Cascade President John A. Charles, Jr. Submits Testimony to Metro Council on its Transportation Demand Management Strategy and the 82nd Avenue Transit Project.
Cascade President, John A. Charles, Jr. delivered pointed testimony last month to the Metro Council urging against two major transportation actions aimed at prioritizing transit and punishing people in cars throughout the region.
At the April 23 meeting, Metro passed a new Transportation Demand Management Strategy (TDM) and advanced three locally preferred alternatives (LPA) for major transit projects, including the 82nd Ave. Transit Project, the Tualatin Valley Highway, and the Montgomery Park Streetcar Extension.
Charles reminded councilors that Metro has been trying to “influence travel behavior” since the early 1990s, and the promised reductions in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) never materialized. Metro’s own performance measures show that 30-year goals have never been met, so they extended the timeline to 45 years. Yet, Metro continues to build new plans on the same fantasy metrics that have never materialized.
“Driving is not a luxury,” Charles emphasized. For most Portland area families, driving is a necessity and a key factor in employment, wage growth, and running a household. Instead of recognizing this, Metro designs policies to make driving harder despite decades of evidence showing these strategies do not change travel behavior—they just make daily life more expensive and difficult.
After 35 years of missed targets the region deserves more than aspirational planning; it deserves transportation investments grounded in reality. It’s time for Metro to require empirical evidence before adopting “behavior‑modification” strategies as a basis for major capital projects. The region deserves transportation investments that improve mobility and economic opportunity for real people.
Read the Testimony by John Charles
Click HERE for the PDF version
Naomi Inman is External Relations Manager at Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization. As a staff journalist and writer, Naomi helps Cascade make the case for free-market policies through media affairs and publications.
John A. Charles, Jr. is President and CEO of Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization. He researches, writes, and presents testimony and analysis on state and local issues important to the freedom and opportunity of all Oregonians.
