Commentary

Small reductions in the volume of traffic, especially at the peak hour produce disproportionate reductions in levels of congestion --evidence of the traffic tipping point.

Last year, the US made more progress in reducing traffic congestion than any other time in history. New data show that in 2008 the amount of traffic congestion in the nation's cities declined by 30 percent, and that congestion was lower in every hour of every day in 2008 than it had been the year previously. How did we make these big gains? Not by adding more highway lanes or transit -- the physical infrastructure barely changed -- we did it with a very modest decline in car travel. On urban interstate highways, total vehicle miles traveled in the US declined by about 3 percent in 2008.

In the past 12 months, Oregon's unemployment rate has roughly doubled (to nearly 12%) and we've lost more than 90,000 jobs.

How did we get in this mess?  Why is Oregon's unemployment rate higher than the national average?  Doesn't Oregon always do worse than the national economy in recessions? 

These are the questions I'm most commonly about the economy, and I took a stab at answering them in a recent Oregonian column (here). 

Like many cities, Portland is contemplating a large public subsidy for the construction of a headquarters hotel near its convention center.  Based on extensive research by our colleagues at Brookings, we're convinced that this is a expensive and risky undertaking.  Joe Cortright's testimony to the Metro Council sharply criticized the feasibility study.

We have warned for some time that housing price dynamics were unsustainable, and our views were published in the middle of 2005.  In a short article commissioned by the Oregonian, we forecast the ultimate reversal of housing markets.

The region needs to take a closer look at the proposed $4 billion Columbia River Crossing project.  This mammoth project--which would be the largest public works project in the region's history--would require us to go deeply into debt, tie up the region's limited financial resources for decades, and facilitate a 40% increase in VMT and carbon emissions.

Thirty Seconds Over Portland : A Comment on the “Costs of Congestion” Study Joe Cortright, Impresa, April 20, 2006 Is it worth spending an additional $6 billion on transportation to save an average of 30 seconds on the typical trip 25 years from now? The “Costs of Congestion” report estimates the economic benefits from improving Portland ’s transportation system over the next two decades that would result from spending an additional $6 billion (that is, increasing projected transportation spending from $4 billion to $10 billion).