Sam Adams wrote: "I hope you will join me and the rest of City Council in working to hold on to the companies and jobs we have and to support the creation of new jobs and companies where we have a competitive advantage. We'll send out more details in the coming months."

Frankly, I've been a little peeved over the last few months, seeing brand new City of Portland trucks around town.

Not one of them was a Freightliner or Freightliner brand (i.e. Sterling, Western Star).

I've seen lots of Volvos (manufactured in Virginia), Kenworths (manufactured in Tacoma) - but NO Freightliners.

How can Sam Adams, the Transportation Commissioner, tell me that he cares about Freightliner when the VERY BUREAU that he is responsible for, that is one of only a handful of bureaus that actually could be a Freightliner customer, refuses to?

Further, Sam Adams claims he is a major proponent of mass transit. Freightliner doesn't need to re-invest in bus manufacturing - Daimler already owns not one, not two, but THREE bus brands - Thomas Bus (school buses, although they did have commerical bus designs), Orion Bus (Salem's Cherriots is the only agency in the region that owns and operates Orion buses, including HYRBID buses), and Setra Bus (long haul buses). In addition, Daimler Bus North America also produces buses using the Sprinter body (which in America is a Chrysler product, but is a Daimler design and manufactured by Daimler outside of the U.S.) which could be useful for smaller neighborhood bus routes (like routes that serve Southwest and West Portland).

The idea of "oh, let's just have them build streetcars" is foolish - the Streetcar market is a niche at best. But there are HUNDREDS of bus agencies in the United States alone - not including Mexico, Canada, and elsewhere. Bus manufacturing is a HUGE business in Europe (yes, where all of those Streetcar systems apparently are, buses are still heavily used.) What's preventing this from happening? Sam Adams and his anti-bus, anti-business, anti-Freightliner attitude.

If Sam Adams cares about Freightliner, he's going to personally go before City Council, vote in a law that gives Freightliner - as a City resident, business, and employer - favored procurement status - AND make sure that he uses his clout at TriMet and Metro to make sure that Metro funds more bus service for TriMet and that TriMet buys those buses from Daimler and that Daimler builds those buses here in Portland.

I don't see it happening, so this is just another empty promise to placate us while he goes on and plans another landmark to himself (currently in progress: the "Sam Adams Columbia River Bridge" and the "Sam Adams Light Rail Line" to Vancouver.) Meanwhile, as a City of Portland resident, I'm still waiting for my quality public transit and my crosswalk so I can safely cross a street but I'm watching my tax dollars flow north to Vancouver.