Transportation in Portland, Oregon

Road bridges across the Columbia and Willamette Rivers are a critical piece of Portland's transportation infrastructure.

Like transportation in the rest of the United States, the primary mode of local transportation in Portland, Oregon is the automobile. Metro, the metropolitan area's regional government, has a regional master plan in which transit-oriented development plays a major role.[1] This approach, part of the new urbanism, promotes mixed-use and high-density development around light rail stops and transit centers, and the investment of the metropolitan area's share of federal tax dollars into multiple modes of transportation. In the United States, this focus is atypical in an era when automobile use led many areas to neglect their core cities in favor of development along interstate highways, in suburbs, and satellite cities.[2]

Portland is "an international pioneer in transit orientated developments."

— Sayeeda Warsi, a British Conservative politician, from a 2006 episode of Newsnight[3]
Commuting statistics for major U.S. cities in 2008.[needs update]
  1. ^ "Transit-Oriented Development Strategic Plan" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on May 22, 2012.
  2. ^ Timothy Egan (May 31, 1987). "Focus: Portland; So Long Cars, Hello People". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 4, 2012. Retrieved July 31, 2012.
  3. ^ Where the car is not king Archived August 21, 2006, at the Wayback Machine, a 15 August 2006 BBC News article on Portland transportation