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.

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.

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.

TriMet’s WES Commuter Rail broke convention… and just plain broke a lot too.

First, in February, Portland’s TriMet opened up its first commuter rail operation, WES. This line runs 14.7 miles from Beaverton Transit Center (where a transfer can be made to MAX light rail) south to Wilsonville. Three intermediate stops allow riders to access the Nimbus/Washington Square area and central Tigard and Tualatin.

The project opened in February, late by about three months, and slightly over budget. The equipment — Colorado Railcar “Aero” Diesel-Multiple-Units — have been buggy and error prone since the beginning. Mired in political controversies (especially from loud critics of TriMet’s rail transit projects), WES has had low ridership so far.

In time, the line may become a key core of a larger Portland-Salem commuter operation, or it may convert into proper High-Capacity Transit with all-day, every-day service at frequent intervals. Or, it may languish as a testament to Washington County’s inflated self-image, a transit equivalent of Beaverton’s Round development.

Pros: Comfy and fast; great connections with Salem busses; WiFi on board.

Cons: Constant equipment failures; mixed ridership and high fixed costs; no fare transfers for Salem busses.

Seattle finally stuck its tow in the light rail water, but will there be more?

While Portland’s TriMet was busy making a commuter operation that looked as much like light rail as possible, Seattle’s Sound Transit was busy making a light rail system — Central Link — that looked very much like Vancouver’s SkyTrain heavy rail system. The result was a 13.9 mile line through Seattle’s downtown transit tunnel and then south to Tukwila, opened in July, with a short extension (1.7 miles) to the SeaTac airport that opened in December. The line uses extensive viaducts and tunneling, and includes a station in a tunnel much like Portland’s MAX light rail.

With such a short segment, Central Link has a long way to go before it develops sufficient critical mass to become a major part of the Seattle transit universe. Indeed, it is the expansions to the system that are currently the center of debate. An extension eastward through Bellevue has generated controversy regarding what bridge on which to cross Lake Washington and where and how to route through downtown Bellevue. Meanwhile, there is discussion of extensions wholly within the city of Seattle, and some interesting debate about the role of streetcars in augmenting the system.

Pros: Feels fast, a few nice stations, train length not limited by system design to two car sets.

Cons: Fare system less than ideal; still only one line not a full system, odd, isolated feel to route in SoDo.

Vancouver, B.C. added a sleek new SkyTrain line.

Just in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics, Vancouver opened a new SkyTrain route — the “Canada Line” — from the YVR airport to downtown in August. This route also has a short branch to the suburb of Richmond, bringing the system mileage to 11.8. Totally separate from the existing SkyTrain heavy rail system, the Canada Line is half underground, half elevated, and very rapid. Equipment for the line is incompatible with the older SkyTrain segments, but the system is integrated into TransLink and uses the same fares and transfers.

Given that this is a relatively new line, it’s hard to say if it will spur lots of tower-block development like the older SkyTrain stations have. Like most totally grade separated lines, the stations constrict train size.

Pros: Bigger, sleeker, more comfortable cars; connections to YVR airport and the Richmond suburbs; Fast and convenient.

Cons: Equipment is incompatible with the rest of the network; stations limit train length.

Portland gets a new downtown light rail alignment and a new spoke to the transit wheel.

The last major opening in the Pacific Northwest was again in Portland, with a two stage addition to the MAX light rail network; 1.8 miles of new downtown alignment on the old bus mall, and 6.5 miles of new line from Gateway Transit Center to Clackamas Town Center Mall.

The alignment on the mall in downtown, sharing the roadway with busses, was a significant cause of worry for me. I remember the old bus mall and the completely undisciplined insanity of the busses there, and could not imagine that exisitng with MAX going through it. The new design, however, injects a significant amount of formality into the mall and works breathtakingly well. In a city that seems more interested in finding the latest negative to gripe about, it is a virtually unsung triumph.

The Gateway to Clackamas TC alignment, although looking much like a roller coaster at first glance, operates quickly and smoothly, and introduces a swift connection between outer southeast and downtown that did not exist prior.

Pros: Downtown segment operates smoothly; fewer downtown station stops; feels fast; great Park & Ride facilities.

Cons: Limited transit-oriented development potential; slight delays at Gateway and Steel Bridge.

Overall, a total of 50.4 miles of new rail transit were added in the Pacific Northwest during 2009. 2010? Here in Portland, two transit projects should get underway during the year, the Portland Streetcar’s eastside project, and the MAX extension to Milwaukie. Otherwise, it should prove a far quieter year in terms of construction, but also a time of important debates about new additions to the transit maps.

Richmond is ethnically diverse, suburban, and… walkable?!?

Richmond sits at the end of the new SkyTrain Canada Line. It’s mostly suburban sprawl, but there are also some newer towers in the area. I wonder how and why these towers were even built? Was it natural market forces, or was it from a government incentive? Regardless, if it weren’t for these towers, the town would look like nothing more than an average North American suburb. Oh, except for the SkyTrain, which runs like a backbone through the area, parallel to the Number 3 Road. It is actually amazing how unobtrusive this is, given its elevated nature. It doesn’t feel overbearing in the way that other more traditional elevated railways do.

This area, by conventional standards, is not pedestrian friendly, and yet the place feels more walkable than downtown Vancouver does. Perhaps it is scale — the buildings are shorter and feels more human sized, despite the massive car parking lots and the wide boulevards with their fast traffic. In addition, the place is bustling, busy, and awash with visual richness. Everywhere are signs in Chinese as well as English, even on big national bank chains like Scotia Bank and the Bank of Montreal. Many businesses have signs only in Chinese and no English at all, simultaneously intimidating and fascinating.

I think that the reason for its feel of greater walkability, however, lies in the blocks. In Richmond, most of the blocks of land are occupied by low density strip-mall type development. This means the blocks, thanks to parking lots and driveways, are permeable, allowing the pedestrian to cut through them. Instead, these lots and alleys became unofficial pedestrian ways and undeclared streets. Downtown, by contrast, fills up blocks completely with large multistory structures, leaving only an occasional, uninviting dark alley.

Surrey: There be cranes here!

Another burgeoning edge city is Surrey. It is evident simply at a glance that Surrey is nowhere near as important as downtown, but it does have some rather tall towers, which is no small achievement, and they appear very newly planted on their hilltop nest. It is in every way a young city, with a “Brasilia” feel of having just been air-dropped in. Empty grass fields and acres of low density suburban sprawl mark the community’s youth. Terri Evans, from the Urban Studies Program at Simon Fraser University, mentioned that the area will soon be bigger than Vancouver itself. I laughed at this, more out of ironic enjoyment than anything, but Terri took the laugh for a scoff, and rejoindered with “it’s true!” I can’t help but think that a Vancouver urbanist, marking up a map of the metro area, might label Surrey with the words “there be cranes here,” and shudder in despair.

North Vancouver: seen one betowered suburb, seen them all?

The last suburb I’ll note is North Vancouver, hunkering down on the hillsides north of the Burrard, the last bastion of urbanization before the Coast Range’s wilds begin. The community can be reached via SeaBus, a high speed ferry that sails between the town and downtown’s Waterfront Station at regular intervals all day long.

Despite a beautiful setting, North Van was no more or less distinctive than any other suburb of area I had seen. As impressive as the towers in a suburb are, it was hardly unique; Richmond, New Westminster, Burnaby, and North Vancouver all had towers also. The town was mostly eighties concrete bunker blocks, vaguely second-rate shopping malls, the bland sameness of the condo towers, and relatively few and not very well maintained older storefronts. Once you’ve seen one mixed-use betowered Vancouver suburb, you’ve seen them all.

Downtown Vancouver’s Manhattan-like north shore looms through the rain spotted windows of Seabus.

The view back at the city center on the return trip via SeaBus was not bad at all, with the north shore of downtown looming on the Burrard Peninsula with an imposing, Manhattan-like feel of multiple layers, with its waterfront terminals for shipping, ferries, and cruise ships. It has a little more than a taste of Seattle’s waterfront presence on the water, and like Seattle it had almost no pleasure waterfront. The resemblance is strong enough that I can see why Douglas Coupland said that the Vancouver looks at Seattle as a model of what it could have become had it openly embraced the freeway and the expressway.

Looking at the view of downtown, I found it hard to believe that the suburbs like Surrey, despite their growth, would ever supplant the Burrard Peninsula. Surrey and Richmond both have no waterfront, no majestic mountains, no cluster of infrastructure. Transportaiton links helped to stimulate denser growth, but those same linkes continue to foster their relative place in the geographic food chain. Richmond and Surrey are and remain end termini of SkyTrain lines, while North Van, although more central, is isolated from most of the region by the Burrard Inlet. None of these suburbs enjoy the status of multi-modal regional hub as downtown Vancouver does. Transportation is arguably the most important reason that a point remains the locus of a given geographic scope, and Vancouver is the heart of the transportation network. When all roads lead to Rome, Rome remains a capitol. Place advantage remains king, and downtown remains central, literally.

Is Richmond a glance into the future of Portland suburbs such as Beaverton?

Still, the growth of Vancouver’s edge cities should give one pause. Soak in the visual play of high rises soaring behind a stripmall and a Best Buy in a significantly ethnic suburb. Is this Richmond, B.C., or is this the future of, say, Beaverton, Oregon, or Portland’s Southeast 82nd Avenue? Of course, Portland will never hold the political prominence in the U.S. that Vancouver has in Canada. That said, Beaverton — like Richmond — is a significant suburb whose ethnic diversity is growing rapidly. Over the last decade, Beaverton has become the home to more and more small businesses catering to Japanese, Korean, and other Asian and Latin ethnic communities, a trend that shows no sign of slowing. Beaverton has ambitions as well, as evidenced by projects such as The Round, the recent proposals for mid and high rise towers on the old Westgate Theater property, and an attempt to secure a stadium for the soon homeless Portland Beavers AAA baseball team. Rapid transit, high rise towers, acres of parking, strip malls of ethnic small businesses. This is the vision of Richmond, B.C. today. Might it also be the vision of Portland’s suburbs in the next few decades?

Living in Portland, Oregon, I sometimes get a bit jaded about our region. Thanks to a strong tradition of urban planning, a large transit system, and comparatively robust growth management laws, Portland has become a kind of poster child for urbanization in America. We are the so-called “most European city” in the United States, and the New York Times seems to have a crush on us. As a result, this region almost never looks up or admires other North American cities — we’re more likely to fall in love with Barcelona or Amsterdam.

Except, of course, for Vancouver, British Columbia.

From the perspective of passive-aggressive, grasping Portland, Vancouver is a true international city. It is a beacon of modernism and sophistication, one rarely talked about critically here in the states; we can resent or grudgingly admire Seattle, San Francisco or Los Angeles, but we can do noting of the sort with Vancouver. Instead we are confined to a quiet awe, as if we were not worthy. Vancouver can be spoken of in the same breath with cities like Berlin, Paris, Shanghai, or Singapore. For all that it wishes to be on the international stage, Portland can only ever pretend to belong to this club.

There are similarities between the two cities. Portland is the warmest and sunniest urban area of the Pacific Northwest, where the idea of perpetual rain is more a myth perpetrated in the tradition of the late Governor Tom McCall’s growth policy of “visit, but don’t stay.” Vancouver, meanwhile, is the only temperate metropolis in a country covered by snow for almost half the year. Both both cities share a history of rejecting freeways. Both have a history of tearing down and then reconstructing high capacity transit. Both have a past that is vaguely hippy, and a present that remains significantly influenced by alternative forms of culture. Even today both cities represent a rejection of mainstream urban norms.

In many ways, Portland, looking to the north, sees its future in Vancouver, B.C.. The downtown core of Vancouver is one of the densest in North America. The suburbs are growing up with residential towers being a common element. The transit system is fully grade separated and runs on rapid schedules.

But is Vancouver, truly, a picture of Portland’s future? There are some key differences any urban enthusiast, public official, or city planner need to be aware of:

Perhaps its not that surprising that Vancouver is simply a different city than Portland. No two cities are exactly alike, and perhaps no city should ever be held up to be emulated, so much as learned from. The initial lessons that I would draw from Vancouver is that

1.) metropolitan areas reflect their downtowns, regardless of jurisdictional boundaries,
2.) increasing density of suburbs has cultural implications that can exacerbate political and social divisions, and
3.) transit development is not enough to intelligently manage growth, even in the relative absence of freeway networks.

Overall, Vancouver is a rich and interesting city. There is no way it can be summed up in this short post, and there are many observations and ideas I brought back from my visit that I think have some bearing on how we live and grow in Portland. Most of all, I came back with a far more realistic picture of this often idolized city, one that is far less idealized but also far more human and real. I encourage any urban admirer of the city to visit, but if you do, do as I did, and spend at least as much time out in the suburbs and outskirts along the SkyTrain line as in the downtown. Cities do not reveal themselves in their shopping districts or their downtown towers, but in their commonplace neighborhoods, both urban and suburban.

Just a quick heads up that this week I will be in Vancouver, British Columbia. My goal is to see a little bit of this city, which as has been noted elsewhere is not entirely dissimilar from the Portland metropolitan region. In addition to some population similarities, both cities have ambitions to be “world class,” and both serve as poster children of progressive urban planning.

Among my goals? To check out the new Canada Line, to sample the new Chinatown of Richmond as well as the old one in Vancouver proper, and to generally soak up the atmosphere of the city. Another goal is to ride each of the rail transit systems that opened in the northwest this year: WES and the MAX Green Line in Portland (Monday), the aforementioned Canada Line in Vancouver (Tuesday or Wednesday), and Sound Transit’s Central Link on Friday in Seattle.

I will be toting along my iBook and my G9, so as the week progresses expect to see Sky Train, dim sum, and skyscrapers as I report back from my visit. For now, I must dash off to the train north.

Prior to my trip, I did some digging to plan my schedule. I didn’t need to be in Salem very early, so I tried to find the latest possible bus to Salem. According to both the SMART and Salem-Keizer Transit web sites, that was the 8:00 am bus from Wilsonville. According to both, that was a connection The Salem-Keizer site doesn’t mention which train I’d need to get there in time, but the SMART web site said I had a train that would get me to Wilsonville at 7:55.

All seemed good, so I checked in at TriMet to see when that WES train departed Tigard. Using the Trip Planner, I set it to look for a train that arrived at Wilsonvile by 8:00 am. Result: a 7:09 that arrived in Wilsonville at 7:25. No matter how often I ran the numbers, however, that’s what I got. Oddly, the Trip Planner doesn’t think the 7:39 out of Tigard exists.

The run itself was neither full nor empty, but somewhere in between, with a dozen or so passengers boarding the train at Tigard. The lost held about 30 cars, and considering there’s almost no residential adjacent to the lot area and almost nothing is open at that time of morning, it’s apparent that these are commuters. I also noted a few people getting dropped off at the station, the so-called “kiss-and-ride” routine. Last, but not least, the transit center itself was hopping, with a Beaverton bound bus outbound, 12s both ways, a 64 Marquam Hill Express waiting to leave, and two 45 Garden Home buses at the station at the same time.

Departing, we picked up more passengers at Tualatin but were still only about half full at best. On arrival at Wilsonville, about a third went dashing off to the various SMART buses waiting, and most of the rest went to the Salem bound bus that was waiting for us. This route is known as the 1X Salem-Wilsonville, and it is jointly operated by both SMART and Cherriots with the two agencies both supplying busses and drivers for the route. Our bus filled most of the way up before it departed for Salem. Cost of fare: $2.50. That morning’s run was a bus from Cherriots, a full size with plush reclining seats, overhead luggage racks, and an internal reader board. It was somewhere halfway between the level of the newest TriMet busses and the commuter buses that Sound Transit and C-Tran both operate. After a few small stops in Wilsonville to pick up a couple more passengers, we made a dash for Interstate 5. Interestingly, one of the last passengers to board simply stood at the front of the bus, his laptop set up on the deck above the passenger side wheel well, typing away.

The trip to Salem on I-5 was pretty smooth and uneventful. The traffic although moderate kept pace, and about 45 minutes later we were pulling off the freeway and into the capitol. (Interestingly, there are no intermediate stops, not even in Woodburn or Keizer.) The bus makes a few stops around the capitol mall area and then terminates at the transit center downtown.

For my return trip, I caught a 4:30 pm bus north. This time, it was a SMART bus that picked us up. This bus was noticeably older. The seats were still fairly well upholstered but were not reclinable, and the overhead luggage rack had been modified with some kind of plastic material to keep things from falling through; this was dirtier and grungier than anything I’d seen on a transit bus before, even on the worst TriMet or rural routes. The bus also had a simple glass box with a slotted lid for fares, which I found fascinatingly antiquated. I suspect that given that SMART is mostly a free system, it wasn’t worth installing a sophisticated farebox mechanism, but it was a jarring thing to see when other transit cooperative initiatives in the region are moving past regular fares and onto regional card systems. After departing the transit station, the bus again snaked around the central area of the capitol mall, stopping a few times to pick up passengers. After we made our last pickup, the bus was almost entirely full, with only maybe one or two seats empty.

The SMART bus also rode worse, but that didn’t keep me from falling asleep on the trip north.

By the time we reached Wilsonville, it was about 5:15. About two thirds of the bus riders went straight for the 400 car parking lot, presumably to drive home. Interestingly, one of the people on my bus was from the Tigard area, and had parked at Wilsonville. I suspect that the reason he parked at Wilsonville and then rode the bus down, rather than park at Tigard and use WES and the bus is that there are no fare transfers between TriMet/WES and the SMART/Cherriots route 1X. This is a matter that TriMet should seriously consider looking into, especially given that only a handful of people were getting onto WES from the bus for a northbound trip.

Overall? The experience was not the greatest I’ve had in commutes, but to be honest there are cross-town TriMet trips that are far lengthier and far more painful. A trip north to WSU Salmon Creek a few weeks prior consisted of three buses with two significant layovers and a total trip time of nearly two hours; getting to and from Salem for an hour and change, $5.80 total, and almost no wait times was a pleasure by comparison. If I were a regular commuter to or from Salem, this system would be a very practical and worthwhile option to use.

Over last weekend, I attended the We Make The Media conference at the University of Oregon’s Turnbull Center. The purpose of the conference was to discuss the future of journalism, both in general, and in the Portland metropolitan region. I have already commented on the experience of attending the conference, but now I’d like to examine some of my takeaways from the event with an eye towards how the changing nature of journalism will affect the public participation (P2) (and to a lesser extent the media relations) profession. Although this event centered on this region, the lessons learned are broadly applicable.

First, the division between traditional journalism (as defined by the postwar mediums of print, radio, and television) and new media / amateur / citizen journalism is gone. Today, there are just as many people turning to new media journalists for news as to traditional sources. In many cases, the quality of the content being produced by the non-traditional media is just as sophisticated and readable as the traditional media. (Example: Jonathan Maus’ BikePortland.org.) It is no longer access to technology and distribution that determine who the media players are, giving content (be it subject or quality of reporting) more primacy.

This rise in citizen journalism will mean that the P2 and media relations fields will need to work closer and closer, not just on planning how to inform people about projects, but also in what channels and methods of communication to utilize. Gone are the days when media relations can center a media campaign around a press release mechanism. Further, it will be necessary to provide specific media outreach to non traditional media, meaning that you might be listing the contacts for “citizen joe’s blog” right alongside your contacts at the local daily newspaper on your media Rolodex.

As the Chinese wall between media relations and P2 is brought down, it will be important for the strategies of both efforts to be one. The work and words of a public information officer (PIO) will no longer be able to be at odds with or independent of P2 efforts.

The second major change in the media landscape is directional: media is now fully two-way. Centralized hierarchy based media is waning rapidly. While it may never go away completely, it may very well lose its primacy, especially among certain segments of your stakeholder base. In its place is technology enabled new media that makes two-way communication the center of its structure.

Media and public outreach, then, becomes less about disseminating information to the public and more about facilitating that most basic unit of communication, the conversation. This means that PIO/P2 people need to be prepared to respond to and dialogue with stakeholders. Don’t do what most newspapers do with their online content and assume that providing a comments functionality is enough. Use comments sections and other technology tools to acknowledge and in some cases respond to stakeholder input. Talk to each other, not at each other.

Third, accept that media is now multichannel than just three mediums. Using just one form of social media to communicate with, for example, is not enough. Not everyone is going to use Facebook or Twitter, powerful and popular as they are. Use them, sure, but keep an eye on the horizon for the next social media tool, and evaluate these new tools routinely to assess them for inclusion in your outreach kit. Note: don’t automatically join and use every social media tool you encounter, either; an article about social media on Mashable from 2007 listed over 350 different social media sites, and (as commenters to the story noted) it was incomplete even then. Follow Alexander Pope’s advice on fashion: “Be not the first by whom the new are tried / Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.”

Lastly, be aware that as traditional media wanes, the digital divide will shift into a media divide. Those without Internet access will be less and less likely to be served by analog forms of media, especially newspapers. Your organization may need to pick up the slack by producing its own analog media to reach those who are elderly, low income, or otherwise unable to utilize web-based media.

Newsletters and fliers, however, will likely not be enough, and will not deliver to your organization the two-way communication it will get from new media forms, thus disenfranchising some stakeholder groups. The solution? Mark out your calendar for more time out of the office and in people’s businesses, front porches, and living rooms. Pound the pavement, but before you do that, get yourself and your fellow P2 practitioners more training on interpersonal and small group communication as well as conflict management. Don’t put your people on the front line without the tools to survive exchanges in a healthy and positive way.

The strongest takeaway I have of the conference is that if the proceedings are reflective of the state of media, we are in deep trouble. Throughout much of the conference I felt as if I were stuck in 2002. People — usually older, white, male employees (or former employees) of dead tree media — were talking about how they wanted to revolutionize media by including things like websites, YouTube videos, and the like. When I hear the term “digital divide” I usually think of low income people who cannot afford a computer, not of upper crust Portland establishment types who apparently are too busy picking lint from their golfing sweaters to understand what all those crazy kids are doing on the spooky Intrawebs.

Okay, that was snarky, but if you want to really understand the vibe at the event, snarky is just it. There was a massive divide — aided partly by the location of outlets for plugging in laptops — that resulted in one corner of the room becoming the Twitter Corner. Although the distribution of ages and backgrounds were not even, there were far more younger crowd people in the Twitter Corner. Sadly, I had decided to be lazy and had failed to bring my near-death iBook, so instead I kept up with the Twitter feed by looking over the shoulders of other laptop users. The conversation going on in the feed was far different than that in the room. It was more net savvy, it was more innovative, it was more frustrated, and it was more snarky. It represented a demographic who felt that the point of the conference was to advance journalism, not to advance the journalistic establishment that presenter Joe Smith nobly enshrined in the clothing of patriotism.

It wasn’t just the damn kids and their Twitterisms that felt this way. I was sitting at the edge of the Twitter Corner, near a lot older freelance writers. One, an environmental writer who was stringing for some big eastern papers recently, kept shaking her head. During a break, we talked, and she pointed out that everyone was so focused on the structures of the journalism establishment that they’d forgotten it’s about the writers. “It takes longer [these days] to pitch a story than to write it,” she related. “I end up putting it on Huffington Post because it’s better to get it out there than wait until it is stale.” This is a key point that has to be understood: this person was willing to put her work up on the web and bypass traditional media (as well as meaningful income) because the story came first. Nobody seemed to understand this. Writers were wanting help to make their magic happen, and instead the center of discussion was some kind of WPA/CCC jobs project to support editors and staff reporters.

Perhaps it is time that the media considered the idea that the era of the staff reporter is over.

Much hand wringing also centered around how little investigative reporting would happen as newspapers continue to decline. The local beat reporter concentrating on attending local government meetings was raised to the level of some kind of hero, bleeding for the people. Local government reporting? I’m sorry, but as someone with a lot of local government experience, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve ever been impressed by local government reporters. They tend to write happy-happy kumbaya stories, or they write stories that seek controversy at the expense of deeper digging that would reveal a more balanced perspective. I don’t think it’s entirely those reporter’s fault — short deadlines, lack of staff, and low pay all contribute to the quality of work here — but really, if what we’re trying to do is preserve the kind of local government / small town reporting that we’ve had for the last thirty years, let’s just take this horse out to the pasture and shoot it already. I’d rather read Twitter. (And not that long ago I had no use for Twitter.)

Is there any hope, or was the conference a total waste of time? Certainly some of the Twitter Corner denizens were toying with ditching the place with two hours left to go and hitting up a bar for some real conversation. I don’t think it was a total waste, though. For one, it was a suitable — if not particularly hopeful — fodder for thought about where media might be going, but that’s a story for next week. For another, it allowed the Twitter Crowd to emerge. Sometimes, the best motivator is something to react against, and I think there were enough interesting moments of failure of imagination by the conference presenters and some of the older ink-and-paper crowd that there’s fodder to react against for a couple of years. I also think that the idea of a journalism incubator might be the kind of decentralized, cooperative tool that could unite many of the lone wolves in the Portland media world.

Most of all, it taught me that I should never, ever, ever go to a conference and leave my laptop at home. Better that it die in the noble service of Twittercasting than leave me out of the loop of the real conversation — the interesting conversation — from the back corner of the room.