Lesson learned? Sadly, I doubt it

On Portland's Trimet buses, many of the overhead banners provided as visual distraction for the riders are a series of historic photos called “Traveling through time”, documentation of public transportation through Portland and Oregon's history.

While these photos offer a fascinating glimpse into the region's various transit metamorphoses, they also serve as inadvertent documentation of our society's perpetual lack of foresight.

Look at the examples I have included here, two different streetcar lines running through downtown Portland. Streetcars once covered the city like a web, across the bridges, even up the comically steep SW Vista Avenue--prior to the proliferation of cars, people needed transportation, and streetcars and buses handled the task. (Look at the crowds of people at the trains in many of the photos at the site linked above, evidence of robust use of the system.) As the automobile's ubiquity increased, use of public transit waned, and eventually the tracks were paved over to facilitate easier car traffic. Of course, this was considered a forward-thinking act, as train use was dropping and car use was increasing.

Now circumstances have changed, and the city has gone back to embracing train travel---three Max lines carry passengers to and from surrounding communities with two more max lines coming, a streetcar serpentines through downtown connecting various neighborhoods with another line coming. With heightened attention to pollution and reliance on imported energy, the city has become a model of effective public transportation---with changes that hearken back to a plan used nearly a century ago.

Of course, there was no way for the city planners in 1940 to anticipate the impact that would come from the automobile. (Though I'm sure some citizens suspected as much.) But these aged photos of streetcars prowling downtown Portland ought to serve as a reminder that so-called solutions being offered today are simply a reflection of a contemporaneous mindset, and as the city discusses widening (or replacing) the Interstate bridge between Portland and Vancouver, perhaps we should remember that making expensive accommodations for personal, insulated transportation vehicles has come back to bite us before.