Washington County is currently working on a new transportation initiative that will fund some of their $2.8 billion dollars worth of desired road projects. They are planning to go to the voters in November ’08 and ask for $420 million over 6 years for transportation related projects.

They’ve recently decided to set aside $10 million for bike and pedestrian stand alone projects. That sounds pretty good, until you realize just how many specific bike and pedestrian projects need to be done before we have a complete transportation network, and how much they will cost. (Note that unlike Portland and many other cities, roads have long been built in Washington County without bike lanes or sidewalks, so we have a long ways to go.)

Consider the gaps in just the bike network. There are about 46 miles of county arterials that lack bike lanes or shoulders. (In terms of percentages, 43% of all arterial road miles have no bike lanes or shoulders). Its even worse for collectors (medium sized roads): the gap is 73 miles (that is, 96% of collector streets have no bike lanes or shoulders) [1].

So how soon can we expect to see those gaps closed? I wondered that myself.

The County usually follows the Oregon law that says that new or reconstructed roads will have bike lanes, so as the county widens (and later re-widens, as they tend to do) collectors and arterials, we can expect to see more bike lanes (albeit on larger, busier streets with faster traffic thanks to the car lane-widening projects, but that’s another story).

The problem is that there are lots of roads that just need bike lanes or sidewalks, and these projects aren’t prioritized as highly as projects which increase automobile capacity.

Digging into the Washington County transportation plan, in table 8 of the “System Funding and Financing Element”, I found that there are $176 million of standalone bike & pedestrian projects (in 2002 dollars) [2]. The current plan is to spend $10 million of the upcoming MSTIP program (which will last 6 years) for bike/ped projects. Assuming that those values hold, and we have a new MSTIP every 6 years, here’s the math:

     $176 million standalone bike/ped projects
  /  $10 million for standalone bike/ped projects per MSTIP
 = 17.6 MSTIP funding cycles

   17.6 MSTIP cycles
 * 6 years/MSTIP
 = 105.6 years

So it will be at least 105 years to fund all the standalone projects. Since multi-modal projects are funded at a higher rate and priority than bike/ped projects, we can be figure that the standalone bike/ped projects will be completed last, and so we can figure that it will be at least 105 years before we have a complete bicycle and pedestrian network in Washington County.

Could the County speed up the funding process? They are doing just that for rural roads. At a November 2007 meeting of the Washington County Coordinating Committee (the group that makes the big transportation funding decisions), the Commissioners decided that paving rural roads should be done in 15-20 years instead of 90-100. From the meeting minutes [3]:

Roy Rogers stated that he estimates it would take 90 to 100 years to meet all County needs, and that the issue is how to address all needs at a faster rate. Mr. Duyck stated that the eligible rural roads could be paved over a period of 15 to 20 years if $1 million per year was made available for that purpose. Mr. Rogers asked whether Mr. Duyck was suggesting that $6 million be provided from MSTIP, and Mr. Duyck said that he was.

For a number of reasons (including safety, decreased auto-congestion, and environmental benefits of increasing alternative transportation), completing the County’s bike and pedestrian network is at least as important as paving rural roads. The County should fund bike and pedestrian specific projects at a rate that is high enough so the bike/ped network can be completed within 15-20 years [4].

1: Source: Washington County Transportation Plan, Bicycle Element, Table 7

2: Specifically, the funding plan says bike projects would cost $106.3 million and pedestrian projects would cost $70.1 million.

3: October 2007 WCCC Meeting Minutes (pdf).

4: Washington County could complete the standalone bicycle projects in about 20 years by spending $5 million per year on bike projects, and complete the pedestrian projects in about 14 years by spending $5 million per year on pedestrian projects. With a population of over half a million people and growing, this works out to be less than $20 a year per person (note that Holland spends about 50 euros, or $75, per person annual on bike and pedestrian projects).

Dear Commissioner Schouten,

I’m ecstatic to read in the paper that the County will have an open house this Thursday to talk about the 185th project between the highway and the high school. I can’t wait until it is finally safe to walk or ride a bike along what is now a nasty stretch of asphalt.

I’m very excited, but at the same time I’m worried.

The purpose of the project is to fix safety and capacity problems, but how much of a ‘fix’ will this be? As you know, people are tired of Band-Aid fixes and want real solutions. A road project that only fixes current traffic problems without looking at our land use problems will only be a temporary Band-Aid, because congestion is only a symptom… the real problem is sprawl. If we don’t fix the sprawl problem we’ll never fix the congestion problem — no matter how wide our roads become.

For the 185th project to be part of a real solution, the County needs to look at land use patterns and think about how road projects can help change those patterns in ways that create vibrant communities where people can easily live without cars. As you know, the Metro 2040 Growth Plan calls for creating these communities by clustering a mix of land uses (residential, retail, employment, cultural, civic, and recreational) in walkable Centers which are well served and connected to other Centers by mass transit, and the Plan designates Aloha as a Town Center. The plan also calls for higher density housing along Corridors, such as 185th. As you know, spending public money on infrastructure projects confers value in the area of those improvements, and is often followed by private investment. For that reason, I think it is extremely important that the 185th road project be the first part of a comprehensive plan for creating a real ‘place’ – a Metro Center – in Aloha.

Before we decide what the street will look like, we need to figure out what kind of a place we want Aloha to be.

Is Aloha just a place people drive through to get to somewhere else, or is it a place that people want to be? Can we create a Center in Aloha, with retail, offices, and housing served by transit? Can we create something more of a Town where people can walk from their homes to their jobs, and then walk to a restaurant or a theater in the evening?

Rebuilding 185th between TV HWY and Aloha High School could be the first step in creating a real Place in Aloha – if we do it right. The types of bicycle and pedestrian amenities will depend on, and impact, how we want the Town Center built. For example, we’ll obviously need good boulevard design with landscaped buffers, safe crossings, and medians to make walking safe – and good boulevard design could then lead to private interest in developing well designed high density housing. Before we can put in landscaped medians, however, we’ll need to have a long range plan for where future connections will be to support the Town Center plan.

Unfortunately I don’t believe the county has any long range plan for the Aloha Town Center yet. I know the County is spending lots of time and money making sure that North Bethany becomes a great place; it would be nice if they’d put the same kind of effort into helping Aloha develop into a great place too.

Metro’s “Achieving Region 2040 Centers” document says that “Every transportation improvement (such as roads, transit stations and sidewalks) is an opportunity to define, enhance or damage the public realm.”[1] Can the 185th improvement project help define the area’s public realm and be implemented as part of a comprehensive strategic plan for developing Aloha?

Thank you.

1: http://www.metro-region.org/files/planning/centers_principles.pdf

Been doing a lot of research on PSA on what works and what does not. I came across this PSA that aired in 2005 in the UK. The Images are some what disturbing. I was thinking of adapting that PSA and other for U.S. taste. I even talked to some TV people and they said a PSA like this would even pass U.S. Censors.

Here’s the video he’s talking about:

Other people pointed out more videos. Below are a couple I thought were good. (WARNING: these images may also disturb you.)

This one shows how much difference 5mph makes in stopping distance:

This last one shows how important paying close attention is:

 *: OK, not ‘nothing’, but a lot less than usual.  Read the details.

Might it also be time to start talking about the ‘I’ word: incorporation? Perhaps it doesn’t make sense to have just two sprawling cities. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to have Aloha, Reedville, South Hillsboro, and North Bethany urbanize and become towns or cities.

The advantage of incorporation over annexation is that citizens would have more voice in what their tax money goes to (which seems to be people’s biggest reason to resist annexation – they don’t want the cities to siphon off tax money without providing something valuable in return).

Of course, people may not even feel the need to be incorporated, since they currently get ‘urban’ services from non-city sources such as the Parks District (THPRD), the Fire District (TVF&R), the county’s enhanced sheriff patrols in urban areas, Clean Water Services (sewage and storm water management), and a county wide library service. In addition, the county provides urban transportation infrastructure and is now doing urban planning for North Bethany and West Bull Mountain.

It seems like the two options are:

1. Combine all the currently urban, unincorporated area into a new mega-city.

Basically the county would spin off its urban services into a new city that would serve all of the urban unincorporated area in the county.

2. Encourage incorporation of separate cities.

The best way to encourage this would be to make it known that the county wants this, let people know what they need to do for this to happen, and most importantly, the county would scale back the urban services it provides. I think scaling back services would have the biggest effect. What if the library system only served people within city boundaries? What if the sheriff patrols were equalized between urban and rural areas? What if when the county planned for new areas, they also planned for them to incorporate as a new town? Finally, what if the county declared that only areas inside cities would be eligible for urban transportation infrastructure improvements?

The main advantage of having many smaller towns or cities is that they could each be designed to be self sufficient, with a good jobs/housing mix and a town center with grocery stores and markets, restaurants, a library, fitness centers and other things people use often. That would make peoples communities more livable, make it easier to walk or bike to commute or for errands, and would reduce cross-county automobile trips.

This is wishful thinking now, but they could also link up each town or city center with high speed and frequent rail service to make getting around easy for folks who need to. This is even more wishful thinking, but if there was green fields between towns, you would be just a short walk away from the country, and people could get food from very nearby local farms (can you imagine what will happen when we run out of oil, gas costs $30 a gallon, and our society still depends on trucking in food from even just 20 miles away?).

I’m looking forward to bringing these ideas to discussion next year.

MSTIP (Major Streets Transportation “Improvement” Program) is basically a program where the county takes a bunch of property tax money from county residents (regardless of how much you might drive) and builds fatter roads that make it easy for people to continue to drive more and more in our increasingly sprawled out region. TIF (Traffic Impact Fee) funds essentially the same big-road projects, but with a fee developers pay (essentially regardless of how bike/pedestrian friendly–or car unfriendly–the development is).

Now, the County seems to think it is friendly to bicyclists and pedestrians when really it tends to just provide the bare minimum that is required by law (sidewalks and bike lanes). Currently the County is planning to collect $420 million over 6 years and of that, will spend a total of $20 million on ‘special’ projects, including bike, pedestrian, and bridge projects.

The County wants people to believe they are working toward a balanced transportation system, but thats just not true:

You can get anywhere you want to in the County by car – the road system is more than complete (there are even places like 185th in Tanasbourne where you’ve got your choice of as many as 8 lanes). That is hardly true for cycling or walking – there are huge gaps in the bicycle and pedestrian transportation system. There are 211 miles of roads without sidewalks, 46 miles (43%) of county arterials without bike lanes, and 73 miles (96%) of county collectors without bike lanes [1].

Most people would probably agree that the start of a balanced transportation system is having a complete network for all modes of transportation, but when the county puts $400 million to auto-improvement projects and bike/pedestrian projects compete with bridge projects for the remaining $20 million, there is clearly a pro-car bias. At the current rate, it will be almost *70 years* before we have a complete bike/ped network (and by then, all the roads that go anywhere, like 185th, will be so big no one will want to be walking or biking anywhere near them) [2].

I believe that the County’s actions may not be in agreement with their plans. If they were paying attention to their strategy as laid out in the introduction to their 2020 Transportation Plan (below), they’d focus on supporting cycling and walking first, and focus on auto-congestion last:

Most broadly viewed, the Plan’s strategy for meeting future travel
demand is three-tiered:

• First, Plan policies, strategies, and systems reflect approaches
  that provide and support multiple modes of travel, both to provide
  Washington County residents with travel alternatives and to reduce the
  need to provide additional roadway capacity for auto travel;
• Second, the Plan includes strategies for transportation system and
  travel demand management, which ensure that the system is operating
  efficiently and that steps are taken to manage and reduce travel
  demand; and
• Third, to identify system improvements and programs necessary to
  improve system safety and to maintain an acceptable level of service
  for system users.

Also if the “level of service” mentioned in point 3 includes bike/ped or transit level of service, they might find that they’d have a long way to go to improve the “level of service” for non-auto modes.

OK, so something is messed up. What should they do?

1) Change the name. MSTIP should be “Major Surface Transportation Improvement Program” instead of “Major Streets Transportation Improvement Program” to reflect the fact that the program needs to focus on something besides streets that look like highways if they want to serve *all* transportation users.

Change their criteria. Currently their selection criteria for projects is biased towards cars (it’s a point system, and bike/ped/transit projects that don’t also improve conditions for driving are scored less). Instead, they should consider the following criteria:

a) Does the project decrease auto traffic (e.g. Vehicle Miles Traveled)?

By focusing on relieving congestion (instead of traffic, the actual number and distance of trips made), the answer has been to build bigger roads – but by increasing auto capacities and speeds we make it more convenient for people to live further away from where they work, which leads to exactly that: more people living further from where they work (or shop, or eat, or play, for that matter). That in turn leads to more traffic which will eventually bring the level of congestion on the road previously widened to its original level of congestion, requiring yet another expensive road-widening project. All the other roads in the area will be adversely effected in a similar manner, and although the level of congestion returns to its original level, the people who have moved further from their jobs (and newcomers who move into new houses far from their workplaces) will find it even more difficult than before to use alternative modes of transportation (widespread low density development is less likely to support transit, and people are less able to walk or bike the increased distances they must travel).

You cannot build your way out of congestion, but you can work on projects or policies that decrease distances you need to drive and decrease the need to drive.

One very cheap way to reduce lots and lots of trips would be to support Safe Routes to Schools (since parents driving kids to school make up 25% of all morning traffic).

b) Does the project decrease emissions of global warming gases?

Climate change is a reality covered nearly every day in the newspaper now, and if we don’t want Seaside or Cannon Beach to be flooded by rising Ocean levels, we need to start considering this. Anything that makes driving slower, less convenient, or more expensive (or makes the other modes faster, more convenient, and cheaper) would get points here.

b2) Does the project decrease our reliance on oil for transportation?
Considering that we’re running out of oil, this should be important [3].

c) Does the project promote cycling?

If a 3 lane road with bike lanes is widened to a 5 lane road with bike lanes, that would actually make people less likely to bike, since no one likes biking near cars, and lots of cars going fast is much worse than some cars going slow. Such a project should get negative points, but a project like building connections between neighborhood streets and doing signing to create a bike boulevard would get positive points. Actually building bike boulevards that are well used should even get points under the old system for increasing capacity on arterials by converting many car trips to bike trips and freeing up road space.

d) Does the project promote walking?

Adding sidewalks promotes walking, while building road capacity makes walking less attractive.

Supporting Safe Routes to Schools would get lots of points, since kids living near schools are the easiest people to convince to walk (or bike, so it gets bike points too).

Another simple project would be setting up traffic lights so that hitting a pedestrian walk button would make the pedestrian signal go green within a few seconds (unlike now, where walkers might wait minutes to cross a street).

e) Does the project promote transit usage?

Extending MAX to Forest Grove would promote transit, so that would get lots of positive points [4].
Widening a road could make bus service faster for a while due to a temporary decrease in congestion, but people who were taking the bus might choose to drive instead now that driving is more convenient, and the bus service would just get bad again in the future as the bigger road allows more traffic which leads to the same level of congestion as earlier. So widening a road is neutral at best, so it gets 0 points. However, if a large road, like Hwy 26, got a paint job to turn one lane into a 3+ carpool, motorcycle, and bus lane, this would get positive points since it makes those modes much more convenient (at the same time as making driving alone less convenient).

Putting in bus shelters, adding sidewalks, and making crossing streets near bus stops easier would get positive points.

Helping TriMet buy cleaner, quieter buses could get some points here and under the climate change criteria.

f) Does the project increase connectivity, which gives cyclists, walkers, and buses more options for how to get from one place to another?

Connecting neighborhoods to other neighborhoods, businesses, or parks can also decrease the distance people need to walk, and allow cyclists to travel on low traffic streets instead of busy roads. Note that retractable bollards could also be used to allow buses and emergency vehicles (but not private autos) to take shortcuts between places to make trips faster.

New connections made by adding new collector streets is also a much more preferable way to increase auto capacity in a more bike/ped friendly way, since it 1) makes distances shorter and gives more travel options and 2) adds auto capacity without making bike/ped conditions worse on other roads. Of course, for promoting cycling and walking, well marked trails are best.

g) Does the project promote density and variety of land uses that make walking or cycling more viable?

Widening roads makes it more convenient to live further from regional centers, so that would get negative points.

Building road connections to make regional centers have more of a grid layout would make them more attractive to developers and businesses.

Hillsboro had a plan to turn the OHSU/Amberglen area into a mini-city with lots of offices and condos and a streetcar. Projects which implement that plan would get lots of points here.

h) Does the project promote carpooling?

One possibility would be funding a program that works to promote carpooling. Also, supporting denser development would make carpooling easier.

Note that in some places, ‘project’ could be a program; for example, a Safe Routes to School project might include funding a program that has staff people who work to promote walking for school kids.

Those are all ideas for MSTIP. TIF could be changed in ways that would promote alternative modes as well, since it could have an effect on development patterns. Right now the fee developers pay is based on Institute of Transportation Engineers estimates about how many trips a certain development (like a house) generates, but 1) I don’t believe their model is accurate since it doesn’t factor in location and things that promote alternative transportation modes and 2) with a change in the fee structure, the fee could not just help increase capacity but could promote alternative modes as well. The County has goals for the percent of trips they’d like to see by alternative modes, but the fee structure totally ignores that.

The following criteria should be evaluated when determining the TIF development fee:

Parking.

A house with 1 parking space is less likely to produce as many trips as a house with 2 or 3 or 7 parking spaces (think about garages plus driveways plus on street parking). Also, with fewer parking spaces per house, that extra space could be used for housing more people, and with more people living there, there is more potential for transit use.

Land Use Variety.

A development that contains or is near a variety of destinations (grocery store, businesses, parks, etc) is less likely to send auto trips onto the regions arterials, so that development should get some
credit for that. Basically the higher the walk score (see walkscore.com for an example) the greater the amount that could be deducted from the TIF fee.

Access to land uses by alternative modes.

A credit should be given if the development builds or is near trails, bike lanes, sidewalks, or transit service.

Distance from centers.

The further the development is from regional centers, the higher the TIF should be.

Density.

Higher density means more trips, but also means greater potential to support transit. Because people are willing to pay more for more space, the TIF should be higher for lower density developments.

Other things that reduce auto trips.
If the developer can make a compelling case for why their development encourages non-SOV trips they should be given credit for that.

Finally, perhaps as part of this MSTIP initiative, I think the County should hire a bike and pedestrian planner who can focus on promoting those modes (in addition to transit, since transit and those modes go hand in hand).

1: Source: Washington County 2020 Transportation Plan

2: Based on System Funding and Financing Element of the Plan, table 8:
$170 million for standalone bike/ped projects plus $50 million for ‘other’ and a 6 year MSTIP cycle with $20 million / year for bike/ped/other.

3: Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2196422,00.html

4: between 1990 and 2000 the biggest thing that changed transportation demographics was building the MAX in Washington County. The percentage of people taking transit was the biggest single change, while there was
slightly smaller change in the amount of people who drove to work, but unfortunately in many areas there was actually a decrease in the percentage of people who got to work via bike or foot.
Source: US Census

Alarmed by this, I asked the City of Beaverton about it (along with another project on their list–a five lane connection from Hall Blvd to Jenkins Rd which would go right though an existing neighborhood). It turns out that although these projects are on Beaverton’s list of plans, they are low priority projects that were included in the County list only because the County didn’t ask about priorities. It is scary though, that the County just assumed projects like these, that would obviously have a severely negative impact on bike and pedestrian modes, as well as neighborhood livability (or even neighborhood existence in the Hall Blvd case), should be among the first projects funded by the next Washington County MSTIP funding initiative.

In fact, the general trend in the Washington County MSTIP plans seems to be widening 2 lane roads to 3 lanes, widening 3 lane roads to 5 lanes, and even widening the 5 lane TV Hwy to 7 lanes. It makes me wonder – when does this pattern end? If the roads weren’t wide enough before, what guarantees that they will be wide enough after reconstruction? Will they just alleviate congestion temporarily while enabling more auto-dependent development at the urban fringes, which will in turn require another round of road widening projects? I also wonder what happens immediately after roads are widened? If it just enables more traffic, won’t that cause more congestion on the roads connected to newly widened roads?

People may currently accept MSTIP road widening projects as necessary and even convenient, but as we run out of easy projects and as it becomes necessary to tear down homes and neighborhoods to make way for more lanes, the political tide will begin to turn against wider roads (and has likely already begun).

But if wider roads don’t fix the traffic problem and people want an alternative, what can be done? Luckily there is an alternative.

The Washington County Department of Land Use and Transportation (DLUT) seems to have left one huge factor out of their supply and demand transportation equations – the demand side. They assume that there is nothing they can do to reduce the amount of driving people do.  But the solution is actually in their name – “Land Use”. Instead of building wider roads to handle growing traffic from new houses far away from businesses, schools, and shopping, the DLUT should focus on promoting infill development and new development in centers, where people are close enough to where they want to go that they wouldn’t need to use a car to make trips (or if they did use their car, at least the trips would be shorter). Resident surveys have already shown that people prefer this to sprawling auto dependent development; the DLUT just needs to start paying attention to what people want and help make that happen. The alternative — continuing our current path and turning our roads into freeways — means more noise, more neighborhoods carved up, less people walking, biking and taking transit, more pollution, and in the end, just more traffic.

It had some interesting information about current funding and transportation trends, and results from a survey of 403 Washington County residents over 18 years old in May 2006. Below are some of the highlights:

In the last 20 years, transportation capital projects costs totaled $432 million. The 2020 capital projects needs will cost $2.6 billion. [I'm really curious how in the next 12 years we can afford to spend six times more money than we did in the last 20 years.]

There is an expected population increase of 44%, and jobs increase of 70% by 2020 in Washington County. Bike/Ped trips are expected increase by 47%, while auto trips increase by 75%. [Does anyone else think that maybe we need to increase our bike/ped mode split?]

When asked to rate the importance and performance of various goals, the survey found that “well planned to handle growth” was perceived as highly important but the county had low performance on this. Efficient use of tax dollars is also highly important to people but results show that people feel the county’s performance is low in this regard.

“Safety and convenience for pedestrians and bicyclists” was rated more important than easy travel to residential or shopping areas, quick connection to freeways, and travel times being maintained or reduced.
Regarding what was the biggest challenge facing the county, “traffic congestion” was rated as the biggest by 36% of people and “education and schools” was rated the biggest by 34%. [I'm a little confused about the numbers on that slide (p25) because they add up to over 100%. It was pointed out that overall, transportation issues were the #1 concern (65%), but I'm curious if that is just because they allowed multiple selection and gave more transportation choices ("congestion", "maintenance", and "infrastructure") than other categories. I also wonder if bike/ped safety and convenience, and education, would matter more if school age people were included in the survey (hopefully the county isn't intending to only support the voting part of the public...)]

When asked who should pay for transportation improvements, the result was:

• 70% fees on new development
• 55% was assessment on commercial trucks
• 45% business income tax
• 42% vehicle registration fees
• 35% local road maintenance districts
• 33% gas tax
• 27% tolls on major freeways
• 25% property tax
• 12% personal income tax

(multiple selection was allowed, so #s add to more than 100%)

Note that more people believed a gax tax should fund transportation rather than property tax.

Annually, the current county gas tax raises $600,000 while property tax raises $20,000,000 (in other words, county property tax raises 30 times as much money as the county gas tax).

Among the conclusions is: “Keep resident values in mind when crafting any new funding package”. [Hopefully if they stick to that they will support more bike/ped infrastructure and shift the funding source away from property tax and onto other sources that might also help people make better transportation choices (like gas tax and vehicle registration fees).]

One thing this presentation completely lacked was any discussion about changing the demand for transportation, via programs to encourage alternatives to automobile use, or through land-use changes. I believe that if the County enacted a high fee on new development on the urban fringe where the costs of providing infrastructure are high and where alternative transportation modes are less convenient, then that could potentially have a big impact on encouraging infill development and development in centers. And instead of spending money on capacity improvements which will just enable more sprawl and more traffic, the money could be spent on providing bike/ped safety improvements, connectivity, and improvements in centers that promote denser development; the result would be less reliance on the automobile and hence less traffic.

Most people say they are ready to make personal sacrifices to address climate change, according to a BBC poll of 22,000 people in 21 countries.

Four out of five people say they are prepared to change their lifestyle, even in the US and China, the world’s two biggest emitters of carbon dioxide.

Three quarters would back energy taxes if the cash was used to find new sources of energy, or boost efficiency.

[...]

In almost all countries in Europe, and in the US, most people believe the cost of fuels that contribute most to climate change will have to increase.

[...] when people opposed to energy taxes are asked whether their opinion would change if the revenue from the taxes were used to increase energy efficiency or develop cleaner fuel, large majorities are produced in every country in favour of higher taxes.

And when those opposed to higher taxes are asked whether they would change their minds if other taxes were reduced in order to keep their total tax burden the same, the survey again discovered large majorities in every country in favour of higher green taxes.

“This poll clearly shows that people are much more ready to endure their share of the burden than most politicians grant,” said Doug Miller, director of Globescan, the polling company that conducted the survey on behalf of the BBC.

(view full article)