrate on launching a new “10-minute newsmagazine” dedicated to the “bus, bikes, and low-car life.” Called Portland Afoot , the magazine put out its first issue this month.

Quitting a solid day job to stake it all on an untried niche publication? Some might question Andersen’s sanity, and when prompted he freely admits that they may be right. “I’m definitely crazy. But there aren’t enough crazy people in this business any more to come up with the ideas that’ll keep it alive. And I’ll be working like a dog all year to prove this crazy idea can work.”

Crazy perhaps, but Andersen has a method to his madness. In Andersen’s view, there is an increasing market in cities such as Portland for niche publications. “Regular newspapers are optimized for the 1950s distribution, with a very little [amount] of everything,” he explains. At the time, people weren’t paying for the news, they were paying for the aggregation of it in one place. The Internet has largely supplanted that role, meaning that the media have to concentrate more on producing valuable content people are actually willing to pay directly for.

Thus was born Portland Afoot, and Andersen isn’t kidding when he says it’s a “10-minute newsmagazine.” The publication feels like a small, high-quality newsletter, but unlike most of that breed it is not a haphazard collection of causes and events struggling for your attention. Instead, it’s a very graphically pleasing and efficient pub with more practical approaches to stories. A news brief about whether or not MAX will get to Clark County via the planned Columbia River Crossing, for example, includes a (thankfully shortened!) link at the end to additional information on the Portland Afoot web site about the related upcoming Metro president race. The primary feature for the inaugural issue is a ranking of TriMet’s bus lines for on-time performance, number of chair lifts, number of stops (a characteristic Andersen labels as “most hectic”), and so forth. In short, the magazine is a gem for those dependent on the non-auto transportation system, or those who are just plain transportation geeks. Subscriptions to the magazine are $14 for a year — thats about a buck per issue — and are well worth it.

Some may ask why Andersen is producing a paper publication in the age of the iPad. Andersen lists a number of reasons, including the ease of reading a paper publication, making the publication available to an audience that is both “rich and poor, young and old,” and the fact that paper publications are still a hallmark of credibility. There’s also a less tangible, more emotional appeal to a paper publication: pleasure. Says Andersen, “Getting a magazine in the mail makes me think somebody likes me. Getting an email newsletter makes me think I have something to do.”

Andersen has many ambitious plans, including filling out the Portland Afoot web site (which is a wiki) with more detailed, slightly “more wonky” content. The next issue is currently in the works, and will include an interview with famous bus driver and blogger Dan Christensen and an article on the best and worst places to sit on a MAX train. Andersen is working on stories that he hopes to break as well, noting that originating stories that matter is important to the publication.

To learn more about Portland Afoot, visit their web site, or subscribe here.

Does social media mean the world of Mad Men style persuasion is really over? Think twice before you answer. Illustration: Dyna Moe.

Last month, a really cool video on the impacts of social media got updated. I’m referring to this video, produced by Eric Qualman at Socialnomics:

I’m a big fan of the video, and often use it as a good, tight primer on how social media is changing our societies. And I say societies because it really is a global phenomenon, not just one for Western Civilization.

There is, however, one argument that Qualman lays out in the video that I’d like to take exception to. At one point, he shows a picture of Dale Carnegie and then a still of the character Don Draper from the AMC show Mad Men. The video then states that the future of marketing and corporate-citizen communications will required “acting[ing] more like Dale Carnegie and less like Mad Men.”

For those of you who do not know the show, Mad Men follows the lives of a handful of men and women in the advertising industry in Mid-Century New York. Frequently the plot delves into the messy machinations of advertising campaigns, as the employees of the firm try to figure out how to get into the heads (and wallets) of consumers.

There is no doubt that social media is leveling the power playing field between corporations and citizens. In some cases, it has turned them into virtual “caged tigers”, prowling and pawing and ready to tear a company to shreds if it makes the wrong move. However, the kind of faith in grass-roots based communication that the Socialnomics video makes is rather naive, and also rather dismissive of one of the most powerful streaks of human existence, the narrative.

Humanity is a story-telling creature. We are constantly evolving narratives to fill in the gaps in our knowledge of the world, to socially construct mutual understanding, and to cement our individual places in society. When Mad Men’s lead advertising man Don Draper spins a story around a product — casting, for example, the Kodak slide projector as a time machine taking us backwards and forwards on a carousel of memories — he’s telling us a story. He’s using all the great and awful arts of rhetoric and narrative to connect us to that product.

What social media has done has guaranteed the public a place in the narrative. Now, the average citizen has the ability to talk back, to exchange, to discuss the stories being placed before them. In so doing, however, all it really has done has placed the citizen back into their role as audience to a play — it should be remembered that an essential element of drama is that the audience plays a part as well.

The power of narrative — the power of what is on that stage before the audience — is the power of initiative and creation, and has not gone away. I hope that we will continue to see social media evolve and I hope that it will continue to foster a more democratic society throughout the world. We should not, however, invest in it the notion that it reduces, even one iota, the power of rhetoric and narrative.

The VooDoo Donut Bacon Maple Bar. Gourmet? No. Unique? No. Portland? Yes.

Among my many interests are food and culture, and as a result I often follow blogs and online discussion forums with culinary themes, sites like Good Stuff Northwest, Portland Food & Drink, and Chowhound. In so doing, however, I’ve detected a rather odd trend amongst food lovers, the elevation of excellence over cultural significance.

By no means am I going to argue that wanting the highest quality ingredients prepared in the best possible manner is a bad thing. I believe that using excellence as the only measure of quality, however, is short sighted.

Food is cultural, in that it links us to place. When I think of experiences (like eating a meal) I am often reminded of places. The reverse, then, also becomes true; when I think of certain place I think of the foods that remind me of there. For example, I cannot think of Cincinnati without thinking of the Christmas-cookie spiced Cincy Chili or bottles of Ale8one from across the river in Kentucky. North Carolina? True barbecue pork, Cheerwine, and biscuits in the morning. Canada? The gravy-smothered pile of fried potatoes called poutine.

Are any of these “excellent?” Are any of them “gourmet?” Sure, they could all be made with quality, but for the most part none of these dishes or products would end up on a white-clothed dinner table.

A more local example: in the pages of MIX, the Portland-based food magazine produced by the Oregonian, the idea of the city’s “best burger” was explored. The results? Kobe beef this, mushroom demi-glace that. All of them looked beautiful, and no doubt were spectacular. None of them, however, were memorable. They were just one more expensive gourmet burger in restaurants that, in my view, you shouldn’t be ordering burgers at anyway. (Seriously, you’e going to go to Biwa to pick up a burger rather than a bowl of Ramen?)

What got ignored? Authentic experience, and authenticity is an integral part of culture. If I am going to go out for a burger, it’s not going to be for excellence. I can make a burger at home that will be far cheaper and far better than even the most top-notch burgers from the finest restaurants in town. No, if I am going out for a burger, I’m going out for the experience of the burger, not the ingredients of it. I’m going to go someplace like, say, the Skyline. The burger will be average, the milkshake will be very good, but the experience of getting there and being there in an authentic Mid-Century burger joint tucked deep into the woods of the West Hills will be unparalleled.

And this brings us to the Voodoo Donut. VooDoo has become a local institution, helped in large part by the media (and especially by being featured on Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations in 2007). Some, however, have questioned its status as a must-eat in Portland. The charges are usually that the donuts are either not that spectacular, or that they are not that unique.

But the cultural role of food goes beyond excellence or even uniqueness. Voodoo’s signature bacon maple bar, for example, isn’t the best donut on the world, it certainly isn’t made from gourmet ingredients, and it’s certainly not endemic only to Portland. (Their bacon maple bar, in fact, is also made by at least a half dozen other donut companies in a half dozen other cities.) But the bacon maple bar and all the donuts made by VooDoo — and VooDoo itself with its funky, hole-in-the-wall, slightly punk atmosphere — is an authentic reflection of Portland’s eclectic, off-beat culture. And for that, it deserves a place in our hearts, and our stomachs.

Picture this. You, Average Q. Planner, are at an open house for a public project, to help people learn more. You are asked by a citizen for more information on something, and you state, “oh, go look on the project web site, your answers are all there.” You are then asked a few more specific questions, and state “I don’t know, but you can go onto our Twitter feed and ask us there, and get a response.”

You, the staff person, are proud. You’ve done your job, and better, you’ve done it in a new and innovative way by using your organization’s web site as well as social media.

But what about the citizen? The citizen is walking away from the meeting just as uninformed as when they entered the room, and feeling cheated somehow.

What actually went wrong here?

The Internet — and especially social media — are often viewed incorrectly by planners and engineers working on public projects. They are quite often viewed as a method to disseminate information more efficiently. What they fail to realize is that communication is not about efficiency, it’s about building relationships. By telling someone to look elsewhere, you’re shutting off a conduit of relationship between yourself and a citizen. To put it another way, when helping projects get built the exchange of information is just as important as the content.

Is it the wrong move, then, to put your project information on your web site, to direct people there, or to use social media tools like Twitter? Not at all. These are all great ideas. They are not, however, replacements for real, face-to-face conversations, nor phone calls, nor email. Nor are they ways to reduce your personal workload. Viewing them through that lens turns public outreach into a mechanical model, which is all about efficiency rather than inclusivity.

Outreach is about building relationships. It’s about empowering citizens, not dehumanizing them. Use the Internet for public outreach. Use social media. But don’t use them as an excuse for bad communication or the elimination of face-to-face contact.

Amtrak’s Empire Builder, seen here at Shelby, Montana, is not a train from Chicago to the Pacific Northwest, but basic public transit for rural America. Photo: Chuck Taylor.

Over the last year or so, there’s been a lot of attention given to the future of High Speed Rail in the United States. Would it work? Would we really get HSR, or would it be something short of it, something that is often labeled as HrSR, or Higher Speed Rail? Is it the next Interstate Highway System, or is it the next boondoggle? The debate goes on.

In the meanwhile, however, we mustn’t forget the importance of the good old conventional train. You know, the type that Amtrak operates on a daily basis. For many communities in the vast portions of the West, they provide basic alternative transportation. Case-in-point: Amtrak’s Empire Builder. Running between Chicago and the Pacific Northwest. When discussed, long-distance trains such as the ‘Builder often get compared to flights between similar points. The comparison, however, is inadequate. While that 757 flies its 5.5 hour flight between Seatac and O’Hare, the ‘Builder is providing basic transportation to dozens of communities across thousands of miles of the Great Plains and Pacific Northwest. The ‘Builder, then, is less a direction connection between Chicago and Seattle or Portland, than a vast, long-distance form of public transit.

And this in and of itself makes it typical of the agency’s services. Although described as an “intercity” railroad, Amtrak is in fact a transit agency write large. In 2007, the agency reported 5,784 million passenger miles. This makes it the second largest transit provider in the nation, behind New York’s subway system (at 11,500 million passenger miles) and above New Jersey Transit (3,380 million passenger miles). (See the APTA fact book 2009, page 35.) To put it in a more local context, in 2007 Amtrak provided 13.8 times the amount of passenger miles as Portland’s TriMet.

So as we debate the future of HSR in this country, let’s not forget that there remains a critical role for the old-fashioned intercity long-distance train. Many portions of rural America are depending on them.

Urban renewal, like any land-use improvement methodology, has conventions or habits. Conventions are meant to be a framework for success, a recipe that, if followed properly, will yield good results. Conventions, however, tend to become canonical and restricting after a time. They limit what is an acceptable course of action, reducing creativity and possibility.

One convention I have bristled against lately is the notion of property assembly. The thinking goes that underperforming areas often need to be physically remade, by tearing down older structures and replacing them with newer, more useful ones. The land necessary to do this, however, is not always in the right size and configuration of parcels. An urban renewal agency can help assembled these parcels into more developable configurations, thus speeding redevelopment and revitalization. Or so the convention goes.

But is this always the case? Or more pointedly, is it or will it be the predominate case of the 21st Century? I have my doubts. About a year ago, when the recession was no more than a housing bubble crisis, I attended a mini conference in Portland on the future of retail development, held by the International Council of Shopping Centers . One of the speakers was architect Kevin Cavenaugh , developer of numerous small retail buildings, including the famous Rocket Building on East Burnside . He advocated a totally different kind of development, one that concentrated on small parcels, low overhead, and building right up to the property lines. It was a scale of development utterly foreign to the normal PDC models of bulldozers and tax abatements. It also was one in line with thousands of years of organic urban growth. It was, if-you-will, human scale developing.

It is with no small irony, then, that the Cavenaugh point-of-view seems to be one that the PDC itself is more and more open to. Look no further than the Burnside Bridgehead project for the latest example of this. In late March, the PDC announced a new strategy for the multi-block development at the east foot of the Burnside Bridge : carve it up into small parcels and sell it off to different developers. That’s right, subdividing parcels. The PDC had just turned property assembly on its head, creating “property disassembly” as a development tool.

For some time it has been my contention that the rules of development have irrevocably changed. We are not going to wake up one day and find our economy back in 2006, with all the same rules in place. Credit is tighter, and financiers are more risk averse. Big development is now seen as less sound than diversified development. The currency of the 21st Century’s development may no longer be the size or price of land, but rather the culture, transportation access and mode diversity, and distance from residential areas. Property assembly, simply put, may be little more than an outdated tool, something to be filed away with the three platinum Visa cards and low interest no-money-down mortgages.

Via the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, Professor Thomas Pettit describes the decentralized media world of Social Media to be a world that is largely like the pre-Gutenberg era. Petit describes the matter in a video on Vimeo:

Thomas Pettitt on the Gutenberg Parentheses from Nieman Journalism Lab on Vimeo.

The possibility that we may be entering a post-print age is a fascinating one, and if true will have huge ramifications for the traditional press. Journalism, however, will not be the only profession or activity affected.

How, for example, might public relations work in a post-print world?

For one, as information sharing becomes less textual and more oral again, I believe there will be an even greater need for individuals to facilitate dialogue with key stakeholders, a role that is much more akin to community outreach than to traditional notions of PR. Strategic messaging and media planning will still be required, but interpersonal and group facilitation skills will be relied on more and more.

Skills and methods of communication will not be the only dynamics that will need to change in order to ensure the success of a project. The very nature of how projects form will also need to change. For the public sector in this region, this should not prove to be a difficult transition, given our history of public participation processes.

However, this participation will need to be more effectively handled. At present, many instances of public involvement are little more than window dressing, the obtaining of input on a plan that is already 99% completed by paid technical experts.

In an oral world shaped by Social Media, however, there is the expectation that communication is truly two-way. If input is met with no more than thanks, and not reflected by real physical changes in a project, an organization or agency will at best be considered unresponsive, and at worst may find itself in serious political trouble.

With the urbanization of both America and the World at large, a lot of attention has been given to the health and development of cities. Urban renewal, neighborhood revitalization, and economic development all have become the paramount topics of land use and transportation.

But what about rural America? If we are a more urban, is it at the expense of the small town? The slow retraction of the industrial Midwest has spread to the small agriculture economy, and the family run farm or ranch is in danger of failure, and small towns are more likely to be known for their meth problems and their population drains.

There might, however, be hope for small town America through improved transit and rail transportation. In California, the nation’s first true High Speed Rail project is getting underway, and Blueprint America followed Visalia mayor Jesus Gamboa as he attempted to convince the California High Speed Rail Authority to place a stop in his town. “We want access to the rest of California, and I think that High Speed Rail will give us that access.”

Gamboa stresses this notion of access as critical to the future of rural communities such as his own. “This is what rural America is all about, and this is what often times is left out of the policy making process by the decision makers…. It’s all about access. Rural America needs access to the urban centers just as much as anybody else does.”

We have been here before, with almost every major new transportation system. When the railroad was new to the American West, cities often lived or died based on whether they got rail service. Now, in the first decades of the 21st Century, we may be back in the same situation. The future of rural communities may lay in their connections to healthy urban megaregions, and the services and markets they control.

As for Visalia? Gamboa’s efforts, as the video shows, were not successful. The CAHSRA chose to place a stop at Hanford, 15 miles away. Gamboa has not given up, however, and is now busy planning a bus system to connect Visalia to the rail system.