OTC looks to adopt new Oregon Transportation Plan on Thursday

The Oregon Transportation Commission meets Thursday the 13th, and they look to adopt a new Oregon Transportation Plan.

New Oregon Transportation Plan cover

I guess it's progress. It has more language on climate and safety and non-auto travel.

But it is rather incremental, and sometimes seems half-hearted. It definitely has internal tensions and even contradictions.

On climate it proposes to commit to reducing "passenger VMT per capita by 20 percent by 2050." But what we need is an aggregate reduction of 20% in the total VMT, not per capita VMT.

Comment summary on climate topics

On safety it leaves a big loophole. It proposes to "give primacy to safety solutions....while not increasing vehicle emissions, except when no other safety countermeasure is determined to be effective."

What the heck does that mean?

On safety

I don't know that drilling into more detail is important. I think those two items adequately symbolize the scope of progress and the unwillingness to commit to less driving and more thorough solutions. It's still a lot of EV mania and is superficial in some ways.