Anchorage Daily News

Whenever the Portland guys come to town, I get both inspired and depressed. Portland is a neat city from what I know about it -- the opposite of sprawl. It has actually put into effect the kind of things we in Anchorage talk about, but haven't accomplished: frequent, widespread public transit, reduced use of autos, well-designed shopping and commercial areas that people can walk around in and maybe walk to from their houses.

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Robert Liberty, a member of the council governing the Portland metropolitan area, on Friday gave a talk to a packed crowd in a city hall conference room. It was sponsored by the Anchorage Citizens Coalition, which advocates for good planning.

Liberty spoke about deciding what kind of community you want first, and making transportation decisions based on that. And analyzing the problems you're trying to solve instead of just jumping to a particular solution, like building a freeway through town.

Liberty's advice is very timely since Anchorage is considering building a $600 million freeway to connect the Glenn and Seward highways.

For that freeway, we should be asking questions like, are people getting into traffic jams en route from home to work within the Anchorage Bowl, or is the big congestion problem long-distance commuters? If smaller hops are the problem, maybe we need more smaller roads.

And we should take seriously the idea of ramping up public transit enough so that people would find it nearly as convenient as a car, as an alternative to building a freeway.

I am a life-long Alaskan, and I've lived in Anchorage virtually since sixth grade. I haven't been to Portland in maybe 10 years, but I think it's OK for Anchorage to become more like Portland, even though we're in Alaska. We can be urban and still enjoy cross-country skiing 15 minutes from our houses, the coastal trail, the up-close mountain range. Having cool neighborhoods and excellent public transportation doesn't take away from that. It gives us the best of both worlds.

-- Rosemary Shinohara

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