Balancing Jetport Parking with Sustainable Transportation
We are not necessarily opposed to adding more parking capacity to the Jetport, but we are concerned about a focus on paving to build infrastructure for cars at the exclusion of other modes of transportation.
We can understand why it seems to make sense to build parking for the Jetport rather than investing in transit. The Jetport charges for parking, so this additional parking will eventually pay for itself. Meanwhile, operating transit requires ongoing funding. But driving imposes costs on us all: it results in carbon emissions, pollutes our air with harmful particles, and requires us to build impermeable surfaces that worsen storm water drainage and heat island effects. We understand that people still need to drive, particularly to the Jetport, but if we are going to expand infrastructure for driving, we must do so very carefully and take steps to encourage more transit usage at the same time.
This is why we think that the Jetport should allocate at least some of this additional revenue towards GP Metro for transit. In addition, we support the conservation easement offered by the Jetport to ensure that permeable wetlands remain intact into the future.
While we advocate fiercely for land use that allows people's daily routine trips to be short, safe, easy, and not reliant on cars, a trip to the airport is somewhat different.
The Jetport is a regional amenity. Many travelers come from outside the city of Portland at distances that transit does not reliably serve, or early in the morning or late at night when buses are not running. We are strongly in support of improving our transit service, but we feel there are service expansions for daily trips that could be more impactful than focusing on Jetport service.
If we are going to expand the capacity for single occupancy vehicles to get to the airport, we can offset this impact by using some of the new revenue captured to provide higher quality transit that people will choose to use on a daily basis. We worry that a policy preventing the Jetport from providing any additional parking would result in third-party lots appearing to fill the gap, diverting this potential revenue stream from transit into private hands.
As urbanists, we want to give more people the ability to live in the City of Portland, which will result in more people using our Jetport. The areas around Portland have already grown substantially in population. We must plan for this future growth so that it happens sustainably and equitably.
The problem of overcrowded airport parking has three levers: an increase in price (to drive down demand and incentivize alternatives like taxis and transit where available), an increase in parking supply (the proposed expansion), and an increase in viable alternatives to driving.
We propose that the city does all three of these things together instead of focusing only on increasing the supply of parking spaces.
We propose the approval of the parking lot expansion be contingent on the implementation of a small additional parking fee that would go into a transit fund.
In the long term, we would like to see planning and policies that move us away from large impermeable surface parking lots and towards land use that protects our green spaces by encouraging compact neighborhoods that are walkable, bikable, and served by great transit. Although this suggestion is small, it would be an important step towards this vision.
