"We can't spend transportation dollars on building new roads"

Actually that is another point, we do need roads. One of the fastest grwoing business segments is the transportation infrastructure (UPS, FedEx, etc.) I know someone fairly high up in one of these companies and Portland is at the bottom of the list for building anything more than a minimum distribution center.

I guess we can all plead for a change in direction, but once we turn downtown into a gridlock of mass transit rails and only government employees with bus passes will go down there to keep the homeless company will CoP see the error of its ways.