In Oregon, a battle raged for nearly twenty years over the construction of a highway project known as the Mt. Hood Freeway. If approved, the Freeway would have removed more than 1% of all housing stock in Portland. In the mid 1970s, after the proposal's defeat, the city opted to build a mass transit infrastructure. The result is a more pedestrian-friendly and livable city.
TOPP videographer, Clarence Eckerson Jr., takes us to Portland to see the results and posits that his own neighborhood in Brooklyn might have benefited from similar forethought during the planning phase of the Robert Moses-designed Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.![]()
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<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman">[intro music]</font> <br>
</p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Clarence Eckerson Jr.:</i>
[00:10] Behind me is the BQE, the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, a Robert
Moses creation ran through Brooklyn neighbourhoods in the 1940’s and
‘50’s. It cut off neighbourhoods from each other and Brooklyn
from its waterfront. Things which nearly 60 years later, some
parts of Brooklyn still haven’t recovered from. I’ve lived
adjacent to this highway for 15 years. Every morning I wake up,
I see it, I smell it, I hear it and I often wonder what if a highway
like this wasn’t built? What would have this section of Brooklyn
possibly look like? Well in Portland, Oregon, in the 1970’s,
residents there were facing a similar challenge. A massive highway
project, also proposed by Moses, called the Mt. Hood Freeway, was being
pushed on its citizens. It was defeated and it radically altered
the city forever, and provides us with a window to see just how different
things might have been here without the BQE. So I figured, let’s
check it out, let’s hop on a plane and let’s go to Portland. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman">[music]</font> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Richard Ross:</i>
[01:24] And we’re standing here this afternoon where the Mt. Hood
Freeway was supposed to be. The Mt. Hood Freeway was a mega plan
of the 1960’s that never came to pass. And the story of how
the freeway was defeated and then traded in for the beginnings of Portland
light rail system is a pretty important one for Portland and, I think,
for other cities. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Steve Dotterrer:</i>
[01:49] Mt. Hood Freeway was one of a number of freeways that were part
of a 1955 Highway Plan, where it was to go through a neighbourhood in
South East Portland, and it would have taken out about 1% of all the
housing units in city. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Greg Raisman:</i>
[02:01] Robert Moses had come to town and planned a dense grid of freeways
that would go through Portland, destroying a lot of homes and businesses
and parks. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Shawn Granton:</i>
[02:10] And Portland brought out Moses and paid him to do a study.
Moses was sort of the grandfather like the nation’s freeway system
and sort of got the whole wheels in progress of like building divided
highways and limited access. They brought him out and he did his
usual shtick of mapping out and saying we should build a highway here,
here and here.</font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Steve Dotterrer:</i>
[02:29] He did this plan. Parts of it were built by the State
Highway Division in the city and then after the war. That plan
was renewed by the Highway Department in the 1950’s, and so that was
the 1955 plan that proposed really a network of freeways over the whole
metropolitan area. Pretty much like every three or four miles
there was another freeway proposed. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Blaine Merker:</i>
[02:50] So standing over the BQE, this actually, you know, it looks
a lot like the condition that the Mt. Hood Freeway would have been.
Obviously the, you know, the urban fabric is different around us but
you would have had the same sort of situation where you would have had
a depressed freeway, down about 40 feet underground.</font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Richard Ross:</i>
[03:09] The plan had the blessings of everyone, everybody that was important,
the State Highway Department, the City Council, the County Commission.
It was for a 15 mile freeway that was coming from inner city Portland
out to the Eastern suburbs, and so the plan was a done deal.</font></p>
<p> <br></p>
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<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Greg Raisman:</i>
[03:28] Neighbourhoods really, as they started to see that plan implemented,
started to decide that was a bad idea and started really pushed the
political leadership to say that as a city, a community, we have a different
vision for ourselves as to how we want to grow and move into the future.
They saw what was happening to the other neighbourhoods in the city
and other cities around the country, and were figuring out that this
highway wasn’t going to help out the inner city at all, it was going
to kill the inner city at the benefit of the suburbs. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Richard Ross:</i>
[03:56] A number of things happened. Probably one of the most
important ones is the National Environmental Protection Act which came
in the early ‘70’s. All of a sudden citizen groups decided
they might sue, that this freeway plan needed an environmental impact
statement. The courts found yes, an environmental impact statement
applied to this proposal for using Federal funds. So that was
pretty important, but at the same time there was a shift politically
to leaders that would question why this was a good idea for communities. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Greg Raisman:</i>
[04:30] Communities was able to get political leadership changes that
led to the city and the county and the state pulling their concurrence
with the plan. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Richard Ross:</i>
[04:40] The Highway Department in the late ‘60’s or early ‘70’s
was beginning to acquire houses right around the New Seasons Market
where we’re standing here today. And they were not only acquiring
them, in some cases they were tearing them down.</font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Shawn Granton:</i>
[04:55] We’re standing right now in Piccolo Park in South East Portland.
This is where the Mt. Hood Freeway would be if it was built. The
neighbourhood and the city got together and proposed putting a neighbourhood
park in here and got the land back and put in all the different, like
playground amenities and green space. So what was once possibly
like four or five empty housing lots is now a city park. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Blaine Merker:</i>
[05:19] The neighbourhood in South East right now is… it’s a walkable
neighbourhood, people bike, it’s a slow… it has a slow pace.
It’d be a completely different place if this structure were right
next to all those houses. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
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<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Steve Dotterrer:</i>
[05:34] There are ramps at the end of the Markham Bridge today that
were supposed to be the ramps that connected to this freeway that have
never been used. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Shawn Granton:</i>
[05:42] This is ramp that’s just sort of dead-end. It like just
ends. It just, you know, it’s a ramp that goes nowhere, a ghost
ramp. And it goes to where the Mt. Hood Freeway would have connected,
but since it never got built, there’s no use for it. It’s
just sort of a useless appendage to the bridge. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Steve Dotterrer:</i>
[05:57] There are other ghost ramps I guess I would say in the area.
One of them is a ramp that is… leads from the Hawthorne Bridge to
the Robert Moses planned waterfront expressway, it was called the Harbour
Drive Expressway. It was built in the late ‘40’s and it was
taken out in the early ‘70’s and replaced with a park. And
it had ramps from… that connected to the bridges. So when it
was replaced with the park that you see on this drawing, these ramps,
these ghost ramps, were left. There was a ramp that came from
the Hawthorne Bridge down onto that expressway. The ramp was saved
and used as a bike route to get down into the park. And there
was big fears about removing that Harbour Drive which, I mean there
were some problems, but they weren’t huge problems. It’s worked
out over time. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Greg Raisman:</i>
[06:41] I see the Mt. Hood Freeway as the moment in time that Portland
experienced a paradigm shift. Portland made the case that instead
of using the money for the freeways, we should use the money to build
a light rail system that would enhance our regional transportation system,
provide for the level of mobility that our city needs, while still letting
for access where people can walk and bike and take transit, as real
comfortable and safe modes moving around the city and throughout the
region. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Blaine Merker:</i>
[07:09] The defeat of the freeway led to just a lot of changes in the
way that Portland looked at transportation because, well first off there
were a bunch of other freeways in line behind the Mt. Hood Freeway.
So after it got built they were going to build a bunch more. Another
thing is pulling out a whole bunch of money to do other stuff, like
the light rail. And put money into a whole bunch of other smaller
transportation projects across the city, and that money has only just
finished being spent in the last few years. It lasted that long.
It means so you can kind of like spend all your money and get this,
or you could spend all your money and get a whole bunch of other stuff.
And of course that money didn’t just… it didn’t pay for all the
light rail of course cos Portland how now a bunch of lines, but it started
light rail. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Speaker:</i> [07:54]
The decision to cash in the freeway was a real watershed for Portland
as a city, it’s more than just transportation. The city began
to pay much more attention to the liveability of its inner city neighbourhoods
rather than just seeing them as a place to get from one place to another
quickly. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Steve Dotterrer:</i>
[08:12] Traffic calming became a really important principle in this
work. When I… when we first started working for the community,
you know, it was like, okay, we’re going to make these streets the
through streets and these aren’t, you know, and after a couple of
years of this they came back and said, well, it’s great you’re making
the through streets, but what are you doing to calm the traffic?
You… we… and it was the community that said, you know, it was a
good idea to say that this would happen automatically, but it won’t
happen automatically. So now you need to start inventing programmes
for us that will actually solve this problem. At first we borrowed
from other places, pretty heavily from Seattle. But after a while
the speed bumps and a lot of the things that the traffic engineers here
developed were pretty innovative original solutions to these problems.
And once you turn their minds towards solving those problems, they’re
very, very creative people. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Speaker:</i> [09:01]
It led to some really defining things about Portland, like the fact
that we took a freeway and turned it into a park, or the fact that we
said no to a Downtown parking garage and instead built Pioneer Courthouse
Square, one of the top ten best public places in the country. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Steve Dotterrer:</i>
[09:16] We’re certainly have some experience with traffic, the volumes
changing when you make these changes. The biggest one for us is
when we put in our bus model or our transit model and took the traffic
away there. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Speaker:</i> [09:26]
We have an outstanding transit system for buses. The bus malls
really are the spine of that. I know that I can walk to the bus
mall and I can get almost anywhere in this city, pretty much go anywhere
in this city, from one of those two streets. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Shawn Granton:</i>
[09:40] It was sort of that different way of thinking, let’s think
about other things other than like accommodate cars. And I think
that… I think that’s one of the key things, if not the key thing,
about cities nowadays to make a liveable city is you have to think…
you can’t think of cars first. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Speaker:</i> [09:55]
The region has a regional transportation plan that tries to put all
modes on a level playing field, which means that investments in transit,
pedestrian friendly streets, and all of those things are looked at at
the regional level, and then local communities get to carry those things
out. But local community plans are required by the State of Oregon
to be multimodal. That I think is the critical thing 30 years
afterwards that has come out of this evolution.</font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Steve Dotterrer:</i>
[10:26] The whole time we were investing in transit we were investing
in all modes, but we were investing in modes like the car and the truck,
but we’re trying to do it in a way that it fits into an urban environment
where people want to live. I mean it’s… you’re trying to
create a place, and then people have to move around in that place, but
you want them to do it in a way that respects the place and the other
people who are there. Once you make that decision and then you
begin to start building that system to serve that purpose, I think then
you’re on your way to success. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman">[music]</font> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Shawn
Granton:</i> [11:01] There was another guy in city government,
Francis Ivancie, who was a perennial City Commissioner and he ran against
Goldschmidt at the next election cycle in 1976. He was pro Mt.
Hood Freeway, and he put up these billboards all around town saying,
if Ivancie was Mayor you’d be home by now, indicating that he was
pro the freeway. Of course the thing that everybody said afterwards
is that Ivancie sort of forgot that most of the people that were pro
the freeway weren’t want Portland voters cos they lived in the suburbs.
And he lost that election. </font> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman">[music]</font> <br></p>
http://transcriptdivas.ca/transcription-canada/
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