You Got Your Wish, Sellwood

"See, 30 years or so ago there was a plan,a balanced plan to route traffic through Sellwood into Johnson Creek Blvd. It included a four lane Sellwood Bridge, an efficient Tacoma Street with dedicated pedestrian and bike paths. But Oh No, you wanted to keep your two lane street, which was a hundred years out of date then. You even had it made more narrow. Oh No, you didn't want your street widened."

"Have you seen the ramshackle buildings along there now? But you're perfectly willing to let the MAX line destroy old buildings anyway. So what have you got? Cut through traffic along your side streets. An impossible crossing. Impossible access to your one wildly overpriced grocery story. Impossible access to your once-affordable, once working- class houses. TriMet buses which are incredibly late because of the congestion you asked for."

A balanced traffic plan from about thirty years ago proposed routing traffic through Sellwood into Johnson Creek Boulevard with a four-lane Sellwood Bridge and an improved Tacoma Street featuring dedicated pedestrian and bike paths. Local decisions preserved and narrowed a century-old two-lane street instead of widening it. That choice produced cut-through traffic on side streets, difficult crossings, and constrained access to a single expensive grocery store and formerly working-class homes. The MAX project contributed to building loss, TriMet buses run late from congestion, and idling traffic generates noticeable exhaust and pollution.

Read at Portland Mercury