Last week Jonathan texted me that he “would really love to see more women using our comments section.”
Little did he know that men and women communicating is something I, for decades, have spent a lot of time thinking about. It probably started with that 1981 Gloria Steinem piece,Men and Women Talking, and continued with the excellent 1990 book by linguist Deborah Tannen, You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation.
It’s a fascinating topic to me. The wrinkle of internet message boards is that most people comment anonymously, so you don’t know their sex. The structure of a Zoom call changes things too, profoundly, especially in terms of interruption.
My short answer to Jonathan was that more women than he thinks do already comment to BikePortland. Women, like men, can and do pick anonymous, gender-neutral user names. The deeper question for me is, why do we assume that everyone is a man?
And I mean the “we.” Just a couple days ago, an occasional commenter posted on one of our stories. “Oh good, so-and-so posted, I like his comments,” thought I. Meanwhile, I had also just received an email from this person in my home email account—nothing to do with BikePortland. I know this person, she is a woman! But it took me a day before I realized the woman in my email box was the same person in the BikePortland comments, despite the fact that her gender-neutral username was practically the same.
How does this happen?
I think many people expect a female commenter to fit into a certain voice, or trope. If you don’t fit into that, the assumption is that you are a man. The molds are “I as a woman experienced xyz;” the face of the cause/disease; the victim; the newbie in need of advice.
In the case of BikePortland, the email address that commenters sign in with identifies some people as women despite their gender-neutral, outward-facing identity. We’ve featured comments from women as Comment of the Week. Did you notice?
It’s still true, though, that BikePortland gets many more comments from men than women. But why assume that is something that needs to be fixed? Why is the male behavior considered the norm? We have five to ten commenters (all men I’m pretty sure) who write a lot, maybe even more than I do. Read them or not, agree with them or not, I appreciate that several of them write link-rich posts which can be informative. I think of them as BikePortland’s Greek chorus—a chorus which doesn’t sing together or agree with each other, but there they are.
So some percentage of men think the world needs to hear from them a lot. Fewer women are like that. (Did you know that hens can crow? Great big cock-a-doodle-dos as good as a rooster? I nearly fell off my tree stump when I heard that come out of a non-aggressive hen who apparently needed to establish dominance over a new bird I had just introduced into the flock.)
Anecdotally, my perception is that most of the women who comment on BikePortland do it precisely, when there is something they specifically can add to the discussion. Comments from women tend to be few, focused and on-topic.
I agree with Jonathan, though, it would be nice if we had more comments from women.
I’m still going through the recent bicycle count report published by the Portland Bureau of Transportation this week and there’s something I need to make very clear: The reason more people aren’t biking is not because of some flaw in the idea of bicycling itself or even because of any shortcomings in the network of roads, paths, and lanes that people do it on.
The problem is cars. Too many cars, to be exact. And too many of them driven without regard for others. This isn’t just my opinion, it also happens to be the official stance of the City of Portland.
This problem has always been right in front of our faces but we don’t recognize it as such because it requires us to acknowledge that something we (nearly) all do on a regular basis might actually have negative impacts on our community and our city. Put another way, the problem is us, and that’s the problem. Not only is driving a car something the vast majority of us do and sympathize with, it’s also normalized by trillions of dollars in marketing over the last century as something that is cool, fun, and harmless. When you’re in a car, Big Auto propaganda says, everyone else is the problem. None of that is true of course, but this is America! With enough money and marketing savvy, you can convince people of anything.
But I digress. What I want you take from this post is a clearer understanding of what has happened on Portland streets in the past decade.
As many of you know, I’ve thought a lot about why bicycling leveled off and then declined in Portland (even before the pandemic). I’ve also tracked closely what PBOT says (and doesn’t say) about the matter. On that note, did you happen to read what PBOT said in the “Discussion” section of the report? On page 16 you’ll see three reasons cited as the causes for the decline in cycling in Portland over the past ten years. Here they are (emphases by PBOT):
The population soared, with an average of about 10,000 new resident commuters hitting the roads each year from 2014 to 2018. Unlike in previous years where biking and working from home absorbed the plurality of new commute trips, during this period it was driving alone. This likely translated to less comfortable conditions for biking.
Public perceptions of safety have dropped. People are driving faster and yielding less since the pandemic, and 2023 was a record year for traffic deaths. But it goes beyond transportation. Anecdotally, the rise in houselessness, encampments along bikeways, as well as open drug use, have deterred some riders.
It has continued to be exceptionally easy to drive a personal vehicle, with a preponderance of street space dedicated to vehicle movement and storage—often at the expense of people who walk, bike, roll, or take transit.
Notice what all three have in common? Cars. Too many cars, to be exact. And too many of them driven without regard for others.
From 2022 Portland Insights Survey, City of Portland Budget Office
I understand PBOT is inherently biased against reaching some conclusions about the decline (such as their anemic designs, lack of political power to sway City Hall dysfunction, and so on) and that just like I often say bicycles and their riders are easy scapegoats, I recognize it’s very easy to blame cars for everything.
But in this case, as the City of Portland itself appears comfortable doing, blaming too many cars is a reasonable conclusion — especially when you consider what happens when cars are removed from the equation, like during Sunday Parkways events or during the pandemic when bicycling and walking on our streets skyrocketed. It’s also worth noting that the PBOT staffer who wrote this leaned on the 2022 Portland Insights survey that found nearly half of all 5,290 people who responded said they’d be interested in biking more if it were affordable and safe (see above).
So next time a city staffer or elected official is in a meeting and says they just can’t imagine why bicycling has struggled in Portland, remember they’ll probably leave that meeting, drive home in a sea of hundreds of other cars, and wonder what all the fuss is about.
Conceptual drawing of cap looking southwest from NE Tillamook toward the river. (Source: ODOT)
Just two days after the Biden Administration announced a $450 million grant to construct highway caps above I-5 through the Rose Quarter, the advisory committee that is largely responsible for making it happen held a meeting. Members of the Oregon Department of Transportation’s Historic Albina Advisory Board (HAAB) gathered on Zoom Tuesday. The group aired feedback on the grant news and watched presentations about the caps and other details from project staff.
HAAB meeting on Zoom with ODOT Director Strickler on bottom right..
I found the meeting very enlightening and figured you might too. Below I’ll share some of the slides and other things I took away from it…
Dimensions
Slides shown Tuesday that give us a sense of where the cap will go and its size in context.
The plan is for one continuous cap (also called a “highway cover”) that would stretch over I-5 from the corner of NE Tillamook and Flint south to NE Weidler (see images). The cap, which is estimated to cost about $700 to $900 million total (about half the project total) would fully restore the street grid of North Flint, Vancouver, and North Williams (north/south) and N Weidler, Broadway, Hancock and Tillamook (east/west). The cap would add about 7 new acres of land to the Rose Quarter.
A skeptic
In addition to still being about $1 billion short on the project (which includes widening I-5 between I-84 and I-405 in addition to other surface street changes), ODOT has to address at least one high-profile HAAB member who is very skeptical that the money will be spent in a way that directly benefits Black people. A top priority of the HAAB is to use this project to rebuild wealth that was stolen from the Black community when the freeway and other developments were built. HAAB member James Posey is well-known in Portland as a former mayoral candidate and co-founder of the National Association of Minority Contractors of Oregon. He’s also president of the local chapter of the NAACP.
When ODOT Director Kris Strickler stopped into the HAAB meeting to thank members for their help in securing what he referred to as the largest grant ODOT has ever received from the federal government, Posey seized the opportunity to express skepticism about who will see benefits from the investment:
James Posey (Photo via Linkedin)
“I hate to be a naysayer… but the truth of the matter is there are a lot of people that are concerned that very little of that money will go into the hands of the Black community. Some of us are concerned that we’ve seen this movie before… And you know, we use the HAAB and Black faces all over the place and at the end of the day, Black people will receive very little benefit from this project. I would recommend that you all put in place a Truth and Reconciliation committee to look at every one of the dollars that come from it and see if in fact we are maximizing the participation of African Americans, which you all are selling, don’t make no mistake about it. You’re using Black people. You’re using this community, and some of us feel like we’re going to be played.”
Posey wants to make sure Black firms, contractors, and other Black Portlanders directly benefit from the construction of the new highway caps. ODOT has never led a project like this before and even their work with the HAAB thus far as been unprecedented. Whether or not they can continue to meet the every-growing expectations of the community is a big unanswered question.
Design precedents
What type of development should we expect on and around the caps? At the meeting Tuesday, a Portland Bureau of Planning & Sustainability staffer shared several buildings and public space projects they believe are good precedents. Among them were: Vanport Square in Portland; the Fruit & Flower Child Development Center on the Portland Community College Rock Creek Campus; the Sherman Phoenix Marketplace in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Pop Courts community plaza in Chicago; and the Louisa Flowers housing block in the Lloyd Center.
Development possibilities
Speaking of construction, a member of the Rose Quarter project team presented at the meeting that the type of development that would be possible on the highway cover will be “limited” due to various necessary offsets and other structural issues. Strength of the cover and whether it would be strong enough to be “buildable” and hold large buildings was a major point in contention before the “Hybrid 3” option was agreed to. So there’s no question multi-story buildings can be built, but what ODOT was saying in the HAAB meeting is that it won’t be a free-for-all in terms of what gets built and where.
According to project staff at Tuesday’s meeting, the northern and southern edges of the cap will have different load ratings due to the length of spans across the freeway and strength of girders. One-story buildings “with some constraints” would be possible in those areas and three-story buildings would be feasible in the middle portion of the cap (roughly between NE Weidler and Hancock).
The staffer also went over a number of reasons buildings would have to be offset from bridge joints, “free edges,” utility access points, and so on. They are clearly trying to manage expectations.
Governance
“Black ownership matters, ownership not only of the land but beneath our feet, but the development processes that shape these spaces.”
– JT Flowers, Albina Vision Trust
Governance of the cover will also be a big issue. As it stands today, ODOT would own all the land created by the cover (since it’s over one of their freeways). This means anyone who owns a building or does business on the cover must have a special lease or governance agreement with ODOT.
At the Oregon Transportation Commission meeting today, Albina Vision Trust members and ODOT are set to begin the first formal, public discussions of a joint workplan agreement that will establish the governance of the caps going forward. In previous work from the project’s Independent Cover Assessment (ICA), ODOT has referred to the need to form a new commission that, ” would have the authority to plan, monitor, manage, and oversee future development activity on the highway cover and any remnant land created by the I-5 Rose Quarter Improvement Project.” They called it the Black Historic Albina Cover Development Commission
“While such a commission should be formed by a legally binding agreement that requires the coordination and cooperation of multiple levels of government and community stakeholders, its decision-making power would sit with Black community members and representatives,” reads a 2021 report from the ICA.
Albina Vision Trust is in the driver’s seat in the future of that commission. At the HAAB meeting Tuesday, AVT’s JT Flowers said their work plan proposal,
“is rooted in a principle that’s very foundational to the work that we do, which is that ownership matters, that Black ownership matters, ownership not only of the land but beneath our feet, but the development processes that shape these spaces matter, and it’s going to be vitally important for us as a community to make sure that we are driving and shaping this work from top to bottom, not just as we build the highway cover, but as we start to imagine what could be built on top of it and for whom that development centers.”
A slide that will be shown at today’s OTC meeting says the governance resolution will, “determine if Albina Vision Trust can have access and rights to 1) future lease(s)/easement(s) for developable air rights on the highway cover; and 2) ownership and development rights for surplus property associated with the Project.”
This is all fascinating new ground for ODOT and the agency finds itself in a very odd position. They don’t have any money or political support for the freeway widening part of their plans (especially with tolling off the table), while AVT continues to build tremendous power and influence. And since AVT has made it clear in past statements they don’t need the freeway expansion to realize their vision, ODOT’s influence and necessity seems to be waning. Maybe in the end, AVT will be in charge of cap development, the City of Portland will manage the surface street changes, and ODOT will be reduced to nothing more than a landlord.
Detail of PBOT conceptual design of N Willamette at N Wabash and Bryant. Note the new bus islands, much larger median island at the top, and newly carfree section of Wabash.
I am extremely excited for PBOT’s North Willamette Blvd project. And it’s not just because I live nearby and have lamented the current conditions on this crucial corridor for many years. It’s also because from what I’ve seen and heard, this project represents PBOT at its best: listening to what people want, coming up with designs that can actually move the needle, getting the funding to build it, then showing real urgency to get it on the ground as soon as possible.
And the latest greatest thing they’ve done? They’ve just put out the best visuals for a bike project I have ever seen. These new visualizations come as PBOT reaches their 60% design milestone and readies to begin construction on the first phase of the $6 million, federally-funded project (via Metro).
Check out the new visuals below and start preparing mentally for how these changes will impact you, your neighbors, and the people you love:
As I reported back in January, PBOT will seize an opportunity to restripe the roadway with bike lanes beginning this spring/summer along with a planned repaving project. The full project will break ground summer of 2025 and we’ll be riding on this thing in 2026. For more info, check the project website.
SW Terwilliger on the left, to new left-side bike lanes on 4th on the right.
In the next month or so, the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) will break ground on a $17 million investment into Southwest 4th Avenue. The project will rebuild and repave this key northbound corridor through downtown from Lincoln to Burnside and add a protected bikeway and many other upgrades. Once complete, PBOT Bicycle Coordinator Roger Geller said, “The 4th Avenue protected bike lane is going to be the premier northbound bike lane through downtown.”
But a high quality bikeway is only as good as the connections to it. And as PBOT staff heard loud and clear last night, if the city is not willing to battle the car-centric status quo to create a high-quality connection, projects like the one planned on SW 4th Avenue will not reach their potential.
At the first in-person meeting of the Bicycle Advisory Committee in four years (!) on Tuesday night, PBOT Planner Corrine McQueen asked for feedback on six different options the city has sketched out to get bicycle riders from the existing bike lane on SW Terwilliger to northbound SW 4th. McQueen leads the Southwest in Motion (SWIM) plan, which is where the need for a Terwilliger-to-4th connection arose, and said at the meeting last night, “We view this as a huge opportunity to integrate this SWIM project with the SW 4th project.”
An in-person meeting for the first time in four years. (Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
Terwilliger (SW 6th north of I-405) is a popular route with a bike lane but it’s separated from 4th by two blocks of multi-lane, one-way streets. And they aren’t just any streets. Due to their proximity to I-405 and the use of streets in this area as de-facto freeway ramps, the confluence of SW Barbur, Broadway, Caruthers and Sheridan are a loud and busy nightmare for anyone not inside a car.
McQueen laid out the six detailed options and went over a lengthy list of pros and cons for each one. Before I get into how BAC members responded, I’ll share the slide for each option:
All of this complexity, just because these streets are overrun with too many deadly vehicles operated by untrustworthy people.
After BAC members shared a few general opinions with McQueen and Geller, BAC Chair Ally Holmqvist took an informal poll. Options 2B and 2C were the favorites. But as the discussion continued, it became clear that none of the options were a clear winner, and that all the options would require strong law enforcement to work (and to keep bicycle riders safe). Several BAC members expressed that none of the options passed muster and said they’d rather keep riding on Terwilliger/6th across I-405 and then cut over to 4th further north.
“What if bicycles were the priority here and you could do anything you wanted — and the cars had to be displaced?
– Joe Perez, BAC vice-chair
Then BAC Vice-Chair Joe Perez said what was I thinking in my own head as I sat and observed the meeting. “What if bicycles were the priority here and you could do anything you wanted — and the cars had to be displaced? When is that going to be an option on the table? It seems like you’re trying to make bicycling more attractive than driving, you’re trying to make walking more attractive to driving, you’re trying to make transit more attractive than driving? Why are we not doing that with this project?”
“Well, get three votes with this on council,” Geller responded.
To which Perez said, “Well, there will be a new council in January, so maybe we should delay this decision until then… You’re putting us in a difficult situation, to pick the least worst of the worst options.”
Perez’s sentiments were echoed by a few other BAC members, who now felt empowered to say something similar now that he’d broken the ice.
“I agree completely,” said committee member Alon Raab. “It’s been an issue since I became a member of the committee and I’ve been thinking about that gap between what I want and what seems to be possible within this current city council.”
And Cameron Bennett added,
“It seems like the barrier we’re up against is that we just have a wildly high volume of vehicle through traffic in this area… Is there any higher-level conversation about reorganizing vehicle movement patterns in this area? Because that could free up a lot of flexibility to do more with this project or to provide some more straightforward solutions. It just seems like there’s a lot of complexity here that maybe could be dialed-down with significant capacity reductions.
At the end of the day, if we’re going to be true to our plans at the city level, that’s got to be part of the conversation, right? To make it harder to drive and reduce the volume of people driving.”
McQueen, the project manager, acknowledged that adjusting car traffic patterns hadn’t been considered by PBOT, “But it’s definitely worth considering,” she replied.
While other options are considered, PBOT needs a recommendation from the BAC in the next few months to get this project aligned with construction of the larger SW 4th Avenue project. Despite the spicy comments at the meeting, there is a strong sense that getting something done in the short-term to connect to 4th is important. The BAC plans to meet for a tour of the area in the coming weeks to better understand the issues and help inform a recommendation.
Stay tuned for developments and let us know what you think. Do you move through this area? How would you prefer to get from Terwilliger northbound to 4th Ave?
After years of headlines about the decline of bicycling in Portland, the city wants to establish a new narrative: “Portlanders are returning to biking and they want to bike more.” That was the opening line in a statement today along with the release of the transportation bureau’s 2023 Bicycle Counts Report.
BikePortland covered a preview of this report last month, which found that cycling rates were up 5% over 2022, and now PBOT has released the full analysis based on a combination of volunteer and hose counts at 272 locations citywide. And with a stroke of welcome political acumen, PBOT also included a list of infrastructure projects in the same press release that aim to make bicycling safer and more enticing.
In a statement released with the report today, PBOT Director Millicent Williams said the 2023 count, “Underscores the need for continued collaboration between advocates for sustainable transportation options and PBOT” and that, “PBOT is committed to making biking, walking and public transit accessible to everyone, in all parts of Portland.”
“We will continue to grow our neighborhood greenways and protected bike lanes in East Portland,” Williams added. “We also need to make sure that as we grow our bike infrastructure, we are updating our older facilities and making sure the new infrastructure we install is substantial and long lasting.”
PBOT Bicycle Advisory Committee Chair Alexandra Holmqvist also shared thoughts about the report, saying that it, “Shows what we know in our community, which is that Portlanders are eager to return to biking.”
And to ensure the trend continues into 2024 and beyond, PBOT touted their work on new neighborhood greenways in east Portland and St. Johns, “areas that have historically not had shared neighborhood bike routes.”
In north Portland, PBOT is working on new greenways on N Delaware (between Sumner and Terry), N Burr, and the Upper St. Johns greenway that will bring traffic calming and other changes to Charleston, Bank, Swenson and Bristol streets.
In addition to those and over $100 million in other major projects citywide that will begin construction this year, PBOT also announced today they plan to improve and update existing neighborhood greenways to bring them into compliance with city standards for driving speeds, volumes, and crossing safety. Those projects include new speed bumps and other calming measures on NE 37th from Fremont to Killingsworth and SE Salmon from 7th to 35th. Construction is also set to begin on a bike-friendly crossing treatment on NW 24th and Vaughn and SE 52nd and Gladstone/Center.
The full report is much more detailed and comprehensive than the preview they released last month. Take a look at the 38-page Portland Bicycle Counts report here.
Looking northeast onto NE 72nd Drive from the golf course parking lot. (Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
“I witnessed two vehicles in a span of on minute bypass the new treatments. Way too easy for drivers to bypass still when they’re this willfully bold.”
That comment was posted by a reader on Monday, March 11th about what’s happening on a new carfree path through Rose City Golf Course. Despite a redoubled effort from the Portland Bureau of Transportation to establish a path on one lane of Northeast 72nd Drive through the golf course, some drivers continue to flout the law. Now PBOT is considering installation of a gate to physically prevent drivers from giving into these selfish and dangerous impulses — while they weigh removal of three existing Jersey barriers in order make the path more welcoming and allow easier access for golf course service vehicles.
After our post about this project last week, we heard back from PBOT Public Information Officer Dylan Rivera who clarified their stance on the project and what we can expect going forward.
PBOT plans. (Note: They might be outdated as tweaks happen.)
Rivera called the destruction and vandalism of the initial traffic calming infrastructure “unfortunate.” “Vandalism destroyed the improvements and forced us to install a hardened facility,” Rivera said. “That is not what we would have intended. It’s hard to think of a multi-use path in Portland that has a Jersey barrier at the entrance.” Rivera’s comments make it clear PBOT finds it challenging to create an open and accessible path for bike riders and walkers, while also preventing miscreant drivers from using it.
Rivera said PBOT is working closely with Portland Police to make sure the project they installed last month remains in place and that they will, “Prosecute anyone engaged in criminal activity against our infrastructure.”
Notably, Rivera said the Jersey barriers and concrete curbs in place today are temporary and that the entire project (which is part of the much larger 70s Neighborhood Greenway project) is still considered an experiment:
“PBOT leadership is firm in our belief that the project is promising and worthy of testing. Traffic volumes of less than 800 vehicles a day and substantial pedestrian use strongly suggest a multi-use path in this location could be the right solution. We will gather data, as said we would, and will share that with the community when we have it.”
In the meantime, Rivera added, they’re making tweaks so that Portland Parks & Recreation maintenance vehicles have easy access to a facility to the northeast of the golf course parking lot. Rivera also confirmed PBOT might install a gate:
“We’re exploring options for a gate to install across the northbound lane, just north of the pedestrian crossing north of the golf course driveway onto NE 72nd Drive. The gate would prohibit motor vehicle access to the multi-use path in the northbound lane. But it would allow Parks & Recreation to use the northbound lane for equipment access that very occasionally needs to come from the south to access the driveway for their maintenance yard. More often, their vehicles can access the yard via NE Sacramento to southbound 72nd Drive north of the pedestrian crossing, and a small cut in the concrete traffic separator can accommodate them. Parks vehicles using the multi-use path in the northbound lane would be operated by professionals, in marked vehicles, looking out for pedestrians and people biking.”
Rivera said installation of traffic separators for about 150-feet north of the gate should deter drivers from going northbound as they leave the golf shop and pub exit onto NE 72nd Dr.
In the southern section of the project, from the striped crosswalk near the golf shop to NE Tillamook, PBOT plans to remove the Jersey barriers. Here’s more from Rivera:
“From the pedestrian crossing to the intersection with NE Tillamook, we would keep the newly installed concrete separators in place. This would restrict vehicle movement. But we would remove all Jersey barriers — the ones at the intersection with Tillamook, at the golf course driveway on NE 72nd and north of the pedestrian crossing. This would allow biking, pedestrian and we believe an extremely limited amount of vehicle traffic (mostly Parks & Recreation service vehicles) sharing the northbound lane in this small stretch. Many people biking and walking in that 100-foot stretch would choose to use the wide, adjacent sidewalk but some would be comfortable sharing the lane with Parks & Recreation vehicles.”
So the saga of this path continues. And as PBOT assesses its impacts on local traffic patterns, remember that it could all be removed if they determine the impacts to have “adverse impacts with traffic diversion on area streets” or if it, “fails to demonstrate the need for biking and pedestrian use on the multi-use path.”
In the meantime, hopefully PBOT and Parks can work together to find a good solution. We’ve previously reported on Parks’ difficulties keeping drivers off their paths on the Columbia Slough, the Peninsula Crossing Trail, and the Springwater — so at least they have some experience with the issues.
ODOT’s revised build alternative from the Revised Supplemental Environmental Assessment.
After winning a $450 million federal grant to build highway covers as part of its I-5 Rose Quarter project, the Oregon Department of Transportation announced more big news this morning: The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has given the project a green light to move forward with an official “finding on no significant impact” (FONSI).
The FHWA decision puts the project back on track after they rescinded a FONSI in January 2022. These steps are related to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a law all major projects must follow. ODOT conducted an Environmental Assessment as part of the NEPA process in 2019 and the FHWA supported it in 2020. But the project that decision was based on was politically infeasible. While ODOT’s internal modeling showed the expansion of I-5 between I-84 and the Fremont Bridge wouldn’t have negative impacts on climate change, air quality, or traffic operations, major project partners weren’t on board. A major sticking point (beyond expanding the freeway) was that ODOT didn’t want to build highway caps that would be robust enough to spur the type of development required to realize the plans of Albina Vision Trust, the nonprofit that wants to rebuild the neighborhood decimated by the freeway’s construction in the 1960s.
This green light from the FHWA also makes it less likely ODOT will heed calls from anti-freeway activists to conduct a more robust environmental analysis known as an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). A memo signed by FHWA Oregon Division Administrator Keith Lynch signed March 6th says, “The FHWA concludes Project impacts would not be severe or intense enough to cause significant environmental impacts that would warrant preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement.”
Notably, ODOT shared a statement of strong support this morning from Portland Bureau of Transportation Director Millicent Williams. “The I-5 Rose Quarter Project has come a long way,” Williams said. “Thanks to the deep involvement of local community stakeholders serving on the Historic Albina Advisory Board, the leadership of the Albina Vision Trust, and the work of PBOT staff, this project has gone from exacerbating past harms to an effort that can help repair and restore a community.”
ODOT acknowledged this checkered past in their statement this morning. “It wasn’t long ago that some project partners and community members pulled back from the project because of disagreements with the design. We have worked hard to incorporate the perspective of our partners and community, and we believe we now have the right project for this region and this moment.”
Ironically, for an agency whose past decisions are guilty of displacing hundreds of Black families from lower Albina, ODOT’s recent progress is entirely the result of centering Black voices and leaning into the work of Albina Vision Trust. (Note: The Historic Albina Advisory Board meets today from 4-7:00 pm.)
While expanded freeway lanes remain a part of the project, there is no money to fund them and it’s not clear if ODOT can convince politicians to support them. Nonprofit No More Freeways is seizing this moment to establish a new campaign to encourage ODOT to, “construct the caps and lose the lanes.”
Gov. Tina Kotek on Monday announced her intention to halt plans to toll Portland-area freeways, citing uncertainty about the costs of planned freeway projects and the revenue tolling would bring in.
So just like that, a plan that’s been seven years in the making is kaput.
The Oregon Department of Transportation was tasked with developing a toll program for Portland-area freeways by the legislature as part of the 2017 statewide funding package. That effort became known as the Regional Mobility Pricing Project. According to ODOT, the RMPP would, “toll I-5 and I-205 in the Portland metropolitan region,” and that, “Tolling is part of ODOT’s long-term strategy to help pay for transportation improvements and provide faster, more efficient trips through the Portland metro region.”
As if tolls weren’t unpopular enough on their own, ODOT’s widespread lack of trust among everyday Oregonians and lawmakers made tolling almost an impossible dream. The agency had pegged toll revenue as a must-have for its own solvency and now will either have to change what kind of projects they build (unlikely) or find a new way to fund them. With a major transportation funding package on the horizon at the legislature in 2025, we’ll likely find out their new strategy soon.
On the social media platform X today, noted ODOT critic City Observatory posted:
R.I.P. Regional Mobility Pricing: Born: 2017, Died 11 March 2024. People only want more road capacity if somebody else pays for them. Mourned by: economists. Survived by the $622 million I-205 Abernethy Bridge, now to be paid for, not by those who use it, but “somebody else.”
As BikePortland reported back in August, Senator and Chair of the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, Jeff Merkley (D-OR), included $1.3 million in the FY24 Senate Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Appropriations bill for three projects that were prioritized by trail advocates statewide: restorations and improvements in the Wenaha sections of the Blue Mountains Trail; new connectors in the Oakridge-Westfir Mountain Bike Trail System, and a detailed planning analysis needed to replace the Eagle Creek Staircase on the Historic Columbia River Highway State Trail.
All three of the projects are now funded. Below are project descriptions from the nonprofit Oregon Trails Coalition:
$300,000 for the Blue Mountains Trail will restore access to the beloved Wenaha River Trail #3106 in the Umatilla National Forest in an area highly impacted by the Grizzly Bear Complex Fire. This [15+ mile] trail restoration project will close a major gap in the Blue Mountains Trail.
$506,923 for the Oakridge-Westfir Mountain Bike Center will construct the Cloverpatch Connector [2.2 miles] and Fugrass Connection trails that will create connected loops in the current mountain bike system and aid in community fire recovery in the Willamette National Forest and nearby communities.
$400,000 for Historic Columbia River Highway State Trail will provide an alternatives analysis for replacing Eagle Creek Stairs and making this Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area trail segment accessible to users of all ages and abilities.
We are especially excited about the Eagle Creek Staircase project. You might recall that this 1996 infrastructure relic has been a major weak link in the Historic Highway State Trail project for many years. Last summer national disability rights activist Juliette Rizzo visited the stairs in a bid to raise awareness for their replacement.
ODOT officials have said replacing the stairs with a ramp, a project estimated to cost $50 million, will have to wait until all other sections of the State Trail are completed. This new planning money will make the project shovel-ready and greatly increase its chances for getting a construction grant sooner rather than later.
See the PDF below more details on all three funded projects.
With the announcement Friday of two separate grants that total nearly a half-billion dollars, the U.S. Department of Transportation has made it clear they want to see the “Albina Vision” for the Rose Quarter area become a reality sooner than later.
Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer and senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley announced they have brought home $450 million to construct covers over Interstate 5 through the Rose Quarter, as well as an additional $38.4 million for a complete makeover of Northeast Broadway and Weidler streets to create a new “civic main street” between NE 7th and the Broadway Bridge.
Ironically, the $450 million federal grant is the same amount ODOT estimated the project would cost when they pitched it to lawmakers in 2017 as a way to alleviate traffic backups through Portland. Since then the project’s estimated cost has ballooned to an estimated $1.3 billion.
This new money isn’t for the freeway widening portion of the project. Instead, it must go toward a project Blumenauer says will, “heal communities torn apart by destructive federal projects.” Senator Merkley said the project will, “Help to right the shameful wrongs inflicted on historically Black neighborhoods and to make our city a stronger and safer community for generations to come.”
This is the first federal investment into construction of the I-5 Rose Quarter project since planning got underway in earnest nearly 14 years ago.
Friday’s announcement injects new life into a moribund project that had been on life support since just before Buttigieg’s visit and it makes good on a prediction by ODOT staff in 2021 that Buttigieg would be Oregon’s “new best friend.” Now ODOT will use this grant as leverage to encourage state lawmakers to fund the (much less popular and politically dicey) freeway-widening portion of their project as they negotiate what’s expected to be a large transportation funding package in the 2025 session.
Now there’s real money on the table to not just envision what lower Albina could look like if it were restored to its former glory as a vibrant neighborhood that was home to hundreds of Black Portlanders who were displaced by racist planning decisions; but to actually build it. This announcement comes after a string of home runs already hit by Albina Vision Trust, the group that has raised well over a billion dollars and closed multiple real estate development deals since it was first launched in 2017.
The grants are a “momentous leap forward in the longstanding fight to rebuild Albina,” said AVT Executive Director Winta Yohannes.
Nonprofit No More Freeways says ODOT should “construct the caps and lose the lanes.” “Albina deserves cleaner air and affordable housing, not air pollution and endless traffic congestion, and the Reconnecting Communities grant funding should be used to heal this neighborhood without ODOT further harming the neighborhood with air pollution and additional freeway lanes. ODOT’s insistence on a costly project that doubles the width of the highway and likely violates environmental standards is delaying the opportunity to heal this neighborhood.”
Broadway Main Street
(Source: City of Portland)
The $38.4 million for PBOT will allow them break ground on their N/NE Broadway Main Street and Supporting Connections project. As BikePortland reported last fall, that project would extend and complement other surface street changes ODOT plans to make in the I-5 Rose Quarter project. The idea would be to change what are currently unwelcoming, wide, arterials into what PBOT calls a “civic main street.” At a meeting last September, a PBOT staffer said the project goal is to create a streetscape that would allow someone to, “take a pleasant walk with their young child from NE 7th to Waterfront Park.”
The great news for cash-strapped PBOT is that the grant requires no matching funds. The great news for people who breathe is that PBOT can get started on this regardless of what ODOT does with the freeway. PBOT has said the Broadway Main Street changes could even come ahead of major construction on the Rose Quarter project.
I wish I knew more than I do, but housing regulation is a subject which still overwhelms me. Which is why last week’s interview with transportation activist and bike parking expert Chris Smith was so satisfying. Sometimes it’s just nice to hear someone explain things.
The treat on top of the interview was that Smith hopped into the comment section and engaged with a couple folks. It was a good bunch of comments, but when reader “qqq” called the 15-feet-from-the-door alcove requirement for bike parking a “design hurdle” which “clearly was created by people who have never had to design units,” Smith countered that the chair of the commission was an architect.
And then he went on to say, “But I’ll bite, how would you describe a requirement that would ensure space for an actual bicycle?”
OK, this is about as exciting as life gets for me, high drama in the comment section. And qqq’s response shifted my thinking a little. The whole exchange is a good example of how to push back firmly and politely, which is what can happen when knowledgeable people have good faith conversations.
The fact that someone included similar alcoves in some projects doesn’t mean it’s something that should be turned into a standard requirement, although it could show I was wrong about it being created by people who’ve never designed units.
The first thing I’d get rid of if I were designing a requirement that would ensure space for an actual bicycle would be to get rid of the requirement that it be within 15′ of the unit door. The distance to the door is irrelevant to whether a bike fits in a unit. And although it would be nice if the space were close to the front door, that rule could be (as was, based on comments from architects and developers) a real stumbling block. Deleting it opens up a lot of perfectly good bike storage possibilities.
Like I said, I can’t find the old code language, but I also recall (could be wrong) that the rule required an actual alcove, versus simply requiring space. If that’s true, it could also be difficult to meet without distorting unit designs, and again is irrelevant to whether there is actual space. Again, deleting specific alcove requirements could open up a lot of perfectly good storage possibilities.
I understand that if there are no requirements, developers can simply say there’s space within the unit, without changing their units from what they’d be offering anyway. On the other hand, you can store a bike in quite a small space, which many units do have, and did have when the code didn’t have ANY in-unit bike space requirements.
Lots of people spent lots of time trying to solve this (which I appreciate) so I’m not trying to say I know the best solution better than anyone else. I’m mainly saying that I understand why architects and developers objected to the alcove requirement.
Thank you qqq and Chris. Qqq helped me think like an architect. How would Frank Lloyd Wright feel about a requirement to build an alcove within 15 feet of the door? And there you have it, another thought-provoking comment. The whole thread was good, start at the top.
