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Cover how Madsion Wisconsin is expanding, mainly taking over Middleton the bike paths that were made in 1990 with one of the biggest sets of bike paths at 26--30 miles of it and the whole structure of the city parts of can't be helped due to the two lakes. However, biggest flaw is houses are impossible to buy unless you are a Millionaire right now as they are 1/2 million right now. Madison Wisconsin is one of the fastest growing cities in the USA right now.
Real talk: NordVPN is not a good company to be in league with. VPN's themselves are not bad, but NordVPN's exploitation of influencer marketing in order to scale their shady high-margin business away from the watchful eye of regulatory regimes (and public scrutiny) is, bluntly, dangerous, and you of all people should know better. Of course, it will take more than this to send me running from this channel, but this actually does lower your credibility in my eyes. I hope you'll do some research (not that it's easy, since the internet is flooded with fake VPN review sites and little way to evaluate the quality of a company vs their product) and reconsider taking their money. (EDIT: Now that I've heard the marketing copy they had you read, you should also know that much of it isn't just exaggerated or misleading, but patently false.)
My name is Xavier, I’m a student of planning at PSU and a huge fan of yours. I was the one who advocated that the Oak Street slip lane across from Powell’s be closed and turned into Pod Plaza. One of the best feelings I’ve ever felt is seeing those benches in Pod Plaza in one of your videos. I cannot understate how accomplished I feel in this moment. Thank you, CityNerd. It’s been a tough week with the Broadway Scandal, but this has made me feel so much better. Keep up the good work!!
I haven't been down there yet since that happened but thanks for pushing for that. As the current Broadway bike lane scandal shows, even if the council is currently captured by business interests and the police we can still see positive change as long as we remain vigilant and advocate strongly for it. We need more folks paying attention and working to make things better.
@@CityNerdChill guys. At least North American city planning is better than Indian city planning. If you North Americans visit India, your cities will seem like paradise and you will be thankful for it.
Props for pushing against slip lanes. As someone who drives a lot (and I do genuinely like driving from a dynamics standpoint in the middle of where, definitely not in traffic though), I even have started to dislike slip lanes from the driver perspective. Fully acknowledging the biggest reason to get rid of them is pedestrian safety, but even without anyone almost ever on the sidewalks (which is the norm in Metro Atlanta) they just really mess with driver psychology such that it's somewhere you can easily have another driver run into you just because you slowed down in order to check for the traffic you're about to rapidly merge into, let alone fully stop because someone is using the crosswalk. Since stopping is not normal and crosswalk use is not normal it makes the stops that do happen both more sudden and less anticipated.
I live in downtown and take the MAX and bike to work. It is rough, consistently late (or trains don't come), 15 minutes is "frequent" service and there are people screaming and smoking fent on the MAX probably 3 days a week and rent keeps going up :(. Portland is beautiful and the public transportation is SO close to being awesome but it feels like public transportation has been given the backseat in the last decade. I can't believe you helped with the FX line!! That line is a lifesaver when the green line train doesn't show up in the morning. I'm a civil engineering major and want to work on projects that improve urban life, thanks for this channel!
I’m a student in civil too, I was just there for the ITE conference, wonder if we crossed paths :) I loved a lot of things about Portland, the bones and emphasis on biking are great and transit has great coverage, but yeah I saw a lot of those problems you talked about and wish Portland could figure out the housing thing. Really a great place.
It's always a trip yelling at the people trying to smoke tinfoil next to you to stop and they respond 'fuck you' and then move to another part of the train.
I take the yellow and orange every day. Are there people doing drugs? Yes. Do they virtually always keep to themselves? Also yes. And while occasionally a train is late, it's definitely not the norm.
@@clayton97330, so a couple of things: most homeless people don't have addictions so not being able to smoke isn't a primary reason. Many do, but they're the minority. A lot are just poor because they encountered bad luck in life and maybe had some executive functioning deficit that made it harder to recover when super stressed (see: poor). ALSO, free housing (shelters) comes with pretty miserable conditions. You're forced out the door early in the morning and can't return until the evening (supposed to be an incentive to get a job I guess?), there's very little security so your stuff gets stolen (sometimes by staff) or privacy (often just rows and rows of bunks), the sleeping conditions are often not great (noise from others, lights left on, bed bug infestations, etc.). You also are usually separated from any pets you had adopted on the streets or had previously and any relationships you had, which is another deal breaker for folks. I used to work with the population trying to get out of shelters into somewhere more permanent. Honestly, I don't blame folks at all for choosing a tent in cities like Portland/Seattle where you're unlikely to die of exposure for opting to camp over taking a shelter bed. Acceptance is much higher if you offer them a spot in a tiny home community where they can feel more human and less like they're being warehoused.
Portland's downtown is like if Vancouver's west end and Seattle's Pioneer Square districts combined: good pedestrian access, and *trees actually shading the streets for the whole downtown*
And at least from what I can tell from the video, a bit dead like Vancouver's west end too. Never been to Portland but it looks like it might take a while for a lot of the foot traffic and businesses to come back after covid like it has in some parts of Vancouver.
Yes I feel sooo much safer cycling downtown simply due to the one-way streets. If someone is going to run a red light, there is only 1 direction they could come from
I'd be a fan, if there were only 1 lane for car travel, but even then, I have seen a lane shared by both directions. A car would need to pull out of traffic to let the other pass. It teaches drivers to be respectful, and slows cars down.
One ways are pretty great if your city does something with them like traffic calming, bike lanes, bus lanes, parking and doesn't have a one way grid from a time long ago when they believed they really needed a grid of 3-4 lane one way urban highways that are now empty and encourage people to do 40 through the densest part of the city.
i live in portland and used to be a strictly public transit commuter. even before the pandemic, when the homeless population went from “kinda bad” to “apocalyptic”, public transit here was a gamble. buses and max trains pretty regularly just never came, with no explanation, and there was always at least one person experiencing drug-induced psychosis on any given max train (that did bother to show up). but i felt like it was manageable and the convenience outweighed the danger. now it’s just a freaking nightmare, there’s always someone screaming, and someone tranqed out, and someone who looks like he’s seconds from attacking everyone near him. i don’t know what anybody can do about this, but whatever it is, it’s not being done.
I do find it frustrating when people pretend the homelessness/fully legalized and omnipresent public drug use is a right wing talking point. it is not and it fully ruins the experience of living in Portland. In Southeast Portland I have to cross the street or step into traffic to avoid tent encampments, take special care at all times to make sure my dog doesn't step onto used fentanyl aluminum foil, and so on. I used to walk home through Laurelhurst Park at night but it no longer feels safe to do so, with screaming drug addled people roaming through it. Then when I go into work downtown, I deal with the awful commute and uncertainty of whether I'll be screamed at or attacked (only been attacked a few times, but felt like I was about to be many times) while walking to my office. Portland is dead because it always had kind of a low level of cultural opportunities given its size to begin with, and since the pandemic there isn't really anything to do at all and going anywhere is just frustrating or scary.
Ray the problem is that there are not enough people LIVING in the downtown area. You can’t rely on people just coming downtown to work for the lifeblood of city and patronizing the businesses.
Portland saw a boom to the north (Pearl District) and to the south (South Waterfront) over the last 20, 30 years. DT itself didn't catch a whole lot of the residential development. So hopefully we can get the ball rolling on that now.
It's always been prohibitively expensive for most Portlanders to live downtown. I grew up in a SE Portland suburb and always wanted to live downtown when I was younger. However, I ended buying a house in Vancouver. Pretty much the only time I go to downtown Portland now is just to drive through out of morbid curiosity on my way to somewhere else.
@@PNWJEEPER01 Just saw a movie at living room theaters, went to sushi at an awesome place nearby. Plenty to do downtown still! Just a lil quieter than normal. But yeah we need residential growth to really create a healthy neighborhood. Then services will follow. Then more people will work downtown, and a positive cycle hopefully starts again.
Portlander here. I LOVE my city. Its current state absolutely breaks my heart. When family from overseas visits, I feel embarrassed by the city because of its lack of cleanliness, safety and homeless population overflow. The problem with Portland can be summed up in two words, Ted Wheeler. The reason Portland has a homelessness problem is because of a total lack of good policy from Mayor Wheeler’s office. He created the problem (lookup springwater corridor) and then withdrew provisions promised to this community forcing them onto the streets in downtown. Good policy matters and that is all it would take to redeem this beloved city. We need better policy that not only moves homeless people off city streets, but into affordable housing with healthcare that addresses what may be the root cause for their circumstances. Becoming homeless in the US is incredibly easy. Half of all bankruptcies in the US result of medical bills. So many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck with no safety net. Unfortunately the homeless problem is a major contributor to the decline in safety and cleanliness of the city. Housing, healthcare and food should be basic human rights. If they were in PDX, you wouldn’t see people shooting up drugs, getting high or passing out. You wouldn’t see someone drop their pants and take a dump on a sidewalk. The streets wouldn’t smell of public urination. On a typical day in PDX, it is now normal to see someone shooting up on the sidewalk 4-5 times/day throughout the city. I do not feel safe walking through Portland, especially by myself and never at night. The safety issue is a direct result of the lack of support to the homeless population. I am not saying that homeless people are innately unsafe. I am saying that many of them are unsafe to themselves and others due to lack of mental health support and/or addiction. Many people who struggle with mental health or addiction do irrational, desperate and violent things. As the homeless population grows in PDX, so does crime and unfortunately no policy has effectively addressed that in a way that supports the dignity and safety of everyone involved. Crime has risen to such a overwhelming degree that many businesses in PDX have closed. These include: REI, Nike, Target, Walmart and Starbucks. Many other smaller retailers closed before now because they couldn’t afford to keep replacing windows and merchandise after repeated break-ins. A lack of policy has left businesses responsible for the safety of their staff and customers. This is why you will frequently see private security guards at places like Voodoo Doughnuts, Powells and Patagonia. Portland has my heart and I’m still rooting for her. I guess it helps that I remember a time when PDX was safe, clean and a proud place to call home. The responsibility now rests with Mayor Wheeler and Governor Kotek’s offices to write and implement legislation that restores PDX to all her glory for all her constituents.
Yours is probably the best and most concise summation of the Portland Problem. It's sad and frustrating that City Nerd and the commenters tiptoe around the real problems here: a felt lack of security along with a sense of tawdriness from open-air drug use, criminality, and homelessness. Since Portland is uber-woke, no mention must be shall to these problems because.....er......we win!! To be sure, victimology never goes out of style on the political ramparts, so Portland makes a virtue out of its deterioration. The net result is that nothing really changes because the usual suspects (see: social justice warriors) will scream bloody murder is some marginalized "victim" is afflicted by laws they choose not to obey. Anarchy is its own reward on the left for some reason but I'm here to say it doesn't and never has worked anywhere.
I have no doubt that Wheeler sucks, but I can say he isn’t the mayor of Seattle, San Francisco, Spokane, Tacoma, etc etc. Every major city is dealing with similar problems. This housing shortage is a national problem that demands a federal response. Unfortunately, Congress is completely stymied and I just don’t see a realistic chance of it coming through with the many billions it would take to fully address the problem. And I don’t even want to imagine what happens if TFG wins this election.
The biggest issue with that right turn situation is that unless you put physical barriers up, people will do exactly what you saw. Worse yet, a lot of people driving just "follow the leader", so will just follow the car in front without really thinking critically about what is going on or what the road is telling them to do. Perhaps the answer is actually physical barriers between the right turn lane and the bus lane.
Watching people misuse the dedicated bike lane as a quick right-turn lane is like watching that Tom Scott video where he discussed a rural UK intersection infamous for cyclist deaths, and seeing a dozen cars drive through its clearly marked STOP sign during the video itself. ...Keeping in mind, the lesser branch of an intersection in Europe defaults to Yield, not Stop (as it is in the US).
I take that right turn frequently so I'm used to it by now, but I think a good number of drivers who go into the bike lane are simply doing so because they don't realize it's changed. It was a visually confusing setup before and is now even more visually confusing/counterintuitive to turn right from a spot that is two lanes to the left. That said, the new system is a lot better and I like that I don't have to worry about wiping out bikes as I cross into the turn lane. I just think (and hope) most people are doing it wrong out of confusion rather than selfishness, as the change is still quite new.
The issue with Portland public transportation is that whether it’s functional for you is highly dependent on where you live, and if you live somewhere affordable public transit probably doesn’t serve you. I have never lived anywhere in this city where driving to work isn’t literally 3 times faster. Right now google maps says this: driving is 21 minutes, bike is 57 minutes, public transit is 58 minutes.
I have a nearly perfect public transit commute: I live less than a block from MAX and work downtown less than a block from MAX - direct on the same line. It's still twice as long to go by train, but it's a much nicer and cheaper journey. Even with the reeking transients lugging trash bags leaking mystery liquid, I still prefer to ride MAX.
So true. Back when I lived in an apartment building in Goose Hollow & worked in Central Eastside, I took public transit everywhere I went and never really struggled with it. But now I live in a SE neighborhood and I don't think I've ever had a good use case for public transit. (Luckily, I usually at least walk or bike instead, though... but that's not the case in all neighborhoods.)
Yeap. I've lived here for 20%+ years and fully agree. This is really easy to solve though, the city needs express buses. I've gone to a few larger cities and they ALL have express buses that run along the same routes as the locals... just less often and less stops. (Sometimes they will say, only do drop offs for the first half of the route or not even stop at all for the first 1/2. Or they will only service 1/2 of the stops on the route etc etc etc.) I've NEVER understood why Portland doesn't have more express buses. There is or used to be the one on Hawthorne that didn't stop until 39thI think. But that by and large is it.. and it's stupid. Then we got the FX bus on Division which is great but they cut out 1/2 the stops. And they are talking about doing the same on 82nd with the #72 and it's such a horrible idea. They just need to start an express bus serving 1/2 the stops going every 30 mins or so and leave the #72 as a local. I'm lucky that I'm a 12 min walk to the max and from there it's super easy to transfer to whatever. But yah, it can take 50 mins to say get from Gateway to SE Hawthone and 39th. It would make so much more sense to have an express bus on say, Ceasar Chaves that only stops a the major cross streets: Hollywood, Burnside, Gilsen, Stark, Belmont, Hawthorne, Division, Powell etc and just doesn't stop anywhere else. It could shave off 10 mins easy in that short distance. Then say if you're riding the #75 from Swan Island to Milwakie it could shave off probably 30 mins over the whole trip
@@OgdenM I've wondered about this too, especially for routes that go further out. The express bus lines are one thing I miss about my brief time in the Seattle area! A 20 mile commute that took ~30 minutes by car & only 5-10 min longer by bus. (The red & blue max lines can probably achieve that, so we get credit there! but not any bus routes I know of.)
Im in Sw portland at the border with beaverton and the 54 right outside my apartment. It's 20-30 minutes to pioneer square for me. And 5 bucks a day vastly outweighs gas abd parking in the down town area. So it works for some.
Thank you for making this video. Reasonable talk about downtown portland just doesn't exist and it gets absolutely obnoxious. So tired of hearing from people that live out in the suburbs eating up right wing news outlets when they haven't been downtown in 5 years. As for the light rail, there's a shuttle that goes from the airport to gateway until construction is done.
It's insane. I went to Portland in 2019 and ... it was lovely. Enjoyed the Rose Garden, walked around various neighborhoods, ... everything was great. I am sure it has its problems as every place, but it was overall a really enjoyable city.
@@souslicer As someone that spends a lot of time downtown, not really. It's quieter, a lot of business followed people working from home, but it's far from dead. It's certainly not dangerous, that part is just hilariously dumb misinformation. Chinatown can still be sketchy just like before the pandemic, union station still has homeless around it, south downtown is still beautiful. Like, literally it's the same city.
Right wing news will have you think Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and any other city perceived to be too liberal, are literal war zones, where will take your life in your hands just by passing through.
Portland's problem with crime and homelessness isn't a product of "right wing media", it's a fact obvious to anyone who looks at the streets and anyone who can review objective numbers. Portland 20 years ago was one of the safest large cities. Since 2018, homicides have more than doubled and shootings have more than tripled. The increase in both is FAR above the national average and above it's peer cities. This is not per right wing media, it's per the California Partnership for Safe Communities, a not for profit that is working with the city of Portland at the cities request, hardly a bastion of right wing conspiracy. Here are some of their findings for 2019 to 2021, and the problem was worse in 2022. Over those three years, the analysis found, Portland saw a 144% increase in its homicide count and a 241% increase in non-fatal shootings that resulted in injury. So people who are reluctant to invest in or visit Portland are doing so at least partly because it is manifestly less safe.
Grew up in Oregon and lived in Portland for awhile, been in NYC for 30 years. I visited Oregon friends this summer, after a long hiatus, and headed downtown to see the hellhole I'd been promised it is now, by both friends and local news. Yes, I can see there's problems, but net/net, I was blown away by how absolutely beautiful Portland has become. Truly gorgeous. If I were looking to move again, I'd seriously consider it.
I left PDX in 2020 (wanted to buy a house, impossible in PDX now) and all I've heard since I left is that PDX is a burnt down hellhole full of drugged out homeless zombies and all "normal" people have abandoned it to smoldering ruins. Lol. So I'm pleased to hear a better assessment
@@erikwick the media portrayal of portland is ridiculously disconnected from reality. It isn't perfect but it isn't nearly as bad as a lot of people think it is.
love the video! (long time Portland resident, for 17.5yrs, around nw/sw) and it's insane how much more car dependent it has become. It doesn't make any sense to me because of how much of Portland isn't designed for the amount of cars going around now. Plus the recent push back against any improvements in transit and bike lanes is just confusing to me.
I had a lot of shots showing just how busy the freeways are and wasn't sure what to do with them. There aren't THAT many people downtown, but there sure are a lot of people driving their cars through to who knows where
@Luke5100it’s bc of the homelessness dude. If you’re biking or in a train you have to deal with the homelessness more. Cars provide an artificial barrier. The issue has festered to the point that people just don’t feel comfortable being openly exposed to it all the damn time
@@CityNerdit's people taking the highways THROUGH Portland to the burbs. Live in Gresham? Gotta drive to Beaverton to get to a lifestyle center with a Gap! It's so silly.
Portland is still car dependent. By the time the UGB was enacted the metro was already 40 miles wide. I think what still sets us apart thankfully are inner city neighborhoods that stayed in tact and a pretty urbanist mindset since the late 80s.
@@CityNerd wfh has definitely given people more freedom in their day to day schedule. Portland traffic is arguably 100 percent the same as it was 4 years ago but all those people driving around are probably running errands too.
Its so weird seeing Portland Oregon less vibrant than downtown Portland Maine. Our city is way smaller but its always got lots of people walking around
I had the pleasure of finally visiting Portland Maine after living in Oregon for many years and was charmed by the walkability. Lovely place to visit. Think older east coast cities built up before cars have that advantage
@@3clubforever, you’d have to visit “right wing media” outlets to see those things; glossed over here. Frequent the small business owners in the downtown area? Ok, many are fleeing, and there’s only so much marijuana I can afford.
@@mrp4242 I think business owners in downtown PDX would still be in a lot of trouble EVEN IF you made it virtually impossible to camp or use drugs there. High density areas require a lot of people and/or commuters to support retail business. It seems to me that not enough people live downtown to support the retail biz there alone, and covid WFH has eliminated a large percentage of downtown commuters. As other people have pointed out, a lot of the medium density neighborhoods in Portland are doing pretty well. Sure, the targets and walmarts are closing up shop, allegedly due to shoplifting, but the small business turnover in the neighborhoods seems to be, anecdotally, at a pretty good rate. I lived in Seattle as it went from not-affordable to only-rich-people-live-here (2014-2021) and I saw a lot of businesses closing up BEFORE the encampments crept out of the shadows. As far as I could tell, they were closing up because they couldn't afford the rent. Anywho - I don't think just letting people live wherever they want (i.e. sidewalks/parks) is doing us any favors, but I think the camps downtown are a symptom, not the disease. I have decided your comment was the one I post something like this to this month. Congrats.
If you look at "Miles of bike infrastructure created or improved" with miles of "car infrastructure" (as a ratio) the greater portland area with, for example, the greater seattle area, portland has been resting on its laurels as a "good bike city" for at least 10 years. There are other metrics to use of course, but its illuminating to look at. Edit: THANK YOU FOR COVERING THE BROADWAY SCANDAL
And Portland inflates its numbers by counting neighborhood greenways as bike infra. They are just residential streets with wayfinding signs. They don't count! If you subtract the greenways, Portland has a shamefully small amount of bike infrastructure. It's absolute insanity that city council wants to take away one of the only really top quality bike lanes in the city!
@@doolittle983 yep, like how Cycle Oregon put signs up that say "scenic bikeway" on country roads with no changes to the roads, that doesn't make them a safe bikeway.
@@doolittle983 It's so frustrating when cities do this--labeling unsafe roads as 'bike friendly' and then patting themselves on the back. In Honolulu, where I currently live, most of the 'bike friendly' streets are less safe than streets with no infrastructure at all, because nearly all of them are either sharrows or, worse, extremely narrow (
Great video Ray! I used the SW broadway bike lane everyday to get to work and the new protected bike lane was super nice. The decision to remove the SW broadway bike lane is a testament to Portlands stagnation and poor leadership. Portland also now charges businesses for taking up street parking for outdoor dining. While it gets a terrible rep, I think Portland has a lot of potential and it’s absolutely beautiful. There is a great community of biking advocates and it’s pretty easy to get around without a car for a city of its size.
I'm curious, do they charge the businesses the same rate that cars get, or do they pay more? If I were to guess, they'd pay more, but sometimes a city will surprise me.
Drivers are typically charged $2.20 per hour to park downtown between 8am-7pm. So that means a space can generate $8,833 a year if it's always occupied. The permits for restaurants range from $360-$2,000 a year depending on what they do with the space.
I'm trying to think about why the concept of charging businesses for use of outdoor dining in would-be parking spaces makes me uncomfortable. I guess it makes sense insofar as those businesses definitely have additional revenue potential from it and the city is losing the meter money. But isn't the ultimate goal for people not to use cars for trips around town? If anything I would think the city should incentivize it. Plus, it isn't at all reasonable to anticipate the full $8k of revenue from a spot: people don't pay (and enforcement misses it), there are holidays (10 where the meters are off), spots go unused for stretches on bad weather days or in emptier areas, etc. I get that Portland may be looking for every bit of cash they can get with a downtown business crater, but it seems like encouraging businesses to claim parking spots is the move, not to tax it. Clearly my mind isn't made up here, I'm just turning it over "out loud." I also have only visited Portland once and it was quite a long time ago, so I'm missing local context.
I live in SE Portland, and the problem with drivers ignoring bike signals to turn right is even worse there. Sometimes there is a car in the bike lane illegally turning on EVERY cycle.
So true, Add Stark to that list as well! I love living in SE but I feel like having to reroute my commute to only go through side streets always adds so much time
As I watched that part, I was thinking about California drivers. So many Californians have moved here, that whenever, as a pedestrian, I encounter a driver who does not yield to my right of way, or when driving, I observe California moves, like intentionally blocking another vehicle trying to merge on the freeway, I assume the driver must be from California. Native Portlanders are known for being very polite. I moved to Portland from California 14 years ago and noticed the politeness of Portland drivers. However, as the influx of techies from California continued to increase, I noticed more and more impolite drivers. No statistical proof of a correlation, but I did see more and more typical California driver moves happening as the years went by and increasingly encountered too many brushes with rude drivers.
I visited Portland last year. Coming from Europe and hearing the news, I went in with very low expectations. I only went there because it was relatively close by and I wanted to experience America's infamous train system. I was really surprised by how nice the city was. I didn't feel unsafe at all either. Unfortunately, there weren't many people walking or biking around, so it felt empty at times
That's kinda what I thought about Helsinki. Not the bad reputation, but just going there and seeing a really nice tram system, but hardly anyone on the roads
I live in Portland, and the stories of it's demise are highly exaggerated. As this video points out, the central downtown is mostly office buildings, which are at record low occupancies, leaving the center of town pretty dead. However, if you head in almost any direction from there you will find vibrant neighborhoods with jam packed bars and restaurants, and there is transit available to get you there. Not unlike every city in America right now, there is a housing, mental health, and drug crisis, and Portland does not seem able to address them with the speed that many would like, so it gets a bad wrap for that, especially in right wing circles.
That myth was propagated by rightwing media outlets in the wake of the protests a few years ago. I used to often get into arguments with idiots from Florida or Tennessee or Texas who would be like "Everyone where you are wants to move to red states because Portland is smoking crater of a hellscape, where 'Antifa' Junkies wander about slitting the throats of Christians and burning down the few buildings that are left". Just ridiculous, and they wouldn't even do the 10 seconds of searching to find out the truth of it. They just assume what they've been told that the whole place is like a worse Detroit. The only difference between Downtown now and Downtown 7 years ago is that there are fewer businesses and fewer people, but it's still a vibrant functional city. People are stupid. FWIW.
On your next visit I highly recommend spending most of your time in East Portland (on the other side of the Willamette from downtown). It's like a bunch of vibrant small towns shoved up next to each other. Hawthorne district, Hollywood, 28th and Burnside, so many fun areas with world class food, amazing bars, theaters. Still very walkable and buzzing with locals and tourists alike.
Jonathan Maus' reporting seems to have led to some backtracking on the plan to tear up the Bdwy lanes. They're talking more about studying the issue. The hotel owners contribute to campaigns so their complaints are going to be heard. Commissioner Mapps is running for mayor, incidentally.
Luckily, the mayorship will be a much less powerful position by then, if he does win. Still, I'm perennially dismayed by city council's rightward lurch since 2020 or so. Reactionary forces like the PBA and PPB have been sadly effective at stirring up fear and contempt, and moderates have gobbled it up.
@@vincentcolavin The structure of Portland City government does not serve residents well. It's the type of structure used for small cities, like under 50,000 people. My understanding is that historically, the city was controlled by the industrialists along the Willamette and the Editor in Chief of the newspaper. They decided who would run for office, then told the mayor which departments to appoint them to, resulting in their hand picked selections running the departments. Most of those industrialists families are gone and the newspaper was sold so others have moved in to fill the void, particularly the PPB and PBA as you mentioned.
We visit portland every year from Vancouver bc, and we always have a good time. It's definitely more quiet now than before the pandemic, though. I also found it funny that our relatives from red US states were asking if Portland was a warzone, and to be careful when we visited. The level of extreme disinformation is comical.
If Portland _is_ a warzone, it's mainly because of right-wing groups like the Proud Boys rolling in to start fights with liberal residents. And if you're familiar with US politics, you know which side of those fights the police actively or passively assisted.
I live here and there is literally no reason for tourists to visit Portland. I wouldn’t call it a war zone like Baltimore or Chicago, but the homeless filth, theft, and public drug use is getting worse, not better. And Portland leftists convince themselves that everything is alright.
I think the major reason bike commuting and transit use is down in Portland is that we have historically had a multi-modal transportation culture here that the influx of transplants don't adopt when moving to town, opting instead to behave like they have wherever they came from (which typically means driving). I live in the Hollywood neighborhood, which is probably the best spot on the East Side for walkability, and is somewhere you should definitely visit/focus on in your East Side video. Southeast (Division/Hawthorne/etc...) gets all the attention, but there's a lot of interesting stuff happening in NE too!
I think you're probably correct about the transplants supplanting the home grown transit/multimodal culture with their car centric lifestyles. I'm a transplant to Portland, but I came with the opposite perspective. I came here close to a decade ago specifically because I was looking for a place that was transit and active transportation focused. I've been dismayed to watch the number of people traveling in cars go up and the number of people getting around by other modes decline rapidly during my time living here.
I really think this is a COVID and homelessness thing. Fewer downtown daily commuters thanks to WFH and when folks do come in to the office they don't want to sit next to someone who hasn't bathed recently and is lugging a leaking trash bag full of cans. I commute by MAX daily and see this very occurrence on more than half of my trips.
@Ethanthevegan I'm sure there are a handful of homeless people that were pushed over the edge by rising housing prices. But blaming Portland's homeless situation entirely on people moving to the city is a bit ridiculous. Portland had a sizable homeless population long before 2008, and it's been growing steadily since. A significant portion, if not the majority of the homeless, came from out of state.
Looking forward to your one-way streets video. Stoplights designed for two-way streets are incredibly inefficient because they not only have to alternate traffic directions, but alternate for left-turning traffic. Even if no stop-lights, left turns/cross traffic turns are slow/dangerous/stressful (for cars, bikers and pedestrians). One way streets solve many problem...and allow light syncing which is really slick when it properly calibrated.
I really appreciate you making these deep dive videos! My number one comment/suggestion would be if you could talk a bit about revitalizing these downtown areas now that WFH is semi-permanent. Portland doesn't seem like it will have the same issues as many other cities with converting massive office towers, so I'm curious what their approach will be. Also, I read somewhere that while downtown is struggling, the outer neighborhoods are actually booming. I'm curious if you observed that at all. Thanks for your continued "journalism!"
Yeah, I mentioned in passing that next time I come to town I'll cover neighborhoods, because even though I like the design aspect of downtown, it's always been the neighborhoods that have made Portland a great place to live. And I lived in A LOT of Portland neighborhoods!
I live in Hollywood and work in a neighborhood brewery/bar in Tabor and we're getting busier and busier. The only time it's a ghost town is when there is a festival at the waterfront (and even then plenty of people choose to avoid those and stay on the east side) or it's a holiday weekend and everyone's out of town. Even the hidden neighborhood dives I like to hang out in are pretty busy on a Sunday/Monday.
@@CityNerd Cover Slabtown / Nob Hill if you are coming back to PDX Neighborhoods. PBOT did quite a bit of investing in the area for bike access and changing how streets are used / diverted to calm traffic. Not the most affordable, but very livable. Plus there are the promises of a streetcar expansion!
@@CityNerd I just found this channel a while ago and after watching this video, my recurring question was if you have seen the TH-cam channel "Not Just Bikes"? From this video, I would gather that you haven't. He converted me from a cycling rules proponent to a balanced approach.
Aside from pandemic and remote work stuff, I imagine that perception of danger or crime is keeping people away from downtown Portland. It’s not actually dangerous to be there, but all the press portraying Portland as such doesn’t help. And people generally have very little understanding of what crime actually looks like and where it happens.
Well, unless you're a business. That isn't just press - that's legit. Most businesses have completely moved out of downtown and the vacancies is absurdly high. That's where the "rampant crime" comes into play. Relentless vandalism of storefronts, and thefts of merchandise is not some media trope, but reality for Downtown Portland. Also Oldtown/Chinatown has had a record amount of stabbings just this year alone, and the rest of Portland proper shattered their shootings and homicide/murder rate records last year, and is once again on par to break it again this year. Again, that's not media tropes, that's verifiable fact. Technically I could throw more onto the list of things that are seen as lies pushed by certain mainstream media outlets that are verifiable facts, but I'll hold back on that. Do they exaggerate? Absolutely, especially more right-leaning media corporations. But it does not make it untrue that various crimes are at record highs in the city, let alone in specific parts of the central core of the city proper.
I work downtown. I see things on a daily basis. On my off time downtown would be the LAST place I'd go to. I wonder if the people who say it's not bad has actually gone there- especially at night
@@alfhild98 You know the old phrase - "The freaks come out at night". And I just spoke with a woman who grew up on the Eastside (bad side of town... which is saying a lot) and she wound up saying the typical thing you hear from people from Portland and from the eastside. "My hood was considered upper middle class, safe and great when I was a kid. But its now the bad area of town." She added that her issue with the westside not just of Portland, but the metro area, too, is that she can't detect who the crazy folks and nut jobs are, whereas east of the river, its automatic. I'm a born and raised westside guy, and have always lived here in the Aloha area, my eldest brother Nathan lived either in Tigard along the 99 corridor (meth central at the time) or Oldtown most of the time right at the epicenter of the "mentally ill, crazy, homeless and/or on drugs" crowd. He himself was of the mentally ill and off & on drug user crowd. My other brother lived for a really long time out off Alberta, too through the mid 2000s and early 2010s. So my family has got metro-wide experience, both first hand and second hand haha.
Downtown is in an extremely fragile state. The work from home dust has yet to settle for the CBD south of Burnside and east of Broadway. West of Broadway and south to PSU id say there is definitely some retail life. The problem which nobody at city hall or at the state seems to want to discuss is the rampant mental health problem happening on the streets. It seems like it only intensifying as office work continues to retract towards the suburbs. You can easily see at least 10 people experiencing complete psychotic breakdowns a mere 3 minute walk SE from Powells. I don't know how all of those people got to Portland but its common to read about out of town transients who have committed some pretty serious crimes. This town needs some new marketing
@@thomasmcroy1756 South of Powell's - That part of Portland and Burnside is the mentally ill and drugged up corridor. Always has been. Oldtown/Chinatown is the hub for those folks. Like due to both services of CCC and the Oldtown Clinic being there, Good Samaritan being close by and Helen Swindell also being right on Burnside & Broadway. And a majority of those people are in fact born and raised Oregonians. I would know given that my eldest brother lived a large portion of his life right there in the heart of that zone, was mentally ill himself and had a bad habit of finding the drug lords and sellers (middlemen), and doing drugs. So me and my mom know the area and the crowd incredibly well. One of the reasons there is so many these days is because the clinics for them are corrupt as all hell, their staff often hold biases and grudges against a lot of them, and of course there simply is not remotely enough capacity. And hell, the mental health system and care is arguably fucked up enough to make people worse, not better. None of that helps. Constantly being outcast, hated, complained about and unwanted certainly doesn't help anyone's mental state when they experience it, especially the already mentally ill and struggling. Knowing almost no one gives a damn about you and would almost prefer you to not exist/be dead is a horrible thing. It definitely didn't help to pass measure 110 that made hard drugs decriminalized and allowed public open usage of drugs without almost any limitations. The concept was sound and made sense, the problem was, as usual with Oregon, they had absolutely nothing to build off of. No foundations in place, their system wasn't even beyond just a idea in people's heads. No blueprints, nothing at all. Just the concept, the suggestion and idea. Thin air. That's it. Oregon voters are reactive voters, so they'll impulsively vote in favor of anything that sounds good in concept, but of course is a guaranteed failure without anything to build off of. You have to get the foundations of your systems in place first before you can go ahead with the rest of the concept and passing it. That's common sense. But, most seem to lack that these days. So, people passed the concept without sound reason and... now we have a rapidly proliferated addiction crisis and aggravated homeless and mental health problem.
I think framing the homeless crisis as a direct effect of housing cost is pretty disingenuous. There's obviously a lot more (drugs, mental health) going on than just housing affordability.
I hear you, but you seriously don't think that being priced out of housing doesn't lead people to substance abuse and exacerbate existing mental health issues?
As a resident of portland who commutes via max or bike, i really appreciate the nuance you bring discussing Portland's strengths and weakness. And Jonathan's shoutout was also well deserved!
I think you got it exactly right with the car problem: we design our infrastructure around the worst drivers that can keep their license, because those are the ones that do the most damage. The basic philosophy that we end up with is "completely prevent any temptation to this bad behaviour, otherwise someone will do it and kill people."
I think the philosophy is more often find the worst thing the worst driver will do and then design around that making all non-car modalities yield to those horrible drivers to prevent accidents.
@@davidgjam7600I couldn't agree with you more. These people don't have the sense to even understand how roundabouts work,which makes them more dangerous. People not yielding and pulling right out in front of you is beyond annoying and common too.
Good idea. I've heard that San Francisco is not only looking at that, but looking at turning a building into a contained university (UC or CSU?), including dorms and rec space. I wonder about requiring these building conversions turn their roof tops into shared park-like rec space.
It's extremely expensive and difficult to do. There are only a handful of small buildings in Portland that would lend themselves to these types of conversions. Most of the larger office buildings built since the 1960s would require a level of renovation and redesign that would be only slightly less expensive than complete teardown and rebuilds.
You might as well demolish and rebuild. Most office buildings, especially older ones, would be residential non-compliant even if they could be converted. Load bearing walls would need to be removed and compensated for; sewer, fire suppression, and water run to every unit…it’s a mess.
I'm in outer NE Portland and want to take the Max more, but as a petite woman riding alone I rarely feel safe. There are always people strung out and screaming or getting into physical altercations. Today a woman randomly kept slamming a broom against the seat next to me. This is honestly what keeps more people from using public transit. If Portland wants to increase riders, it has to deal with this issue.
@@Anna_Rae I get that! And don't get me wrong, I love Portland and feel homesick whenever I go elsewhere. But the situation on transit is just a nightmare.
I live outside a city that has similar problems and solutions to that of Portland. I make every effort to avoid going into town. It's a great place for those who live in the city center, with local mass transit, bike lanes, and creative ideas laced with an undeworld of homeless people congregated to use centralized drug treatment services. By design people are encouraged to leave vehicles at home, which is impossible for visitors without a mass transit system that extends to outside areas. Thank goodness for online merchants, who have drastically cut any need I might have to travel into town. You may think the reduction of people on the streets is a Covid byproduct, but the Amazon effect is hidden within.
We were here just last October. Spot on assessment. Its sad to see so much of Downtown and Old Town dependency on suburban office commuters. And everyone here in Oakland/ SF talk a big game about taking middling Class C Office commercial and converting to mixed use residential (everyone's one case study is NYC's lower Manhattan post 9/11). But change is slow, interest rates high and banks make more money writing off buildings in the red than they do with modifying use.
I’m all for better driver training, law enforcement, and license revocations, but isn’t that a really bad mindset? Hasn’t merging into bike lanes been proven to reduce injuries and fatalities from right hook accidents? Most people don’t seem aware that different jurisdictions have varying engineering and laws around bike lanes and tight turns.
You're required to pass a written and practical drivers test to get a driver's license. You don't need anything to ride a bike on the streets like an idiot. Just watch any intersection in Portland for 5 minutes and count the number of bikes that break traffic laws running through lights, stop signs, in and out of traffic and on/off sidewalks, not giving pedestrians right of way. I guarantee it's more than the number of auto infractions on that same intersection.
@@mattropolis99 1. all studies thus far seem to contradict your impression 2. also, most people on a bike do have a driver's license 3. ...also also, even if your impressions were eventually proven to (locally?) be accurate... of course we should be holding someone essentially driving half a ton of metal or more around a couple of mostly empty sofas to a higher standard than someone who is unlikely to damage anyone else but themselves
Beside that, the best way is what is done in Netherlands or Sweden. Just built the infrastructure in a way, that even distracted or otherwise unattentive drivers will proabably do the right thing: - if they are supposed to drive slow, don't build a road like a high way, but make it narrow, add speed bumps, add little curves, or even use copper to indicate that it is a slow street - decide which purpose a specific street has and built it for this purpose (so if it is connecting, make driving without disturbance possible, e.g. no parking, not many crossings; if it is a street for habitants, make it inattractive or impossible for drive-through traffic and ensure low speed) - if cars are not supposed to drive on bike (or bus lanes), make physical separation - if cars are supposed to share the lane with bikes or pedestrians, make it different from a usual road (for example increase altitude on pedestrian levels), and not only paint it - and of course, if there is contact with a lower weighing traffic participants, by default, the driver of the more dangerous vehicle is fully responsible and guilty (and make fines significant high) - and at best: make intelligent traffic lights - they should be aware of how many cars or bikes are coming and switch accordingly, priorize less dangerous and more effective traffic (public transport, bikes, pedestrians) and at bad wheather increase green time for bikes and pedestrians - forbid turn right at red as default (it's just insecure), probably allow it for bikes (that's not insecure)
Thanks for a great video on one of my favourite cities! As an ex-PDXer it broke my heart to see the negative stories about the city over the past couple of years. It's such an amazing place, I'm so happy that I got to live there and experience so many expansions of the MAX, the introduction of the Portland Streetcar, and see it become such a great cycling city. Look forward to more videos about Stumptown / The Rose City / Portlandia!
Yes - I heard two things about the city (1) demonstrations a few years ago (2) Tent cities I guess news is like cherry picking. The picked cherries are always rotten. Oregon is a great state. I used to live 30 miles North of Hermiston.
@@daniellarson3068 I've seen tent cities in Des Moines, Iowa. A certain segment of our population just has to find reasons to hate on cities/states that don't agree with their politics.
@@thatissomeBS Yes - I have seen since the time when Rush Limbaugh became popular that there is big money behind those people that tell the negative stories about tent cities, etc. They have a conservative view of the world where the facts don't match reality. They often have an agenda that doesn't align with the needs of the common good. Thanks for the response.
@@thatissomeBSPerhaps, but it doesn't help that Portland's "tolerant" residents don't have a problem ki11ing anyone who mildly disagrees with them, as we saw in 2020 with the first degree murd^r of a Trump supporter downtown. You don't see that in Iowa.
I graduated from PSU almost 20 years ago, and LOVED Portland! Went back this Summer for the first time since. Was super scared to see what it has become based on what people have been saying. Was extremely PLEASED to discover that it was as pleasant and beautiful as ever!
I took a trip to Seattle earlier this year and took the Cascades down to Portland for a day trip. The difference between the two cities was night and day. Seattle felt so much more alive and inviting compared to Portland. Portland feels like a city strictly for Portlanders, which I understand is a dying breed. It didn't help that the train back to Seattle lacked air conditioning. A HSR link between Portland and Seattle (or at least hourly trains) would help reinvigorate the city.
I'm a Portlander currently on a trip to Seattle, and I think maybe I'm just not in an ideal part of town, but I've been experiencing the exact opposite this week. It's pretty dangerous to walk from my hotel to anywhere else, mostly for road infrastructure reasons (everything is far apart and the crossings are harrowing). I hardly see anyone on foot here, and there isn't much to do. Maybe if I was staying in a less-industrial area I'd have a different take. I probably would! But claims like "Portlander is a dying breed" baffle me - housing is expensive as shit because the demand keeps ramping up. The Portland I know is very vibrantly alive, where there's always something exciting and unique a block away at most. There's also a strong community element, personally - I've met most of the amazing people who are currently vital to my life because I moved to a national LGBTQ hotspot, and it's really hard to imagine voluntarily living somewhere else. All that said, I strongly agree about HSR. The Cascades train experience is just not great, and at these distances, there's no reason/excuse not to have rail travel times that are faster than flying (when counting airport security). Current rail travel is wildly overpriced for how slow and janky it is. Portland/Seattle cross-pollination is a very good thing, and could be cheap, fast and convenient!
We won't see high speed rail on the West Coast because the Amtrak trains run on the same tracks that freight rail does. Freight gets priority, so the passenger trains are delayed. Build separate rails? That won't happen. Oregon and Washington can't even agree on how to replace the VERY old Interstate Bridge on I-5 (and they've been arguing since 2005.) Maybe some rich billionaire should take a sudden interest in high-speed passenger rail.
@@MaddieM4I'm going to guess you're in SeaTac? The whole city is just stroads that sprung up once the airport was built, so it's pretty miserable on foot.
@@oregonsenior4204 that doesn't really make sense. Even if Amtrak operated on it's own right of way, new tracks would still have to be constructed in order to accommodate the softer turns required for HSR. Given Seattle and Vancouver's reputations as major tech hubs, I could totally see private investment play a role in funding such a project.
Thank you for this video! I have been feeling like Portland City Council's priorities has been absolutely bonkers lately. Like in a time where pedestrians and cyclists are dying at a record rate, ripping out a protected bike lane? We have a lot of problems for sure, but Council has really focused on policy responses that just respond to business owner wants and don't meaningfully address the real problems. Like downtown is struggling because our policies assumes that downtown would be the place people commute to go to work. Now we need to rethink what downtown is for, and it could be great! But not with the current Council's priorities.
From my hometown (Miami) to my home base (Portland) thank you for these city visits! I wondered if you would have made this video recently enough to touch on the current PBOT scandal and you did! It’s a shame we’ve fallen off in a lot of ways as an aspirational public transport city, but I’m happy to find out you’ve worked on some of the cities projects in the past. More Portland videos!
You are right about the Cascade…so frustrating that it doesn’t have assigned seats. One time my husband went to the dining car and I had to guard his seat with my life. People were getting mad at me saying I was lying and just trying to have 2 seats for myself. I ended up joining him in the dining car and we just stayed there the whole time. Much more pleasant and nicer people. The Coast Starlight is a dream (with assigned seats and super comfortable seats), but always delayed since its route is so long.
From an urban planning point of view, Portland has one of the best downtowns in America for all the reasons you mentioned. The next mayor / new form of government has the unique chance to really tackle the unhoused homeless / drug problem. If overall "safety" returns as the public perception of Downtown Portland, it will revive quickly because of its excellent urban planning, architechture and light rail. It's really that simple and every resident should be pushing for an end to the era of "compassion" and usher in a new era of "tough love". Investors who buy at the current discounts and can afford to hold for 10 years, will likely make a fortune.
Really enjoyed this video. I live in inner SE and am a grad student at PSU. My son goes to daycare on campus and we commute downtown every day. It's definitely quiet downtown, but over the summer it was often bustling, especially when the market was open on the park blocks. PSU has a new president and I think there are plans to continue to transition more classes back to in-person from online with the hopes that getting more people on campus will help downtown's revival.
While Powell's is completely awesome for sure, I will have to nominate another bookstore as the best in the country even though nobody has heard of it outside of my hometown of Jacksonville, FL. It's Chamblin Book Mine which has over 2,000,000 used books in an old warehouse. You can spend all day there. But there's no coffee shop.
This video is an example of my favorite format: Our boy gets dropped into a city, observes things, thinks about those things, and delivers slightly-longer-than-usual analysis. I like all this channel’s content but these vids are always especially good.
Thank you so much for talking about Portland, especially what is happening with the Broadway bike lane, which btw is only the southbound portion of the north/south couplet. The northbound half on 4th Ave hasn't even been built yet. I have been subscribed to your channel for awhile now, back when you used to talk about Portland more often than briefly on a top ten list, I hope you make many more videos about our city because it offers a lot of untapped knowledge and wisdom for folks that care about urban planning.
I just moved to (NW) Portland at the beginning of the year. The new Broadway bikelane has helped me so much as someone who is new biking and the city. Thank you and those who helped in that project!
as a portlander, reading this comment section is cursed: "BLM riots killed portland", "it's the worst city in the country", "it's the second rust belt", "fentanyl ate my baby" kind of nonsense. i'll never understand why people have a such a strong need to hate the city or make up stories to justify their feelings as if they were objective fact.
We attracted the right wing eye of sauron in 2020 with the sustained protests and we are now like an avatar for a liberal city. Reality doesn't matter with those type of folks they could visit and all they would do is take videos of homeless folks and leave because their narrative is more important than anything else.
I don't need to make up a story. I was accosted by a girl with a knife in front of Nordstrom on Broadway for money. I had worked late and was on my way to take the Woodstock bus route to my apartment on Milwaukie Ave. I was so tired and found this unacceptable. No longer live in Portland Metro.
@@bonniegirl5138 that shit's always happened though. we could trade stories all day and most of mine happened decades ago, as in pre-covid, pre-fent, and pre-BLM. you can call out the city's rough edges all day, but it's dishonest to pretend it's new or unprecedented
I didn’t realize there was so much well thought out engineering in the downtown grid and transit mall. Would definitely be interested in learning more about that.
Thanks Ray. Please continue to visit more cities and make a video about it. This is a good series! I like that when you visited Minneapolis/St Paul too
W/regards to the one way streets: I agree with all your points, BUT, want to add that I think the width of the streets is important too. As a Philadelphian (who’s driven in Portland) it felt odd driving down streets that wide and one way, and it felt way too easy to speed
One of the only times I've genuinely appreciated clickbait! 😂 Any time I've visited my more conservative family members since 2020ish, they've asked me about Portland as if it's a crumbling, harrowing warzone. They don't seem to like my answer that I'm having a lovely time living here! 😂 And one of my favorite things is how easy & (relatively) safe it is for me to walk or bike to pretty much everywhere I need to go. So I really appreciated your insights about all the planning that goes into that! (And the negative impact some people/groups are unfortunately having on it 🙃)
Great video!! Potential video topic - have you ever looked into the similarities between large, typically walkable cities and the surrounding areas? For example, San Francisco proper has some great urbanism but it feels like once you step outside of that it's immediately back to car-infested suburbia (San Jose and the like)
I've found that some parts of the Bay area are like that, but others places are quite urbanist, such as Oakland and Berkeley. But yeah, south of SF it gets pretty car-centric.
@@mushroomsteve Yeah it's definitely a mixed bag, when I went up there a couple of months ago I just figured that everywhere in the area would be like SF and was surprised to find that some areas are just one 4-lane stroad after another. I've heard good things about those cities as well as Emeryville though, I'll have to check them out next time I have a chance
Ha this is awesome! You featured so many pieces of my daily commute! I cross the Hawthorne to go up the Broadway bike lane to ride up to OHSU. I started doing this after the pandemic made the OHSU tram feel too claustrophobic, which means I’ve stopped using the Tilikum to get to the Go By Bike valet. I started bike commuting in Boston before moving here and was initially so impressed - but riding every day for 6 years in Portland has led me to notice so many of the critiques you’ve mentioned here. Just yesterday I had the delicious opportunity to yell at a driver for almost hitting me by turning right on red.
My neighborhood in Brooklyn is mostly one-way streets... it's definitely much safer and efficient than 2-way streets based on my experience, especially if you're biking or driving and need to know where traffic is coming from while crossing an intersection. The idea that a "trend" could possibly consist of changing these nice 1 -way streets into 2-way streets is disturbing, wasteful and stupid.
Thankfully pbot backed down from removing the Broadway bike line. Still not a good sign that there were some pushing to remove infrastructure in the face of upcoming budget cuts.
I live in Troutdale at the mouth of the Gorge, past Gresham on the east side. I’ve noticed that traffic is way better since the pandemic. I-84 and the Sunset Highway were unusable from about 2 to 7 PM before Covid and now, I can get across town from my mom’s house in Beaverton with only a small amount of stop and go on the bridge and merging onto 84. Often, there’s barely any slowdown at all. It’s definitely a positive result of work from home taking significant numbers of cars off the highways.
Poor Portland....I visited last year for the first time and I saw a city with so much potential. Downtown restaurants closed by 3:00 pm😮 and there was a complete lack of vibrancy.... I'd love to see a recovering city on my next visit. In particular, I loved how the rail system just casually ran through neighborhoods with so much casual access.
I always say that Portland reminds me of where I live, Seattle, but if no one seemed to have a job. Every time I visit the city seems extremely quiet and empty. Even all of your shots don't seem to show many people on the street for a "big city." After visiting a couple of times when I first moved to the PNW, I pretty much got my fill. Hawthorne Street is fun.
Downtown has changed a lot. Although much cleaner than a couple years ago it's pretty dead now since the office workers and many businesses left. I lived in Portland during the heyday of the 90s and 00s. It was beautiful and vibrant. Downtown was hopping. I moved to Seattle in 2019. The two cities have some similarities culturally and geographically but are two very different animals otherwise. The offshoot neighborhoods in SE, N, and NE again feel vibrant though, much improved over a couple years ago.
I agree and I’d say Seattle feels definitely more cosmopolitan and diverse than Portland. Although for the PNW, I’d give Vancouver the top spot, just in my opinion.
downtown is certainly more quiet than it used to be on the weekdays. but it's always been quiet. the downtown core is mostly office space and government buildings, so i don't know what else people are expecting? if you want nightlife you have to get out of downtown that said, weekends in downtown still seem pretty active. people still go to soccer games, the saturday market, just out shopping or to events in general
This video leaves me with a bittersweet taste in my mouth. I visited Portland earlier this year and fell in love with the city. I planned on moving there at the end of September, but my employer told me I'd be taking at huge pay cut due to the lower CoL. I still get irrationally angry whenever I see articles talking about how Portland is a "lifeless hellhole". Even in it's "recessed" state, Portland is a really cool city with so much character. I don't know of any other PNW city that can compare. Seattle has elements of it, but feels so much more vanilla and corporate by comparison (sorry Seattleites). Super frustrating to see PBOT backpedaling on their commitments to building a complete bike network.
Where would you be moving from that has a lower COL? I love Portland and still have family there but I had to leave because I couldn't afford housing, even working two jobs. I'm approaching retirement age and was afraid the drop in income after retirement would leave me on the streets.
😆 19:43 This is so spot on: "...the watchful eye of complete strangers and imagining they're judging me rather than completely ignoring me, which is much more likely... well, it really helps keep me on task...."
If businesses want people to come back to downtown, they need to start charging less. People can't afford all the huge price hikes that came around after the pandemic and with all the other price increases that wildly outpaced incomes in the last couple years, work from home is the only financially feasible move.
Shocked to see how few pedestrians and bikers are on the streets you filmed - unless it was filmed at 10am on a weekday. Looks like a beautifully designed ghost town compared to even mid sized midwestern downtowns.
The major problem is the lack of punishment and the concerning numbers of drug addicts and homeless walking around like zombies. There was always some problem with them, but it really just skyrocketed in 2020 when our courts just decided to stop punishing many crimes period. Combine that with a shocking spike in retail theft and it's not surprising that many stores have left the downtown. No stores, all the homeless and drug addicts, means that people don't want to bike or ride public transportation. There are nice parts don't get me wrong, but the refusal to take off the shades and acknowledge the problems because we might agree with a fellow American who watches a different news channel than we do is detrimental to this city's future potential. Have a nice one 👍
That’s because portland is currently terrifying to walk downtown and take the Max. This is from someone who moved to Portland in2006 primarily because of the progressive transit-this used to be an amazing place. People don’t avoid downtown because there aren’t full office buildings -they don’t go downtown because drug addicts stoned out of their mind very possibly will attack you out of the blue. Or try to eat your face. (I’m not kidding, just actually happened.)
@@StorytellingHeadshots Bingo!!! I live across the river in Washington and use to frequently visit Portland. Not any more. With the crime, drug, and homeless problem, Portland is a dump......
It really does depend on the time of day and whether it's a weekday or weekend. Since downtown has about 20% vacancy rate in the office buildings, you don't see nearly as many people downtown on weekdays anymore. Don't listen to these neurotic fear-mongers who responded with apocalyptic descriptions. I take MAX and walk downtown all the time and have never had a problem. The homeless mess was worse two years ago, but there's a serious drug problem again in the city. It's a complicated situation that the city will hopefully be able to fix. But every time they try something the Courts tell the city they can't do it. It's frustrating. The city is not a dump. Downtown is pleasant to walk around and I feel safe. It seems the paranoid and right-wing extremists love to bash the city and spread anti-Portland propaganda. Ignore them--they're idiots. The crime and drugs were much worse back in the 70s and early 80s.
I moved to Portland a little less than a decade ago, and it is true that the city is being left behind compared to other cities when it comes to urbanism, but it's still pretty good for U.S. standards. Most people here blame the Californians who moved here bringing with them their car culture and money (the latter increasing the cost of living and income inequality which is a huge reason why homelessness and drug abuse has risen). I have been living carless in Portland without any significant issues, but yeah drivers keep getting more and more scary for cyclists and pedestrians, and it's a shame that nothing is being done about them. And yes, as someone else mentioned, 15 minutes between trains is too long. It certainly needs to go down to 10 minutes, but apparently there is a lack of drivers (although driverless trains could fix that).
As a former Californian/current Portlander, I also blame Californians for both the increased housing costs and more dangerous driving conditions. I thought I had finally left all that behind when my wife and I moved. Real Portlanders are calm, considerate drivers who read signs and aren't in a big rush. Unfortunately, many transplants from California (and commuters from Washington) are bringing their impatient, aggressive driving into our beautiful city and making the roads less friendly (though still not nearly as bad as the the roads of Sacramento or Los Angeles).
@@grahamturner2640 Yes, driverless trains work amazingly well on the Vancouver BC Skytrain (with completely reliable 7 minute headways!). But that is a completely grade separated train system (it's 100% elevated or in a tunnel).
@@joshuaoehler5796 Also moved here a year ago from L.A., and the deterioration of traffic mores there (to almost non-existent) was, no exaggeration, a large motivating factor for the move. So I'm with you in both an appreciation of the less frantic mode of driving in Portland AND in decrying those who move here from California and don't adapt to this mode (and it *does* require conscious deprogramming, I'm still expecting people to jump in front of me at the last minute without signalling, cut across lanes, etc., and am amazed when they actually - for the most part - abide by traffic rules).
So interesting that you are now in Albuquerque and lived and worked in planning in Portland. I took the opposite path--lived in ABQ from 94-97 (moving from the Bay Area) and then moving to Portland in January 1998 to November 2000 to attend the MURP program at Portland State. Living in ABQ, I was horrified to ride my bike in the city at that time. Motorists were truly hostile! It appears that the bike infrastructure has changed in ABQ enormously in the last 25-30 years, and the city has doubled in size (likely with outsiders that are more used to cyclists?). I was so relieved to move to Portland after ABQ! Portland was a breath of fresh air as I could take transit everywhere and loved the downtown grid/walkability. I did work downtown in retail at the beginning and downtown PDX was ALWAYS dead in the evening. At any rate, it just goes to show that cities can and do change--it appears that ABQ is a more livable city in terms of bike and ped infrastructure and Portland has gotten a bit less livable. My memories of Portland will always be good as moving there saved me from the huge depression of living in ABQ, which at that time was not a very planning-friendly city.
I visited Portland once in May 2016. I loved the walkability and MAX Rail. However, it seemed that drivers were easily annoyed at pedestrians, even ones who cross intersections in a timely manner. People in bars thought any kind of complaining is witty. Several people talked about their love lives openly on the light rail. Finally, I notice many lone, sad-looking, bearded guys around town. I had enough positive experiences that inspire me to visit Portland again. Before my visit, I pondered relocating to Portland. Now I feel I would just morph into one of those aforementioned bearded, emo guys.
I’m in SW Portland and it feels pretty bad to travel. Getting to the main city takes 25 min by car or an hour by public transit and you don’t see a lot of people just hanging out around town. Everything is just too spread out
Thanks for sharing our amazing and beautiful city. I live in the burbs now but I love that the city is coming back after a rough couple of years. I’d never live anywhere else.
The unhinged rhetoric about portland, in some cases fudned and driven by business interests is so frustrating. It's making it harder to actually work on our real challenges when we have to fend off bullshit.
have you done a video that specifically focuses on slip lanes? if not, do you have any plans of doing one in the future? I grew up in Vancouver where slip lanes are virtually nonexistent, but now I live in a city that can't get enough of them. every time I have to drive through one I'm reminded that I hate them for a variety of reasons, especially within the city boundaries
What you said about angry business owners is absolutely correct. They're the only force worse than NIMBYs as they can undo positive change instead of just preventing it.
I can't imagine how a guy whose whole election pitch was "I'm a disgruntled former employee of the current commissioner so vote me instead of Chloe" could possibly turn out to be a terrible politician.
The whole council is a dumpster fire and they keep coming up with shitty ideas that are massively unpopular and in some cases are directly at odds with the will of the voters like what Mapps and Gonzalez where trying to do to the already voter approved charter reform. Near as I can tell all that's happened is that they keep having to back pedal when they face massive pushback. It's scary to think what might have happened to that bike lane without Bike Portland's coverage.
I'm from St Louis and moved to Portland a year ago and Portland is miles better in terms of being able to exist outside a car. I never visited pre pandemic so I don't know what it was like before to compare it to.
Another great video. Like many cities Portland's downtown is struggling in the post-covid WFH era despite doing most things (not everything) right. I was wondering if you had any takes on the future of urban planning in a world where downtowns aren't the centers of activity they used to be and if the situation could potentially be reversed
Great review. Portland is my city, and I think you're right on. We have some serious problems in city hall right now, but I don't think they'll last. I love this city.
What's striking about Portland is how outside Central Portland there's no massive TOD cluster to speak of. Instead, you just have a bunch of 5-over-1s, built 400 units at a time, sprinkled all over the MAX system. These mini-TODs are tiny, isolated islands in seas of sprawl. They aren't integrated into large, self-sustaining TOD megaprojects where residents can live, work, and shop in the same neighborhood. So people in these TODs take the MAX only to commute to Downtown--and drive to go anywhere else. By contrast, in San Diego, there's plenty of TOD beyond Central San Diego, including Mission Valley, which is building TOD megaprojects like SDSU Mission Valley, with over 4,000 units and plenty of offices/retail mixed in. Similarly, Greater Seattle has Downtown Bellevue, and Atlanta's MARTA has Buckhead. Having these secondary satellite TOD clusters strongly anchors your rail lines from end-to-end with consistent, all-day demand, forcing transit agencies to increase off-peak frequency.
Visited Portland last spring. Yes, there was more homelessness and graffiti than there used to be a dozen years ago when I last lived there. No, I didn’t feel unsafe. No, it is not the burnt-out husk of a former urban war zone like so many on the Right seem to think. Regarding the homelessness, the main problem is housing affordability. Homelessness has shot up in tandem with housing costs. And the main cause of housing costs going up is a shortage of housing; costs have gone up in tandem with how population has increased faster than the rate of housing construction. It’s all very Econ 101.
I’m sure it has nothing to do with substance abuse, the ability to commit crimes at will, and mental health. Those damn Righties! When will they get it right!
Here's like 1.33 USD to appreciate that you respected the privacy of distressed people but were content to show the licence plates of people driving in the bike lane👍
I'm curious what people's bike commutes are. I've recently started biking to work (downtown Minneapolis) and even though it's all dedicated bike trails and lanes, it's about a 40 minutes door to door.
Thanks for posting this video on Portland's urban design. Very insightful. I grew up in the portland metro area and commuted between the suburbs for work. I rarely drove in downtown as a result except for the rare weekend outing. I found the colored lane system really confusing due to unfamiliarity. For example, I would find myself accidentally driving in the bus or bike lane and receive understandably negative responses from the public. I like these approaches but I think drivers not being exposed to them in other parts of the region are reducing their effectiveness. A political problem in itself but my hope and wish for rail expansion into vancouver area would be very nice. The bottleneck that is the i-5 and 205 bridge between the two cities will continue to inhibit growth in the region..
I went to college just outside PDX, and I didn't have a car at the time, but I was still able to get around relatively well. Now I live in a car dependent area with little to no public transit. I know PDX isn't that same as it was 10 years ago, but I can't help but miss it for that reason.
It's only got better on the transit front since then. My main complaint is that frequency is still at like 15min in alot of cases but there's been an entire transit only bridge, a whole new max line, and a new Bus rapid transit line added since then.
I think the one way vs two way debate depends on the width of the street. There's a few streets in downtown Pittsburgh that are one way streets with contraflow bike lanes. I think the more narrow streets can benefit from being one way, especially if you can accommodate multi-modal options as well. But some other instances where I think two way traffic is better would be the two way conversion they did around Allegheny Center in the North Side and the current conversion they're doing in East Liberty. Both of those roads were wide, urban renewal era projects that were one way, multi-lane ring roads around shopping the city was trying to get people to go to back when people were fleeing to the suburbs. They've been, or are in the process of being, converted to two way vehicle traffic with protected bike lanes (even the intersections have protection!) which I think slows people down more than having multiple wide lanes to travel down.
Thanks for covering Portland. I have to say that I never have a reason to go to those center city neighborhoods. I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on light rail generating development. I could really use a grocery store next to the Orange line. Cheers.
Wow seeing the updates to Burnside Bridge is amazing. I used to walk the bridge every day from the Max stop to eastside for work. The walking space on both sides was so narrow and there was no buffer between car lanes and the slightly elevated path. The Max in general was an amazing way to get in and out of the city to surrounding areas, but that Burnside Max stop and the walk across the bridge were not pleasant experiences.
In that last clip where the cars are using the bike lane as a right turn lane, just put in poles to keep the cars out. Sure, the cars could still illegally use the bus lane to turn right, but at least some drivers would be less likely to turn into a red lane than a green lane. Update: I wonder if busses would need that space to turn right. That may be the reason why there are no poles separating lanes there.
It's possible that drivers aren't aware of the law. Perhaps painting a No Cars (with the red line over a car) sign on the bike lane would communicate the message more effectively.
@@julietardos5044There is a sign that says no turn on red. The cars are driving in the bike lane to turn red against the light. They just don’t care. They don’t look and they don’t care. It’s especially dangerous when they make a right on red from the car lane because there is a bike signal there that turns green before the cars to give the bikes a head start.
Visited Portland in February as part of my cross country train tour, so quite a lot of snow on the ground. Getting around was easy on Public Transport was fine though like in LA a lot of people use it as a way to keep warm. Downtown at night was deserted when I walked the the delightful Hubers Cafe. The inner neighbourhoods were great, especially North West area west of Nob Hill and Washington Park. Everything I ate in Portland was delicious, especially the food carts and sandwich shops. I would love to visit in the summer when the outdoor scene would be in full swing.
At 15:00 Why not just simply put a little flower bed between the bus lane and the cycle path so that car's can't cross over without damaging their vehicle? Or just install a camera and send hefty fines to everyone using this as a shortcut if it is not allowed?
![Where Should You Live in Portland Oregon? [Every Portland Neighborhood Explained]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4EJA3rOFZLI/mqdefault.jpg)
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You should do a video on the major cities in florida, since they are all very similar, and tragic.
Cover how Madsion Wisconsin is expanding, mainly taking over Middleton the bike paths that were made in 1990 with one of the biggest sets of bike paths at 26--30 miles of it and the whole structure of the city parts of can't be helped due to the two lakes. However, biggest flaw is houses are impossible to buy unless you are a Millionaire right now as they are 1/2 million right now. Madison Wisconsin is one of the fastest growing cities in the USA right now.
no
Real talk: NordVPN is not a good company to be in league with. VPN's themselves are not bad, but NordVPN's exploitation of influencer marketing in order to scale their shady high-margin business away from the watchful eye of regulatory regimes (and public scrutiny) is, bluntly, dangerous, and you of all people should know better. Of course, it will take more than this to send me running from this channel, but this actually does lower your credibility in my eyes.
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My name is Xavier, I’m a student of planning at PSU and a huge fan of yours. I was the one who advocated that the Oak Street slip lane across from Powell’s be closed and turned into Pod Plaza.
One of the best feelings I’ve ever felt is seeing those benches in Pod Plaza in one of your videos. I cannot understate how accomplished I feel in this moment. Thank you, CityNerd.
It’s been a tough week with the Broadway Scandal, but this has made me feel so much better. Keep up the good work!!
I haven't been down there yet since that happened but thanks for pushing for that. As the current Broadway bike lane scandal shows, even if the council is currently captured by business interests and the police we can still see positive change as long as we remain vigilant and advocate strongly for it. We need more folks paying attention and working to make things better.
Haha, for real? That slip lane was always so dumb -- there are all kinds of interesting spots in PDX that can be converted to little plazas.
I saw and loved that last time I hit up Powell's! Much better use of space-glad to see spaces, even small, where advocacy works. Great job!
@@CityNerdChill guys. At least North American city planning is better than Indian city planning. If you North Americans visit India, your cities will seem like paradise and you will be thankful for it.
Props for pushing against slip lanes. As someone who drives a lot (and I do genuinely like driving from a dynamics standpoint in the middle of where, definitely not in traffic though), I even have started to dislike slip lanes from the driver perspective. Fully acknowledging the biggest reason to get rid of them is pedestrian safety, but even without anyone almost ever on the sidewalks (which is the norm in Metro Atlanta) they just really mess with driver psychology such that it's somewhere you can easily have another driver run into you just because you slowed down in order to check for the traffic you're about to rapidly merge into, let alone fully stop because someone is using the crosswalk. Since stopping is not normal and crosswalk use is not normal it makes the stops that do happen both more sudden and less anticipated.
I live in downtown and take the MAX and bike to work. It is rough, consistently late (or trains don't come), 15 minutes is "frequent" service and there are people screaming and smoking fent on the MAX probably 3 days a week and rent keeps going up :(. Portland is beautiful and the public transportation is SO close to being awesome but it feels like public transportation has been given the backseat in the last decade. I can't believe you helped with the FX line!! That line is a lifesaver when the green line train doesn't show up in the morning. I'm a civil engineering major and want to work on projects that improve urban life, thanks for this channel!
I’m a student in civil too, I was just there for the ITE conference, wonder if we crossed paths :) I loved a lot of things about Portland, the bones and emphasis on biking are great and transit has great coverage, but yeah I saw a lot of those problems you talked about and wish Portland could figure out the housing thing. Really a great place.
It's always a trip yelling at the people trying to smoke tinfoil next to you to stop and they respond 'fuck you' and then move to another part of the train.
I take the yellow and orange every day. Are there people doing drugs? Yes. Do they virtually always keep to themselves? Also yes. And while occasionally a train is late, it's definitely not the norm.
@@joshogden3105 Portland has free housing options, but they come with don't do fent rules, so they sit underused.
@@clayton97330, so a couple of things: most homeless people don't have addictions so not being able to smoke isn't a primary reason. Many do, but they're the minority. A lot are just poor because they encountered bad luck in life and maybe had some executive functioning deficit that made it harder to recover when super stressed (see: poor). ALSO, free housing (shelters) comes with pretty miserable conditions. You're forced out the door early in the morning and can't return until the evening (supposed to be an incentive to get a job I guess?), there's very little security so your stuff gets stolen (sometimes by staff) or privacy (often just rows and rows of bunks), the sleeping conditions are often not great (noise from others, lights left on, bed bug infestations, etc.). You also are usually separated from any pets you had adopted on the streets or had previously and any relationships you had, which is another deal breaker for folks.
I used to work with the population trying to get out of shelters into somewhere more permanent. Honestly, I don't blame folks at all for choosing a tent in cities like Portland/Seattle where you're unlikely to die of exposure for opting to camp over taking a shelter bed. Acceptance is much higher if you offer them a spot in a tiny home community where they can feel more human and less like they're being warehoused.
Portland's downtown is like if Vancouver's west end and Seattle's Pioneer Square districts combined: good pedestrian access, and *trees actually shading the streets for the whole downtown*
And its bike lanes and food trucks are better, on top of this
And at least from what I can tell from the video, a bit dead like Vancouver's west end too. Never been to Portland but it looks like it might take a while for a lot of the foot traffic and businesses to come back after covid like it has in some parts of Vancouver.
Portland’s only problem are the junkies. Too many and out of control, they need help.
@@The4905 Vancouver is getting there as well.
@@nicktankard1244Vancouver has a long way to go then. lmao
I'm a fan of one-way streets. Much easier to cross by foot or bike and can allow you to get rid of a car lane for sidewalks, cycle lanes, or transit
Yes I feel sooo much safer cycling downtown simply due to the one-way streets. If someone is going to run a red light, there is only 1 direction they could come from
I'd be a fan, if there were only 1 lane for car travel, but even then, I have seen a lane shared by both directions. A car would need to pull out of traffic to let the other pass. It teaches drivers to be respectful, and slows cars down.
I'm a fan of one-way streets only if they're fairly narrow. These look great but where I live 4 lane one-ways are a norm 😅
Oh that's terrible!@@waffluru
One ways are pretty great if your city does something with them like traffic calming, bike lanes, bus lanes, parking and doesn't have a one way grid from a time long ago when they believed they really needed a grid of 3-4 lane one way urban highways that are now empty and encourage people to do 40 through the densest part of the city.
i live in portland and used to be a strictly public transit commuter. even before the pandemic, when the homeless population went from “kinda bad” to “apocalyptic”, public transit here was a gamble. buses and max trains pretty regularly just never came, with no explanation, and there was always at least one person experiencing drug-induced psychosis on any given max train (that did bother to show up). but i felt like it was manageable and the convenience outweighed the danger. now it’s just a freaking nightmare, there’s always someone screaming, and someone tranqed out, and someone who looks like he’s seconds from attacking everyone near him. i don’t know what anybody can do about this, but whatever it is, it’s not being done.
I do find it frustrating when people pretend the homelessness/fully legalized and omnipresent public drug use is a right wing talking point. it is not and it fully ruins the experience of living in Portland. In Southeast Portland I have to cross the street or step into traffic to avoid tent encampments, take special care at all times to make sure my dog doesn't step onto used fentanyl aluminum foil, and so on. I used to walk home through Laurelhurst Park at night but it no longer feels safe to do so, with screaming drug addled people roaming through it. Then when I go into work downtown, I deal with the awful commute and uncertainty of whether I'll be screamed at or attacked (only been attacked a few times, but felt like I was about to be many times) while walking to my office. Portland is dead because it always had kind of a low level of cultural opportunities given its size to begin with, and since the pandemic there isn't really anything to do at all and going anywhere is just frustrating or scary.
@@resaunders26incompetent soft politicians voted in by soft headed people
Ray the problem is that there are not enough people LIVING in the downtown area. You can’t rely on people just coming downtown to work for the lifeblood of city and patronizing the businesses.
Portland saw a boom to the north (Pearl District) and to the south (South Waterfront) over the last 20, 30 years. DT itself didn't catch a whole lot of the residential development. So hopefully we can get the ball rolling on that now.
they're living there, just mostly out of tents
It's always been prohibitively expensive for most Portlanders to live downtown.
I grew up in a SE Portland suburb and always wanted to live downtown when I was younger.
However, I ended buying a house in Vancouver.
Pretty much the only time I go to downtown Portland now is just to drive through out of morbid curiosity on my way to somewhere else.
@@PNWJEEPER01 Just saw a movie at living room theaters, went to sushi at an awesome place nearby. Plenty to do downtown still! Just a lil quieter than normal. But yeah we need residential growth to really create a healthy neighborhood. Then services will follow. Then more people will work downtown, and a positive cycle hopefully starts again.
Especially if you make it unfriendly to people who had to use cars to get there
Portlander here. I LOVE my city. Its current state absolutely breaks my heart. When family from overseas visits, I feel embarrassed by the city because of its lack of cleanliness, safety and homeless population overflow. The problem with Portland can be summed up in two words, Ted Wheeler. The reason Portland has a homelessness problem is because of a total lack of good policy from Mayor Wheeler’s office. He created the problem (lookup springwater corridor) and then withdrew provisions promised to this community forcing them onto the streets in downtown. Good policy matters and that is all it would take to redeem this beloved city.
We need better policy that not only moves homeless people off city streets, but into affordable housing with healthcare that addresses what may be the root cause for their circumstances. Becoming homeless in the US is incredibly easy. Half of all bankruptcies in the US result of medical bills. So many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck with no safety net.
Unfortunately the homeless problem is a major contributor to the decline in safety and cleanliness of the city. Housing, healthcare and food should be basic human rights. If they were in PDX, you wouldn’t see people shooting up drugs, getting high or passing out. You wouldn’t see someone drop their pants and take a dump on a sidewalk. The streets wouldn’t smell of public urination. On a typical day in PDX, it is now normal to see someone shooting up on the sidewalk 4-5 times/day throughout the city.
I do not feel safe walking through Portland, especially by myself and never at night. The safety issue is a direct result of the lack of support to the homeless population. I am not saying that homeless people are innately unsafe. I am saying that many of them are unsafe to themselves and others due to lack of mental health support and/or addiction. Many people who struggle with mental health or addiction do irrational, desperate and violent things. As the homeless population grows in PDX, so does crime and unfortunately no policy has effectively addressed that in a way that supports the dignity and safety of everyone involved.
Crime has risen to such a overwhelming degree that many businesses in PDX have closed. These include: REI, Nike, Target, Walmart and Starbucks. Many other smaller retailers closed before now because they couldn’t afford to keep replacing windows and merchandise after repeated break-ins. A lack of policy has left businesses responsible for the safety of their staff and customers. This is why you will frequently see private security guards at places like Voodoo Doughnuts, Powells and Patagonia.
Portland has my heart and I’m still rooting for her. I guess it helps that I remember a time when PDX was safe, clean and a proud place to call home. The responsibility now rests with Mayor Wheeler and Governor Kotek’s offices to write and implement legislation that restores PDX to all her glory for all her constituents.
Yours is probably the best and most concise summation of the Portland Problem. It's sad and frustrating that City Nerd and the commenters tiptoe around the real problems here: a felt lack of security along with a sense of tawdriness from open-air drug use, criminality, and homelessness. Since Portland is uber-woke, no mention must be shall to these problems because.....er......we win!!
To be sure, victimology never goes out of style on the political ramparts, so Portland makes a virtue out of its deterioration. The net result is that nothing really changes because the usual suspects (see: social justice warriors) will scream bloody murder is some marginalized "victim" is afflicted by laws they choose not to obey. Anarchy is its own reward on the left for some reason but I'm here to say it doesn't and never has worked anywhere.
I have no doubt that Wheeler sucks, but I can say he isn’t the mayor of Seattle, San Francisco, Spokane, Tacoma, etc etc. Every major city is dealing with similar problems. This housing shortage is a national problem that demands a federal response. Unfortunately, Congress is completely stymied and I just don’t see a realistic chance of it coming through with the many billions it would take to fully address the problem. And I don’t even want to imagine what happens if TFG wins this election.
The biggest issue with that right turn situation is that unless you put physical barriers up, people will do exactly what you saw. Worse yet, a lot of people driving just "follow the leader", so will just follow the car in front without really thinking critically about what is going on or what the road is telling them to do.
Perhaps the answer is actually physical barriers between the right turn lane and the bus lane.
could do a Dutch style bicycle junction too
Watching people misuse the dedicated bike lane as a quick right-turn lane is like watching that Tom Scott video where he discussed a rural UK intersection infamous for cyclist deaths, and seeing a dozen cars drive through its clearly marked STOP sign during the video itself.
...Keeping in mind, the lesser branch of an intersection in Europe defaults to Yield, not Stop (as it is in the US).
I take that right turn frequently so I'm used to it by now, but I think a good number of drivers who go into the bike lane are simply doing so because they don't realize it's changed. It was a visually confusing setup before and is now even more visually confusing/counterintuitive to turn right from a spot that is two lanes to the left. That said, the new system is a lot better and I like that I don't have to worry about wiping out bikes as I cross into the turn lane. I just think (and hope) most people are doing it wrong out of confusion rather than selfishness, as the change is still quite new.
I think the issue is it used to be a turn lane and people don't want to drive around the block just to turn right.
@@diderooy You can still turn right there. There's a turn lane with a dedicated signal
The issue with Portland public transportation is that whether it’s functional for you is highly dependent on where you live, and if you live somewhere affordable public transit probably doesn’t serve you. I have never lived anywhere in this city where driving to work isn’t literally 3 times faster. Right now google maps says this: driving is 21 minutes, bike is 57 minutes, public transit is 58 minutes.
I have a nearly perfect public transit commute: I live less than a block from MAX and work downtown less than a block from MAX - direct on the same line. It's still twice as long to go by train, but it's a much nicer and cheaper journey.
Even with the reeking transients lugging trash bags leaking mystery liquid, I still prefer to ride MAX.
So true. Back when I lived in an apartment building in Goose Hollow & worked in Central Eastside, I took public transit everywhere I went and never really struggled with it. But now I live in a SE neighborhood and I don't think I've ever had a good use case for public transit. (Luckily, I usually at least walk or bike instead, though... but that's not the case in all neighborhoods.)
Yeap. I've lived here for 20%+ years and fully agree. This is really easy to solve though, the city needs express buses. I've gone to a few larger cities and they ALL have express buses that run along the same routes as the locals... just less often and less stops. (Sometimes they will say, only do drop offs for the first half of the route or not even stop at all for the first 1/2. Or they will only service 1/2 of the stops on the route etc etc etc.)
I've NEVER understood why Portland doesn't have more express buses. There is or used to be the one on Hawthorne that didn't stop until 39thI think. But that by and large is it.. and it's stupid.
Then we got the FX bus on Division which is great but they cut out 1/2 the stops.
And they are talking about doing the same on 82nd with the #72 and it's such a horrible idea. They just need to start an express bus serving 1/2 the stops going every 30 mins or so and leave the #72 as a local.
I'm lucky that I'm a 12 min walk to the max and from there it's super easy to transfer to whatever. But yah, it can take 50 mins to say get from Gateway to SE Hawthone and 39th. It would make so much more sense to have an express bus on say, Ceasar Chaves that only stops a the major cross streets:
Hollywood, Burnside, Gilsen, Stark, Belmont, Hawthorne, Division, Powell etc and just doesn't stop anywhere else. It could shave off 10 mins easy in that short distance. Then say if you're riding the #75 from Swan Island to Milwakie it could shave off probably 30 mins over the whole trip
@@OgdenM I've wondered about this too, especially for routes that go further out. The express bus lines are one thing I miss about my brief time in the Seattle area! A 20 mile commute that took ~30 minutes by car & only 5-10 min longer by bus. (The red & blue max lines can probably achieve that, so we get credit there! but not any bus routes I know of.)
Im in Sw portland at the border with beaverton and the 54 right outside my apartment. It's 20-30 minutes to pioneer square for me. And 5 bucks a day vastly outweighs gas abd parking in the down town area. So it works for some.
Thank you for making this video. Reasonable talk about downtown portland just doesn't exist and it gets absolutely obnoxious. So tired of hearing from people that live out in the suburbs eating up right wing news outlets when they haven't been downtown in 5 years.
As for the light rail, there's a shuttle that goes from the airport to gateway until construction is done.
It's insane. I went to Portland in 2019 and ... it was lovely. Enjoyed the Rose Garden, walked around various neighborhoods, ... everything was great. I am sure it has its problems as every place, but it was overall a really enjoyable city.
There is a massive difference between 2019 and 2020 and beyond
@@souslicer As someone that spends a lot of time downtown, not really. It's quieter, a lot of business followed people working from home, but it's far from dead. It's certainly not dangerous, that part is just hilariously dumb misinformation. Chinatown can still be sketchy just like before the pandemic, union station still has homeless around it, south downtown is still beautiful. Like, literally it's the same city.
Right wing news will have you think Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and any other city perceived to be too liberal, are literal war zones, where will take your life in your hands just by passing through.
Portland's problem with crime and homelessness isn't a product of "right wing media", it's a fact obvious to anyone who looks at the streets and anyone who can review objective numbers.
Portland 20 years ago was one of the safest large cities.
Since 2018, homicides have more than doubled and shootings have more than tripled. The increase in both is FAR above the national average and above it's peer cities. This is not per right wing media, it's per the California Partnership for Safe Communities, a not for profit that is working with the city of Portland at the cities request, hardly a bastion of right wing conspiracy. Here are some of their findings for 2019 to 2021, and the problem was worse in 2022.
Over those three years, the analysis found, Portland saw a 144% increase in its homicide count and a 241% increase in non-fatal shootings that resulted in injury.
So people who are reluctant to invest in or visit Portland are doing so at least partly because it is manifestly less safe.
Grew up in Oregon and lived in Portland for awhile, been in NYC for 30 years. I visited Oregon friends this summer, after a long hiatus, and headed downtown to see the hellhole I'd been promised it is now, by both friends and local news. Yes, I can see there's problems, but net/net, I was blown away by how absolutely beautiful Portland has become. Truly gorgeous. If I were looking to move again, I'd seriously consider it.
This has been arguably the most difficult 3 years in the city's history. It'll only get better from here on out!
I left PDX in 2020 (wanted to buy a house, impossible in PDX now) and all I've heard since I left is that PDX is a burnt down hellhole full of drugged out homeless zombies and all "normal" people have abandoned it to smoldering ruins. Lol. So I'm pleased to hear a better assessment
Portland... beautiful? Now? What?
@@erikwick the media portrayal of portland is ridiculously disconnected from reality. It isn't perfect but it isn't nearly as bad as a lot of people think it is.
@bdog5k have you ever stepped foot in Portland?
love the video! (long time Portland resident, for 17.5yrs, around nw/sw) and it's insane how much more car dependent it has become. It doesn't make any sense to me because of how much of Portland isn't designed for the amount of cars going around now. Plus the recent push back against any improvements in transit and bike lanes is just confusing to me.
I had a lot of shots showing just how busy the freeways are and wasn't sure what to do with them. There aren't THAT many people downtown, but there sure are a lot of people driving their cars through to who knows where
@Luke5100it’s bc of the homelessness dude. If you’re biking or in a train you have to deal with the homelessness more. Cars provide an artificial barrier. The issue has festered to the point that people just don’t feel comfortable being openly exposed to it all the damn time
@@CityNerdit's people taking the highways THROUGH Portland to the burbs. Live in Gresham? Gotta drive to Beaverton to get to a lifestyle center with a Gap! It's so silly.
Portland is still car dependent. By the time the UGB was enacted the metro was already 40 miles wide. I think what still sets us apart thankfully are inner city neighborhoods that stayed in tact and a pretty urbanist mindset since the late 80s.
@@CityNerd wfh has definitely given people more freedom in their day to day schedule. Portland traffic is arguably 100 percent the same as it was 4 years ago but all those people driving around are probably running errands too.
Its so weird seeing Portland Oregon less vibrant than downtown Portland Maine. Our city is way smaller but its always got lots of people walking around
I had the pleasure of finally visiting Portland Maine after living in Oregon for many years and was charmed by the walkability. Lovely place to visit. Think older east coast cities built up before cars have that advantage
He specifically didn’t film sidewalks with tents. Walking around isn’t nice like it used to be. They only clean up main areas.
@@3clubforever, you’d have to visit “right wing media” outlets to see those things; glossed over here. Frequent the small business owners in the downtown area? Ok, many are fleeing, and there’s only so much marijuana I can afford.
@@mrp4242 I think business owners in downtown PDX would still be in a lot of trouble EVEN IF you made it virtually impossible to camp or use drugs there. High density areas require a lot of people and/or commuters to support retail business. It seems to me that not enough people live downtown to support the retail biz there alone, and covid WFH has eliminated a large percentage of downtown commuters. As other people have pointed out, a lot of the medium density neighborhoods in Portland are doing pretty well. Sure, the targets and walmarts are closing up shop, allegedly due to shoplifting, but the small business turnover in the neighborhoods seems to be, anecdotally, at a pretty good rate.
I lived in Seattle as it went from not-affordable to only-rich-people-live-here (2014-2021) and I saw a lot of businesses closing up BEFORE the encampments crept out of the shadows. As far as I could tell, they were closing up because they couldn't afford the rent.
Anywho - I don't think just letting people live wherever they want (i.e. sidewalks/parks) is doing us any favors, but I think the camps downtown are a symptom, not the disease. I have decided your comment was the one I post something like this to this month. Congrats.
portland oregon has so many people walking around even at night
If you look at "Miles of bike infrastructure created or improved" with miles of "car infrastructure" (as a ratio) the greater portland area with, for example, the greater seattle area, portland has been resting on its laurels as a "good bike city" for at least 10 years.
There are other metrics to use of course, but its illuminating to look at.
Edit: THANK YOU FOR COVERING THE BROADWAY SCANDAL
And Portland inflates its numbers by counting neighborhood greenways as bike infra. They are just residential streets with wayfinding signs. They don't count! If you subtract the greenways, Portland has a shamefully small amount of bike infrastructure. It's absolute insanity that city council wants to take away one of the only really top quality bike lanes in the city!
@@doolittle983 yep, like how Cycle Oregon put signs up that say "scenic bikeway" on country roads with no changes to the roads, that doesn't make them a safe bikeway.
@@doolittle983 It's so frustrating when cities do this--labeling unsafe roads as 'bike friendly' and then patting themselves on the back. In Honolulu, where I currently live, most of the 'bike friendly' streets are less safe than streets with no infrastructure at all, because nearly all of them are either sharrows or, worse, extremely narrow (
Great video Ray! I used the SW broadway bike lane everyday to get to work and the new protected bike lane was super nice. The decision to remove the SW broadway bike lane is a testament to Portlands stagnation and poor leadership. Portland also now charges businesses for taking up street parking for outdoor dining. While it gets a terrible rep, I think Portland has a lot of potential and it’s absolutely beautiful. There is a great community of biking advocates and it’s pretty easy to get around without a car for a city of its size.
I'm curious, do they charge the businesses the same rate that cars get, or do they pay more? If I were to guess, they'd pay more, but sometimes a city will surprise me.
Drivers are typically charged $2.20 per hour to park downtown between 8am-7pm. So that means a space can generate $8,833 a year if it's always occupied. The permits for restaurants range from $360-$2,000 a year depending on what they do with the space.
Honestly that rate doesn’t seem all that unreasonable
I'm trying to think about why the concept of charging businesses for use of outdoor dining in would-be parking spaces makes me uncomfortable. I guess it makes sense insofar as those businesses definitely have additional revenue potential from it and the city is losing the meter money. But isn't the ultimate goal for people not to use cars for trips around town? If anything I would think the city should incentivize it. Plus, it isn't at all reasonable to anticipate the full $8k of revenue from a spot: people don't pay (and enforcement misses it), there are holidays (10 where the meters are off), spots go unused for stretches on bad weather days or in emptier areas, etc. I get that Portland may be looking for every bit of cash they can get with a downtown business crater, but it seems like encouraging businesses to claim parking spots is the move, not to tax it. Clearly my mind isn't made up here, I'm just turning it over "out loud." I also have only visited Portland once and it was quite a long time ago, so I'm missing local context.
@@Mitchell-me7bp for me, it is as simple as the street is a public good, and to use it for your own private purposes, you should pay.
I live in SE Portland, and the problem with drivers ignoring bike signals to turn right is even worse there. Sometimes there is a car in the bike lane illegally turning on EVERY cycle.
I’m in SE as well, and there are so many areas I wish had protected lanes, but don’t. Like Powell, Chavez, Division, Hawthorne, Belmont, Foster
Monkey see, monkey do
So true, Add Stark to that list as well! I love living in SE but I feel like having to reroute my commute to only go through side streets always adds so much time
@@Northwest360 And Sandy, too. How can there not be a bike lane on Sandy? It's crazy!
As I watched that part, I was thinking about California drivers. So many Californians have moved here, that whenever, as a pedestrian, I encounter a driver who does not yield to my right of way, or when driving, I observe California moves, like intentionally blocking another vehicle trying to merge on the freeway, I assume the driver must be from California. Native Portlanders are known for being very polite. I moved to Portland from California 14 years ago and noticed the politeness of Portland drivers. However, as the influx of techies from California continued to increase, I noticed more and more impolite drivers. No statistical proof of a correlation, but I did see more and more typical California driver moves happening as the years went by and increasingly encountered too many brushes with rude drivers.
I visited Portland last year. Coming from Europe and hearing the news, I went in with very low expectations. I only went there because it was relatively close by and I wanted to experience America's infamous train system.
I was really surprised by how nice the city was. I didn't feel unsafe at all either.
Unfortunately, there weren't many people walking or biking around, so it felt empty at times
That's kinda what I thought about Helsinki. Not the bad reputation, but just going there and seeing a really nice tram system, but hardly anyone on the roads
I live in Portland, and the stories of it's demise are highly exaggerated. As this video points out, the central downtown is mostly office buildings, which are at record low occupancies, leaving the center of town pretty dead. However, if you head in almost any direction from there you will find vibrant neighborhoods with jam packed bars and restaurants, and there is transit available to get you there. Not unlike every city in America right now, there is a housing, mental health, and drug crisis, and Portland does not seem able to address them with the speed that many would like, so it gets a bad wrap for that, especially in right wing circles.
That myth was propagated by rightwing media outlets in the wake of the protests a few years ago. I used to often get into arguments with idiots from Florida or Tennessee or Texas who would be like "Everyone where you are wants to move to red states because Portland is smoking crater of a hellscape, where 'Antifa' Junkies wander about slitting the throats of Christians and burning down the few buildings that are left". Just ridiculous, and they wouldn't even do the 10 seconds of searching to find out the truth of it. They just assume what they've been told that the whole place is like a worse Detroit. The only difference between Downtown now and Downtown 7 years ago is that there are fewer businesses and fewer people, but it's still a vibrant functional city. People are stupid. FWIW.
On your next visit I highly recommend spending most of your time in East Portland (on the other side of the Willamette from downtown). It's like a bunch of vibrant small towns shoved up next to each other. Hawthorne district, Hollywood, 28th and Burnside, so many fun areas with world class food, amazing bars, theaters. Still very walkable and buzzing with locals and tourists alike.
This is probably for the best that the center is empty. After all, it's usually a nexus of traffic and the host of problems it brings. @@Shizz81
Jonathan Maus' reporting seems to have led to some backtracking on the plan to tear up the Bdwy lanes. They're talking more about studying the issue. The hotel owners contribute to campaigns so their complaints are going to be heard. Commissioner Mapps is running for mayor, incidentally.
Luckily, the mayorship will be a much less powerful position by then, if he does win. Still, I'm perennially dismayed by city council's rightward lurch since 2020 or so. Reactionary forces like the PBA and PPB have been sadly effective at stirring up fear and contempt, and moderates have gobbled it up.
@@vincentcolavin The structure of Portland City government does not serve residents well. It's the type of structure used for small cities, like under 50,000 people. My understanding is that historically, the city was controlled by the industrialists along the Willamette and the Editor in Chief of the newspaper. They decided who would run for office, then told the mayor which departments to appoint them to, resulting in their hand picked selections running the departments. Most of those industrialists families are gone and the newspaper was sold so others have moved in to fill the void, particularly the PPB and PBA as you mentioned.
Then climate activists can stir up fear and contempt, too. So can cyclists.@@vincentcolavin
Yeah I'm aware. Didn't want to get that deep into it in the video, but people should follow BikePortland if they want to track all of this nonsense
Yup, looks like it will remain!
We visit portland every year from Vancouver bc, and we always have a good time. It's definitely more quiet now than before the pandemic, though. I also found it funny that our relatives from red US states were asking if Portland was a warzone, and to be careful when we visited. The level of extreme disinformation is comical.
Funny. It’s almost like they probably get all of their information from the same source. 🤔
If Portland _is_ a warzone, it's mainly because of right-wing groups like the Proud Boys rolling in to start fights with liberal residents. And if you're familiar with US politics, you know which side of those fights the police actively or passively assisted.
It’s probably the burned Federal Court House that does it.
I live here and there is literally no reason for tourists to visit Portland. I wouldn’t call it a war zone like Baltimore or Chicago, but the homeless filth, theft, and public drug use is getting worse, not better. And Portland leftists convince themselves that everything is alright.
the really sad thing is it is outside agitators from right wing groups who are causing much of the violence.
I think the major reason bike commuting and transit use is down in Portland is that we have historically had a multi-modal transportation culture here that the influx of transplants don't adopt when moving to town, opting instead to behave like they have wherever they came from (which typically means driving).
I live in the Hollywood neighborhood, which is probably the best spot on the East Side for walkability, and is somewhere you should definitely visit/focus on in your East Side video. Southeast (Division/Hawthorne/etc...) gets all the attention, but there's a lot of interesting stuff happening in NE too!
I think you're probably correct about the transplants supplanting the home grown transit/multimodal culture with their car centric lifestyles. I'm a transplant to Portland, but I came with the opposite perspective. I came here close to a decade ago specifically because I was looking for a place that was transit and active transportation focused. I've been dismayed to watch the number of people traveling in cars go up and the number of people getting around by other modes decline rapidly during my time living here.
@@doolittle983 Same here, glad to know others feel the same way.
I really think this is a COVID and homelessness thing. Fewer downtown daily commuters thanks to WFH and when folks do come in to the office they don't want to sit next to someone who hasn't bathed recently and is lugging a leaking trash bag full of cans. I commute by MAX daily and see this very occurrence on more than half of my trips.
@@haphazard1342 Yeah, COVID did really upend this, but I saw traffic get worse for seven years before the pandemic started.
@Ethanthevegan I'm sure there are a handful of homeless people that were pushed over the edge by rising housing prices. But blaming Portland's homeless situation entirely on people moving to the city is a bit ridiculous. Portland had a sizable homeless population long before 2008, and it's been growing steadily since. A significant portion, if not the majority of the homeless, came from out of state.
Looking forward to your one-way streets video. Stoplights designed for two-way streets are incredibly inefficient because they not only have to alternate traffic directions, but alternate for left-turning traffic. Even if no stop-lights, left turns/cross traffic turns are slow/dangerous/stressful (for cars, bikers and pedestrians). One way streets solve many problem...and allow light syncing which is really slick when it properly calibrated.
I really appreciate you making these deep dive videos! My number one comment/suggestion would be if you could talk a bit about revitalizing these downtown areas now that WFH is semi-permanent. Portland doesn't seem like it will have the same issues as many other cities with converting massive office towers, so I'm curious what their approach will be.
Also, I read somewhere that while downtown is struggling, the outer neighborhoods are actually booming. I'm curious if you observed that at all.
Thanks for your continued "journalism!"
Yeah, I mentioned in passing that next time I come to town I'll cover neighborhoods, because even though I like the design aspect of downtown, it's always been the neighborhoods that have made Portland a great place to live. And I lived in A LOT of Portland neighborhoods!
I live in Hollywood and work in a neighborhood brewery/bar in Tabor and we're getting busier and busier. The only time it's a ghost town is when there is a festival at the waterfront (and even then plenty of people choose to avoid those and stay on the east side) or it's a holiday weekend and everyone's out of town. Even the hidden neighborhood dives I like to hang out in are pretty busy on a Sunday/Monday.
@@CityNerd Cover Slabtown / Nob Hill if you are coming back to PDX Neighborhoods. PBOT did quite a bit of investing in the area for bike access and changing how streets are used / diverted to calm traffic. Not the most affordable, but very livable. Plus there are the promises of a streetcar expansion!
@@CityNerd I just found this channel a while ago and after watching this video, my recurring question was if you have seen the TH-cam channel "Not Just Bikes"? From this video, I would gather that you haven't. He converted me from a cycling rules proponent to a balanced approach.
Aside from pandemic and remote work stuff, I imagine that perception of danger or crime is keeping people away from downtown Portland. It’s not actually dangerous to be there, but all the press portraying Portland as such doesn’t help. And people generally have very little understanding of what crime actually looks like and where it happens.
Well, unless you're a business. That isn't just press - that's legit. Most businesses have completely moved out of downtown and the vacancies is absurdly high. That's where the "rampant crime" comes into play. Relentless vandalism of storefronts, and thefts of merchandise is not some media trope, but reality for Downtown Portland.
Also Oldtown/Chinatown has had a record amount of stabbings just this year alone, and the rest of Portland proper shattered their shootings and homicide/murder rate records last year, and is once again on par to break it again this year. Again, that's not media tropes, that's verifiable fact.
Technically I could throw more onto the list of things that are seen as lies pushed by certain mainstream media outlets that are verifiable facts, but I'll hold back on that. Do they exaggerate? Absolutely, especially more right-leaning media corporations. But it does not make it untrue that various crimes are at record highs in the city, let alone in specific parts of the central core of the city proper.
I work downtown. I see things on a daily basis. On my off time downtown would be the LAST place I'd go to. I wonder if the people who say it's not bad has actually gone there- especially at night
@@alfhild98 You know the old phrase - "The freaks come out at night".
And I just spoke with a woman who grew up on the Eastside (bad side of town... which is saying a lot) and she wound up saying the typical thing you hear from people from Portland and from the eastside. "My hood was considered upper middle class, safe and great when I was a kid. But its now the bad area of town." She added that her issue with the westside not just of Portland, but the metro area, too, is that she can't detect who the crazy folks and nut jobs are, whereas east of the river, its automatic.
I'm a born and raised westside guy, and have always lived here in the Aloha area, my eldest brother Nathan lived either in Tigard along the 99 corridor (meth central at the time) or Oldtown most of the time right at the epicenter of the "mentally ill, crazy, homeless and/or on drugs" crowd. He himself was of the mentally ill and off & on drug user crowd. My other brother lived for a really long time out off Alberta, too through the mid 2000s and early 2010s. So my family has got metro-wide experience, both first hand and second hand haha.
Downtown is in an extremely fragile state. The work from home dust has yet to settle for the CBD south of Burnside and east of Broadway. West of Broadway and south to PSU id say there is definitely some retail life. The problem which nobody at city hall or at the state seems to want to discuss is the rampant mental health problem happening on the streets. It seems like it only intensifying as office work continues to retract towards the suburbs. You can easily see at least 10 people experiencing complete psychotic breakdowns a mere 3 minute walk SE from Powells. I don't know how all of those people got to Portland but its common to read about out of town transients who have committed some pretty serious crimes. This town needs some new marketing
@@thomasmcroy1756 South of Powell's - That part of Portland and Burnside is the mentally ill and drugged up corridor. Always has been. Oldtown/Chinatown is the hub for those folks. Like due to both services of CCC and the Oldtown Clinic being there, Good Samaritan being close by and Helen Swindell also being right on Burnside & Broadway.
And a majority of those people are in fact born and raised Oregonians. I would know given that my eldest brother lived a large portion of his life right there in the heart of that zone, was mentally ill himself and had a bad habit of finding the drug lords and sellers (middlemen), and doing drugs. So me and my mom know the area and the crowd incredibly well.
One of the reasons there is so many these days is because the clinics for them are corrupt as all hell, their staff often hold biases and grudges against a lot of them, and of course there simply is not remotely enough capacity. And hell, the mental health system and care is arguably fucked up enough to make people worse, not better. None of that helps. Constantly being outcast, hated, complained about and unwanted certainly doesn't help anyone's mental state when they experience it, especially the already mentally ill and struggling. Knowing almost no one gives a damn about you and would almost prefer you to not exist/be dead is a horrible thing.
It definitely didn't help to pass measure 110 that made hard drugs decriminalized and allowed public open usage of drugs without almost any limitations. The concept was sound and made sense, the problem was, as usual with Oregon, they had absolutely nothing to build off of. No foundations in place, their system wasn't even beyond just a idea in people's heads. No blueprints, nothing at all. Just the concept, the suggestion and idea. Thin air. That's it. Oregon voters are reactive voters, so they'll impulsively vote in favor of anything that sounds good in concept, but of course is a guaranteed failure without anything to build off of. You have to get the foundations of your systems in place first before you can go ahead with the rest of the concept and passing it. That's common sense. But, most seem to lack that these days. So, people passed the concept without sound reason and... now we have a rapidly proliferated addiction crisis and aggravated homeless and mental health problem.
I think framing the homeless crisis as a direct effect of housing cost is pretty disingenuous. There's obviously a lot more (drugs, mental health) going on than just housing affordability.
I hear you, but you seriously don't think that being priced out of housing doesn't lead people to substance abuse and exacerbate existing mental health issues?
As a resident of portland who commutes via max or bike, i really appreciate the nuance you bring discussing Portland's strengths and weakness.
And Jonathan's shoutout was also well deserved!
I think you got it exactly right with the car problem: we design our infrastructure around the worst drivers that can keep their license, because those are the ones that do the most damage. The basic philosophy that we end up with is "completely prevent any temptation to this bad behaviour, otherwise someone will do it and kill people."
To me, that doesn't explain why they put 2 overlapping roundabouts in Springfield. Some of the worst drivers in Oregon lol
I think the philosophy is more often find the worst thing the worst driver will do and then design around that making all non-car modalities yield to those horrible drivers to prevent accidents.
@@davidgjam7600I couldn't agree with you more. These people don't have the sense to even understand how roundabouts work,which makes them more dangerous. People not yielding and pulling right out in front of you is beyond annoying and common too.
Could you make a video on the needs and trade offs of converting downtown office space into housing? How are city planners involved in this process?
I would also be interested in a video on this topic!
Good idea. I've heard that San Francisco is not only looking at that, but looking at turning a building into a contained university (UC or CSU?), including dorms and rec space.
I wonder about requiring these building conversions turn their roof tops into shared park-like rec space.
99% invisible recently did an episode on this that was really well done
It's extremely expensive and difficult to do. There are only a handful of small buildings in Portland that would lend themselves to these types of conversions. Most of the larger office buildings built since the 1960s would require a level of renovation and redesign that would be only slightly less expensive than complete teardown and rebuilds.
You might as well demolish and rebuild. Most office buildings, especially older ones, would be residential non-compliant even if they could be converted. Load bearing walls would need to be removed and compensated for; sewer, fire suppression, and water run to every unit…it’s a mess.
"Extremely unserious behavior" is the most polite yet scathing CityNerd putdown I could imagine.
I'm in outer NE Portland and want to take the Max more, but as a petite woman riding alone I rarely feel safe. There are always people strung out and screaming or getting into physical altercations. Today a woman randomly kept slamming a broom against the seat next to me. This is honestly what keeps more people from using public transit. If Portland wants to increase riders, it has to deal with this issue.
That's really rough to hear. Portland has interested me a lot, but as a trans woman I question my safety at times.
@@Anna_Rae I get that! And don't get me wrong, I love Portland and feel homesick whenever I go elsewhere. But the situation on transit is just a nightmare.
I live outside a city that has similar problems and solutions to that of Portland. I make every effort to avoid going into town. It's a great place for those who live in the city center, with local mass transit, bike lanes, and creative ideas laced with an undeworld of homeless people congregated to use centralized drug treatment services. By design people are encouraged to leave vehicles at home, which is impossible for visitors without a mass transit system that extends to outside areas. Thank goodness for online merchants, who have drastically cut any need I might have to travel into town. You may think the reduction of people on the streets is a Covid byproduct, but the Amazon effect is hidden within.
We were here just last October. Spot on assessment. Its sad to see so much of Downtown and Old Town dependency on suburban office commuters. And everyone here in Oakland/ SF talk a big game about taking middling Class C Office commercial and converting to mixed use residential (everyone's one case study is NYC's lower Manhattan post 9/11). But change is slow, interest rates high and banks make more money writing off buildings in the red than they do with modifying use.
"Maybe the dumbest, most least attentive driver should not have a license to operate a 5,000 lb. vehicle in the first place." Thank you.
I’m all for better driver training, law enforcement, and license revocations, but isn’t that a really bad mindset? Hasn’t merging into bike lanes been proven to reduce injuries and fatalities from right hook accidents?
Most people don’t seem aware that different jurisdictions have varying engineering and laws around bike lanes and tight turns.
this! i'm surprised more people aren't lobbying for driver licenses that are not "for life", in practice...
You're required to pass a written and practical drivers test to get a driver's license.
You don't need anything to ride a bike on the streets like an idiot. Just watch any intersection in Portland for 5 minutes and count the number of bikes that break traffic laws running through lights, stop signs, in and out of traffic and on/off sidewalks, not giving pedestrians right of way. I guarantee it's more than the number of auto infractions on that same intersection.
@@mattropolis99
1. all studies thus far seem to contradict your impression
2. also, most people on a bike do have a driver's license
3. ...also also, even if your impressions were eventually proven to (locally?) be accurate... of course we should be holding someone essentially driving half a ton of metal or more around a couple of mostly empty sofas to a higher standard than someone who is unlikely to damage anyone else but themselves
Beside that, the best way is what is done in Netherlands or Sweden. Just built the infrastructure in a way, that even distracted or otherwise unattentive drivers will proabably do the right thing:
- if they are supposed to drive slow, don't build a road like a high way, but make it narrow, add speed bumps, add little curves, or even use copper to indicate that it is a slow street
- decide which purpose a specific street has and built it for this purpose (so if it is connecting, make driving without disturbance possible, e.g. no parking, not many crossings; if it is a street for habitants, make it inattractive or impossible for drive-through traffic and ensure low speed)
- if cars are not supposed to drive on bike (or bus lanes), make physical separation
- if cars are supposed to share the lane with bikes or pedestrians, make it different from a usual road (for example increase altitude on pedestrian levels), and not only paint it
- and of course, if there is contact with a lower weighing traffic participants, by default, the driver of the more dangerous vehicle is fully responsible and guilty (and make fines significant high)
- and at best: make intelligent traffic lights - they should be aware of how many cars or bikes are coming and switch accordingly, priorize less dangerous and more effective traffic (public transport, bikes, pedestrians) and at bad wheather increase green time for bikes and pedestrians
- forbid turn right at red as default (it's just insecure), probably allow it for bikes (that's not insecure)
Thanks for a great video on one of my favourite cities! As an ex-PDXer it broke my heart to see the negative stories about the city over the past couple of years. It's such an amazing place, I'm so happy that I got to live there and experience so many expansions of the MAX, the introduction of the Portland Streetcar, and see it become such a great cycling city. Look forward to more videos about Stumptown / The Rose City / Portlandia!
Yes - I heard two things about the city (1) demonstrations a few years ago (2) Tent cities I guess news is like cherry picking. The picked cherries are always rotten. Oregon is a great state. I used to live 30 miles North of Hermiston.
@@daniellarson3068 I've seen tent cities in Des Moines, Iowa. A certain segment of our population just has to find reasons to hate on cities/states that don't agree with their politics.
@@thatissomeBS Yes - I have seen since the time when Rush Limbaugh became popular that there is big money behind those people that tell the negative stories about tent cities, etc. They have a conservative view of the world where the facts don't match reality. They often have an agenda that doesn't align with the needs of the common good. Thanks for the response.
@@thatissomeBSPerhaps, but it doesn't help that Portland's "tolerant" residents don't have a problem ki11ing anyone who mildly disagrees with them, as we saw in 2020 with the first degree murd^r of a Trump supporter downtown.
You don't see that in Iowa.
@@daniellarson3068😂
I graduated from PSU almost 20 years ago, and LOVED Portland! Went back this Summer for the first time since. Was super scared to see what it has become based on what people have been saying. Was extremely PLEASED to discover that it was as pleasant and beautiful as ever!
I took a trip to Seattle earlier this year and took the Cascades down to Portland for a day trip. The difference between the two cities was night and day. Seattle felt so much more alive and inviting compared to Portland. Portland feels like a city strictly for Portlanders, which I understand is a dying breed. It didn't help that the train back to Seattle lacked air conditioning. A HSR link between Portland and Seattle (or at least hourly trains) would help reinvigorate the city.
Portland is the last bastion of the pnw stereotype, whereas Seattle is overrun by tech, and Vancouver struggles with being a showcase of $$$$$ housing
I'm a Portlander currently on a trip to Seattle, and I think maybe I'm just not in an ideal part of town, but I've been experiencing the exact opposite this week. It's pretty dangerous to walk from my hotel to anywhere else, mostly for road infrastructure reasons (everything is far apart and the crossings are harrowing). I hardly see anyone on foot here, and there isn't much to do.
Maybe if I was staying in a less-industrial area I'd have a different take. I probably would! But claims like "Portlander is a dying breed" baffle me - housing is expensive as shit because the demand keeps ramping up. The Portland I know is very vibrantly alive, where there's always something exciting and unique a block away at most. There's also a strong community element, personally - I've met most of the amazing people who are currently vital to my life because I moved to a national LGBTQ hotspot, and it's really hard to imagine voluntarily living somewhere else.
All that said, I strongly agree about HSR. The Cascades train experience is just not great, and at these distances, there's no reason/excuse not to have rail travel times that are faster than flying (when counting airport security). Current rail travel is wildly overpriced for how slow and janky it is. Portland/Seattle cross-pollination is a very good thing, and could be cheap, fast and convenient!
We won't see high speed rail on the West Coast because the Amtrak trains run on the same tracks that freight rail does. Freight gets priority, so the passenger trains are delayed. Build separate rails? That won't happen. Oregon and Washington can't even agree on how to replace the VERY old Interstate Bridge on I-5 (and they've been arguing since 2005.) Maybe some rich billionaire should take a sudden interest in high-speed passenger rail.
@@MaddieM4I'm going to guess you're in SeaTac? The whole city is just stroads that sprung up once the airport was built, so it's pretty miserable on foot.
@@oregonsenior4204 that doesn't really make sense. Even if Amtrak operated on it's own right of way, new tracks would still have to be constructed in order to accommodate the softer turns required for HSR. Given Seattle and Vancouver's reputations as major tech hubs, I could totally see private investment play a role in funding such a project.
Thanks!
No problem!
Thank you for this video! I have been feeling like Portland City Council's priorities has been absolutely bonkers lately. Like in a time where pedestrians and cyclists are dying at a record rate, ripping out a protected bike lane?
We have a lot of problems for sure, but Council has really focused on policy responses that just respond to business owner wants and don't meaningfully address the real problems. Like downtown is struggling because our policies assumes that downtown would be the place people commute to go to work. Now we need to rethink what downtown is for, and it could be great! But not with the current Council's priorities.
Thanks! Would also appreciate a video giving your thoughts on the absence of real transit between Portland and Vancouver WA
Dang, I've taken the C-Tran commuter bus a lot of times when I had client meetings up in Vancouver, but yeah it's not an all-day high frequency thing
From my hometown (Miami) to my home base (Portland) thank you for these city visits! I wondered if you would have made this video recently enough to touch on the current PBOT scandal and you did! It’s a shame we’ve fallen off in a lot of ways as an aspirational public transport city, but I’m happy to find out you’ve worked on some of the cities projects in the past. More Portland videos!
You are right about the Cascade…so frustrating that it doesn’t have assigned seats. One time my husband went to the dining car and I had to guard his seat with my life. People were getting mad at me saying I was lying and just trying to have 2 seats for myself. I ended up joining him in the dining car and we just stayed there the whole time. Much more pleasant and nicer people. The Coast Starlight is a dream (with assigned seats and super comfortable seats), but always delayed since its route is so long.
From an urban planning point of view, Portland has one of the best downtowns in America for all the reasons you mentioned. The next mayor / new form of government has the unique chance to really tackle the unhoused homeless / drug problem. If overall "safety" returns as the public perception of Downtown Portland, it will revive quickly because of its excellent urban planning, architechture and light rail. It's really that simple and every resident should be pushing for an end to the era of "compassion" and usher in a new era of "tough love". Investors who buy at the current discounts and can afford to hold for 10 years, will likely make a fortune.
Really enjoyed this video. I live in inner SE and am a grad student at PSU. My son goes to daycare on campus and we commute downtown every day. It's definitely quiet downtown, but over the summer it was often bustling, especially when the market was open on the park blocks. PSU has a new president and I think there are plans to continue to transition more classes back to in-person from online with the hopes that getting more people on campus will help downtown's revival.
While Powell's is completely awesome for sure, I will have to nominate another bookstore as the best in the country even though nobody has heard of it outside of my hometown of Jacksonville, FL. It's Chamblin Book Mine which has over 2,000,000 used books in an old warehouse. You can spend all day there. But there's no coffee shop.
Talking Drum was gentrified out...
This video is an example of my favorite format: Our boy gets dropped into a city, observes things, thinks about those things, and delivers slightly-longer-than-usual analysis.
I like all this channel’s content but these vids are always especially good.
Agreed, this was great!
Slightly?
Thank you so much for talking about Portland, especially what is happening with the Broadway bike lane, which btw is only the southbound portion of the north/south couplet. The northbound half on 4th Ave hasn't even been built yet. I have been subscribed to your channel for awhile now, back when you used to talk about Portland more often than briefly on a top ten list, I hope you make many more videos about our city because it offers a lot of untapped knowledge and wisdom for folks that care about urban planning.
I just moved to (NW) Portland at the beginning of the year. The new Broadway bikelane has helped me so much as someone who is new biking and the city. Thank you and those who helped in that project!
as a portlander, reading this comment section is cursed: "BLM riots killed portland", "it's the worst city in the country", "it's the second rust belt", "fentanyl ate my baby" kind of nonsense. i'll never understand why people have a such a strong need to hate the city or make up stories to justify their feelings as if they were objective fact.
We attracted the right wing eye of sauron in 2020 with the sustained protests and we are now like an avatar for a liberal city. Reality doesn't matter with those type of folks they could visit and all they would do is take videos of homeless folks and leave because their narrative is more important than anything else.
Pure, uncut right-wing copium.
shhh! even if it's nonsense, anything that deflates the speculative real estate market here is a good thing :)
I don't need to make up a story. I was accosted by a girl with a knife in front of Nordstrom on Broadway for money. I had worked late and was on my way to take the Woodstock bus route to my apartment on Milwaukie Ave. I was so tired and found this unacceptable.
No longer live in Portland Metro.
@@bonniegirl5138 that shit's always happened though. we could trade stories all day and most of mine happened decades ago, as in pre-covid, pre-fent, and pre-BLM. you can call out the city's rough edges all day, but it's dishonest to pretend it's new or unprecedented
I didn’t realize there was so much well thought out engineering in the downtown grid and transit mall. Would definitely be interested in learning more about that.
The cars turning right on red in the vine lane is a great example of why protected intersections are necessary.
Thanks Ray. Please continue to visit more cities and make a video about it. This is a good series!
I like that when you visited Minneapolis/St Paul too
W/regards to the one way streets: I agree with all your points, BUT, want to add that I think the width of the streets is important too. As a Philadelphian (who’s driven in Portland) it felt odd driving down streets that wide and one way, and it felt way too easy to speed
One of the only times I've genuinely appreciated clickbait! 😂 Any time I've visited my more conservative family members since 2020ish, they've asked me about Portland as if it's a crumbling, harrowing warzone. They don't seem to like my answer that I'm having a lovely time living here! 😂 And one of my favorite things is how easy & (relatively) safe it is for me to walk or bike to pretty much everywhere I need to go. So I really appreciated your insights about all the planning that goes into that! (And the negative impact some people/groups are unfortunately having on it 🙃)
Great video!!
Potential video topic - have you ever looked into the similarities between large, typically walkable cities and the surrounding areas? For example, San Francisco proper has some great urbanism but it feels like once you step outside of that it's immediately back to car-infested suburbia (San Jose and the like)
I've found that some parts of the Bay area are like that, but others places are quite urbanist, such as Oakland and Berkeley. But yeah, south of SF it gets pretty car-centric.
@@mushroomsteve Yeah it's definitely a mixed bag, when I went up there a couple of months ago I just figured that everywhere in the area would be like SF and was surprised to find that some areas are just one 4-lane stroad after another. I've heard good things about those cities as well as Emeryville though, I'll have to check them out next time I have a chance
Ha this is awesome! You featured so many pieces of my daily commute! I cross the Hawthorne to go up the Broadway bike lane to ride up to OHSU. I started doing this after the pandemic made the OHSU tram feel too claustrophobic, which means I’ve stopped using the Tilikum to get to the Go By Bike valet. I started bike commuting in Boston before moving here and was initially so impressed - but riding every day for 6 years in Portland has led me to notice so many of the critiques you’ve mentioned here. Just yesterday I had the delicious opportunity to yell at a driver for almost hitting me by turning right on red.
My neighborhood in Brooklyn is mostly one-way streets... it's definitely much safer and efficient than 2-way streets based on my experience, especially if you're biking or driving and need to know where traffic is coming from while crossing an intersection. The idea that a "trend" could possibly consist of changing these nice 1 -way streets into 2-way streets is disturbing, wasteful and stupid.
LOL! In order to watch this video about alternative transportation I had to watch two SUV ads!
Thankfully pbot backed down from removing the Broadway bike line. Still not a good sign that there were some pushing to remove infrastructure in the face of upcoming budget cuts.
I live in Troutdale at the mouth of the Gorge, past Gresham on the east side. I’ve noticed that traffic is way better since the pandemic. I-84 and the Sunset Highway were unusable from about 2 to 7 PM before Covid and now, I can get across town from my mom’s house in Beaverton with only a small amount of stop and go on the bridge and merging onto 84. Often, there’s barely any slowdown at all. It’s definitely a positive result of work from home taking significant numbers of cars off the highways.
Poor Portland....I visited last year for the first time and I saw a city with so much potential. Downtown restaurants closed by 3:00 pm😮 and there was a complete lack of vibrancy.... I'd love to see a recovering city on my next visit. In particular, I loved how the rail system just casually ran through neighborhoods with so much casual access.
I agree. Business is closing early does not help their case. This place feels like a ghost town. At least the transit is decent
It’s the next Detroit, only down hill from here
Great info in this one. Love the insight on the technical stuff
I always say that Portland reminds me of where I live, Seattle, but if no one seemed to have a job. Every time I visit the city seems extremely quiet and empty. Even all of your shots don't seem to show many people on the street for a "big city." After visiting a couple of times when I first moved to the PNW, I pretty much got my fill. Hawthorne Street is fun.
Downtown has changed a lot. Although much cleaner than a couple years ago it's pretty dead now since the office workers and many businesses left. I lived in Portland during the heyday of the 90s and 00s. It was beautiful and vibrant. Downtown was hopping. I moved to Seattle in 2019. The two cities have some similarities culturally and geographically but are two very different animals otherwise. The offshoot neighborhoods in SE, N, and NE again feel vibrant though, much improved over a couple years ago.
I agree and I’d say Seattle feels definitely more cosmopolitan and diverse than Portland. Although for the PNW, I’d give Vancouver the top spot, just in my opinion.
downtown is certainly more quiet than it used to be on the weekdays. but it's always been quiet. the downtown core is mostly office space and government buildings, so i don't know what else people are expecting? if you want nightlife you have to get out of downtown
that said, weekends in downtown still seem pretty active. people still go to soccer games, the saturday market, just out shopping or to events in general
@@ficus3929Vancouver BC, you mean?
This video leaves me with a bittersweet taste in my mouth. I visited Portland earlier this year and fell in love with the city. I planned on moving there at the end of September, but my employer told me I'd be taking at huge pay cut due to the lower CoL. I still get irrationally angry whenever I see articles talking about how Portland is a "lifeless hellhole". Even in it's "recessed" state, Portland is a really cool city with so much character. I don't know of any other PNW city that can compare. Seattle has elements of it, but feels so much more vanilla and corporate by comparison (sorry Seattleites). Super frustrating to see PBOT backpedaling on their commitments to building a complete bike network.
Where would you be moving from that has a lower COL? I love Portland and still have family there but I had to leave because I couldn't afford housing, even working two jobs. I'm approaching retirement age and was afraid the drop in income after retirement would leave me on the streets.
😆 19:43 This is so spot on: "...the watchful eye of complete strangers and imagining they're judging me rather than completely ignoring me, which is much more likely... well, it really helps keep me on task...."
When I was younger I thought that every major city just had a giant book store, and I didn't realize how special it was to have Powells
If businesses want people to come back to downtown, they need to start charging less. People can't afford all the huge price hikes that came around after the pandemic and with all the other price increases that wildly outpaced incomes in the last couple years, work from home is the only financially feasible move.
Also asking for tips that start at 25% everywhere lol
Shocked to see how few pedestrians and bikers are on the streets you filmed - unless it was filmed at 10am on a weekday. Looks like a beautifully designed ghost town compared to even mid sized midwestern downtowns.
The major problem is the lack of punishment and the concerning numbers of drug addicts and homeless walking around like zombies. There was always some problem with them, but it really just skyrocketed in 2020 when our courts just decided to stop punishing many crimes period.
Combine that with a shocking spike in retail theft and it's not surprising that many stores have left the downtown. No stores, all the homeless and drug addicts, means that people don't want to bike or ride public transportation.
There are nice parts don't get me wrong, but the refusal to take off the shades and acknowledge the problems because we might agree with a fellow American who watches a different news channel than we do is detrimental to this city's future potential.
Have a nice one 👍
Portland is a ghost town for the most part
That’s because portland is currently terrifying to walk downtown and take the Max. This is from someone who moved to Portland in2006 primarily because of the progressive transit-this used to be an amazing place.
People don’t avoid downtown because there aren’t full office buildings -they don’t go downtown because drug addicts stoned out of their mind very possibly will attack you out of the blue. Or try to eat your face. (I’m not kidding, just actually happened.)
@@StorytellingHeadshots Bingo!!! I live across the river in Washington and use to frequently visit Portland. Not any more. With the crime, drug, and homeless problem, Portland is a dump......
It really does depend on the time of day and whether it's a weekday or weekend. Since downtown has about 20% vacancy rate in the office buildings, you don't see nearly as many people downtown on weekdays anymore. Don't listen to these neurotic fear-mongers who responded with apocalyptic descriptions. I take MAX and walk downtown all the time and have never had a problem. The homeless mess was worse two years ago, but there's a serious drug problem again in the city. It's a complicated situation that the city will hopefully be able to fix. But every time they try something the Courts tell the city they can't do it. It's frustrating. The city is not a dump. Downtown is pleasant to walk around and I feel safe. It seems the paranoid and right-wing extremists love to bash the city and spread anti-Portland propaganda. Ignore them--they're idiots. The crime and drugs were much worse back in the 70s and early 80s.
I moved to Portland a little less than a decade ago, and it is true that the city is being left behind compared to other cities when it comes to urbanism, but it's still pretty good for U.S. standards. Most people here blame the Californians who moved here bringing with them their car culture and money (the latter increasing the cost of living and income inequality which is a huge reason why homelessness and drug abuse has risen). I have been living carless in Portland without any significant issues, but yeah drivers keep getting more and more scary for cyclists and pedestrians, and it's a shame that nothing is being done about them. And yes, as someone else mentioned, 15 minutes between trains is too long. It certainly needs to go down to 10 minutes, but apparently there is a lack of drivers (although driverless trains could fix that).
I’m not sure if driverless technology really works for trams going on city streets at the moment.
@@grahamturner2640yeah that’s true
As a former Californian/current Portlander, I also blame Californians for both the increased housing costs and more dangerous driving conditions. I thought I had finally left all that behind when my wife and I moved. Real Portlanders are calm, considerate drivers who read signs and aren't in a big rush. Unfortunately, many transplants from California (and commuters from Washington) are bringing their impatient, aggressive driving into our beautiful city and making the roads less friendly (though still not nearly as bad as the the roads of Sacramento or Los Angeles).
@@grahamturner2640 Yes, driverless trains work amazingly well on the Vancouver BC Skytrain (with completely reliable 7 minute headways!). But that is a completely grade separated train system (it's 100% elevated or in a tunnel).
@@joshuaoehler5796 Also moved here a year ago from L.A., and the deterioration of traffic mores there (to almost non-existent) was, no exaggeration, a large motivating factor for the move. So I'm with you in both an appreciation of the less frantic mode of driving in Portland AND in decrying those who move here from California and don't adapt to this mode (and it *does* require conscious deprogramming, I'm still expecting people to jump in front of me at the last minute without signalling, cut across lanes, etc., and am amazed when they actually - for the most part - abide by traffic rules).
That right turn should have a nice large cement barrier, that usually keeps cars from violating the no turn on red and bike lane ;)
Very much looking forward to the deep dives of the other neighborhoods and Seattle. Like your content!
So interesting that you are now in Albuquerque and lived and worked in planning in Portland. I took the opposite path--lived in ABQ from 94-97 (moving from the Bay Area) and then moving to Portland in January 1998 to November 2000 to attend the MURP program at Portland State. Living in ABQ, I was horrified to ride my bike in the city at that time. Motorists were truly hostile! It appears that the bike infrastructure has changed in ABQ enormously in the last 25-30 years, and the city has doubled in size (likely with outsiders that are more used to cyclists?). I was so relieved to move to Portland after ABQ! Portland was a breath of fresh air as I could take transit everywhere and loved the downtown grid/walkability. I did work downtown in retail at the beginning and downtown PDX was ALWAYS dead in the evening. At any rate, it just goes to show that cities can and do change--it appears that ABQ is a more livable city in terms of bike and ped infrastructure and Portland has gotten a bit less livable. My memories of Portland will always be good as moving there saved me from the huge depression of living in ABQ, which at that time was not a very planning-friendly city.
I visited Portland once in May 2016. I loved the walkability and MAX Rail. However, it seemed that drivers were easily annoyed at pedestrians, even ones who cross intersections in a timely manner. People in bars thought any kind of complaining is witty. Several people talked about their love lives openly on the light rail. Finally, I notice many lone, sad-looking, bearded guys around town. I had enough positive experiences that inspire me to visit Portland again. Before my visit, I pondered relocating to Portland. Now I feel I would just morph into one of those aforementioned bearded, emo guys.
Not Emo Guys - this is the Northwest, they're Grungy Guys.
What an eclectic mix of observations.
I’m in SW Portland and it feels pretty bad to travel. Getting to the main city takes 25 min by car or an hour by public transit and you don’t see a lot of people just hanging out around town. Everything is just too spread out
I love your laptop stickers. Where did you get them?
Thanks for sharing our amazing and beautiful city. I live in the burbs now but I love that the city is coming back after a rough couple of years. I’d never live anywhere else.
The unhinged rhetoric about portland, in some cases fudned and driven by business interests is so frustrating. It's making it harder to actually work on our real challenges when we have to fend off bullshit.
have you done a video that specifically focuses on slip lanes? if not, do you have any plans of doing one in the future? I grew up in Vancouver where slip lanes are virtually nonexistent, but now I live in a city that can't get enough of them. every time I have to drive through one I'm reminded that I hate them for a variety of reasons, especially within the city boundaries
What you said about angry business owners is absolutely correct. They're the only force worse than NIMBYs as they can undo positive change instead of just preventing it.
REI was bad to move out. Getting your store broken into every other day is no reason to close down.
@@Marlin2231ummmm…yes it is?
Man, Mingus is the worst of the worst on that council. Hopefully voters get wise and push him out of office - and politics altogether.
I can't imagine how a guy whose whole election pitch was "I'm a disgruntled former employee of the current commissioner so vote me instead of Chloe" could possibly turn out to be a terrible politician.
The whole council is a dumpster fire and they keep coming up with shitty ideas that are massively unpopular and in some cases are directly at odds with the will of the voters like what Mapps and Gonzalez where trying to do to the already voter approved charter reform. Near as I can tell all that's happened is that they keep having to back pedal when they face massive pushback. It's scary to think what might have happened to that bike lane without Bike Portland's coverage.
@Ethantheveganthat’s it. It’s the ‘conservatives’ that are ruining Portland.
This is why you can’t have nice things.
I'm from St Louis and moved to Portland a year ago and Portland is miles better in terms of being able to exist outside a car. I never visited pre pandemic so I don't know what it was like before to compare it to.
Another great video. Like many cities Portland's downtown is struggling in the post-covid WFH era despite doing most things (not everything) right. I was wondering if you had any takes on the future of urban planning in a world where downtowns aren't the centers of activity they used to be and if the situation could potentially be reversed
That main character syndrome in a coffee shop is the best work motivator. 💅🏾
Why did you use the black emoji when that isn’t your skin color?
Omg that Amtrak part at the end is too real 😵💫 Awesome video!
Great review. Portland is my city, and I think you're right on. We have some serious problems in city hall right now, but I don't think they'll last. I love this city.
The new charter can't get implemented fast enough.
What's striking about Portland is how outside Central Portland there's no massive TOD cluster to speak of. Instead, you just have a bunch of 5-over-1s, built 400 units at a time, sprinkled all over the MAX system. These mini-TODs are tiny, isolated islands in seas of sprawl. They aren't integrated into large, self-sustaining TOD megaprojects where residents can live, work, and shop in the same neighborhood. So people in these TODs take the MAX only to commute to Downtown--and drive to go anywhere else.
By contrast, in San Diego, there's plenty of TOD beyond Central San Diego, including Mission Valley, which is building TOD megaprojects like SDSU Mission Valley, with over 4,000 units and plenty of offices/retail mixed in. Similarly, Greater Seattle has Downtown Bellevue, and Atlanta's MARTA has Buckhead. Having these secondary satellite TOD clusters strongly anchors your rail lines from end-to-end with consistent, all-day demand, forcing transit agencies to increase off-peak frequency.
Visited Portland last spring. Yes, there was more homelessness and graffiti than there used to be a dozen years ago when I last lived there. No, I didn’t feel unsafe. No, it is not the burnt-out husk of a former urban war zone like so many on the Right seem to think.
Regarding the homelessness, the main problem is housing affordability. Homelessness has shot up in tandem with housing costs. And the main cause of housing costs going up is a shortage of housing; costs have gone up in tandem with how population has increased faster than the rate of housing construction. It’s all very Econ 101.
I’m sure it has nothing to do with substance abuse, the ability to commit crimes at will, and mental health. Those damn Righties! When will they get it right!
Here's like 1.33 USD to appreciate that you respected the privacy of distressed people but were content to show the licence plates of people driving in the bike lane👍
I actually thought about blurring it out then was like naaahhhh
Any feedback on the efficacy of Portlands density infill rules, like allowing anybody to have a ADU and eliminating parking requirements?
I'm curious what people's bike commutes are. I've recently started biking to work (downtown Minneapolis) and even though it's all dedicated bike trails and lanes, it's about a 40 minutes door to door.
Thanks for posting this video on Portland's urban design. Very insightful. I grew up in the portland metro area and commuted between the suburbs for work. I rarely drove in downtown as a result except for the rare weekend outing. I found the colored lane system really confusing due to unfamiliarity. For example, I would find myself accidentally driving in the bus or bike lane and receive understandably negative responses from the public. I like these approaches but I think drivers not being exposed to them in other parts of the region are reducing their effectiveness.
A political problem in itself but my hope and wish for rail expansion into vancouver area would be very nice. The bottleneck that is the i-5 and 205 bridge between the two cities will continue to inhibit growth in the region..
I went to college just outside PDX, and I didn't have a car at the time, but I was still able to get around relatively well. Now I live in a car dependent area with little to no public transit. I know PDX isn't that same as it was 10 years ago, but I can't help but miss it for that reason.
It's only got better on the transit front since then. My main complaint is that frequency is still at like 15min in alot of cases but there's been an entire transit only bridge, a whole new max line, and a new Bus rapid transit line added since then.
I think the one way vs two way debate depends on the width of the street. There's a few streets in downtown Pittsburgh that are one way streets with contraflow bike lanes. I think the more narrow streets can benefit from being one way, especially if you can accommodate multi-modal options as well. But some other instances where I think two way traffic is better would be the two way conversion they did around Allegheny Center in the North Side and the current conversion they're doing in East Liberty. Both of those roads were wide, urban renewal era projects that were one way, multi-lane ring roads around shopping the city was trying to get people to go to back when people were fleeing to the suburbs. They've been, or are in the process of being, converted to two way vehicle traffic with protected bike lanes (even the intersections have protection!) which I think slows people down more than having multiple wide lanes to travel down.
City Nerd should come check out the east coast, specifically NYC and see how much better downtown life is.
Thanks for covering Portland. I have to say that I never have a reason to go to those center city neighborhoods. I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on light rail generating development. I could really use a grocery store next to the Orange line. Cheers.
Thank you. Finally, some honesty about the dysfunction that is driving residents crazy.
Wow seeing the updates to Burnside Bridge is amazing. I used to walk the bridge every day from the Max stop to eastside for work. The walking space on both sides was so narrow and there was no buffer between car lanes and the slightly elevated path. The Max in general was an amazing way to get in and out of the city to surrounding areas, but that Burnside Max stop and the walk across the bridge were not pleasant experiences.
You like those steps from the train that pop up by the mission? Always good company around there
In that last clip where the cars are using the bike lane as a right turn lane, just put in poles to keep the cars out. Sure, the cars could still illegally use the bus lane to turn right, but at least some drivers would be less likely to turn into a red lane than a green lane.
Update: I wonder if busses would need that space to turn right. That may be the reason why there are no poles separating lanes there.
Or an enforcement camera. Catch your license plate in the bike lane block, you get a ticket.
None of the bus lines that run over the bridge turn right there, they all continue straight, so your solution would work just fine there, FWIW!
It's possible that drivers aren't aware of the law. Perhaps painting a No Cars (with the red line over a car) sign on the bike lane would communicate the message more effectively.
@@julietardos5044There is a sign that says no turn on red. The cars are driving in the bike lane to turn red against the light. They just don’t care. They don’t look and they don’t care. It’s especially dangerous when they make a right on red from the car lane because there is a bike signal there that turns green before the cars to give the bikes a head start.
@@ivoryandgrey7053 Good to know.
Visited Portland in February as part of my cross country train tour, so quite a lot of snow on the ground. Getting around was easy on Public Transport was fine though like in LA a lot of people use it as a way to keep warm. Downtown at night was deserted when I walked the the delightful Hubers Cafe. The inner neighbourhoods were great, especially North West area west of Nob Hill and Washington Park. Everything I ate in Portland was delicious, especially the food carts and sandwich shops. I would love to visit in the summer when the outdoor scene would be in full swing.
At 15:00 Why not just simply put a little flower bed between the bus lane and the cycle path so that car's can't cross over without damaging their vehicle?
Or just install a camera and send hefty fines to everyone using this as a shortcut if it is not allowed?
We need a city nerd top 10 coffee drinks to sip on while working in a cafe.