We Need Answers to Critical Questions About the Rose Quarter I-5 Widening

As the federal government hits pause on Rose Quarter freeway expansion, local leaders should use the time out to ask some questions.

Potential ramp-to-ramp connections, as outlined by ODOT.

On January 18th, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) rescinded its “Finding of No Significant Impact” regarding the expansion of I-5 at the Rose Quarter. While to some of us the significant impacts of the project have long been evident, such as the need for the relocation of Harriet Tubman middle school (a fact recently admitted by the Governor), the reversal of the federal position by the Biden Department of Transportation is a welcome cessation in the ODOT drumbeat for this project. The re-evaluation also serves as an opportunity for local leaders in the region to ask some critical questions:

Could the congestion relief benefits of the project be realized via congestion pricing, with less cost and much less environmental impact?

• By financially incentivizing commuters to use the roadway during non-peak times, rush-hour gridlock can be avoided. ODOT has already applied for “value pricing” authority from FHWA.

Could the “operations” benefits of the project (preventing fender-bender collisions from creating traffic backups) be achieved less expensively?

• International traffic engineering firm Arup, under contract to ODOT, has suggested that simply widening shoulders on the existing roadway could achieve much of that desired benefit.

Could we deliver on Albina Vision’s goal of capping the freeway less expensively by covering the existing freeway lanes?

Is it essential that we add more lanes in the effort restitch the Albina neighborhood, an area first targeted decimated by the construction of the freeway in the first place?

Is framing this effort as a “safety project” on a stretch of freeway that has seen no fatalities in over a decade the highest priority for ODOT?

• This question is especially relevant because people walking, rolling, cycling, and driving on the many ODOT “orphan highways” (82nd Ave, Barbur Blvd, TV Highway, among others) are dying in traffic violence on a regular cadence.

In a time when the evidence of climate change in the form of heat waves, flooding, and wildfires is experienced annually in our region, should our approach to traffic congestion continue to be freeway widening instead of expanding transit, biking, and walking choices?

Are the benefits worth the costs, both financial and environmental?

• When conceptualized a decade ago, the price tag for this project was $400M. The current estimate is now between $1.2B and $1.5B.

Let’s take a moment and think things through! One way to be more thoughtful would be to insist that ODOT prepare a full Environmental Impact Statement for this project.

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Chris Smith is recently retired from 12 years as a Portland Planning and Sustainability Commissioner. He is part of the leadership of the No More Freeways campaign.