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· Metro's "community outreach" plan for its light-rail

planning specifies that it will "identify citizens,

business and community leaders willing to speak and

make presentations."87  Metro has indeed identified and

arranges speaking engagements for more than 50 citizens

who favor light rail but none who oppose it.

Metro's land-use and transportation plans for Portland

will be a disaster for most of the area's residents.  The

plans will more than triple road congestion, make single-

family homes almost unaffordable, and raise taxes--and those

are only the intended consequences.  Unintended consequences

could include increased air pollution and crime and the

creation of a permanent underclass forced to live its lives

in rental housing because home ownership is too expensive.

Metro's Regional Transportation Plan includes a list of

570 "preferred network" projects with an estimated cost of

about $4.5 billion, and a list of 240 "financially con-

strained network" projects with an estimated cost of about

$1 billion.  Planners say that funding is ensured only for

the constrained list.88

The most glaring problem is that planners made no

attempt to evaluate the effects of the various transporta-

tion projects on land use, congestion, air pollution, or

other important aspects of life.  For example, the south-

north light-rail line proposed for the reauthorization of

ISTEA is projected to carry fewer than 1 percent of all

person-trips in the Portland area, at a cost of nearly $3

billion.  That amount, with the funds for the constrained

list, would allow Portland to cover the costs of its pre-

ferred list, the one that presumably would be most benefi-

cial to the city.

By what standard will planners judge the success of

their projects?  Portland's transportation plan says that

congestion in residential and commercial areas will "signal

positive urban development for these areas."89

Yet even with the proposed 120-mile rail system, plan-

ners predict that Portlanders will continue to drive the

vast majority of their local trips.  Automobiles currently

account for 92 percent of the metropolitan area's trips, and

the plan predicts that they will account for 87.8 percent of

trips by the year 2040 (Table 4).  Transit's share of trips

will increase from 2.8 percent to less than 6.4 percent, and

most of that increase will be in bus riders (the remaining

trips will be made on foot or by bicycle).90