Looking for a little excitement in your life? Hoping to step into a role that will earn you praise and respect? Enjoy pasteries? If you answered yes to these questions, I have a job for you: chair of transportation for the Foster-Powell neighborhood association, which meets on the second Monday evening of each month at Sweetness Bakery and Cafe.
You might have a tough time snatching up this job, though. Current transportation chair Christian is clearly enjoying his stint, and who can blame him? The transportation chair is a hot seat these days, since the City of Portland is in the early planning stages for an expanded streetcar network.
At Monday’s meeting, Christian explained that Portland used to be a spider web of streetcar tracks. In fact, Foster used to be a major streetcar corridor– that’s why it’s so wide. The City of Portland is now taking official recommendations from Neighborhood Associations about which streets are the best for streetcar development.
The consensus among neighborhood association meeting attendees was that Foster would be the best street for the streetcar in our area, for three reasons:
- Foster has plenty of underutilized real estate (Underutilized…let’s all remember that euphemism for future suggestions for the City.)
- Foster is wide enough to accomodate streetcar tracks and traffic, and bringing a streetcar back to this area would restore this one aspect of FoPo’s historical heritage.
- A streetcar on Foster could connect the Lents Urban Renewal Area to downtown.
What do you think? Where should the City put the streetcars, if they end up running out this far? Post your comments here, and I’ll email them to Christian before he reports to the City.
Photo by Ellie
