Every great Portland neighborhood started as someone’s 'streetcar to nowhere'
What might look misguided in the present often appears visionary in the future
The NW Examiner recently reported on Portland’s plan to extend the streetcar 0.65 miles from Northwest Northrup Street to Montgomery Park, connecting the former industrial area to the existing transit network. Last week, Bob Weinstein published a response calling it a “streetcar to nowhere”, arguing that the city is sinking money into speculative development while NW 23rd crumbles and basic maintenance goes unfunded.
Weinstein raises real frustrations, but his critique misunderstands how Portland has always built its most desirable neighborhoods. What looks like fantasy development in the present tense often reads as obvious inevitability in the past tense.
Before getting there, it’s worth clearing up a few technical points:
Federal funding isn’t fungible. Weinstein asks why we’re spending $190 million on streetcars instead of fixing streets. Under 49 U.S.C. § 5309, federal transit capital grants can only fund capital construction, not maintenance. The streetcar money cannot be redirected to pothole repair. Without the project, those federal dollars go to another city.
Northwest 23rd (probably) isn’t being held hostage. Weinstein reports “a senior Portland Bureau of Transportation official” told him in 2024 that the bureau won’t repair the street until the streetcar goes in. He writes “This isn’t planning. It’s coercion.” PBOT’s stated plan is to bundle Northwest 23rd’s full reconstruction with the streetcar project. The street needs more than an overlay—it requires complete rebuilding (base, utilities, stormwater, ADA curbs) costing $10–15 million. A $500,000 overlay would last two or three years before the streetcar construction tears it up anyway. Without the streetcar, Portland pays for all of that with local dollars. With the streetcar, federal capital grants cover 50%-80% of the full reconstruction—saving the city $5 million-$12 million on work that has to happen eventually. It’s hard to verify what that unnamed official said, but the decision not to overlay makes fiscal sense regardless of motives. The legitimate critique is that PBOT should have explained this calculation clearly instead of leaving residents to interpret project bundling as deliberate neglect.
Megaprojects aren’t all the same. Weinstein cites the Columbia River Crossing, Interstate Bridge Replacement and Rose Quarter as proof this project will balloon. All three are state of Oregon highway megaprojects with complex multi-jurisdictional right-of-way, navigation clearances and active traffic management. The Montgomery Park extension runs in existing city streets. ODOT ≠ PBOT.
How Portland actually built Portland
Nearly every Portland neighborhood that people desire to live in today started as speculative real estate sold to nobody who lived nowhere. Irvington, Alameda, Laurelhurst, Ladd’s Addition and Sellwood—developers platted the streets, ran the streetcar lines and hoped people would follow:
The Alameda Land Co. didn’t wait for housing demand to materialize before financing its own streetcar extension up to its empty land.
Hartman & Thompson platted Parkrose and built its streetcar line in 1907, the same year, to serve the zero residents who lived there at the time.
The Laurelhurst Co. bought William Ladd’s 462-acre dairy farm in 1909 for $2 million, hired the Olmsted Brothers to design curving streets and positioned their sales office at the Glisan streetcar stop—all before a single house existed.
By 1916, Portland Railway, Light and Power Company operated 40 lines across 300 miles of track with 583 streetcars. By the 1980s, nearly all of those lines had been paved over, but they remain visible today in the commercial strips along Belmont, Alberta, Mississippi and Division streets where streetcar-era storefronts still define the streetscape.
Pearl District was the same bet
When Portland opened the modern streetcar in 2001, connecting downtown to the contaminated Pearl District railyards, the objections were familiar. Who would live in a polluted industrial zone? Where’s the demand?
The outcome is now boringly well documented. Roughly $13.3 billion in development occurred within the streetcar corridor. Between 1997 and 2006, 55% of all central business district development happened within one block of the line, up from 19% before the streetcar. In fact, it worked so well that Portland Streetcar inspired similar systems in more than a dozen American cities, including Seattle, Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Detroit, Cincinnati and Kansas City.
Along every Portland streetcar extension, property owners voted to tax themselves through Local Improvement Districts. That is their money, not the city’s. They could vote no, but they repeatedly did not. That’s because they’re making a calculated bet on future property values, backed by Portland’s 150-year track record.
Risk, accountability and timing
Skepticism about a $190 million price tag is reasonable. Oregon’s recent megaproject history has earned distrust. The difference here is risk structure. LIDs give property owners oversight and the ability to halt the project if costs spiral. That accountability does not exist with state highway projects.
Infrastructure decisions can’t wait for perfect market conditions because perfect market conditions never arrive. The Pearl was built during a recession. Early streetcar suburbs were built amid uncertainty. Infrastructure built during downturns positions cities for recovery. Deferring it guarantees stagnation.
Timing matters. Federal funding windows open and close. Zoning alignments shift. Ownership coalitions dissolve. Waiting for everything to feel comfortable usually means waiting long enough to lose the chance entirely.
What this is really about
Strip away the rhetoric and the argument isn’t really about streetcars. It’s about trust.
Portland has struggled in recent years to maintain basic infrastructure, communicate clearly and manage public space. Those failures make any new capital investment feel reckless. That reaction is understandable, but also dangerous.
Capital investment and day‑to‑day operations are separate problems. Portland has underperformed at both, and we should fix that. But rejecting transit-oriented development because governance is currently shaky is how cities lock in decline.
Portland became a model city by taking calculated infrastructure risks when outcomes looked uncertain. The Pearl looked impossible in 2001. If Montgomery Park looks impossible in 2025, that’s not a warning sign; that’s the historical baseline.
Every great Portland neighborhood began as someone’s “streetcar to nowhere.” The bet worked before. Whether it works again depends less on market conditions than on whether the city still believes infrastructure creates opportunity instead of waiting for it to appear.
Mattt Zmuda is a resident of Northwest Portland. He is currently working to consolidate Portland and Multnomah County under the City-County Act of 1971. Find out more at https://multnomo.org
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Setting the Record Straight on the Montgomery Park Streetcar Extension
Matt Zmuda's recent response to my critique of the Montgomery Park streetcar extension mischaracterizes my arguments while glossing over the project's fundamental problems. Let me address his points directly.
On Fungibility: Only Half the Story
Zmuda correctly notes that federal transit capital grants under 49 U.S.C. § 5309 cannot be redirected to street maintenance. I am well aware of that and never claimed otherwise. What he omits is that the local match—20% to 50% of the project cost—is entirely fungible.
Depending on a federal grant award—hardly assured under a motor vehicle-centric Trump administration—that means $38 million to $95 million in city-controlled funds must be raised locally through LIDs, general revenues, or other sources.
Against that backdrop, PBOT’s refusal to spend even $500,000—less than 1% of the low-end local contribution—to temporarily repair NW 23rd is indefensible.
NW 23rd, including its hazardous crosswalks, has been in deplorable condition for over a decade. This deterioration predates the streetcar proposal and should not be held hostage to an unfunded project that may not break ground for years, if ever. We should not have to wait for a lawsuit—after an elderly or visually impaired person is injured in a potholed crosswalk—before the city acts.
The Development Has Collapsed—and So Have the Ridership Assumptions
Zmuda leans on a familiar narrative: build the infrastructure and development will follow. Sometimes that has been true. But history does not override present-day facts.
The development used to justify this extension has collapsed:
• Montgomery Park sold for 13% of its former value
• The promised 2,000 housing units vanished
• The 23-acre ESCO site has sat vacant for seven years
• No developer has stepped forward with financing or plans
Yet PBOT and Portland Streetcar continue to rely on unchanged ridership projections, justifying them by pointing to “adopted zoning”—as though zoning itself generates riders.
This is not prudent planning based on future property values. It is building expensive infrastructure for a development that does not exist and pretending the numbers still work.
Equally telling is PBOT’s refusal to clearly define the Local Improvement District boundary. The reason is obvious: to make the financing pencil out, the LID must sweep in property owners who already have decent transit access via bus lines and the existing streetcar—and who would receive little or no marginal benefit from this extension.
Portland’s Streetcar History Is Being Selectively Remembered
Zmuda invokes early streetcar projects and the Pearl District to suggest today’s objections are shortsighted. What he omits is who bore the risk.
Historically, streetcar extensions outside the Pearl District were privately financed by property owners and developers who owned the land and stood to profit directly:
• Alameda’s developers financed their own extension
• Laurelhurst’s backers built transit to market their property
• Risk and reward were aligned
By contrast, PBOT’s current proposal asks existing homeowners and small businesses to subsidize infrastructure intended to benefit speculative future developers who have not committed capital, secured financing, or even demonstrated interest.
That is not continuity with Portland’s past—it is a departure from it.
The Pearl District worked because land assembly was real, financing existed, development followed quickly, and property owners knowingly taxed themselves. None of those conditions apply here.
“Accountability” Without Transparency Is Not Accountability
Zmuda argues that Local Improvement Districts provide accountability because property owners can stop the project. That claim is dubious. Once a project enters construction, it is exceedingly difficult for individual property owners to halt it. The meaningful opportunities for objection occur earlier—opportunities PBOT has undermined by refusing to define LID boundaries or engage the community honestly.
Property owners are being asked to support a project with a $292 million-per-mile price tag, open-ended cost exposure, and planning assumptions untethered from current market realities. That is not shared risk; it is asymmetric risk.
This Is Ultimately About Trust—and PBOT Has Not Earned It
Zmuda concludes that opposition to the streetcar reflects a broader lack of trust in Portland’s governance. On that point, he is right—though not in the way he intends.
When PBOT allows a major commercial corridor to deteriorate for years, dismisses modest interim fixes, clings to outdated projections, and avoids clarity about who pays and who benefits, skepticism is not reactionary. It is rational.
Not every great Portland neighborhood began as a “streetcar to nowhere.” They began with developers bearing risk, financing grounded in reality, transparent costs, and basic infrastructure that was actually maintained.
Portland became a model city through calculated risks backed by real market conditions and private capital. This project offers neither. Until PBOT can answer basic questions—Who pays? Who benefits? What happens when costs rise?—and until actual development materializes rather than theoretical zoning capacity, this extension remains what I called it: a streetcar to nowhere.
In the meantime, NW 23rd deserves the maintenance it should have received a decade ago.
Good arguments from Mr. Weinstein and Mr. Zmuda. Speculation is always a risky proposition however the examples of success cited by Mr. Zmuda illustrate private sector speculation based on population trends and private investment. It's a highly questionable undertaking when development speculations are made on the public dime. It has been said that there is a very fine line between vision and folly and right now and for the foreseeable future, Portland appears to be in the latter position.