Portland business owner discusses streetcar benefits

“Economic development project”

Steve Hawley, Mar 31, 09.

Portland business owner Michael Powell discusses the benefits of the city’s streetcar system in a 17-minute video provided by Reconnecting America.

The introduction notes:

[Powell] calculates the benefits this way: The number of pedestrians in the crosswalk in front of his store numbered three an hour before the line opened in 2001, he says, but when he counted again in 2008 there were 938 pedestrians. Meantime, 400 new businesses opened in the Pearl [business district], 90 percent of which are locally owned – the vast majority by women and minority entrepreneurs. In the meantime, property values have increased more than tenfold.

Michael gave this talk at a day-long national streetcar workshop last May in Los Angeles, which has begun environmental work on a streetcar line in downtown. The workshop was based on Reconnecting America’s book, Street Smart: Streetcars and Cities in the 21st Century. Michael’s perspective is interesting because business and property owners are increasingly being asked to step up to the plate to help fund the construction of streetcar lines. Streetcar projects are increasingly being viewed not as transportation projects, but as “economic development projects with transportation benefits.

(Photo by Wikipedia user Cacophony. Posted under a Creative Commons Share-Alike 2.5 license.)