The Portland area will have to find ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 21 percent over the next 25 years, under draft rules the state released this week. A new poll out Friday shows Portlanders like some solutions better than others.
Just a quarter of the 600 people surveyed in the Portland area support increasing the gas tax. Charging higher rates for parking or replacing the gas tax with a tax on mileage wasn’t much more popular.
Respondents preferred incentives. About 80 percent supported tax incentives for businesses that hand out transit passes, or facilitate car-pooling.
Land-use policies aimed at making it easier to avoid driving were popular, too – like putting housing close to jobs or near transit.
Pollster Adam Davis told an audience packed with government officials that callers did no cajoling over the phone to find 70 percent support for urban growth boundaries, for instance.
Adam Davis: “We can’t keep people on the telephone as long as we used to. We can’t start connecting the dots for them and trying to address their concerns or anything.”
The poll was finished last weekend. It has a margin of error of plus or minus four percent.
