September 2012
NEWS
The Southwest Portland Post • 3
Which comes first, land-use planning or transportation improvements?
BARBUR CONCEPT PLAN
By Lee Perlman
The Southwest Portland Post
City and Metro planners have
neatly divided up the work for
planning the future of Highway
99W. Inside the Portland city lim-
its, between Duniway Park and the
Tigard city limits, the highway is
called Southwest Barbur Boulevard.
The Southwest Corridor Plan,
which also includes Tigard, Tuala-
tin and Sherwood, is looking at the
future of traffic and transit in the
corridor, including a possible new
light rail route.
The Barbur Concept Plan is one
of several efforts by participating
jurisdictions to consider what future
land uses in the corridor should be,
and how to create them.
However, as a briefing on the
Barbur Concept Plan before the
Portland Planning and Sustainabil-
ity Commission last month showed,
it’s hard to separate the two. Specifi-
cally, some of the land use goals of
the Concept Plan depend on the
Corridor Study transportation im-
provements to succeed.
As planner Morgan Tracy told the
Commission, public input so far
calls for future development on the
street to be a mixture of retail and
commercial, at a high density but
not so high as the Pearl District or
South Waterfront.
For the time being, Tracy said,
planners think some of the housing
development might better be placed
on roads such as Southwest Taylors
Ferry Road or 13th Avenue, within a
block of Barbur, rather than directly
on it. There is a need for better bicy-
cle and pedestrian facilities, he said.
Commission member Chris Smith,
who is sitting on the Concept Plan’s
stakeholders committee, said, “The
pervasive idea is that traffic will
increase, and that we have to plan
for that. I say we should design the
place we want to live in instead of
for the backup on the few days a
year when I-5 overloads.”
Another Commission member,
Howard Shapiro, said that in design-
ing future development, “There’s
a tendency to say, ‘We know more
than you. Cars won’t be here in 25
years anyway, so get over it.’”
However, Smith said, an essential
ingredient for the development and
success of less car-oriented develop-
ment is bus service that is “more
regular, higher quality and stays on
schedule better” than what is now
delivered by TriMet, and Smith said
he is “frustrated” with that agency.
Southwest Neighborhoods Inc.
land use chair John Gibbon told the
Commission he shared this frustra-
tion. “There’s not good news from
TriMet, obviously,” he said. “(Bar-
bur) Line 12 is a strap hanger from
6 a.m. to
6 p.m.” due to limited
service. “The planning scenarios
assume light rail, and I’m not sure
we can count on it. It’s going to be
a challenge.”
Commission chair Andre Baugh
said much of Barbur Boulevard is
occupied by “car-centric businesses,
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A potential light rail station, Southwest 26th Avenue is one of the focus areas of
the Barbur Concept Plan. (Post file photo by Don Snedecor)
and there will be a transition. It will
be planned obsolescence for a form
of life. The question is how do we
work with TriMet for the transi-
tion?”
SWNI transportation chair Roger
Averbeck said the Concept Plan al-
lowed for short-term improvements
to the street in the form of better
“access management and pedestrian
safety, which is not well managed
by the state.”
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