At the corner of Southeast Oak and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, the inner eastside’s cup runneth over, what with the

and that elegant bunkhouse for Portland’s creative class, the Schoolhouse Electric Building.

Brooks Gilley moved 52 LTD in eight months ago; designer Adam Arnold is parked in the corner suite. “We’re super pumped to be here,” Gilley said. “This is the most relevant creative neighborhood in the city.”

When Portland’s eastside streetcar “unites the city” on Sept. 22, I’m sure the trolleys will slow to a crawl — ah, but I repeat myself — in front of the building at 330 Southeast MLK so the revelers and renaissance men can toast the high ceilings and plate-glass possibilities.

And they better. Because on the final 15 blocks of the ride to virtually nowhere, they are hemmed in by the brick walls, barbed wire and barren parking lots much more in keeping with the industry of the neighborhood.

The streetcar, everyone knows, is a real-estate development tool, not a transit option.

Because it served its purpose in the Pearl District, the city dragged the streetcar across the Broadway Bridge at an eye-rolling cost of $148 million.

Some of that money might have been well spent if both the northbound and southbound lines had been planted on Seventh Avenue, where commuters had a fighting chance to transfer to a real transit service — the lowly TriMet bus — and cross the Morrison and Hawthorne bridges into downtown.

Instead, Mayor Sam Adams and eastside leasing agents shoved the southbound tracks down MLK’s throat and scheduled a gala victory lap for Sept. 22, long before the four-lane truck route, or those knockoff streetcars with the Made-in-the-

USA stickers, are ready for their close-up.

Yes, Schoolhouse Electric oozes urban cool and street appeal. But the next seven blocks on MLK’s east flank sport as many gas stations — one — as storefronts.

And the views only get worse as you drift south toward

. Between Southeast Oak and Mill, two-thirds of the property bordering MLK is parking lot or bridge abutment. Most of the rest is Burger King, the sullen brick walls of body

shops, or Linoleum City.

When the kids were little and the zoo was closed, they frequently asked if we could board the slow train for Linoleum City, but still ...

The return trip northbound on Grand is definitely an improvement. Only one-third of the property would prohibit the redevelopment the mayor craves. The seedy bars are begging for a makeover.

Southeast Grand also hosts the two monuments to the power of the streetcar: the campaign headquarters of mayoral candidate Charlie Hales, and the

, which will feature — through next spring — the exhibit, “Streetcars Build a City.”

The co-sponsors?

, of course, and the urban developers at

.

On one level, this is the way of things in Portland. The streetcar helped transform the Pearl and still might, as Gilley suggests, relieve the parking problems between MLK and the Willamette. If the $148 million price tag misdirects $28 million in urban renewal funds, it also includes a $75 million gift from the feds.

But let’s stop pretending this glitzy development vehicle is supplementing, not undercutting, the city’s increasingly fragile transit grid.

TriMet has three times slashed bus service since 2009, yet still found $3.75 million in its 2013 budget to fund “streetcar operations.”

That sum would restore full service to four or five of TriMet’s major lines. And that might be TriMet’s preference, for all I know, if the mayor and the Transportation Bureau weren’t fixated on the streetcar.

Uniting the city? Horsepucky. The streetcar is an amusement park ride, and the antithesis of efficiency and mobility for the poor slobs in Portland who actually need the trains to run on time.

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