That is not a survey

By Todd Stadler · Monday, November 12, 2007 8:23am

A week or so ago, I wrote an article on Portland's Safe and Sound Streets program that questioned the questionnaire associated with that project and, frankly, set the city of Portland on fire.

By which I mean it resulted in three comments, one of which was from me, and the rest from people who live well outside of Oregon. ¡En fuego!, as the Spaniards say. I'm sure the rest of the city wanted to chime in, but they were too busy.

Anyhow, I wanted to follow up on that rousing success while I was still on a roll, so today I'd like to focus on the survey aspect of the program.

The Safe and Sound Streets site has a link to a survey PDF with the following description: "Public opinion survey shows support for local funding options to tackle maintenance and safety backlogs on local streets and Willamette River bridges." But if you read the PDF itself, it pretty much says nothing of the sort.

First of all, survey respondents do not agree that things are bad with Portland's transportation system. 63% say it is pretty good or excellent (p. 6 — all page numbers refer to the survey PDF), even if the city does proclaim "Portland's Streets and Bridges are in Trouble" on the program's main page.

A cynical person might conclude the whole point of this "survey" — indeed this whole project — was to drive down that 63% by asking people about how terrible things are and how much they want to stave off the imminent collapse of all Portland infrastructure. A cynical person would ask how things came to suddenly be so bad, and why it is the taxpayers' responsibility to pay more to fix things, and not, say, on the heads of the people who have already been spending the taxpayers' money to date. But I don't know any such cynical people.

Next, the surveyors said they "presented 20 different funding package components" and "asked how important including the component would be to their support for a funding package" (pp. 7–12).

I don't know why they use the phrase "funding package" twice, given that all that section gives is a list of components people favor regardless of how they're funded. Do you want "repairs to the Willamette River bridges to increase safety"? Hey, so does 81% of the city to some degree (p. 8).

But tops on the respondents' priorities is improving traffic lights — in addition to the 81% who support "signal synchronization on major city streets to improve traffic congestion", 79% support it "to reduce auto emissions". In short, "fix the lights so I don't have to stop, but if it's environmental, I guess that's okay, too."

But who doesn't want that? In fact, according to these questions, there are only two transportation features Portlanders don't support: speed bumps and red light cameras (p. 11).

I'm sorry, but the picture that emerges isn't one of a public concerned with safety, but rather getting places fast, which is arguably antithetical to safety.

Another curious feature of this survey is that it breaks up desired features into "tiers" that, well, have little to do with the results of the survey. So it is that the "top rated" tier (p. 8) contains the aforementioned "signal synchronization" support (81% and 79%, depending on whether emissions are mentioned), bridge repair (at 81%), and "more bike boulevards to reduce conflict between motorists and bicyclists", with only 68% support.

However, the "second tier" contains two features that are more popular than bike boulevards: "focus[ing] on long delayed maintenance that will reduce future cost of road and bridge repairs" (79% support) and "matching funds for building sidewalks on busy streets that now lack them" (73%). Heck, even "construction of projects that minimized trucks in neighborhoods and more efficient movement of freight on designated streets", in the "third tier" with 70% support, was more popular than bike boulevards.

I found this whole tier thing so confusing, I graphed the support various features have and color-coded them according to the tier they were placed in:

Fig. A: It may not make sense, but it's kind of pretty

Sure, overall, it decreases from tier 1 to tier 4, but a cynical person might conclude that the tiers were assigned based on political factors, not actual support.

But enough of that. Next, the surveyors "presented 23 different transportation funding options, asked about their level of support for each option: strongly oppose, somewhat oppose, somewhat support, strongly support" and found that "none of the options were strongly opposed by a majority of voters" (p. 13).

Wait, none of them "were strongly opposed"? Why only focus on that most negative of groups? Is it because the overwhelming majority of people oppose all options to some degree?

I mean, 36% of respondents strongly opposed what I believe is the proposed plan (a $.05 city gas tax plus a $4.50 fee per household — notably placed in the tier labeled "Highest Level of Opposition", p. 14).

But then, oddly, the survey PDF fails to provide the percent of people who "somewhat oppose" the funding measures, making it impossible to know completely how unsupported something is.

Not that the results aren't goofy, regardless. How is it that

• 43% strongly opposed a $.05 city gas tax
• 40% strongly opposed a $.05 city gas tax plus a $3.40 fee per household
• 36% strongly opposed a $.05 city gas tax plus a $4.50 fee per household (all from p. 14)

That makes no sense, except that it seems that people really don't want to pay a gas tax. Maybe they think that if they pay even more with the household fee, at least the non-drivers are getting ripped off, too?

Regardless, it's fairly clear from the results that no funding options are actually popular, and most are probably opposed outright. Except studded tire fees (ooh, studded tires annoy me, too).

But it's hard to find support for the statement that this "survey shows support for local funding options to tackle maintenance and safety backlogs on local streets and Willamette River bridges." There is no support for most of the funding options, and what most people want is the lights to be in their favor. In short, people are selfish.

But then it's really hard to run for mayor on that, so let's pretend the survey says what it doesn't, that people are really concerned about this problem (they're not), and that they want to pay for it (and then tell the people that they want it, hopefully to convince them of that fact). And let's not forget the bicycles.

This hodgepodge was brought to you by your eventual mayor Sam Adams.