A friend of mine has been in Portland looking for work.  He does carpentry work, placing him firmly in the blue collar category.  His profession isn't technically requisite of a private automobile, but in almost every call back, reference, job request, and other possibility that has arose he has lost the chance because of the lacking automobile.

To me this seems absolutely blasphemous and stupid in Portland.  Any practical job site within 15 miles of the downtown core can be reached on a daily basis reliably.  Why someone needs a car I don't know.  Besides that what does a carpenter make?  10-25 bucks at best.  So they gotta lose another 15% to an automobile that they have questionable use for.  The company should provide onsite vehicles for work need.

Needless to say that is very "not cool" nor very intelligent on the parts of the builders.  But then of course shoving costs back on the workers to keep costs down for home buyers in an area notorious for higher building costs because of a 30-45% increase in building costs I can't lay much blame.  Except of course, the State & City Governments could fix this problem, not with repressive increases in regulation, but a decrease in regulation, oversight costs, and other such issues that cause the problem in the first place.

If a transit system is going to be provided (that is primarily for the lower incomes in the first place) it should be easy and smart for lower income people to use it.  Instead saying I will use transit is a barrier to much of the lower income jobs.

I never thought I'd say it, but the stupid article I read over 2 years ago from the Libertarian Think Tank about buying people cars instead actually investing in transit makes a LOT more sense today.  It's still illogical and stupid (as any subsidy for one choice over another is) but is glowing with more logic than the counter of building transit for "low income" or whatever the excuse so often is.

The fact of the matter is transit works in Portland because low income people are a percentage of the riders.  The reason it maintains support and thus funding is because white collar (think west side MAX) workers use it to get to their jobs.  These jobs also are some of the most supportive of transit.

To maintain that transit is for low income workers is almost delusional, because the jobs that are transitional or actually pay the bills (i.e. the jobs over 10 bucks, the construction jobs, etc) usually require a personal transportation vehicle.  It's a sad fact.  I don't think it is a smart way to do business, if most of those doing business thought about it they would probably agree, but with Government acting and behaving the way it does these days, it is obvious why businesses do these things.

In conclusion, it would be stupid for Portland (or Oregon) to cut back on transit funding or expansion of the transit system or to decrease road funding.  If anything I must agree with another agitator, Chris Smith, in regards to the slice of the pie.  Transportation plain and simple needs a larger slice of the pie in this state.  The road subsidies need increased, the gas taxes need increased, the user access prices (tolls or whatever) need to be increased or created, and transit needs to be more representative of what it is for, the middle and upper middle class that wants to be carless.  I'm not for the subsidies and such, but until the damn Governments figure out the logic of opening the transportation industry back up to the people of this nation then they'll need to keep dumping their own money into it, since they've created a completely unprofitable industry (transportation).