1 Eugene has small regional airport. It always surprises me how 'not cheap' it is to fly into regional airports on commercial carriers. Depending on what you want to do, can be cheaper to fly to PDX and drive down.Eugene is expensive!!!!! It’s 50k a year and they are not giving out any discounts to out of state students, well at least to us. Really surprised by that. They went to visit the campus and took a tour a few weekends ago. Of course they loved the campus and the greenery. Travel to Eugene is not cheap. Few if any direct flights. They could have flown to Europe for what they paid flying to Eugene/San Diego. They were stoked on no sales tax and cheap water though. Smaller than they expected.
So many factors factor in the big picture.
2 Eugene and Salem used to be tied for 2nd biggest city in Oregon, or switch positions every few years. Would guess there are about 180,000 +/- 5K people in both now.
3 Lack of sun can be a bigger issue than the long periods of drizzly misty rain.