Getting where?

From Oregonlive.com, "How To Get There"

Metro and its three counties are speeding closer to a decision on designation of urban reserves, land that will be targeted for urban growth boundary expansions through the year 2040.

Most of the focus has been on what, as in what farmland should be preserved from development, and how much, as in how much land is really needed for outward growth in the next half century or so.

But painfully absent from the discussions has been how to get there - not to the designation process, but to the land that ultimately is set aside as reserves. The decision will be made - supposedly, unanimously - by the Metro Council and the commissions of Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties.

Councilor Kathryn Harrington, Commissioner Jeff Cogen, Chairman Tom Brian and Commissioner Charlotte Lehan represent those boards, respectively, on the so-called Core 4, the group negotiating the ultimate reserves plan.

The Core 4 has the tools to take this into account. Metro's soon-to-be-adopted regional transportation plan clearly states where future high capacity transit investment will be.

But the Core 4's preliminary areas of agreement on reserve land don't necessarily mesh with the corridors likely to be developed for mass transit in the next 20 years.

In fact, of the 20,800 acres the Core 4 has preliminarily agreed to, more than 11,000 acres are nowhere near any sort of high-capacity transit: no freeways, no planned busways, no MAX lines.

Add in areas relatively close to freeways but nowhere near transit, and about three-quarters of the reserves are essentially designed for sprawl, not for "20-minute neighborhoods" and "low vehicle miles traveled."

The problem is that poor planning will only further the jobs-housing imbalance in the region, where westside workers are forced to live in houses they can afford east of the Willamette.

TriMet's system is not designed to get people across town quickly: A 25-mile trip from Hillsboro to Portland's Gateway District takes 80 minutes, at about 19 mph.

By comparison, San Francisco's BART can move people 50 miles from suburb to suburb in an hour.

But there is no money to create some sort of fast cross-town connection, such as an underground downtown bypass, to solve the problem. Plans for cross-town light rail from Clackamas to Beaverton are low on the priority list, equal to suggestions for some sort of mass transit system on the Tualatin Valley Highway and below a planned transit line along Powell Boulevard in Portland and Gresham.

We're not saying the preliminary choices for urban reserves are wrong. So far, the costs and benefits of growth have been spread fairly equally.

But the more urban reserves are trimmed from the Tualatin Valley, the less real estate Hillsboro and Cornelius will have for new homes - those cities will focus their growth on industrial sites. That means the homes will continue to go in Oregon City, Wilsonville and Damascus.

Metro and the Core 4 must realistically assess how new residents of Clackamas and Multnomah counties can get to their jobs in the Tualatin Valley.

And the Core 4 and cities must honestly ask themselves if they have the means, and political will, to ensure new residents and workers in massive urban reserves near Roy Rogers Road, south of Cornelius and south and east of Damascus can get to and from those areas.

If a freeway to Damascus, a freight bypass of Cornelius and a MAX line west of King City are unrealistic, then growth in those areas should get a harder look. Urban growth expansions to difficult-to-service areas are exactly the problems the Core 4 is trying to solve.