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Oregonians have been pushing for comprehensive climate action for more than a decade. Other states and provinces in North America have forged ahead, attracting clean energy investments, creating local jobs, and cleaning up the air they breathe but Oregonians are still paying price for someone else’s pollution—hospital bills for our kids’ asthma, a faltering seafood industry, wildfires, and more. With not a moment to spare, Oregon’s elected leaders are united...

Every time someone parks a car on the street outside Steven Lien’s downtown Portland shop, an invisible clock inside his business plan starts to tick. If they’re stopping by his men’s underwear store, of course, he’s happy. If they’re not, he’s eager for the minute they’ll finish their errand, get back in their car and move along. “I can definitely say that when we get more turns on the parking...

Today, Governor Inslee delivered the coup de grâce to the proposed Vancouver Energy oil terminal. Planned for a site within blast radius of downtown Vancouver, Washington, the facility would have been North America’s biggest oil train depot, drawing at least 5 dangerous oil trains each day across the interior Northwest to the banks of the Columbia River. For everyone who cares about clean water, public safety, and climate change, this...

Could 2018 be the year that Oregon and Washington join BC and California and make climate polluters pay? Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington, is pushing a carbon tax (more on that soon), and Oregon legislators are again considering legislation to limit carbon pollution and invest in clean energy and other good things. In 2017, a bill to cap pollution, enforce the cap with limited allowances, and invest the revenue...

This is a convoluted story about an 11-page memo on parking meters. It seems a trifle at first—an obscure bureaucratic kerfuffle. But it’s not. The subject of the memo is a surprisingly large opportunity for affordable housing in Cascadia, and the memo—an exercise in obstructionism—reveals much about why progress on building desperately needed homes is infuriatingly slow. It also points to a chance still available to put housing for people ahead of...

Low-income families typically cause far less greenhouse gas pollution than their better-off peers; yet because they make less money, they spend a larger share of their income on carbon-based fuels. They’ve done the least to cause climate change, but they’re the most vulnerable to its impacts. They’re also most vulnerable to the single best policy for taming carbon pollution—putting a price on it—which would hit them in the pocketbook harder...

This is the season climax, the culmination, the big reveal. Previously on Parking? Lots! Cities mandate off-street parking (guided only by junk science and groupthink). They do it in fear of territorial neighbors who want “their” curb spaces left alone. Our communities suffer horribly as a result. Information technology is shaking things up, though, and cities can now charge for curb spaces more easily. They can also share the proceeds...

Imagine if you could put a meter in front of your house and charge every driver who parks in “your” space. It’d be like having a cash register at the curb. Free money! How much would you collect? Hundreds of dollars a year? Thousands? How might all that lucre shift your perspective on local parking rules? The idea of a private meter (already available on eBay)—or a variant of it...

We’ve written before about the “high occupancy/toll” lane experiment on Washington’s SR-167. But for those unfamiliar with the concept: HOT lanes are special highway lanes that transit and carpools can travel in for free, but are also available to solo drivers who are willing to pay a toll. When the regular lanes start to back up, the HOT lane tolls increase. That way, the HOT lanes never get clogged, even...