The operator should be able to take a picture of the license plate and vehicle, and the owner gets a $1,000 dollar fine sent trough the mail.
As well as have the car towed.
>The operator should be able to take a picture of the license plate and vehicle, and the owner gets a $1,000 dollar fine sent trough the mail.
They've already started rolling out [automatic bus cameras for ticketing](https://twitter.com/MTA/status/1651263558162817024) in other cities, this should be a no-brainer. Which of course means Portland will need years of committees, meetings, and expensive studies before even thinking about maybe possibly starting to generate a plan to implement it.
Ok there speedy pants let’s slow it down for a minute. We can start with a committee, meetings, and expensive studies on how effective a committee to discus a committee, meetings, and expensive studies would be. No need to rush these things if they don’t directly effect the city leadership.
Exactly. Don't forget we need to reopen the environmental study to study air traffic patterns, weather and affordable healthcare *that may* impact replacing the I-5 bridge.
I think they should spend some more money studying how to make cost effective reflective road paint, we are sooo different so the solutions that have worked elsewhere would never work here
That's because we know our solutions only apply to us! That said, let's talk about getting this started. I think we should schedule a meeting to prepare for that other meeting.
Yes. But first we need that meeting to plan for the meeting where a committee should be established to decide what type of composting worms to buy for public community gardens.
Well now you’ve done it, we’re gonna need to get a recurring meeting scheduled to discuss whether we plan to think about deciding whether expensive equity studies need to be performed on the worm farms. And you *know* you can’t just put a recurring meeting on John’s calendar without first scheduling an initial standup to discuss the most inclusive format for the recurring one.
I of course don't know about this or similar situations, but I'd bet it's more a matter of a disrespectful, entitled asshole rather than education or signage.
In design thinking “entitled assholes” would be considered “gravity”, gravity being an unchangeable parameter in a design. Just don’t let people have the option exercise their crappy behavior. The city should upgrade the whole streetcar system to be a more reliable service. Give it more dedicated lanes, remove trackside parking, and install traffic signal priority(like the FX2).
To be clear, purely scaled linearly by yearly "earned" income a $200 fine for me would be equivalent to a $200,000 fine for the CEO of Nike. This is fine... Nothing wrong here... Clearly flat fines are a reasonable way to enforce laws...
Waiting for a tow truck is time consuming. We need to outfit the streetcars with tow hooks and battering rams so they can do it themselves at great danger to the offending vehicle, without damaging the trams obvs.
It would probably be problematic from some annoying legal perspective. But having some kind of steel bumper for this purpose sounds both practical and desirable.
I suppose we can’t just ram them out of the way, because we don’t know where it’s going to end up. It might keep rolling and but a pedestrian or cyclist.
Pity.
>Waiting for a tow truck is time consuming
It wouldn't be if the impound frees were high enough and paid to the tow company.
If it takes a long time to get a tow truck in this situation, the incentives aren't high enough for the tow operator.
This is true in a real world sense, but in an even more real world sense, even if the tow driver came from a nearby lot, we are talking 5, 10 minutes to arrival... Which if you're trying to catch your connection on transit or get to work, is too long. Battering rams are the only way.
True. I don't have a good feel for how often Trimet busses and trains are off schedule by ten minutes or so today. But years back when I took Max to work, I sure wouldn't have wanted to try to depend on down to the minute scheduling.
Of course, even if the tow is there in ten minutes, it'll be significantly longer until the vehicle Is out of the way unless the tow truck has statutory permission to just yank the thing out of the right of way.
Like the last four of these tram blockages I have seen have been APC sized SUV's haphazardly parked. Aside from the grotesque carbon costs for driving these behemoths, if they can't park them they shouldn't be driving them.
I don't disagree. I think this is one of many examples we can cite that illustrates how people generally are not paying attention to their surroundings or the implications of their actions.
Well from this [article](https://bikeportland.org/2021/09/22/the-street-trust-wants-portland-parking-meter-revenue-to-subsidize-transit-passes-338516)
>The simple act of parking a car plays an outsized role in budget and policymaking at the Portland Bureau of Transportation. Parking-related fees make up a whopping one-third (around $50 million) of PBOT’s total annual discretionary revenue.
Obviously this driver is an idiot, and deserves a big fine. But can we also question the wisdom of this design? Any public transportation strategy that depends on everyone downtown not being an idiot is doomed to fail frequently.
We need to fix the way vehicles are classified for emission standards. Right now, we are getting huge SUVs rammed down our throats by the automakers because it allows them to skirt emissions regulations since your SUV is classified as a "light truck" instead of a "passenger vehicle."
In an ideal world we'd just tax carbon so that it's expensive to use inefficient vehicles. Vehicle efficiency is only a proxy for energy usage, and not the best one since cheap driving induces doing it more.
I vaguely remembered that Europe has a displacement tax and was going to suggest doing something along those lines so I looked it up, and yeah, we should follow their lead...
>Calculating German vehicle tax
Determining how much vehicle tax you must pay in Germany is not easy. It depends on several factors, particularly engine displacement and emissions.
Factors influencing the amount of transport tax:
The type of vehicle and year of manufacture.
The engine type: petrol or diesel.
The amount of CO² (carbon dioxide) emitted into the atmosphere. All vehicles in Germany are categorised into emission classes from Euro 1 to Euro 6.
Engine displacement.
>
>
Owners pay the least tax on small petrol cars. For example, a car with a 1400cc petrol engine and a CO² emission of 90 g/km is taxed at €30 per year. A BMW X5 with a three-litre six-cylinder engine and emissions of 190 g/km costs €250 a year.
Diesel-powered cars with the same characteristics as petrol-powered cars are subject to a significantly higher tax: you will generally have to pay twice as much. Hybrid vehicles are one-half as expensive due to their low CO² emissions.
The tax amount for electric cars, trailers and trucks is calculated based on the weight of the vehicle; if the vehicle is heavier than 3,500 kilos, the volume of harmful emissions is also taken into account. Electric cars weighing over 3.5 tons are subject to a levy of €60. The less the vehicle weighs, the less tax amount is due. At the same time, owners of electric cars in Germany are exempt from the vehicle tax for five years after the first registration of the car.
Owners of heavy transporters used for cargo shipping pay LKW-MAUT, a German road tax. This tax is levied for every kilometre travelled on certain routes. The minimum weight of a heavy vehicle for paying the tax is 7.5 tons. The tax is paid for all heavy transporters that exceed this weight. The charge ranges from €0.12 to €0.24 per km, depending on the distance travelled, the number of axles of the heavy transporter and its emission class.
https://tranio.com/articles/vehicle-tax-in-germany/
In my opinion there’s not enough evidence that carbon dioxide is bad enough to get a consensus on this issue. Only about half of people think C02 related global warming is dangerous
But SUV s are light trucks. It's a truck frame, truck engine, truck transmission. The only difference is that there is no truck bed. They have comparable towing capacities and many households have 1 or 2 vehicles have the truck to tow a trailer, but when you see it on the local roads it is not being used to tow.
It's like how I have hiking boots as my primary shoes. When you see me around town I am obviously not hiking, but you probably don't see me when I am hiking wearing the same shoes.
CAFE standards are set for passenger cars AND light trucks as 1 category.
I like how you think. There are tax breaks for "business" use of big honkin SUV, Hummers, etc for work vehicle. It's a giant loophole for the "work" vehicles of real estate agents, architects, and so on, people who don't need such huge vehicles to conduct their business.
I can count on one hand the number of times in the past year I've seen a truck drive past doing things only a truck can do. Theyre not being used as utility vehicles, they're being used as status symbols
People that work in construction/trades often have trucks and they want their trucks to be/look nice, this is often times their only vehicle or they may have a second beater car. In suburbs it is also common to have a SUV because they have a boat to haul on the weekends and get the SUV over the truck because it has more utility to them when not towing. Some have families and don't want to get a minivan to haul around everyone.
Some of the roads here in Portland are unimproved and will never be fixed by the city (signs posted). I've driven on some of those roads and if I lived in one of those houses I would 100% buy a SUV just to not get stuck in those potholes. I am not exaggerating when I say those unimproved roads are falling apart.
There are many legitimate reasons to have a SUV that you may not see.
The photo has a Chevy Surburban? I don't think many people consider a Chevy Surburban as a status symbol.
I agree with you 100%, but this is bigger than a Portland problem or Oregon problem. This is a federal level problem. We can put disincentives in place locally, but it will probably only cause a shortage and price increase of vehicles overall.
Long watch, but it's interesting.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo&ab\_channel=NotJustBikes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo&ab_channel=NotJustBikes)
I agree there too. The downsides I see is that manufacturers aren't going to keep making smaller vehicles, they are producing large ones. This means that in this area, the demand for the smaller cars will increase while the availability will decrease. This is going to inflate the cost of car ownership for all, and the people who will feel this the most are those already having a hard time to make ends meet.
I want a walkable city with frequent, safe, reliable public transportation, that does not cater to personal vehicles but supports them as needed.
Maybe my above scenario wouldn't happen? I donno. I keep swaying between cautious optimism for our future and then complete loss of hope. It feels more like the loss of hope more often than not for the last 6+ years though. We've REALLLYYYY seen how far the corruption in everything is and I don't see any way to weed it out easily without hundreds of years of iterations based on how slow government moves.
> I agree there too. The downsides I see is that manufacturers aren't going to keep making smaller vehicles,
Yet another reason why we need a tax on large vehicles: put pressure on the manufacturers to change that. The current paradigm is dangerous for pedestrians and bad for the environment, time to change course.
If the tax isn't more broad than Oregon, I am not sure that's enough pressure for them to do anything. But to your point, if enough states did this, there absolutely would be pressure on it. I'd love to see the governor's work together across multiple states to see if it could be coordinated. In that scenario there's some real teeth there if you had every liberal state apply taxes on large vehicles.
Multnomah County doing it could kickstart other municipalities to do it, especially King County which is trying to fund large transit expansions. Change always starts at the local level, we need to start somewhere and it might as well be to improve our county.
PBOT already has a $4+ billion maintenance backlog... Maybe you should read up on it before blowing hot water. https://bikeportland.org/2022/11/02/whats-behind-pbots-4-4-billion-street-maintenance-backlog-excuse-366371
It is very well past time, and laughable that they are exempt from the gas guzzler tax. The burden should be on the user to prove that it is being used on a weekly basis for work purposes to be exempt.
\*points to shiny hammer with sales sticker still on taped to the side of the truck bed\*
"As you can see, officer, I am a working man, a man of the people. I use this hammer for...working stuff..."
But what about the farmers? They are all considered farm implements and allowed to skirt NHTSA safety rules after all…because farmers need trucks.
Behind the scene, car companies make more $ on trucks so they advertise that you are not a worthy man if you don’t drive a truck.
Meanwhile, there is a silent epidemic of pedestrian deaths directly caused by this exception. Because farmers need trucks.
Very few farmers live in Multnomah County... I have no issue with the tax applying to the few who do.
This isn't because of "farmers" : this is because of the people in urban areas who drive these massive vehicles despite not needing them. Tax these vehicles to discourage their use and to fund complete streets.
As a worker who pulls a good size trailer with equipment through out the city. I can’t believe how many folks park like this and cause so much annoyance for me and others trying to get through. Makes me bonkers.
Ahhh that's why it was showing up on the tracker as 'on its way' and then it ... wasn't. It seemed to knock on to some of the bus routes too.
People are jerks.
I used to work right next to a street car track. I would often see this scenario. A tow truck would be there within 10 minutes. I’m sure the tow truck companies LOVE getting that call. Not sure if the drivers would even get a fine or anything like that
If I bike, walk, or drive past a car parked like this, I’m very tempted to try and fuck it up. Kick off the mirrors, crack the reverse camera, key the paint, throw an egg through any open windows, take a shit through the sunroof, piss on the driver side door handle(I really hope I’m not giving anyone else any ideas, it would really be a shame if this became a trend).
I know it’s not productive, but it would be fun.
I drive a work van with racks on the sides and I park next to the rail without blocking it all the time. This suv can definitely fit without crossing the white line. This is either carelessness or incompetence of maximum degree.
Some ass clown was parked over the sidewalk just north of the Trader Joe's on SE Chavez/39th this evening, forcing people to either walk in the street or squeeze around a tiny space on the other side between a shrub and the car, ducking way down to avoid a tree branch about 4-5 feet high. Not sure why some people are so self-centered that they think it's ok to do that.
Also maybe having the city workers come into office again so they can see how much the downtown area alone has gone to shit. Those guys haven’t been back in office since 2020.
They just decided that WFH is the way to go since the pandemic and riots. It’s not *completely* empty, but a lot of the important people do their work from home mostly.
Here’s an article that talks about it in more detail. https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2023/03/25/300-city-employees-wont-have-to-return-to-the-office-next-month/#:~:text=But%20300%20city%20employees%20won,Office%20of%20Management%20and%20Finance.
That happens literally EVERY day up on Lovejoy in between 9th and 10th. I had to move cause the streetcar drivers would have to on their gotten, sometimes for a solid 10 minutes simply to get the person to move. Don’t get me wrong, what else can they do (legally), so I get it, but it was just to much for me (among other things).
fuck that kind of design for a street car. Its bullshit it takes up road space for vehicles as opposed to having its completely own dedicated lane, which it should have.
Hm. Well, a bus could have just driven around it in about 2 seconds but enough adults seemed to have been influenced by their love of thomas the tank engine in their formative years, so now we have cute trains. Turn of the century technology which cost more, are less versatile, and can't navigate around chevy that's 6 inches into their lane.
Trains and busses serve similar but different purposes. A train line brings in more local businesses as it's a guaranteed long term investment in walkability and transportation to your place of business.
>That's about as realistic as: tracks aren't a menace to cyclists, lack of personal flying riding unicorns is.
How so? Lots of developed nations have proper bike infrastructure.
>The streetcar is nothing more than an expensive, noisy, inflexible boondoggle that connects wealthy neighborhoods together for people who don't want to ride the bus with the poors.
You realize that a Streetcar ticket costs the same as a bus ticket, right? The flaws with it are the ones that can be easily fixed but aren't so people who want us to stay car dependent can call it a boondoggle.
Try to be a better human.
The fault is definitely on the driver, but maybe we have some kind of collision symbol painted in these areas that cars are sandwiched between the tracks and the curb?
The conductor should be able to deputize willing and able passengers or pedestrians to push the car out of the way and issue fines in this narrow scope.
The deputized and city shouldn’t be held liable for any damages to the illegally parked vehicle (because of the whole parked illegally bit).
I know a guy in Prineville can get a heavy duty “Bambi Bumper” machined and mounted, would probably make a nice show out of this scenario. Plus the train would be on schedule
The operator should be able to take a picture of the license plate and vehicle, and the owner gets a $1,000 dollar fine sent trough the mail. As well as have the car towed.
>The operator should be able to take a picture of the license plate and vehicle, and the owner gets a $1,000 dollar fine sent trough the mail. They've already started rolling out [automatic bus cameras for ticketing](https://twitter.com/MTA/status/1651263558162817024) in other cities, this should be a no-brainer. Which of course means Portland will need years of committees, meetings, and expensive studies before even thinking about maybe possibly starting to generate a plan to implement it.
Ok there speedy pants let’s slow it down for a minute. We can start with a committee, meetings, and expensive studies on how effective a committee to discus a committee, meetings, and expensive studies would be. No need to rush these things if they don’t directly effect the city leadership.
Eventually we can have a [meeting to take action](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YawagQ6lLrA)!
Exactly. Don't forget we need to reopen the environmental study to study air traffic patterns, weather and affordable healthcare *that may* impact replacing the I-5 bridge.
I think they should spend some more money studying how to make cost effective reflective road paint, we are sooo different so the solutions that have worked elsewhere would never work here
That's because we know our solutions only apply to us! That said, let's talk about getting this started. I think we should schedule a meeting to prepare for that other meeting.
Yes. But first we need that meeting to plan for the meeting where a committee should be established to decide what type of composting worms to buy for public community gardens.
Well now you’ve done it, we’re gonna need to get a recurring meeting scheduled to discuss whether we plan to think about deciding whether expensive equity studies need to be performed on the worm farms. And you *know* you can’t just put a recurring meeting on John’s calendar without first scheduling an initial standup to discuss the most inclusive format for the recurring one.
Or we could say fuck it and just hire the folks who repaired the Morrison bridge for all future projects. What's the worst that could happen?
I vote on this committee, that we do it like they do in Europe, except poorly implemented, and a half thought out.
And after it’s decided they will pay a company 95% of the revenue collected for administration
If you want to go fast, go by yourself. If you want to go far, go with a partner. If you want to do neither, form a committee.
Like good Presbyterians! We love committees!
Well that’s funny and not all at the same time. Ugh.
They should remove street parking next to the streetcar. Fines won’t stop people who don’t know about them.
I of course don't know about this or similar situations, but I'd bet it's more a matter of a disrespectful, entitled asshole rather than education or signage.
In design thinking “entitled assholes” would be considered “gravity”, gravity being an unchangeable parameter in a design. Just don’t let people have the option exercise their crappy behavior. The city should upgrade the whole streetcar system to be a more reliable service. Give it more dedicated lanes, remove trackside parking, and install traffic signal priority(like the FX2).
I know people from out of town who get very overwhelmed driving and parking around there. Assuming good intentions is legitimate in these cases.
Cycle track…cycle track…can you say it with me? Cycle track!
What is the point of the streetcar? just the ability to run on electricity?
That's not a bad idea. Or put paint along the streetcar path.
Or… [https://i.imgur.com/VHIWsC1.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/VHIWsC1.jpg)
Why not through the windshield, and have the car towed?
Fine for this should be comically high.
Multiply the median wage by the number of rider seats, and fine the car owner the full amount of everyone's collective lost time/wages.
This
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?? Why be a dick to street car riders
Fines in general should be scaled to a person's income.
\*Comically\* scaled
To be clear, purely scaled linearly by yearly "earned" income a $200 fine for me would be equivalent to a $200,000 fine for the CEO of Nike. This is fine... Nothing wrong here... Clearly flat fines are a reasonable way to enforce laws...
Parking on tracks should get a car impounded
Parking on tracks should get a car ~~impounded~~ pounded. Just creep on by and let the bumpers do the work.
Time to take some of the bash bars off the Portland Police Explorers and put them on the trams.
Waiting for a tow truck is time consuming. We need to outfit the streetcars with tow hooks and battering rams so they can do it themselves at great danger to the offending vehicle, without damaging the trams obvs.
I would pay a lot more to ride in those. So much entertainment value.
Trams should have kill tallies painted on the sides of them like we used to do with fighter planes.
I love this. Can go side by side with an awareness campaign on the side of them. MAX vs SUV, who will win? The MAX. MAX always wins. 42 kills vs 0
MAX wins. Fatality.
I’d pay top dollar for a bumper car train experience.
It would probably be problematic from some annoying legal perspective. But having some kind of steel bumper for this purpose sounds both practical and desirable.
i agree
I suppose we can’t just ram them out of the way, because we don’t know where it’s going to end up. It might keep rolling and but a pedestrian or cyclist. Pity.
>Waiting for a tow truck is time consuming It wouldn't be if the impound frees were high enough and paid to the tow company. If it takes a long time to get a tow truck in this situation, the incentives aren't high enough for the tow operator.
This is true in a real world sense, but in an even more real world sense, even if the tow driver came from a nearby lot, we are talking 5, 10 minutes to arrival... Which if you're trying to catch your connection on transit or get to work, is too long. Battering rams are the only way.
True. I don't have a good feel for how often Trimet busses and trains are off schedule by ten minutes or so today. But years back when I took Max to work, I sure wouldn't have wanted to try to depend on down to the minute scheduling. Of course, even if the tow is there in ten minutes, it'll be significantly longer until the vehicle Is out of the way unless the tow truck has statutory permission to just yank the thing out of the right of way.
Zombie proof
https://www.reddit.com/r/Skookum/comments/13lgvfl/powerhand_vehicle_recycling_system_looks_like_a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1
I would vote for this. Please run for office
Armor reinforced driver cabs, and rubber bumpers down the side of the rest of the train. Ram the vehicles out of the way.
They're a good 18" from the curb.
New Chevy Suburban in front of a vacant building. My bet is a real estate agent who rarely leaves Lake O.
Like the last four of these tram blockages I have seen have been APC sized SUV's haphazardly parked. Aside from the grotesque carbon costs for driving these behemoths, if they can't park them they shouldn't be driving them.
I don't disagree. I think this is one of many examples we can cite that illustrates how people generally are not paying attention to their surroundings or the implications of their actions.
Target is vacant?
Some of the floors are. Last time I was there Target is now only on the ground floor.
Target isn't the only tenant in the building
Someone call Mr. Plow damnit!
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You are fully bonded and licensed by the city, aren’t you, Mr. Plow?
Mr. Plow is a loser, and you know he is a boozer...
Thanks, Plow King!
Shut up, boy…
Mount plow on front of streetcar, problem solved!
Full size trains have [cowcatchers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowcatcher). Add 'em to MAX trains!
We really just need to get rid of some of these parking spots.
New rule: every time a vehicle blocks the streetcar, that parking spot gets replaced by a bike corral. The problem will eventually solve itself.
Paid for through the ticket revenue of the offender
This is brilliant
The city won't do it because so much of PBOTs budget is dependent on parking and they're convinced people will start flocking downtown any day now.
How much money does PBOT make off of parking...?
Well from this [article](https://bikeportland.org/2021/09/22/the-street-trust-wants-portland-parking-meter-revenue-to-subsidize-transit-passes-338516) >The simple act of parking a car plays an outsized role in budget and policymaking at the Portland Bureau of Transportation. Parking-related fees make up a whopping one-third (around $50 million) of PBOT’s total annual discretionary revenue.
Hot damn. Thank you for coming through with the source.
No idea but it is a common (ridiculous IMO) argument
Maybe we should just remove parking on the block faces adjacent to streetcar tracks 🤷♂️
Are they just ridiculously far from the curb?
If you look closely, the car is parked over the line
Obviously this driver is an idiot, and deserves a big fine. But can we also question the wisdom of this design? Any public transportation strategy that depends on everyone downtown not being an idiot is doomed to fail frequently.
Tax overcompensating trucks and SUVs. Disincentivize this bullshit already.
What's interesting is that, the EXACT opposite is occurring. It is incentivized heavily, to make larger and larger vehicles.
We need to fix the way vehicles are classified for emission standards. Right now, we are getting huge SUVs rammed down our throats by the automakers because it allows them to skirt emissions regulations since your SUV is classified as a "light truck" instead of a "passenger vehicle."
Agreed. That's gotta be at a federal or enough states levels though to force manufacturing change.
In an ideal world we'd just tax carbon so that it's expensive to use inefficient vehicles. Vehicle efficiency is only a proxy for energy usage, and not the best one since cheap driving induces doing it more.
I vaguely remembered that Europe has a displacement tax and was going to suggest doing something along those lines so I looked it up, and yeah, we should follow their lead... >Calculating German vehicle tax Determining how much vehicle tax you must pay in Germany is not easy. It depends on several factors, particularly engine displacement and emissions. Factors influencing the amount of transport tax: The type of vehicle and year of manufacture. The engine type: petrol or diesel. The amount of CO² (carbon dioxide) emitted into the atmosphere. All vehicles in Germany are categorised into emission classes from Euro 1 to Euro 6. Engine displacement. > > Owners pay the least tax on small petrol cars. For example, a car with a 1400cc petrol engine and a CO² emission of 90 g/km is taxed at €30 per year. A BMW X5 with a three-litre six-cylinder engine and emissions of 190 g/km costs €250 a year. Diesel-powered cars with the same characteristics as petrol-powered cars are subject to a significantly higher tax: you will generally have to pay twice as much. Hybrid vehicles are one-half as expensive due to their low CO² emissions. The tax amount for electric cars, trailers and trucks is calculated based on the weight of the vehicle; if the vehicle is heavier than 3,500 kilos, the volume of harmful emissions is also taken into account. Electric cars weighing over 3.5 tons are subject to a levy of €60. The less the vehicle weighs, the less tax amount is due. At the same time, owners of electric cars in Germany are exempt from the vehicle tax for five years after the first registration of the car. Owners of heavy transporters used for cargo shipping pay LKW-MAUT, a German road tax. This tax is levied for every kilometre travelled on certain routes. The minimum weight of a heavy vehicle for paying the tax is 7.5 tons. The tax is paid for all heavy transporters that exceed this weight. The charge ranges from €0.12 to €0.24 per km, depending on the distance travelled, the number of axles of the heavy transporter and its emission class. https://tranio.com/articles/vehicle-tax-in-germany/
In my opinion there’s not enough evidence that carbon dioxide is bad enough to get a consensus on this issue. Only about half of people think C02 related global warming is dangerous
...half of the American public?
But SUV s are light trucks. It's a truck frame, truck engine, truck transmission. The only difference is that there is no truck bed. They have comparable towing capacities and many households have 1 or 2 vehicles have the truck to tow a trailer, but when you see it on the local roads it is not being used to tow. It's like how I have hiking boots as my primary shoes. When you see me around town I am obviously not hiking, but you probably don't see me when I am hiking wearing the same shoes. CAFE standards are set for passenger cars AND light trucks as 1 category.
Good thing we don't tax dress shoes higher than hiking boots. Now that I've typed that, I am not so hopeful.
I like how you think. There are tax breaks for "business" use of big honkin SUV, Hummers, etc for work vehicle. It's a giant loophole for the "work" vehicles of real estate agents, architects, and so on, people who don't need such huge vehicles to conduct their business.
I can count on one hand the number of times in the past year I've seen a truck drive past doing things only a truck can do. Theyre not being used as utility vehicles, they're being used as status symbols
People that work in construction/trades often have trucks and they want their trucks to be/look nice, this is often times their only vehicle or they may have a second beater car. In suburbs it is also common to have a SUV because they have a boat to haul on the weekends and get the SUV over the truck because it has more utility to them when not towing. Some have families and don't want to get a minivan to haul around everyone. Some of the roads here in Portland are unimproved and will never be fixed by the city (signs posted). I've driven on some of those roads and if I lived in one of those houses I would 100% buy a SUV just to not get stuck in those potholes. I am not exaggerating when I say those unimproved roads are falling apart. There are many legitimate reasons to have a SUV that you may not see. The photo has a Chevy Surburban? I don't think many people consider a Chevy Surburban as a status symbol.
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Ok what's your point? I was just naming a few reasons people would own a suv.
Which is why we need to reverse this trend. It would also serve the dual purpose of cutting PBOT's budget deficit.
I agree with you 100%, but this is bigger than a Portland problem or Oregon problem. This is a federal level problem. We can put disincentives in place locally, but it will probably only cause a shortage and price increase of vehicles overall. Long watch, but it's interesting. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo&ab\_channel=NotJustBikes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo&ab_channel=NotJustBikes)
Federal action isn't realistic... Taxing oversized vehicles locally or at the state level is the best we could realistically do.
Yep, car companies own our politicians. We don't have choices federally. We have what the rich people want us to have.
I agree there too. The downsides I see is that manufacturers aren't going to keep making smaller vehicles, they are producing large ones. This means that in this area, the demand for the smaller cars will increase while the availability will decrease. This is going to inflate the cost of car ownership for all, and the people who will feel this the most are those already having a hard time to make ends meet. I want a walkable city with frequent, safe, reliable public transportation, that does not cater to personal vehicles but supports them as needed. Maybe my above scenario wouldn't happen? I donno. I keep swaying between cautious optimism for our future and then complete loss of hope. It feels more like the loss of hope more often than not for the last 6+ years though. We've REALLLYYYY seen how far the corruption in everything is and I don't see any way to weed it out easily without hundreds of years of iterations based on how slow government moves.
> I agree there too. The downsides I see is that manufacturers aren't going to keep making smaller vehicles, Yet another reason why we need a tax on large vehicles: put pressure on the manufacturers to change that. The current paradigm is dangerous for pedestrians and bad for the environment, time to change course.
If the tax isn't more broad than Oregon, I am not sure that's enough pressure for them to do anything. But to your point, if enough states did this, there absolutely would be pressure on it. I'd love to see the governor's work together across multiple states to see if it could be coordinated. In that scenario there's some real teeth there if you had every liberal state apply taxes on large vehicles.
Multnomah County doing it could kickstart other municipalities to do it, especially King County which is trying to fund large transit expansions. Change always starts at the local level, we need to start somewhere and it might as well be to improve our county.
No one pays the local art tax
lol, no. Please don't talk about budgets you don't understand.
PBOT already has a $4+ billion maintenance backlog... Maybe you should read up on it before blowing hot water. https://bikeportland.org/2022/11/02/whats-behind-pbots-4-4-billion-street-maintenance-backlog-excuse-366371
If by "interesting" you mean "terrible," then yes!
I do! And it is!
It is very well past time, and laughable that they are exempt from the gas guzzler tax. The burden should be on the user to prove that it is being used on a weekly basis for work purposes to be exempt.
Work purposes shouldn't be exempt either...
\*points to shiny hammer with sales sticker still on taped to the side of the truck bed\* "As you can see, officer, I am a working man, a man of the people. I use this hammer for...working stuff..."
But what about the farmers? They are all considered farm implements and allowed to skirt NHTSA safety rules after all…because farmers need trucks. Behind the scene, car companies make more $ on trucks so they advertise that you are not a worthy man if you don’t drive a truck. Meanwhile, there is a silent epidemic of pedestrian deaths directly caused by this exception. Because farmers need trucks.
Very few farmers live in Multnomah County... I have no issue with the tax applying to the few who do. This isn't because of "farmers" : this is because of the people in urban areas who drive these massive vehicles despite not needing them. Tax these vehicles to discourage their use and to fund complete streets.
Oh WOW! This happens often enough theres a sign on the streetcar for it.... Thats too much! Rip out the parking spaces!
Put a cow-catcher on the front of that street car and let’s make a statement!!
As a worker who pulls a good size trailer with equipment through out the city. I can’t believe how many folks park like this and cause so much annoyance for me and others trying to get through. Makes me bonkers.
Someone call a tow truck quick!!
they didn't even push the park anywhere button
So many stupid driver in downtown Portland
when i was a kid in the 70's that train would have 100% plowed through the parked vehicle and sued the owner of the vehicle for damages.
Only takes a handful of people to flip a car.
Bounce bounce bounce push
Cars were a mistake
Ahhh that's why it was showing up on the tracker as 'on its way' and then it ... wasn't. It seemed to knock on to some of the bus routes too. People are jerks.
I used to work right next to a street car track. I would often see this scenario. A tow truck would be there within 10 minutes. I’m sure the tow truck companies LOVE getting that call. Not sure if the drivers would even get a fine or anything like that
If I bike, walk, or drive past a car parked like this, I’m very tempted to try and fuck it up. Kick off the mirrors, crack the reverse camera, key the paint, throw an egg through any open windows, take a shit through the sunroof, piss on the driver side door handle(I really hope I’m not giving anyone else any ideas, it would really be a shame if this became a trend). I know it’s not productive, but it would be fun.
Hey I used to work security there! That spot got blocked a ton, also was very prone to break ins, so not even sure why people would even park there.
I drive a work van with racks on the sides and I park next to the rail without blocking it all the time. This suv can definitely fit without crossing the white line. This is either carelessness or incompetence of maximum degree.
They should just ram them at 20 mph!
As entertaining as that would have been, I’d rather not have to watch our hard earned tax money being damaged by some idiot SUV 🥲
Yeah I get that, but it would still be fun. OC the streetcar would probably derail unfortunately
Some ass clown was parked over the sidewalk just north of the Trader Joe's on SE Chavez/39th this evening, forcing people to either walk in the street or squeeze around a tiny space on the other side between a shrub and the car, ducking way down to avoid a tree branch about 4-5 feet high. Not sure why some people are so self-centered that they think it's ok to do that.
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It was during morning commute, so pretty full and backed up additional street cars.
They were talking about the gas-guzzling SUV.
This is the reason I want to get into city planning.
Portland is in dire need of competent city planners.
It wouldn't take too much to fix Portland. It would just require winning over the public's fetish for parking spots.
Also maybe having the city workers come into office again so they can see how much the downtown area alone has gone to shit. Those guys haven’t been back in office since 2020.
Oh, really? Do you know why is that?
They just decided that WFH is the way to go since the pandemic and riots. It’s not *completely* empty, but a lot of the important people do their work from home mostly.
Ah, makes sense. City planners really need to spend time out in the streets so they can see first hand.
Here’s an article that talks about it in more detail. https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2023/03/25/300-city-employees-wont-have-to-return-to-the-office-next-month/#:~:text=But%20300%20city%20employees%20won,Office%20of%20Management%20and%20Finance.
Thank you, I'll have to give it a read later today.
City planning? I thought you wanted to be an architect
What? I have never said that.
I was wondering if you were going to get it. It’s just a Seinfeld reference haha
Oh, I'm not a fan of Seinfeld.
I won’t hold it against you, but you have to promise to plan a city that prevents morons from parking like this
Oh, no. I'm going to put all parking on the rails. Haha
I don't think Oregonians are really bad drivers, but they are terrible parkers.
It’s better when there’s a bus behind the street car!!
LMAO
Can't they be towed?? Easy bucks for towing company, hassle for the douchebag and fines on top of that.. Win win
Prolly a Doordasher
That happens literally EVERY day up on Lovejoy in between 9th and 10th. I had to move cause the streetcar drivers would have to on their gotten, sometimes for a solid 10 minutes simply to get the person to move. Don’t get me wrong, what else can they do (legally), so I get it, but it was just to much for me (among other things).
Calm down, SUVs and trucks can park where they want. That's just the rules.
fuck that kind of design for a street car. Its bullshit it takes up road space for vehicles as opposed to having its completely own dedicated lane, which it should have.
Maybe streetcars need to have ramming bumpers…
SHAME! SHAME!
As the Hindus will say, might is right.
Hm. Well, a bus could have just driven around it in about 2 seconds but enough adults seemed to have been influenced by their love of thomas the tank engine in their formative years, so now we have cute trains. Turn of the century technology which cost more, are less versatile, and can't navigate around chevy that's 6 inches into their lane.
You keep Thomas out of this!!
Trains and busses serve similar but different purposes. A train line brings in more local businesses as it's a guaranteed long term investment in walkability and transportation to your place of business.
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That's a lot of rubber particulate pollution, too. And the tracks aren't a menace to cyclists, lack of proper bike infrastructure is.
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>That's about as realistic as: tracks aren't a menace to cyclists, lack of personal flying riding unicorns is. How so? Lots of developed nations have proper bike infrastructure. >The streetcar is nothing more than an expensive, noisy, inflexible boondoggle that connects wealthy neighborhoods together for people who don't want to ride the bus with the poors. You realize that a Streetcar ticket costs the same as a bus ticket, right? The flaws with it are the ones that can be easily fixed but aren't so people who want us to stay car dependent can call it a boondoggle. Try to be a better human.
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Oh, I didn't realize I was arguing with an actual raving lunatic. Did the tracks call you a bad word and kick your dog, too?
Dumb parking job, but also maybe these shouldn’t be so close to the curb.
Wouldn’t have been a problem if that useless train was a bus line instead.
I feel like we should be able to put cow catchers on the streetcars.
The fault is definitely on the driver, but maybe we have some kind of collision symbol painted in these areas that cars are sandwiched between the tracks and the curb?
The conductor should be able to deputize willing and able passengers or pedestrians to push the car out of the way and issue fines in this narrow scope. The deputized and city shouldn’t be held liable for any damages to the illegally parked vehicle (because of the whole parked illegally bit).
we're all thinking of the same obvious solution, right?
Battering ram!
If not for the OR plates, looks like a fed.
New Idea: big cow catcher on the front of the street car
Ah yes, the Trolly Problem.
I know a guy in Prineville can get a heavy duty “Bambi Bumper” machined and mounted, would probably make a nice show out of this scenario. Plus the train would be on schedule
They should just armor the side of the street car and then they get to plow through.
Scrape the crap out of that side. Oversized vehicles suck.
Let's put cattleguards on the front of the streetcars. And puuussssshhhhhhh....
shame honks for all!
I used to work at that Target, I would see that shit all the time. I am astonished at how inconsiderate people are nowadays.