Leroy N. Soetoro
2018-03-24 20:46:45 UTC
http://www.oregonlive.com/cycling/index.ssf/2013/05/mark_gorton_the_hedge-
fund_mil.html
When I first met Mark Gorton six years ago, he was a brash hedge-fund
millionaire whose philanthropic passion was turning New York City into a
cycling-walking-transit paradise in which the automobile would be
relegated to a secondary status.
As we sat in his firms headquarters high above lower Manhattan, he
spilled out his ideas for the livable streets movement he was
championing:
Build a Copenhagen-style bike network, carve public plazas out of the
street network and, oh yeah, hed like to close Broadway to autos.
Thats the avenue that cuts diagonally through Manhattan and also happens
to go right by his office.
It mostly sounded like wild dreaming to me, but it started becoming
reality just a few months later when Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed
Janette Sadik-Kahn as his transportation commissioner.
She launched a network of protected bike lanes (after hiring a noted
Copenhagen planner, Jan Gehl, as a consultant) and rejiggered the street
network to create a big plaza in Times Square, as well as other public
spaces around the city. And she actually did close parts of Broadway.
She also blocked off Park Avenue in the heart of Manhattan for the citys
Summer Streets rides (similar to Portlands Sunday Parkways) and will soon
open the countrys largest bike share program.
All of this was chronicled on Streetsblog, the influential website
financed by Gorton that has become one of the rallying points for
transportation reformers. It was heady stuff for a guy who got into it
because he felt like he was taking his life in his hands riding his bike a
few miles to work.
Flash forward to 2013. Gorton is sitting across from me at lunch at Kenny
and Zukes Delicatessen in Portland and talking about how hes starting to
take his livable streets message to the rest of the country including
the small towns and suburbs that still rely almost solely on automotive
travel.
Unlike the paid advocates who work the halls of government, I think
theres room for someone like me to be a bit of an outsider and say how
screwed up things are, says Gorton, who was in Salem the day before
speaking at the Oregon Active Transportation Summit.
Gorton says he knows his message is an easier sell in central cities,
where biking in particular is an obvious transportation choice because the
trip distances are shorter, car parking is tougher and traffic speeds are
lower.
However, Gorton is convinced he can get small-town and suburban civic
leaders to sit up and listen when he talks about money. He questions
whether it makes sense to keep up the cost of maintaining local roads that
may serve only a few dozen families. Continuing to put new development on
the edge of communities raises a variety of infrastructure costs, from
roads to sewers.
We have converted to the automobile blindly, he says, but now the bills
are coming due.
In many cases, Gorton argues, municipalities would be better off
investing in hundreds of small projects that would make it easier for
residents to at least use walking or bicycling for some of their trips.
One small example: build a few simple paths to improve connectivity, so
it would be easy to ride or walk between subdivisions. The more choices
you provide, he argues, the lower your transportation costs and the
economically stronger your community.
Its still a little hard to know exactly where Gorton is headed on his new
crusade, which he admits is still a work in progress. The
bicycling/transportation crowd will pay attention to him, in no small
measure because of his wallet (he appears to be the largest individual
donor to these causes in the country).
Gorton, 46, also brings plenty of smarts to the table and a willingness to
cause trouble. A Yale and Stanford-trained engineer, Gorton built a
successful hedge fund based on high-frequency trading, which relies on
computer-generated trades to exploit split-second market opportunities.
Gorton and other similar firms are now responsible for more than half of
all stock trading in the U.S. and are drawing the attention of regulators
worried that it increases market instability.
And there this is Gortons wild ride with LimeWire, a popular file-sharing
system he developed that he continued to operate despite legal challenges
from the recording industry. For a time, it appeared his fortune might be
at risk Streetsblog, for one, began looking for ways to make itself
financially independent before Gorton reached a $105 million settlement
nearly two years ago. He appears to have survived that financial hit and
it hasnt appeared to dim his ardor for financing the livable streets
movement. And his rhetoric hasnt mellowed.
We have poisoned our own environment with traffic, says Gorton, who is
in his talks likes to promote the cityscapes once common in America:
choked with walkers, streetcars, and cyclists, not cars.
After our talk, he headed out for a bike ride around Portland. He later
sent an email saying he was impressed with the citys biking
infrastructure and described it as a great livable city. But he saw
room for improvement.
"Even on the generally friendly streets on which I rode, there were places
where timid bicyclists would be intimidated by traffic, he wrote, adding
that if the standard is whether a parent would be comfortable with an 8
year old kid riding all over the city, Portland still has a bit of work to
do."
--Jeff Mapes
--
Donald J. Trump, 304 electoral votes to 227, defeated compulsive liar in
denial Hillary Rodham Clinton on December 19th, 2016. The clown car
parade of the democrat party ran out of gas and got run over by a Trump
truck.
Congratulations President Trump. Thank you for cleaning up the disaster
of the Obama presidency.
Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp.
ObamaCare is a total 100% failure and no lie that can be put forth by its
supporters can dispute that.
Obama jobs, the result of ObamaCare. 12-15 working hours a week at minimum
wage, no benefits and the primary revenue stream for ObamaCare. It can't
be funded with money people don't have, yet liberals lie about how great
it is.
Obama increased total debt from $10 trillion to $20 trillion in the eight
years he was in office, and sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood queer
liberal democrat donors.
fund_mil.html
When I first met Mark Gorton six years ago, he was a brash hedge-fund
millionaire whose philanthropic passion was turning New York City into a
cycling-walking-transit paradise in which the automobile would be
relegated to a secondary status.
As we sat in his firms headquarters high above lower Manhattan, he
spilled out his ideas for the livable streets movement he was
championing:
Build a Copenhagen-style bike network, carve public plazas out of the
street network and, oh yeah, hed like to close Broadway to autos.
Thats the avenue that cuts diagonally through Manhattan and also happens
to go right by his office.
It mostly sounded like wild dreaming to me, but it started becoming
reality just a few months later when Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed
Janette Sadik-Kahn as his transportation commissioner.
She launched a network of protected bike lanes (after hiring a noted
Copenhagen planner, Jan Gehl, as a consultant) and rejiggered the street
network to create a big plaza in Times Square, as well as other public
spaces around the city. And she actually did close parts of Broadway.
She also blocked off Park Avenue in the heart of Manhattan for the citys
Summer Streets rides (similar to Portlands Sunday Parkways) and will soon
open the countrys largest bike share program.
All of this was chronicled on Streetsblog, the influential website
financed by Gorton that has become one of the rallying points for
transportation reformers. It was heady stuff for a guy who got into it
because he felt like he was taking his life in his hands riding his bike a
few miles to work.
Flash forward to 2013. Gorton is sitting across from me at lunch at Kenny
and Zukes Delicatessen in Portland and talking about how hes starting to
take his livable streets message to the rest of the country including
the small towns and suburbs that still rely almost solely on automotive
travel.
Unlike the paid advocates who work the halls of government, I think
theres room for someone like me to be a bit of an outsider and say how
screwed up things are, says Gorton, who was in Salem the day before
speaking at the Oregon Active Transportation Summit.
Gorton says he knows his message is an easier sell in central cities,
where biking in particular is an obvious transportation choice because the
trip distances are shorter, car parking is tougher and traffic speeds are
lower.
However, Gorton is convinced he can get small-town and suburban civic
leaders to sit up and listen when he talks about money. He questions
whether it makes sense to keep up the cost of maintaining local roads that
may serve only a few dozen families. Continuing to put new development on
the edge of communities raises a variety of infrastructure costs, from
roads to sewers.
We have converted to the automobile blindly, he says, but now the bills
are coming due.
In many cases, Gorton argues, municipalities would be better off
investing in hundreds of small projects that would make it easier for
residents to at least use walking or bicycling for some of their trips.
One small example: build a few simple paths to improve connectivity, so
it would be easy to ride or walk between subdivisions. The more choices
you provide, he argues, the lower your transportation costs and the
economically stronger your community.
Its still a little hard to know exactly where Gorton is headed on his new
crusade, which he admits is still a work in progress. The
bicycling/transportation crowd will pay attention to him, in no small
measure because of his wallet (he appears to be the largest individual
donor to these causes in the country).
Gorton, 46, also brings plenty of smarts to the table and a willingness to
cause trouble. A Yale and Stanford-trained engineer, Gorton built a
successful hedge fund based on high-frequency trading, which relies on
computer-generated trades to exploit split-second market opportunities.
Gorton and other similar firms are now responsible for more than half of
all stock trading in the U.S. and are drawing the attention of regulators
worried that it increases market instability.
And there this is Gortons wild ride with LimeWire, a popular file-sharing
system he developed that he continued to operate despite legal challenges
from the recording industry. For a time, it appeared his fortune might be
at risk Streetsblog, for one, began looking for ways to make itself
financially independent before Gorton reached a $105 million settlement
nearly two years ago. He appears to have survived that financial hit and
it hasnt appeared to dim his ardor for financing the livable streets
movement. And his rhetoric hasnt mellowed.
We have poisoned our own environment with traffic, says Gorton, who is
in his talks likes to promote the cityscapes once common in America:
choked with walkers, streetcars, and cyclists, not cars.
After our talk, he headed out for a bike ride around Portland. He later
sent an email saying he was impressed with the citys biking
infrastructure and described it as a great livable city. But he saw
room for improvement.
"Even on the generally friendly streets on which I rode, there were places
where timid bicyclists would be intimidated by traffic, he wrote, adding
that if the standard is whether a parent would be comfortable with an 8
year old kid riding all over the city, Portland still has a bit of work to
do."
--Jeff Mapes
--
Donald J. Trump, 304 electoral votes to 227, defeated compulsive liar in
denial Hillary Rodham Clinton on December 19th, 2016. The clown car
parade of the democrat party ran out of gas and got run over by a Trump
truck.
Congratulations President Trump. Thank you for cleaning up the disaster
of the Obama presidency.
Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp.
ObamaCare is a total 100% failure and no lie that can be put forth by its
supporters can dispute that.
Obama jobs, the result of ObamaCare. 12-15 working hours a week at minimum
wage, no benefits and the primary revenue stream for ObamaCare. It can't
be funded with money people don't have, yet liberals lie about how great
it is.
Obama increased total debt from $10 trillion to $20 trillion in the eight
years he was in office, and sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood queer
liberal democrat donors.