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 [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Looking back at 2009, public transit had a big year throughout the region. With a trip north to Seattle and Vancouver, B.C. late in the year, I was able to experience every rail transit line that opened in 2009. Here’s a review of those systems, in chronological order, with a few highlights.

TriMet’s WES Commuter Rail [...]