oregon

The Oregon Department of Transportation Office of Innovative Partnerships and Alternative Funding will be issuing a Request for Information (RFI) to demonstrate several of the proposed components and functions of a demonstration system for the Road Usage Charge Pilot Program (RUCPP).

Think of the ideal circumstances where lightrail might be competitive with a car: (1) a Big Event with large masses of people at one destination (2) expensive or scarce parking at the Big Event (3) blank slate developments planned in detail as transit oriented.

A group of local businessmen, engineers and roadbuilders in Oregon are developing an approximate 20km (12 mile) $350m to $400m tollroad project designed to improve connections between Portland and the coast. Called the Coastal Parkway the project would provide a high quality connection between I-5 and the 99W or Southwest Pacific Highway near Dayton. They hope to get a toll concession from the state under its Public Private Partnerships law of 2009.

Oregon DOT's Mileage Fee report is the most useful report on surface transportation in many years. By contrast, two "national commissions" on US surface transportation policy that reported recently were useless - proposing more of the same mishmash of corrupt favor trading and brain-dead 'planning' that has got our transportation into the mess it is today.

A small toll plaza off I-84 in the little town of Hood River on the Columbia River in Oregon is the first in the state to do electronic tolling. They now have five months experience using sticker tags, and the Port of Hood River finance director Linda Shames says they have been "very well received."