2 thoughts on “Contact Us”

1. 

   Marshall Houston says:

   I recently saw your very informative YouTube video “Will Oregon Really TOLL EVERYONE Who Drives on I-5?”

   I have seen several of your informative YouTube videos over the past few years and I really appreciate them. I am an Oregonian who, until a year ago, lived in a Vintage 1906 house in Portland, Oregon’s inner Southeast Brooklyn neighborhood, just three blocks from the address on my birth certificate. When I was a child, many of the locals even “walked” to and from their home down the street to work at places like Columbia Empire Meat company, that still exists but today, but workers come from dozens of miles away. (That neighborhood, became so overrun with crime, I stopped riding my bicycle from unsafe exposure to homeless, Fentanyl, Graffiti, car thefts, break-ins etc. Just driving to an from work through the City became needlessly stressful, with mentally ill and drugged out people suddenly walking in front of the car during the commutes. So, when our household had a person that was disabled and therefore extremely vulnerable, we reluctantly left Portland, just over a year ago, to a much more peaceful Newport, Oregon)

   That said, I haven’t been provincial, as I have traveled widely to Central America, Mexico, Vancouver B.C. Canada and all up and down the West Coast including San Francisco and Los Angeles. I lived for six months in Dallas, Texas, nine Months in Tarrytown, New York (with weekends in Manhattan), weeks in Orlando, Florida and several weeks in Japan from Osaka to Tokyo (both ways on the Shin Kansan Bullet Train) and to Europe, twice to Dublin, Ireland for several months, and to London and Paris through the Chunnel and Brussels, Belgium on the TGV high speed train and to Copenhagen, Denmark. Those are just a few of the more notable places. So, I think I can tell that Portland could be a lot better addressing local transportation issues. Proximity to the Portland State University Urban Planning Department (I have spoken personally to several PSU Urban Planning Professors over the years) is not helpful, as they are used as shills for compromised City Plans.

   So, back to Portland, Oregon…

   My history is that I have used TriMet’s Buses and Light Rail as primary transportation for over ten years with transfers to Max to the end of the line in Hillsboro, Oregon and to the other end of line in Gresham, Oregon. I even rode a bicycle to work for about three years until a few years ago when it became unsafe as Drugs and Homeless camps interrupted my pathways.

   That said, I am not impressed with TriMet’s management of the overall system. Ridership is still down from before COVID. While upper management continues to award pay raises. I worked for a time until 2014 at Intel in Hillsboro and riding from Southeast Portland to the Hillsboro Intel took 2-1/2 hours each way, I transferred three times, once from SE Portland to Downtown, then Max to Hillsboro, then a less frequent bus to the jobsite at Intel.
   What kills time on mass transit are the number of transfers.
   However, when I drove a car to Intel in the worse rush hour traffic through the Sylvan Tunnel, it took over a half hour and perhaps 45 minutes, one way. As was discovered by an astute commentator on San Francisco BART system, I discovered that Mass Transit doesn’t take the passenger to where the good jobs are located. The locations outside downtown Portland or other local urban centers, that have good jobs, typically do not have good Mass Transit connections. What Mass Transit does is take Government Workers and recipients of Government benefits to their locations. I noticed direct buses or MAX from downtown Portland City Hall, to City Hall in Milwaukie or Oregon City, or over to Lloyd Center’s Bonneville Power Administration Buildings or State Office buildings there, to Gresham City Hall.. catch my drift… of my digression…. to go back over to the main point.

   So back to Tolling the freeways in Oregon…..

   I was surprised that you didn’t address the regressive nature of Tolling our Freeways. Back East they have found that Tolls, trap underprivileged into their neighborhoods, preventing escape from poverty, where access to better jobs required use of the Tolled roads. Likewise in Portland, rents near downtown are so high that workers (Essential Workers during COVID) can only afford to live in the outlining areas around Portland.
   One example, I currently work for the Engineering Department at a Shipyard, we are having trouble hiring laborers. Laborers once came from within the Metro Area, including the nearside neighborhood where I grew up that consisted of Blue Collar workers back in the 1970s. However, most of our current laborers commute from distant outlying areas around the four points of the compass, Scappoose, St. Helens, Woodland, Canby, Rhododendron. What Tolls would do, is make it expensive for low income laborers (Essential Workers) to go to work. The more affluent can always pay Tolls, but the people who serve us our Lattes and Mochas, the Waiters, the Cooks, the Welders, Security Guards, Warehouse workers, the Janitors, etc, already hit with inflation and higher car insurance are being hit between the eyes if Tolls are in their pathway.
   The people down in the State Capital in Salem, though they have rhetoric that is Blue, however, proven by their actions, really don’t care about the poor and weak, just expanding government programs for revenues, while they look at the public like food, as Clients for potential revenue, rather thinking old fashioned as Public Servants and good stewards of public funds. That is why they like Congestion Pricing, as a means of arbitrarily priced Taxation without representation. It’s also why they once pressed for Carbon Taxes, because the rates are arbitrarily dependent on whatever their favorite Environmental and Climate Scientists declare.

   So, I would have really loved your video more, on Tolling in Oregon, but I think the regressive taxation against the working class part, was one of the most important factors that was left out.

   January 2025 at 12:30 pm
2. 

   Tim Butler says:

   Hello Rob,

   You seem like a really nice guy. Or do you just think about roads like I do??? I’ve never really told anyone how much I think about them.

   I too was raised in the suburbs and want good roads. I’ve thought about roads and how drivers use them since I learned to drive. For a while I even scraped my money together so I could try to race cars. But now I live in SF and love that I can walk places. I just watched your video about parking in Carmel. I hope more places do that.

   A question I’d love to see what you find is for decades now I’ve wondered why extra lanes are added on the right. That right lane for nervous or unengaged drivers should be continuous. But they’re made to work the hardest. If they’re going to stay responsible then they have to act to move back to the right. Or they can stay where they end up and clog traffic. Designers surely know this. Was this their plan from the beginning? Did they just not think about driver behavior? Did they simply add a 2nd lane where it would be called lane 2?

   So you live in LA if I remember right and you’ve driven from Sacto to the Bay Area. Have you driven the reverse? As you go thru Vallejo and past Marine World and the exit to Hwy 37. The hill is quite steep there and maybe a half-dozen lanes are added to the right. Trucks have to change that many lanes to stay in the slow lane. Slow drivers can end up right next to the fast lane and miles from the slow lane. Of all place that needs a continuous slow lane, this is it.

   I’m sure you’ve seen slow drivers get into the fast lane and just stay there regardless of what was going on around them. I once saw an old lady move from the on-ramp/#4 lane to the fast lane in about a 1/4 mile. The expression on her face and what I saw of her driving after that said she hated driving and was looking for the quietest place to drive – traffic only on one side and a continuous lane.

   Now not so long ago, my family and I took a trip to S Lake Tahoe. CA-50 looks to have been revamped. So many of the passing lanes are on the inside, to the left, and not to the right. You know how bad they are on the right and how little passing gets done. What happened? Is this CA getting smart? Dumb luck? I waited for so long to see this; I want to know it’s the future and not a one time thing.

   Another question, have you noticed how easy it is to drive in other states? Here in CA it seems the way to know how to get around well is to have already learned the hard way where things are? I remember approaching a freeway split in Altanta I think. There was a lane map up on the overhead sign. It showed which lanes went where and that’s what they did. Here, there are no maps and there’s usually a lane that goes itself splits rather than two lanes where the split goes between them. When there’s a lane that goes both ways, it usually fills up with car so it’s hard to get into. Then at the split you see that some of the cars just didn’t bother to change lanes to make room for people going the other way.

   I wish more people would see the people in cars and driving as a social activity rather than as something mechanical like an obstacle course where only only they matter.

   Thanks for setting this up so that I can write this much.

   Best, Tim

   March 2025 at 3:39 pm

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