Dear Congressmen Blumenauer…

Dear Earl,

It was reported in The Oregonian today that your staff alerts you whenever your name appears in a blog. Well, here we are alerting you to a fantastic news story on a national expert debunking Portland’s mtyhology on smart growth. Report here. Randall O’Toole uses good data to show that high priced light rails and heavy handed government laws are not working to decrease ridership or traffic. In fact transit ridership percentages has almost gone DOWN instead of up after spending such billions for light rail and transit services. One study shows that the number of people using the popular Interstate Street transit services dropped after booting out buses and replacing them with the multi-million dollar light rail line. Why spend millions of dollars on something that is going to make people use public transit less?

Mr. Blumenauer, you work hard at trying to solve Oregon’s environmental problems, so take time to examine Mr. O’Toole’s analysis. Only by working on a results-based system (and not political-based system) can we best protect the environment.

With love, from your fellow bloggers at OregonCatalyst.