"Smart growth" in Portland. Sound familiar?

Subsidized by Portland taxpayers at $18 a ride

 

It's not just San Francisco that's shaking down residents and drivers with parking meters and parking permits. Portland, our sister city in anti-carism and bad planning, is also pushing costly rail projects and apartment buildings with little or no parking. Jack Bog documents this folly with his Portland blog:

$60 a year to park in front of your own house? "You wanted it."

The City of Portland will stop at nothing to squeeze more money out of its residents. Here's the latest ploy:

1. Encourage real estate weasels to build massive cr-apartment bunkers in residential neighborhoods without off-street parking.

2. Install parking meters at every commercial location in town.

3. When parking on neighborhood streets becomes impossible, act like you're doing the neighbors a favor by issuing parking permits to them so that they can park on the street near their homes.

4. Charge $60 or more per year per permit.

5. Rinse and repeat.

It's bad enough that that's what the politicians and bureaucrats are pulling, but it's truly maddening when they act as though it's something the neighbors wanted. Hey, they didn't want it until they were forced into it by steps 1 and 2. But it will be easy to get the local reporters to take the bait, and if City Hall says it enough times, it will eventually become the meme: "The neighborhoods asked for it."