With just 18 days left to submit an official comment into the Interstate Bridge Replacement Program (IBRP) Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement (SDEIS), some advocates say they can’t properly assess the project because its leaders are using bad data to analyze the design proposal. Allegations are swirling that transportation department staff and project consultants have “cooked the books” by intentionally manipulating traffic data to justify investing an estimated $7.5 billion on a wider freeway and seven new interchanges across a five-mile stretch of I-5 between Portland and Vancouver.
The IBRP is successor to the Columbia River Crossing (CRC), a project that many thought died in 2014. 10 years later, the megaproject is alive and well with a new name and a new legion of consultants and transportation department staff from Oregon and Washington committed to getting it built. The project has secured $4 billion in federal and state commitments, and while it faces fewer controversies and legal headwinds (so far) than the I-5 Rose Quarter project a few miles south, the IBRP still faces serious questions.
One big problem is that critics and project leaders don’t agree on the same set of basic facts. The ability of people to “meaningfully evaluate” the impacts of a proposed project form the bedrock of the federal National Environmental Policy Act the IBRP is obligated to follow. But experts and outsiders say IBRP staff make it impossible to evaluate the project because the numbers, models, and data being used by project staff are incomplete and/or wrong.
“This is all fantasy numbers,” said Chris Smith, a co-founder of No More Freeways, one of 36 groups in the Just Crossing Alliance coalition that wants to “right size” the project. “How can we meaningfully evaluate the impacts, which is what the EIS [Environmental Impact Statement] is supposed to be about, when it’s all make believe?”
I spoke to Smith a week after Just Crossing Alliance held a press conference to share a 29-page report by an outside consultant that looked at the IBRP’s traffic modeling. Models are used to estimate the future amount of cars, trucks, bikes, and transit users on a given piece of infrastructure. A major concern of advocates tracking the IBRP is that the model that underpins all assumptions about the current proposal is outdated. They say not only is the model bad, but that IBRP officials are manipulating numbers that come from it to suit narratives required to build a more expensive — and expansive — project than needed.
“Garbage in, garbage out.”
The report, Review of the IBR Project SDEIS, was published by Smart Mobility Inc. President Norman Marshall, an expert with nearly four decades experience in transportation demand modeling who’s completed projects with city governments across the country. Marshall says IBRP is solving for the wrong thing. His examination of traffic data shows the Interstate Bridge is not the bottleneck and that “widening the bridge would do nothing to improve I-5 congestion and could make it worse.”
By analyzing traffic flow and speed patterns, Marshall found congestion in the bridge area actually originates further south at N Lombard during the morning peak and at N Victory Blvd northbound in the afternoon peak. And he says new driving lanes and larger interchanges proposed in the IBRP will encourage more traffic because of induced demand — a proven phenomenon that the SDEIS “almost completely sidesteps” reports a story by The Urbanist this week.
The IBRP SDEIS says the bottleneck originates at the bridge; but Marshall proves in his report that that statement, “is simply wrong.” “The DSEIS fundamentally misrepresents existing northbound [and southbound] traffic conditions in the I-5 corridor,” he writes in the report. “And in doing so, creates an erroneous ‘need’ for the project.”
(Above: Pages from Marshall’s report.)
Marshall also blames Metro’s regional travel demand model (which the SDEIS is based on) for using a process that is outdated (it was created in the 1960s) and only considers traffic in a specific area (known as the “static traffic assignment” or STA process), as if traffic volumes within project boundaries are not influenced by traffic volumes outside it. That means known bottlenecks just south of the IBRP project area don’t figure into the analysis of traffic flow within the project area. That’s, “a plainly unrealistic assumption,” Marshall writes in the report.
And here’s why:
“Treating every roadway segment as independent causes the regional model to exaggerate the benefits of widening individual segments because it assumes that traffic throughput can grow on road segments even where traffic growth is prevented by upstream and downstream bottlenecks.”
Marshall also claims that the IBRP SDEIS estimates for future traffic growth under the “no-build scenario” are “preposterous” and that there has been no growth in peak hour traffic on this section of I-5 since 2005.
But how can governments justify a $7.5 billion investment without traffic growth numbers to back it up? Economist and freeway expansion skeptic Joe Cortright says the IBRP team “cooked the books” and simply adjusted numbers from Metro’s model to suit their needs. Here’s an excerpt from an article he published this week in City Observatory that claims project leaders (with the help of Metro’s model) “invented millions of phantom trucks to sell a wider bridge”:
“IBR and Metro inflated truck counts to exaggerate the current importance of trucks, and built traffic models that grossly overestimate the growth in truck freight. In essence, these flawed traffic models mean that IBR is widening a freeway to accommodate that truck traffic that doesn’t now exist, and based on false predictions of future truck traffic growth–when in reality truck traffic has been declining.”
Without traffic numbers they can trust, many advocates are scrambling to share impactful feedback during the SDEIS public comment period.
“The air quality and health impacts of this project are directly related to the level of traffic. We need accurate data to confidently assess these impacts,” said Neighbors for Clean Air Co-Director Nakisha Nathan.
Chris Smith echoed that frustration in our conversation earlier this week. “How is any organization like us — that’s trying to really understand the environmental impacts — how are we supposed to do that when there’s nothing in there [the DEIS] we can believe?”
“They tell a wonderful story,” Smith added. “That has no basis in any kind of rigorous analysis.”
— I’ve reached out to the IBRP and hope to share a response or follow-up on these issues soon.
Thanks for reading.
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Its a good thing this is coming out before election day. Clearly there is value in NOT voting for an incumbent. The IBRP is apparently popular with the current political ruling class as how else could it still be ongoing in its current form?
As far as the problems with pretend data? It will keep on happening as long as the major focus of the bridge is wealth distribution from taxpayers to the construction/developer/union friends of the political class. The only numbers that matter to them are the dollar amounts.
You can continue to focus on the piddly details that apparently no one in power cares about, or cut to the heart of the matter which is changing the decision makers in Salem and Portland.
More lanes mean less congestion and less air pollution. The Light Rail extension is too expensive to build, maintain, and operate.
Bridge tolls are unfair and inefficient. Our whole modern life requires good roads. Everyone pays for public schools, even if they don’t have students in the family. Freeways are the same. Roads are for the entire state, so everyone should help pay. Not just the drivers that use the bridge.
more lanes means more driving and more pollution
Wha? You mean normally people would stay home, but if more lanes they’d say “hey, let’s go drive to Vancouver and then come back and try out those new lanes”? Please explain where the “extra” trips are coming from?
This is literally the concept of induced demand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand#In_transportation_systems
I don’t think it really happens exactly the way you describe it, though. Here are the two mechanisms I’d imaging:
1) You drive a particular route and traffic is horrible. You tell yourself “I’ll never drive that way again”. Eventually traffic reaches equilibrium, with different people making the decision to take that specific route or not based on their own tolerance for traffic, need to get to their destination, and other options available to them. When you expand capacity, all you do is move the equilibrium point to allow slightly more people to be stuck in the same amount of traffic.
2) But especially now, Google Maps/Waze type apps are basically actively balancing traffic load by directing people to the “fastest” route. So this process happens even quicker. Any increase in throughput just rebalances the traffic, meaning more people take that route, traffic gets worse, and the equilibrium is reached once more, just with a few more people stuck in the same traffic.
There’s also a delayed effect. If a route becomes temporarily faster, it encourages people to travel longer distances, which influences where they decide to live, work, shop, and recreate. For example, if I have a daily commute tolerance of 30 minutes one way, I’m going to look for a housing/work combination that fits me within that 30-minute window. If a new highway speeds up traffic along a particular corridor while I happen to be in the market for a new home or job, I might decide to look near the edge of my 30-minute circle if it means that I get a cheaper house or a bigger yard or whatever, while I might not have made that trade-off if the commute were 45 minutes instead of 30. The really insidious thing, though, is that after several years of people making the same decisions, my 30-commute might creep up to 45 minutes or more, and now the new traffic equilibrium is locked in. Because I may not be able to afford moving closer into the city now, I’m going to start demanding the highway I take be expanded and will get angry with my government if they don’t solve this problem that they (and myself and all of my neighbors) have made for me (through poor public infrastructure investment choices)!
“I’m going to start demanding the highway I take be expanded and will get angry with my government if they don’t solve this problem”
I’m not sure I’m fully on board with your scenario, but leaving that aside, you seem to imply that the future pressure for road expansion buy people whose commutes have become unacceptably long will be irresistible, and the only way to solve the problem is to prevent it.
If the pressure to expand in the future will be irresistible, then resisting the pressure to expand now may also be irresistible because the people who want to expand the facility now are the ones whose 30-minute commutes a decade or two ago are now 45 minute commutes.
I don’t know what the solution is. If a commute takes 45 minutes by car, there’s no way it’s going to be faster by bus, and buses serving outlying areas rarely work well anyway. If Portland’s population starts growing again, and if we continue to replace single family housing with denser or more expensive buildings, the number of people wanting to move out of the city will grow (more people chasing fewer houses), which will increase pressure on the transportation system. More people may decide they can tolerate a 45-minute commute if it means getting a larger or more affordable house (which is one of the primary dynamics that has been driving suburban growth for about forever), but as their commutes turn into 60 minute commutes, the pressure you describe will mount.
At some point, something is going to give, and it’s probably not going to involve large numbers of suburban residents crowding into the inner city apartment buildings that some people fantasize about.
Induced demand is a secondary concern. Most important is public safety. The latest design for the southbound exit ramp to Hayden Island (exactly the same as the CRC) should be considered a severe traffic hazard and rejected. The exit is “blind” in that it’s a steep ramp. It’s short and leads at a ‘T’ stop; if a motorist, for any reason can’t stop, they’re in the water!
The latest design for Marine Drive interchange (3 roundabouts and a lengthy access ramp to I-5 southbound) is far more complex than the CRC design.
I’d nix the 3 interchanges further north in Vancouver. Access ramps to SR14 and downtown Vancouver are all that’s needed for now. It seems to me that the IBRP commission of agencies is padding their paychecks or worse – intentionally complicating the design knowing it will ultimately be rejected.
NOT TRUE.
Nick — here’s the numbers from the IBR’s own data in the DSEIS. The project is NOT “green” by any stretch of the imagination.
https://www.clarkcountytoday.com/news/the-faux-green-interstate-bridge-replacement-proposal/
Huh, sounds like communism to me. All god-fearing Americans should pay their own way, otherwise they’re socialists, which we don’t care for here in these United States. Having said that, I’m open to waiving tolls for car pools and creating a dedicated lane for car pools and freight.
False and false. https://www.ucdavis.edu/magazine/does-widening-highways-ease-traffic-congestion
Compared to what? The added interchanges that come with the proposed freeway expansion are expected to make up about $5B (66.7%) of the total project cost. Given that this expansion is unlikely to actually reduce congestion, the light rail extension seems like a bargain seeing as it actually provides an alternative to sitting in traffic.
https://www.interstatebridge.org/media/xdbdhl4x/ibr_rivercrossingoptions_final_remediated.pdf
False. Many people here get by just fine without driving on a regular basis.
Unfair comparison. Public education has a significant benefit to the public, whether or not you have students in the family. The article here and sources provided demonstrate that the economic arguments for funding the highway expansion piece of this project simply don’t hold water. There’s going to be little benefit to the highway expansion for anyone in or out of a car. If drivers want to pay more to sit in traffic, that’s on them, but as a taxpayer, I don’t want to pay for you to continue to sit in traffic.
It’s really easy to be stuck in traffic thinking “someone should do something!” But the reality is that any of the proposed fixes will cost a whole lot of money and won’t actually reduce your travel time from A to B. I don’t see how it is at all fiscally responsible to bankroll the highway expansion part of this project.
Great summary!
I think that the argument about traffic modeling misses the point. We’ve built an entire transportation system on this underlying assumption that “cars good, more lanes better” and spent a century entrenching it in the public consciousness.
Every red-blooded American “knows” that widening highways fixes traffic, despite that fact being a complete falsehood. Americans think that cars are the cheapest transportation option, when in fact they are the most expensive. We’re facing big budget shortfalls, but we’re going to add billions in bond debt that we’ll be paying on for the next 30 years.
Hell – I’ve had people argue this system is equitable, despite the obvious inequity of needing to maintain a car to obtain transportation. AAA estimates TCO for a car at over $10K per year. That’s a flat tax on transportation, and incredibly inequitable!
—
There’s an infinite supply of drivers to get up in front of the elected officials and scream about more lanes – right next to every big business who sees a paycheck from cars. None of them give a shit about whether the traffic modeling is accurate, because the lie is so strong.
How do we break this lie, and change the story? How do we explain that freeways have only brought death, destruction, and debt? How do we explain the functional city that is buried underneath these pollution factories that we call highways?
I really wish I knew.
Comment of the week!
“I’ve had people argue this system is equitable, despite the obvious inequity of needing to maintain a car to obtain transportation”
If a car is the price I have to pay to be able to afford a nice single family home, it may be a comparative bargain.
How much is that “nice single family home”? And, while we’re at it, how about a definition of “nice”?
We all have our own definition of “nice” which has a bi-directional interplay with cost.
So your answer will be different than mine.
A significant part of the extreme cost of housing is not expanding the Urban Growth Boundary in Oregon.
Why should I pay for schools if I don’t have kids?
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
Seriously – a better-educated society helps society a huge amount, including those without kids.
“a better-educated society helps society a huge amount, including those without kids”
Just as a well functioning road system benefits those who don’t drive.
“not like that!”
Your Suoermarket food comes on a truck.
And there will be benefits to many from buildings by the bridge
Because your retirement plan is for other people’s kids to fork over some of their earnings to you after you stop working. Saving for retirement is an illusion; all you’re saving is IOUs from future generations to you. If those future generations decide they don’t want to honor those IOUs (and why should they–they never consented to them), your retirement will be nothing of the kind. The best way to stop that from happening is prosperity, because it’s less fraught to divide up a growing pie than a shrinking one. And the best way to ensure prosperity is education. So it’s that simple: pay for schools or work until you die.
You just described paying for public infrastructure.
Notice how I never said you should. The point was that it is an unfair to say: “since I pay for schools, you should pay for freeway expansion.” The whole point of Jonathan’s article and the linked pages is that the cost-benefit claims for the freeway expansion are dubious at best, if not flat out lies. Regarding education, it’s still ultimately a judgement call, but there are more substantive arguments for the social benefit of the investment.
But it’s a public good. They hardly ever pencil out
Please check my numbers and estimated costs??
Light Rail extension is 1.9
Miles and costs two billion dollars.
Maintaining & operating this extension costs about 21.6 million per year. Things usually go up.
How much is PERS (Oregon) under funded?? 26 Billion dollars is a low number.
We do NOT need more GOVERNMENT employees!!
Two billion could go up.
My calculations follow.
$16,500 per INCH.
$2,395 Per hour to operate and maintain.
Could someone invite John Ley to shed some light??
It’s so telling how drivers suddenly care about the pollution that they create only when their massively polluting mode of travel isn’t given full priority over more sustainable modes.
“Look what you made me do!”
If Light Rail was not so scary, more people might ride. Stoners on drugs.
People sleeping under a pile of blankets.
People going potty two steps off the train.
So we all pay for schools and we all pay for roads whether we use them or not, but we shouldn’t pay for transit? What happens to the people who can’t or don’t want to afford buying and maintaining a car? I guess you’d just have them trapped at home?
Mass transit is not the problem. This mass transit is the problem.
The new bridge project will still have 3 NB & 3 SB lanes except that 54% of these ‘new’ lanes will be dedicated to light rail, buses and pedestrians. So if anything this new project will create even more bottlenecks and drive people over to I-205. And if you think I-205 is a parking lot now, just wait.
It is stupefying that forecasts from 2005 are so steep an actuals (Figure 12, 14) are more sideways, flat or DECREASING.
IBR needs to stop telling lies
The article point out falsehoods I ODOT’s metrics, but is itself omitting the fact that the existing bridges are old and deficient and do not have safety shoulders, are not seismically structural and do not provide acceptable bicycle or pedestrian routes. These bridges need to be replaced. I don’t have an answer as to how to satisfy the many conflicting demands on the crossing, but both sides of this debate seem to argue using lies of omission
The existing pedestrian/bike route over I5 isn’t incredible, but it’s not that bad. If ODOT and WSDOT wanted to solve that problem, I have to assume they could within the context of the existing bridge.
And yes, the bridge is a seismic risk. There are basically zero bridges in the Portland area rated to survive a 9.0 earthquake. This evidently includes every overpass, on ramp, and other piece of associated infrastructure on I5. It’s a good idea to replace them, but the actual emergency routes should probably be planned in a way that involves minimal risk. I’m not convinced that Interstate highways are good choices in general for that. Major arterials like Burnside or 82nd might make better options, since they have generally fewer risky pieces of connected infrastructure.
To say the bridge “needs to be replaced” may be true, but with so many badly needed infrastructure investments in the region (and in the country more broadly) it’s not enough to just say that – you ought to demonstrate why it should be such a high priority relative to other projects.
My read is that no one is really arguing to not replace the bridge. The complaint is that they want to be involved in giving feedback, but can’t do that with erroneous data. Billions are already committed – it’s important to do it this as objectively well as possible.
Take the current process to 100% design and put/store it on a special shelf like so many other plans.
There is no reason to replace the bridge because there is no guarantee that the bridge will fall in the next 50-100 years.
Just let it fall in the water if/when the earthquake happens.
Then clean up the mess and build another using the 100% plans.
What was done when the Key Bridge fell and the I-35W in Minneapolis collapsed? they cleaned up the mess and began designing a new bridge.
We have a head start.
The 100% design could be updated every 10 years.
There are so many other transportation projects that need to be done.
This bridge project is fixing something that ain’t broke.
“fixing something that ain’t broke.”
This is why I would never fix my roof until after it started leaking. Preventing major problems rather than reacting after they occur is for chumps.
Assuming of course that there is the money to fix all of the roof while it is still working instead of making the house livable.
In fairness, Watts, my dentist keeps telling me that I need expensive crowns on my teeth, “since dentistry is preventive.” But she has been telling me that for ten years, and my teeth are fine.
The trick is to know WHEN to replace something. I’d say it’s really an art. In the case of the interstate bridge, we probably need to rely on the people who work on and around the bridge (actually bridges) every day. They have the best sense of how well it’s working and whether it needs to be replaced.
We probably want to have the replacement up before the big earthquake, so if we can just figure out when that’s going to happen, we should be good.
Also, since this project is highly dependent on federal money, we can’t just wait until some arbitrary future date… We need to do it while the feds have their checkbook out.
Probably. But, not probabalistically. The risk of a seismic event is difficult to quantify, but I think “probably” and “should” are inadequate for justifying the level of investment. The deterministic assessment is that the bridge MUST be able to withstand a 9.0 earthquake. Even a brand new span has some probability of failure in that event. I think what Blumdrew is suggesting is that based on connecting infrastructure, the benefit of bridge hardening may not be as beneficial as we think. A better argument against this needs to take into account the probability and severity (life and economic risk) of bridge failure over the planned lifespan of the new one. Otherwise we may be look more survivalists building a bunker out of paranoia.
(Also, I think Blumdrew may be suggesting that the seismic resilience argument is made in bad faith to push the freeway expansion. It’s like saying you need a new chain for your 8-speed commuter, but while you’re at it upgrading to full SRAM AXS 13-speed. Looks cool, but ultimately the investment isn’t going to get you home any faster…)
“Probably” is my word. Catastrophically losing the bridge in an unplanned earthquake event would be “bad news” (also my words).
“Should” is a political calculation, which should be made in relation to the data. I haven’t seen it, nor an I sure I could reasonably evaluate it without the context of whatever standards and requirements exist that might apply to this situation.
I understand folks here have a complete distrust for anything anyone says in support of this project, but I think this decision has been made.
If you think we don’t need a new bridge at all, and you want to reopen the whole reason for the project, put that in your comments, and share your concerns with the governor. She is probably the only one who can do anything major on this front, but Kotek is an establishment Democrat in a safe seat (and most folks here probably voted for her and will do so again) so that seems like a longshot.
Maybe try your state rep.? Not sure where you live, but Rob Nosse send fully on board with the project, but Rep. Pham seems potentially sympathetic (and may have some sway with Nosse).
For the record, I oppose this project, and have submitted testimony on several occasions to that effect. But I don’t question the need to prepare for an earthquake.
Then we should replace the bridges. Over half of the $7+ billion proposal involves widening replacing interchanges miles north and south of the actual bridges. ODOT/WSDOT had some bridges to replace and decided to push through a freeway expansion at the same time.
Good point, Chris. You have put your finger on the most cynical aspect of their ploy.
Sorry Granpa but you’re trying to both-sides this and I really disagree.
I’m not “omitting” any facts. The story wasn’t about whether or not we need to replace the bridge. That being said, I did refer to how the activists mention actually are not opposed to the entire project, just that they want to “right-size” it. And if you read closely over the years you will see that one of the points I’ve made since I started cover this like 14 years ago is that if the DOTs weren’t so out of touch and greedy we’d already have a new bridge built by now!! The reason they can’t get their bridge built is because they insist on a bloated, unnecessarily large version.
So please don’t “both sides” when you’ve got one side intentionally misleading the public and spending 100s of millions of taxpayer dollars on shitty social media no one watches and high-priced consultants pushing an idea that is obviously outdated and flawed and will lead to worse public health and environmental outcomes and you’ve got another side that is just trying to inform the public about what’s going on.
Goodness, JM. Take a chill pill. I don’t think anything Granpa said deserved that kind of blowback.
Sometimes we just like to work out our ideas in writing. You don’t have to take what we write so personally.
Umm that’s all I’m doing Fred! When someone implies that I’m lying by omission I want defend myself. And thank you for telling me how I should feel, but I reserve the right to respond however I want. Thanks.
And you’ll continue to chase commenters away from your site, but I guess that’s your choice.
Fred, I hope I’m not chasing people away Fred. But I’m a human and I feel like I need to have a voice too. I’m just trying to balance that with sitting her quietly and taking a lot of shit and not being able to respond the way I’d like to.
The activists also mention that the Port need is a farce and they specifically use shipping data from 2017 that is immediately after the labor dispute at the port, which is only nominally prior to the 2019 data on trucks over I-5 bridges in the table above. Interestingly, container data in 2023 is effectively back to levels prior to the labor dispute. Some of these containers are ending up on trucks that use the bridge. Further, they note 350 trucks per day leave the port in Vancouver and amazingly, they have no data on the number of trucks that use the bridge from there.
It would appear that both sides are cultivating data that is most advantageous to their position on the overall project.
That’s a terrific point, PS. I read recently that the Port is closing the container terminal, permanently, since the demand is no longer there – shippers don’t want to navigate the Columbia bar and make the long and expensive transit to Portland when Tacoma, Seattle, etc are much easier to reach. So all of that lost truck traffic should be factored into their modeling, as you say.
https://www.portofportland.com/Newsroom/port-announces-container-shipping-will-continue-at-terminal-6
That was political bluster to get a lease signed and more money from the state. The Port is still an embarrassment due to the unions, but at least we’ll still have container capacity.
JM perhaps over the history of efforts to replace the Interstate Bridge replacement project you have conceded that the bridge needs replacing but that article doesn’t come to mind. I do know you have been pretty thorough in describing the bridge design alternatives. You may prove me wrong but I don’t recall your mentioning that when a lift span bridge at ground level is replaced with a fixed span bridge elevated more than 100’ (or so) above grade, that approaches to the new bridge must ramp up over some distance to achieve that height. The new approaches would then not align with existing intersections thus requiring intersections to be reconfigured.
I’m not beating a drum for more lanes, or any specific configuration but I do understand the reasons the project’s scope extends well beyond the Columbia River. That is the omission I commented on in my post. Thank you for prompting my clarification
You are equating a redesign of the approaches to a new bridge (crossing the Columbia in ~1 mile) with 5 miles of massive highway expansion. I think this basic understanding has been purposely muddled by ODOT, but it’s a clear distinction between what a simple, functional bridge could look like and what the current 7.5 billion mega project is. The former is a bridge replacement, whereas the latter is a massive highway expansion.
“both-sides this”
In this case, both sides are using speculation and bogus data to press their claims. ODOT in the way this article describes, and opponents by conjuring induced demand with no supporting analysis.
C’mon, Watts! There are boatloads of data that show induced demand is REAL. If they build a 16-lane bridge, we will see massive induced traffic on that bridge.
I didn’t doubt induced demand is real. So is growth in traffic. Project opponents assert it will be a problem, but have presented no supporting analysis quantifying how much it would be. It could range anywhere from “a lot” to “none at all”. Without any analysis, it’s just guessing.
“I don’t use the bridge so the rest of us don’t need one”
I participated in an earlier version of Cascadia Rising while I was with the Oregon Guard, but the information hasn’t really changed much. I’m not convinced the I5 bridge needs replaced and I don’t think all that interchange and widening needs to happen at all. Read for yourself if you think the area needs to take on all that debt simply “in case” a Cascadia event happens anytime soon.
Ask yourself why the politicians seem so desperate to get this pushed through when there are so many more projects that would provide actual, tangible benefits to so many people
https://www.oregon.gov/oem/Documents/Cascadia_Rising_Exercise_Scenario.pdf
You might be right. The main reason to replace the bridge is to more efficiently move people and goods. It would appear that the population of the region is beginning a broad plateau, immigration is negative and births are anemic at 1.4 relative to replacement of 2.1. If alternative work structures remain for many white collar workers (which they will, see downtown PDX office vacancy), the movement of people becomes less of an issue for a daily need. Less people means less stuff, so the freight argument falls apart as well. Worst case, the existing bridge gets hit by a barge ala Baltimore and falls in the river. Traffic on Glenn Jackson becomes the stuff of nightmares, but for the vast majority, life goes on. In that vein then, the suggestion that we replace it for an earthquake is even more absurd logically.
Considering what we think will happen with a full rip, what we know about behaviors after catastrophic natural disasters (i.e. everyone of means will leave forever), the ineptitude of the local governments, and the polarization of the federal government, the economy left behind after a CSZ disaster will not need a $7.5B bridge to anywhere, let alone another disaster zone in SW Washington and the feds may or may not step up to replace it at that point until they see what remains.
This discussion is now in its 5th iteration. It always begins with “we need to replace the bridge” and ends with a major bridge expansion. Replacing the bridge is being held hostage to bridge expansion. I think it is a mistake to attribute that entirely to ODOT or local elected officials.
We talk about induced traffic as if that is a bad thing. But for real estate developers who have development rights on land in Clark County “induced traffic” means potential customers bought one of their new homes who otherwise wouldn’t have. There have been people speculating on transportation infrastructure since the country’s founding. And there are lots of prominent people in Portland who have been speculating on expanded transportation infrastructure to Vancouver for the last 30 years.
Some of that speculation has been around light rail. But the real money has been on land for sprawling development. There are plenty of folks on the Washington side who own rural land who see a possible real pot of gold at the end of the bridge rainbow.
The bridge itself of course is also a pot of gold for some people. It will bring billions of federal dollars to the region and that money will end up in the pockets of contractors, their suppliers and employees. And the spending by those folks will be a shot in the arm to the region’s economy. So in addition to the businesses that get money directly from the project, the larger business community sees it as helping the local economy in general.
Politicians by their nature are consensus builders. They need to get to “yes” in order to move forward. No matter who we elect, they are going to face those enormous pressures for expansion from those prepared to hold the project hostage to their private interests. We elected Rex Burkholder, the founder of BTA, as chair of Metro and he became the champion of the Columbia River Crossing. If Lynn Peterson was still the transportation advocate at 1000 Friends she would be leading the charge against this project. But she isn’t about to put her body on the tracks in front of this steaming train.
I think the idea that we can win the argument is a failed strategy. We have already won the argument. We need people to put their bodies on the line. The only thing that will really stop this project is the threat of massive civil disobedience.
Um – no. Let’s just make sure the new bridge has three things:
Also just replace the bridge and drop the seven interchange replacements and associated freeway widening.
There. Is that so difficult?
Yes, it is that difficult obviously. After 30 years of talking that option has not been on the table for the reasons I sighted. Its wishful thinking that its going to come out of this process.
The headline thumbnail represents a classic problem with gov’t analyses: it uses linear regressions as forecasts.
That’s the wrong approach for many reasons but people still do it because that’s the “trend line” you can fit in excel. It works fine for rough estimates in financial forecasting but is absolute trash for anything remotely scientific.
In this context it’s bad because it assumes each successive time point is uncorrelated with the prior point and there will be steady, linear growth to infinity. In reality, the traffic volume today is highly predictive of the traffic volume tomorrow, growth is non-linear, and there will not be infinity cars on the bridge in infinity years — there is some maximum volume that the freeway can support.
As a starter, ODOT should really use some of the free time series forecasting software that companies like Facebook open sourced a decade ago. Supply the model a saturating maximum. Base your decisions on forecasts that bake in the conditions of reality. Stop just using excel.
https://facebook.github.io/prophet/docs/saturating_forecasts.html#:~:text=Forecasting%20Growth,should%20saturate%20at%20this%20point.
“there is some maximum volume that the freeway can support.”
It is true that linear tends can rarely continue forever, and it true that the the bridge has a finite capacity that cannot be exceeded.
However, we are nowhere near that maximum except for a few hours per day, and linear projecting are often good approximations within certain bounds.
The numbers on this project certainly look bogus, but not for the reasons you started.
a) who said that we’re at capacity now..? did I make that assertion?
b) it is rush hour throughput that really matters for practical saturation in traffic modeling. consider the alternative: this bridge is completely full at 5pm but it’s breezy at 2AM, so we’re good!
c) I have no idea where we currently stand so I wouldn’t (and didn’t) say I-5 is saturated. I would say you should assume a saturating maximum in long-horizon traffic modeling and should not assume linear growth.
sounds like we agree: as I said, linear regressions work fine for rough estimates in financial forecasting.
I’m not pedantic enough to get mad at a linear regression for a 2-year forecast rolled up to the monthly level, but on the time horizons that matter for this bridge & the amount of money being spent here, they should really not use a “meh, good enough within certain bounds” approach.
they should use daily or sub-daily data and build a model that uses actual forecasting best practices. that would be very, very cheap relative to the project budget.
linear regressions assume uncorrelated data. time series data are autocorrelated. so, yes, the reasons I stated are at least part of why those #’s are bogus (and that bogusness compounds over time)
“linear regressions work fine for rough estimates in financial forecasting.”
Also in many engineering applications where approximating a very nonlinear curve with a linear one works well for certain parts of the curve (e.g. deformation of steel under load).
Linear projections are fine if you have reason to suspect the future will be like the past. Which it generally is, until you reach some limit where that assumption starts to break down. To make any future forecast, you have to assume something.
I’m not defending the ODOT projections, and it sounds like you’ve got some good fodder for a great DEIS comment.
Yes, OLS linear regression is easily the most used & most useful statistical model. I’m talking about time series forecasting specifically, which violates the assumptions of linear regression by definition.
I went to the IBR web site to comment on the project, but the site is almost incomprehensible. Not surprised to hear they are using bogus data. The whole public-outreach aspect of this project seems 100% performative: leaders in both Washington and Oregon have already decided this project is going ahead and will be BIG. Nothing that anyone tells them at this point will change the decision they have already made.
I believe the Columbia River Crossing project in 2014 was killed by the USCG because the lift span at full lift impeded river traffic. And I believe the USCG will kill this project as well as they will again have the final say.
That’s a great point, Jim. I keep saying that the bridge is simply in the wrong place. If you want an interstate-freeway bridge of unlimited height, you have to move I-5 to US Hwy 30 and then you can build a very tall, 16-lane bridge at St Helens. Think of the economic boost for Columbia County!
Post-script: Any decision-maker I’ve shared this theory with thinks I’m totally daft. But it will happen one day. As Picasso said, when someone observed that his portrait of Gertrude Stein didn’t look like her: “She will.”
The 2014 killing of the CRC was because the Washington Legislature did not keep their promise on funding. In this case it does take two to tango. Most of this push back was WA did not want Light Rail.
Either state will be able to sink this project. A lot of Clark County does not want Light Rail. Uneven Tolling could be a big factor in
Diversion Traffic. Many “big trucks are through traffic” big trucks pay big tolls. A trucker has only one chance to pick their FREEway.
Oregon Government or the people might object to Washington running the Toll Program.
I find it unusual that there are no estimates of buying off the businesses that need more ship clearance?? This issue is NOT new.
IN FACT the (projected) 143,000 average daily crossings of I-5 was never close. Instead, Covid struck and the numbers went down dramatically on the I-5 bridge. The ACTUAL average daily crossings of I-5 in 2021 was 130,000, not 143,000.
Traffic peaked at 138,000 in 2019. Then it went down to 120,000 in 2020. The 2023 number is now back up to 133,000. The 2024 figures aren’t in yet.
The IBR USED the Columbian’s 143,000 figure in all sorts of presentations, right up to the present time. It was far from the truth. I eventually gave up trying to correct the IBR.
Washington state has the ACTUAL MEASURED bridge crossings numbers. They’re right here (below) for all to see and use (including IBR).
The middle column is the I-5 bridge, the right column is the I-405 bridge. That’s the truth.
https://www.rtc.wa.gov/data/traffic/bridges/daily.asp
https://www.columbian.com/news/2021/sep/19/keeping-the-interstate-5-bridge-up-and-running/
https://www.facebook.com/sam.churchill/posts/pfbid0EU62VfyeaeoT9hhHSxjxVebvf2iC2MVtSUHfaohEQCiHcD9YLA1DDfsi31MAARo2l
It looks like that since 1997 the I-205 bridge has consistently had much more traffic than the I-5 bridge, that traffic has simply moved eastwards, so that even if I-5 has 20 or 40 lanes, the I-205 bridge will still get a majority of the traffic – or to put it another way, as long as people think there’s congestion elsewhere such as downtown, they’ll avoid using the new IRB anyway, that the old bridges might actually be good candidates for a road diet rather than an expansion.
I honestly hope it never happens. I205 is right there and guess what, it congests every day except (gasp!) when it’s a holiday or there isn’t demand. The new interchange if built will congest. Cars are an inefficient form of transport. Bikes, buses, mororcycles and trains are actually efficient but we are spending billions to enable the one that’s been messing it up for decades.
Hmm: here’s the chance to do something different and it’s just more of the same.
Trains and buses are not particularly efficient at our current rates of ridership.
The bus will never reduce traffic until every single stop has a dedicated pull out space that allows bikes and motorists to continue past. But we are in the city that works backwards, look at what they did at SE 34th and Belmont going West. The 15 used to pull over in front of Hodas, out of the way, but then for some reason they moved it in front of the Belmont Inn, after they made the sidewalk protrude out into the street, so no one can get by when the bus stops there. Who in their right mind possibly thought that was a good idea?
They did this on Division as well.
TriMet likes that design because buses sometimes have trouble re-entering the flow of traffic if drivers don’t yield as they are required to.
Thank you for the consultant study, first and foremost. Next, thank you for the article, allowing people to be more informed for the comments they want to share with the government during the formal comment period.
I would have welcomed a discussion of the impact of the northbound only HOV lane on the impacts. (Perhaps I missed it). That is an important difference in the two directions of rush hour traffic flow.
Next, I would love to see an in-depth similar study & evaluation on the IBR’s transit ridership numbers — both “current” and “projected”.
Nobody believes transit ridership will grow that quickly, in the next 20 years. Currently only about 525 people use C-Tran’s “express” bus service on the I-5 corridor to cross the river. C-Tran used to have SEVEN separate “express” bus lines over the river, on both I-5 and I-205 corridors. Today they only have THREE.
But we need as many people as possible to actually submit comments to the formal DSEIS in the next two weeks. Here’s the link — https://www.interstatebridge.org/updates-folder/supplemental-environmental-impact-statement/#review
Some added discussion points for people to consider, when making formal comments to the DSEIS.
https://www.clarkcountytoday.com/news/traffic-congestion-to-increase-by-over-three-hours-after-7-5-billion-interstate-bridge-replacement-project/
TriMet wants to charge the IBR TWO to THREE times the actual cost of the 19 MAX light rail vehicles they are demanding for the IBRP.
https://www.clarkcountytoday.com/news/bridge-management-defends-trimets-excessive-demands-for-project/
At a BILLION dollars per mile, the IBRP’s 1.9 mile light rail extension would be the world’s most expensive rail project. Furthermore, there is no need for 19 new light rail vehicles for a 1.9 mile extension. The 10-mile “Better Red” just added FOUR new light rail vehicles.
Take a minute and read this article, as you consider your remarks to the IBRP DSEIS.
https://www.clarkcountytoday.com/news/i-5-bridge-replacement-project-has-the-worlds-most-expensive-light-rail/
Are 100 passenger Double Decker Busses coming to IBR??? I don’t think a Single Decker would be close to capacity often. I like the name Mono Decker. Some 14 passenger ” airport ” style busses would probably be fine.
Does anyone else remember the Columbus Day storm??
Dave — thanks for noting the “100-passenger, double decker busses”. They are part of the graft and corruption embedded in the project. The project is offering C-Tran these new, expensive electric buses & they are also offering TriMet 19 new replacement light rail vehicles. Added to the boondoggle “buy”, is an unneeded expansion of TriMet’s Ruby Junction maintenance facility in Gresham. They plan to eminent domain property there.
None of these new vehicles are truly “needed” for a replacement bridge that will be less than 1 mile long.