The Addendum | Where is Portland’s transit leadership?

Posted on July 8, 2010 by ABC
 

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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.

Posted in Cities, Land Use & Transportation | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

The Addendum | Eugene’s EmX: Bus Rapid Transit as it shouldn’t be

Posted on July 7, 2010 by ABC
 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The Addendum | Review: Railroad noir: The American West at the end of the Twentieth Century

Posted on July 6, 2010 by ABC
 



Railroad Noir: The American West at the End of the Twentieth Century
Narratives by Linda Grant Niemann, Photographs by Joel Jensen. Indiana University Press, 601 North Morton Street, Bloomignton, IN 47404; http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/; 11.3 x 9.1 x 0.8 in; hardbound; 168 pages, 23 color and 17 b/w photos, 1 map; 39.95

In American culture, the railroad is often viewed as a collection of marvelous technical feats, of brutish powerful locomotives hurtling thousands of tons of freight at great speeds. Beyond this technical and technological aspect, however, the railroad has always been a place of people, a machine sure, but a machine run by human beings. Thanks to social and technological changes, however, the railroad worker of today is no longer seen or heard from on a daily basis. Instead, they exist inside a closed, wholesale-side world, one that runs 24/7/365 but largely out of view of the public consciousness. Linda Niemann, a former brakewoman on the Southern Pacific, seems more adept than any other contemporary writer at cracking open this insular, often nocturnal world to outsiders. In Railroad Noir, Niemanns’s third book, she again plunges readers into the realms of the railroad world through a series of short non-fiction narratives, accompanied by the moody, pensive imagery of photography Joel Jensen.

Following the acknowledgements is a brief introduction shared between the writer Niemann and the photographer Jensen, primarily discussing how the book came into being after many years working together on articles. The book then launches into the heart of the matter, 20 stories or life on the railroad by Niemann. The first ten are each accompanied by a single opening image from Jensen in black-and-white. Following this group comes a gallery of 21 color images and a map of the Southern Pacific system, Neimann’s former employer. The map, though handy, seems slightly incongruous slapped down here in Jensen’s photos, and would have made more sense at one end or the other of the book. Next come two short stories that begin with color images, and then seven more stories accompanied by black-and-white photographs. One chapter, “Lord of the Night,” is accompanied by a photograph of an apparently ancient drawing of a Native American god; it is unclear whose photograph this is as it is not accompanied by a location, does not fit Jensen’s usual style or subject matter, and is not included in the publisher’s official count of photos in the book. A glossary of railroad terms rounds out the work.

Railroad Noir is essentially an anthology of Niemann’s stories. Some of these were printed previously as parts of her first book, Boomer, or in the pages of TRAINS Magazine (where they were likewise accompanied by the photos of Joel Jensen). Niemann’s writing is intense and often poignant as she tells tales of the hidden underclass who populate the railroad. Her personal landscape is made up of dry, dingy built spaces, vast and terrifyingly beautiful desserts, and windblown openness. This is not the ordinary America we all see and experience, but a private, clannish world, a refuge for the people who, as Niemann puts it, are “on the borders” of life. She is brutally honest and raw with her descriptions of her co-workers lives, from drug addiction to sexual problems and alcoholism. Niemann is no finger-wagger, however, and spends considerable time examining her own life with all of its flaws and mistakes. Yet at no time does Niemann come off as moralizing. She presents this world not without a judgement for or against it, but instead with a kind of documentarian’s sensibility. The railroad world and its inhabitants, to Niemann, are a microcosm of humanity that has value and should be recorded and understood. Her writing is both open and slightly sentimental, which only adds to the complexity and confusion over what to think of this part of society.

The pairing of the text with Jensen’s photos is very complimentary, as Jensen has a gritty loner’s eye that immediately makes the viewer feel like both an insider and an outcast. Images like “Mechanics on break” on page 62 or “Truck stop” on page 110 speak loudly of the isolation of this world view. More poignant, however, are the two images of railroad workers walking in the snow towards their motels, “Off duty” on page 70 and “Home away from home” on page 71. Both have an eerie, unearthly glow to them from a world lit only by off-color, man-made light. Beyond these pools of glow, in the blackness, there is, perhaps, another world out there sleeping, but if so it is one which the denizens of the railroad have no part or place in.

The format of the book is much like a photography book, not a book of text, and as a result it sometimes feels that there are not enough photos from Jensen. Beyond that, the book could also have benefitted from more images to help a fresh reader develop a better understanding of the tone of the world that Niemann is describing. As far as the text, Niemann continues to give us compellingly written stories of her time on the railroad. Occasionally, however, she delves into unusual side-jaunts away from the railroad — one such jaunt takes us with her to Mexico where she learns Spanish by immersion. It is only after a few of these narrative sidebars occur that the reasoning becomes clear: this is not a topical book about life on the railroad, but rather a memoir of someone who worked for and lived in the railroad world. In some ways, this limits the book, as an audience seeking a more topical focus might find these side-jaunts to be distracting. As a method of carrying forward a sense of authenticity, however, the decision to include these extra-railroad memories is quite effective. The title, however, remains deceptive: “Railroad Noir: The American West at the End of the Twentieth Century” does not very well convey that the book is, in fact, a highly personal biographical narrative. These are minor quibbles, however, and both the narrative and the images chosen are all top-notch work.

Fit and finish shows the book itself is a quality product. Photo reproduction looks to be good, and color is consistent and fresh. No image is spread across two pages, a stylistic choice that retains the power of most of the photos but at the price of displaying them rather small. The paper is solid and thick and should hold up well, but it also has an odd, rubbery feel to the fingers. The size of the book is moderate — its horizontal frame will fit on a standard shelf — but there are some odd quirks resulting from this format choice. Although this is basically a book of stories accompanied by some photographs, this size makes it inconvenient to take as a piece of travel reading. It is also not ideal to read in your lap in an armchair, or in bed. Despite the fact that it is a fairly small coffee-table book, a coffee-table book it remains, and it feels best to read it at a table. This is not exactly the most comfortable place to spend time getting lost in Niemann’s compellingly penned world.

Overall, Railroad Noir is an interesting book with some sophisticated photos and a moving set of narratives. Photographers may find the book a good addition to their collection, but this is not primarily a photography book and it is certainly not a pictorial aimed at a typical railfan market. The book should prove interesting to those with an interest the human and social sides of railroading as well as those who enjoy railroad literature. .

Railroad Noir: The American West at the End of the Twentieth Century is available from Amazon, Powell’s Books, as well as directly from the publisher.

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The Addendum | Portland bridge lovers: Help out Zeb

Posted on June 18, 2010 by ABC
 

Normally I use this space to talk about my own photography and writing, or sometimes about the subjects that I tend to focus on: land use and transportation, cultural geography, and industrial archaeology. Today though, I want to highlight a project from someone else, the bridges of Portland as photographed by Zeb Andrews.

Zeb has been making images of the bridges of Portland for some time now, mostly the Fremont and St. Johns. In recent months, however, Zeb began to make a series that was meant to capture the essence of all of Portland’s varied bridges. Anyone who knows much about my photographic tastes knows that bridges are a strong draw for me as well, so it should be no surprise that I looked forward to each new image as Zeb revealed them on his Flicker stream. Check them out yourself and I’m sure you’ll agree that they’re great stuff.

Now, Zeb is trying to take this series to the next step, and share it with the world beyond Flicker with an exhibit and a book. Unfortunately, exhibits are not cheap, especially once you add up the costs of all the matts, frames, and such.

In short, Zeb needs your help. Zeb is raising money for this exhibit on Kickstarter, a site for creative fundraising.

The premise of Kickstarter is simple: within a given time frame, people can pledge to support a specific project proposal such as Zeb’s. If the total is reached before the deadline, then your pledge is paid out, and the project moves forward. If the total isn’t reached by the deadline, nobody pays anything. Payments are all handled through Amazon, a solid proven e-commerce provider.

By supporting Zeb’s project, you’ll help be part of seeing his work in an exhibit sometime this year. If altruism isn’t enough alone, Zeb’s offering a range of thank-you gifts, from postcards and postcard sets to prints to a book of images from the series.

For full disclosure, I have nothing vested here other than seeing some cool photos get some good exposure. I only really know Zeb through his work on Flickr and the fact that he’s usually the guy behind the counter at Blue Moon Camera when I pick up or drop off film.

So if you like Zeb’s bridge images, consider going over and making a pledge to support his project. The pledge period ends July 28th and any donation, no matter how small, will help.

And to Zeb, best of luck, and I look forward to my set of thank-you postcards.

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The Addendum | Transportation news you can actually use

Posted on June 18, 2010 by ABC
 

Michael Andersen
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.

Posted in Cities, Culture, Land Use & Transportation | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

The Addendum | Food as culture, not food

Posted on May 26, 2010 by ABC
 

The Bacon Maple Bar
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.

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The Addendum | Photos on Railfan’s web site

Posted on April 28, 2010 by ABC
 
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Old United Railways mainline in Guild’s Lake. Portland, OR, April, 2010. Kodak TMY.

Back from the Center for Railroad Photography and Art‘s 2010 “Conversations About Photography” conference in Chicagoland, I’ve got a few brief things to catch up on.

First, Railfan and Railroad has published two of my photos and a short article about the relationship between the railroad and the Guild’s Lake industrial park in Portland (which I also briefly wrote about here a while ago). The story and photos were run on the Extra Board, a new web exclusive monthly feature on Railfan’s new web site. The only downside is that (right now at least) there is no archive for articles on the Extra Board, so once the July story goes up in about 30 days, the story and photos will disappear from the web.

I’m particularly happy with the photos they ran, especially the lead. (I’d link to it on my Flickr but really, go see it at Railfan’s site while it’s up.) Thanks to the boys at R&R for running this.

Second, the other photograph published with this story is a close-up of a Keline switch lock, one of many that can still be found in Guild’s Lake. This is also a photograph from a new series I am currently shooting, a long-term project to try and break through some of the conventions of the railroad photography genre. Expect more about this process over the coming year.

For more photos of Guild’s Lake’s, check out the Flickr Job 101 set or see everything of mine from Guild’s.

UPDATE (9/20/2010): Railfan is now archiving the “Extra Board,”, and “Last Light at 12th Street” can now be viewed here.

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The Addendum | Amtrak ≠ intercity, Amtrak = transit

Posted on April 28, 2010 by ABC
 

0091-B-25Amtrak’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.

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The Addendum | The Role of Loss

Posted on April 19, 2010 by ABC
 
Checking For Obstructions. Portland, OR, March 2010. Kodak TMY.

This week, a friend picked up a copy of David Plowden’s retrospective, Vanishing Point, a book I once wrote a Russian-novel length review of here.

I’ve come to be a great admirer of Plowden. His photography is simultaneously straightforward yet lyrical. Unlike the works of, say, the New Topographics movement, Plowden’s work doesn’t imply a value judgement. Instead, the reaction provoked is more emotional, and is usually described as loss. He has famously described his career as a photographer as being “one step ahead of the wrecking-ball.”

What does that have to do with this image? Many things. The subject itself — Portland’s Guilds Lake industrial park — is slowly fading from its railroad industrial past. More significantly, this image is part of an in-progress series, an intentionally unromantic take on the railroad world. Yet, precisely by being intentionally unromantic, this image (and its series kin) become about loss too, the loss of the romantic viewpoint.

Maybe loss is integral to photography. Cameras, after all, have always held the promise of extending the moment, of being an external memory device. First steps. Birthdays. Weddings. Friends. You know the drill. You want to capture memories, preserve them before they, too, become victims of loss. And besides, entropy is not only a lot easier to find than growth, it is required to precede it: the first sign of newness is usually the sweeping away of something old.

And in the ultimate sense of Time’s irony, it’s barely possible to stay ahead of the wrecking ball anymore. The wrecking ball is going the way of, well, the wrecking ball.

* * *

Since I’ve discussed both David Plowden and the New Topographics, there are a few more things I should mention. First, the New Topographics exhibit is together again, and on tour. The closest it will get to the Pacific Northwest will be at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, starting in July. There’s also a new book out, and I strongly recommend it to anyone with an interest in landscape photography or critical photography. Second, Plowden has a book forthcoming this fall, Requiem for Steam from W. W. Norton. Keep an eye out for it.

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The Addendum | Property disassembly: 21st Century urban renewal tool?

Posted on April 14, 2010 by ABC
 

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.

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