TriMet GM boosts e-bikes as leaders weigh in on congestion pricing

Urgency for brand spanking new transportation funding choices has by no means been larger.
(Picture: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

Even earlier than the Covid-19 pandemic took a cleaver to municipal budgets and dramatically impacted mobility patterns regionwide, congestion pricing was already a sizzling matter. Now there’s new urgency across the concept of charging individuals to make use of roads.

Presently Metro, the Oregon Division of Transportation and the Portland Bureau of Transportation are concerned in separate — however associated — discussions about if and find out how to implement tolls.

On Thursday Metro’s Joint Coverage Advisory Committee on Transportation (JPACT) was briefed on the Metro Regional Congestion Pricing Study (to not be confused with PBOT’s Pricing for Equitable Mobility or ODOT’s I-5 and I-205 tolling efforts).

(From Metro’s Regional Congestion Pricing Examine)

Metro Planner Elizabeth Mros O’Hara introduced the research to JPACT members and stated, “The logic behind congestion pricing is de facto easy. Should you cost motorists a charge to make use of roadways and use the cash on the issues that you just care about, individuals are prone to change their conduct.”

That change in conduct can have wide-ranging impacts not simply to budgets and mobility, however to well being outcomes. Mros O’Hara advised JPACT members that after Stockholm applied congestion pricing, acute bronchial asthma instances for younger kids in adjoining areas dropped by 50%.

Clackamas County Commissioner Paul Savas.

Metro is exploring whether or not or not 4 several types of pricing methods can help the area’s transportation priorities: A car miles traveled charge the place drivers pay for each mile they journey; A “cordon pricing” scheme the place drivers would pay to enter a pre-determined space (like downtown Portland); A hall pricing method the place drivers would pay a charge to drive on a selected highway, bridge, or freeway; or good, old school parking pricing.

Clackamas County Commissioner Paul Savas expressed considerations about equity based mostly on his view that folks he represents don’t have the identical breadth of transportation alternate options as those that life in Portland. “The transportation choices in Portland are improbable in comparison with what we’ve got in Clackamas County,” Savas stated. If viable alternate options to driving should not in place earlier than tolling begins, Savas added, “It feels extra like extraction of {dollars} than it’s a change of conduct as a result of there aren’t any choices.”

“65 to 75% of our of our inhabitants leaves the county each day and doesn’t have entry to these alternate options,” Savas defined. “All they’ll do is drive a automobile.” If individuals don’t have any different choices however to drive, Savas warned that any pricing scheme would stay “extremely unpopular and extremely controversial.” “I simply need to simply put it put that on the market that that this can be a huge deal, and it’s going to be extremely, extremely politically charged,” he warned.

TriMet GM Doug Kelsey.

TriMet Basic Supervisor Doug Kelsey echoed Savas’ considerations. He shared the instance of Copenhagen and Stockholm the place congestion pricing has already been applied and the place viable alternate options to driving are properly established. Kelsey stated the potential of pricing “is completely immense” however that to achieve success we should put money into alternate options beforehand.

Kelsey then introduced up — quite unexpectedly — the potential of electrical bikes and biking usually. “I actually encourage us to additionally think about e-bikes in right here. The vary of e-bikes is de facto… it’s exploding proper now. I actually suppose it’s a new variable within the dialog.” “However even with out e-bikes,” Kelsey continued, “the Copenhagen’s and the others of the world, they actually factored biking in…not simply transit.”

“The e-bike phenomenon, I feel, is right here to remain. And it’s simply going to be nothing however progress. So I wouldn’t underestimate or encourage us to be as a part of our consideration to factoring the gap and energy that e-bikes may be capable of carry,” Kelsey stated.

Portland Commissioner Chloe Eudaly.

Portland Metropolis Commissioner Chloe Eudaly is an enormous fan of congestion pricing; however she stays involved about its equity. She additionally thinks e-bikes can play a big position in permitting extra individuals to maneuver round with out having to drive — and pay new tolls that include it. “We now have a full e-bike fleet [as part of the newly expanded Biketown bike share system] and we’re deploying that fleet in east Portland, which is drastically increasing bicycles as a viable transportation choice for commuters throughout the town,” she stated.

Eudaly reminded JPACT members that each determination they make should remember the fact that 40% of greenhouse fuel emissions in Oregon come from transportation emissions. “This isn’t ideological,” she stated. “That is existential.”

Eudaly stated tolling has potential to assist the area obtain each local weather and income objectives; but it surely have to be completed fastidiously to not unfairly influence individuals who depend on automobiles. “The Metropolis of Portland, regardless of how dense it’s, regardless of our nice transit system, regardless of how walkable and bikeable a lot of our neighborhoods are — we’ve got a protracted option to go earlier than we might think about implementing congestion pricing on our roadways,” she stated. “There’s plenty of work to do, individuals want alternate options, however that is completely the time to begin contemplating these choices.”

Metro plans to proceed learning choices by way of the top of 2020 and resolve on subsequent steps early 2021.

— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org
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chloe eudaly, congestion pricing, doug kelsey, metro, paul savas