Portland is built on both sides of the Willamette river, connected by bridges. Out of twelve bridges, there is one designated only for walking, cycling, and Trimet. Portland has strict urban growth boundaries (UGB), meaning that the edges of the city are planned to strictly remain as rural, and new urban growth must fit into the bounds of the city (Seltzer 2004, 35). For this reason, urban planning in Portland has involved constantly accounting for how a growing population, and growing economy, can fit within these geographic boundaries.
The strict UGB in Portland is unique among other cities of the same size; this means “natural” attractions are close to the center of the city, but strict UGB presents challenges with so many stakeholders involved. Portland’s transportation systems, and Portland’s land use policies, have a history of implementing ideas before other American cities, giving the city a reputation as being on the cutting edge of planning.
In 1991, the Oregon state government created the Transportation Planning Rule (TPR), which required localities to plan intentionally for the long term of transportation, which had overarching goals of reducing vehicle miles by 10 percent in 20 years and 20 percent in 30 years (Bianco and Adler 2001). Through the lens of TPR, Portland Metro government has implemented a variety of ideas with the robust and well-funded transportation planning department, PBOT. These ideas have focused on the provision of non-car alternatives, removal of parking, and the narrowing of streets as part of the ‘road diet’ school of thought (Alder, Sy and Dill, Jennifer 2004, 238). In other cities in America, Scooter companies began operating without permits or approval, but in Portland, PBOT instituted a pilot program to avoid this.
The saturation of urban markets with so many brands of e-scooters is possible because of a history of urban planning that made it possible and profitable. In the U.S., transportation planning had a widespread era of ‘mega-projects’ in which large and expensive infrastructure, like highways, were built during the 1950s and 1960s in a time of unprecedented federal aid (Altshuler and Luberoff 2004, 8). This disruption took the form of houses and public amenities being demolished, or lengthy construction processes that disrupted the lives of people in the city.
Towards the end of this era in the 1960s, these disruptive infrastructure projects became issues of intense protest by stakeholders concerned about the demolition of neighborhoods and public spaces, environmental advocates, and racial justice advocates who saw that highway projects were being used to separate neighborhoods as a way to stop civil rights protests (Rose and Raymond 2012). Beginning in the 1970s, it became a common goal of local governments to avoid these forms of protest by avoiding significant disruption and harm.
Portland’s current public transportation provider, Trimet, was created in 1969 as a way to address issues of low ridership and bankruptcy of the previous public transit, which was privately owned. H.B 1808 raised money for the creation of Trimet locally through payroll tax (Trimet 2013, 3). In 1973, protests caused Portland Metro to redirect the $400 million meant for the Mt. Hood Freeway, and to suggest constructing a light rail system instead. After so much protest, Portland Metro chose this because it was expected to cause less disruption and protest. The first freeway removal in America in response to protest was Portland’s Harbor Drive in 1974, decades before any other city removed a freeway (Rose and Raymond 2012, 180). This is one major event in the history of Portland’s transportation planning that set the stage for high levels of public involvement in new transportation infrastructure.
However, the newest forms of transit coming to cities are using a privatized “share” model. David Harvey theorizes that at the intersections of late capitalism and urbanism municipalities have become “entrepreneurs,” rather than “managers” (Harvey 1989). Public-private partnerships are taking the place of what used to be government work. In times of reduced federal funding for transportation infrastructure, Portland Metro has to look to other sources of funding. Harvey also emphasizes that cities are not just an active local government but a social configuration of people living in them. Scooters are not just here because of Portland Metro’s policies but also because people in Portland are riding and charging them.
E-scooters are a market solution advertised as last-mile transportation. E-Scooter companies compete with each other to attract scooter users paying by the minute to ride. These companies use an almost entirely informal gig workforce to pick up and charge the scooters in their own homes and place them back in designated locations, and even to complete maintenance and mechanical repairs to the scooters. These “workplaces” are moderated by other companies who profit on secondary markets, like Perch, which rents storage pods by the night for people to charge scooters in (Perch Mobility). Regulatory and safety duties are partially outsourced to PBOT, funded by local taxpayers.
Seltzer, Ethan. 2004. “It’s Not an Experiment: Regional Planning at Metro, 1990 to Present.’” In The Portland Edge: Challenges and Successes in Growing Communities, edited by Connie P. Ozawa. Washington, DC: Island Press. 35 -59
TriMet. 2013. “Public Transit: A History of Public Transit in Portland.” https://trimet.org/pdfs/publications/Public-Transit-in-Portland.pdf
Rose, Mark H., and Mohl, Raymond A. 2012. “The Freeway Teardown Movement in American Cities” in Interstate Highway Politics and Policy since 1939. 3rd ed. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. 177-191.
Rose, Mark H., and Mohl, Raymond A. 2012. “The Highway and the City, 1945–1955” in Interstate Highway Politics and Policy since 1939. 3rd ed. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. 55-69.
Harvey, David. 1989 “From Managerialism to Entrepreneurialism: The Transformation in Urban Governance in Late Capitalism.” Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography 71, no. : 3.
Altshuler, Alan A., and Luberoff, David E.. 2004. “Overview: Four Political Eras” in Mega-Projects : The Changing Politics of Urban Public Investment. Washington: Brookings Institution Press. Accessed January 25, 2021. 8-42.
Perch Mobility. Accessed March 1, 2021. https://www.perchmobility.com/distributed-charging-network.
Note that the echo = FALSE parameter was added to the code chunk to prevent printing of the R code that generated the plot.