Portland Day 4

Today was the first full day of workshops at Railvolution.

It opened up with a meeting of the National Assoiciation of Public Transit Advocates meeting which seemed to focus on what the Arizona Transit Association is doing with a grand they recieved from APTA.

Next up was the opening Plenary which featured Gordon Price who is a professor at Simon Fraser University in Vancounver, BC on why we need Portland. He did a presentation on what Vancouver has learned from the Portland and what it could do better. Then Congressman Earl Blumenauer who is one of the biggest advocates of livable cities.

On the workshop side I attended the Workforce Housing: The Missing TOD Link, Introduction to Station Area Planning and Livable Communties + Commuter Rail: Can We have both. One of the problems sometimes with these workshops is that you look at the discription in the program and what is being talked about is different than what the program seems to indicate. This happened the last time I was at Railvolution in Miami at the only workshop I could attend after doing my own presentation.

One of the best events of the day was the Networking Event and I attended the one put on by Jarrett Walker who writes the excellent Human Transit Blog. After the session I had a much better idea of where Jarrett is coming from and he has also given me some great ideas for future posts.

Finally there was a filmfest held at the Bagdad Theater in the Hawthorne district of Portland. The Hawthorne district is an ecletic streetcar era shopping district. The theater is an old time theater that is now not only a theater but sports a pub in what was the lobby of the classic theater. Many of the films came from Street Films out of New York which does many excellent presentations.

The first full day of Railvolution was outstanding and I look forward to going to more excellent workshops today.