A Streetcar Named Denial

Portland, Oregon, city commissioner Steve Novick is nothing if not verbose. Since his 2012 election, he’s used his publicly funded position to rail against DirectTV, driving around to look for a parking space, and–I’m not kidding–sitting in chairs. Rare indeed is the issue that the proudly progressive Commissioner Novick, a lifelong government employee, has yet to declaim upon.

Well, there is one. An audit released last week commissioned by the city of Portland found that public transit authorities have wildly inflated the ridership and on-time statistics for Portland’s streetcar. The Oregonian newspaper (which oddly called the infamously slow and shoddy streetcar service “renowned”) had the details: