Rush minute becomes rush hour
Busless boomtown in a fix
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Heavy rush-hour traffic heads out of Bend on Highway 20.
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BEND, Oregon (AP) -- In just over a decade, Bend has gone from ski-bum hangout to booming resort and retirement community.
Just three hours over the Cascade mountains from Portland, Bend tripled in population in the 1990s and will probably double again by 2025. There are construction sites in every direction, a new mall on the outskirts of town, a new Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course and a clutch of expensive homes built by refugees from Seattle and Silicon Valley.
At the same time, the long-cherished "rush minute" is steadily changing into a full-blown rush hour.
And there's no relief in sight, for Bend made its transformation without any real public transit system -- an expensive and now hard-to-fix reality.
Already, with a population of about 62,000, Bend is the biggest stand-alone city in the West without a traditional city bus system consisting of fixed routes and scheduled stops, according to transit experts.
Other Western cities that also absorbed a deluge of retirees and outdoors-lovers in the 1990s are far ahead of Bend. For example, in St. George, Utah, which grew from about 30,000 to 50,000 people in the 1990s, the year-old city bus system makes 60 stops on three routes.
Even far smaller ski resort towns like Aspen, Colorado, and Jackson, Wyoming, have public buses with routes that run for many miles outside the city limits to pick up the waitresses, teachers and police officers who serve their towns but cannot afford to live there.
In Bend, there is no public transit between the city and outlying communities like Redmond, Prineville and LaPine, home to many of the relatively low-paid workers who staff Bend's restaurants and resorts but cannot afford the town's rising home prices.
Public transportation advocates in the city are up against a steadfast car culture reinforced by the influx of Californians, plus a wealthy population that probably wouldn't ride the bus even if one existed.
"If they are getting around town in their Lexus, they are not too concerned about the next bus stop," said Brian Shetterly, the town's chief planner.
That dims the chances of a "yes" vote for the new taxes that would be necessary to build a true public transit system, city planners said.
Setting priorities
Allan Brucker, who has lived in Bend for decades, said he is not convinced about the need for full-scale mass transit.
"We are a million short on our local police force," he said. "Where does transportation fit in when you have those needs? Transportation is not as essential as those services."
Plus, Brucker said it would be hard to persuade residents to give up their cars and take the bus. "You look around every place, especially in the American West, and the buses have two or three riders," he said.
Wanda Gray, Bend's transportation operations manager, said a new bus system would cost about $2 million up front and about $2 million per year to operate. That is a lot for a city that is already strapped trying to pay for police, fire and road maintenance on a proposed 2004 budget of about $120 million.
That has left officials searching for creative solutions, the latest of which is a plan to join forces with the school district to use the school buses that sit idle while students are in class. A pilot program could be in place by the fall of 2005, but there are still many details to work out.
In the meantime, Bend has expanded its Dial-A-Ride shuttle for senior citizens and the disabled to the general public. With 24 hours' notice, a van will arrive at your door and take you wherever you want to go, for just $1.25. But that falls well short of public transit on demand.
"Sometimes you don't know when you might want to go somewhere, and you have to call ahead, 24 hours," said June Slaugenhaupt, a blind senior citizen who uses Dial-A-Ride to get to and from her job at the Department of Human Services in Bend. "That is just a real bummer. It would be so nice to just get on the bus and go on up to the fairgrounds."
A few other grass-roots solutions have sprung up to address the region's transportation problems and increasingly frequent traffic jams.
Some residents are working with the Mount Bachelor ski resort and other employers, such as several recently opened call centers, to encourage employee van-pooling. The city has also been installing roundabouts to slow down speeders and keep traffic moving smoothly.
Plus, to keep commuters' minds off traffic, public art has been placed at strategic intersections -- with varying results. One sculpture of a large, red phoenix rising from the ashes has been given a not-altogether-affectionate nickname: "the flaming chicken."
Copyright 2004 The
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