Advocates for and against the I-5 Rose Quarter project had a rare opportunity to voice their perspectives at Portland City Council on Monday. But it wasn’t a fair debate, as city councilors Loretta Smith and Olivia Clark were clearly in favor of one side and were deeply skeptical of the other.
Members of the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee heard from leaders of nonprofits Albina Vision Trust (AVT) and No More Freeways (NMF) as part of an agenda item organized by City Councilor and Vice-Chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Angelita Morillo. AVT has emerged as a powerful force in the Rose Quarter since it first came on the scene in 2017 with a plan to re-establish the neighborhood around the Moda Center that was destroyed by construction of I-5. NMF is a grassroots organization trying to stop and/or dramatically reform ODOT’s plans. The lack of any industry representatives or transportation agency staffers was by design. Morillo said at the outset that she felt it was important to have these “different community perspectives” offered by AVT and NMF at the table, “Because we often hear from industry and other voices a lot.”
But two of Morillo’s colleagues on the committee — councilors Loretta Smith and T&I Committee Chair Olivia Clark — clearly didn’t agree. They not only lamented the absence of project leaders from the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) and Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), they were clearly on the side of AVT, a nonprofit working to redevelop Rose Quarter neighborhoods that strongly supports the I-5 Rose Quarter project’s highway lids and expanded freeway lanes. This bias for AVT and the project in general manifested in part by how Clark and Smith treated NMF co-founders Chris Smith and Joe Cortright, both of whom were invited to testify.
The hearing began with AVT Executive Director Winta Yohannes. Yohannes used her time to clarify her organization’s position on the controversial project. She knows there are many Portlanders who are excited about plans to build a new neighborhood on lids over I-5 through the Rose Quarter; but who strongly oppose other project elements that would increase auto capacity by widening I-5 between I-84 and I-405. AVT’s support of the project, “is rooted in our very clear and deep understanding of trade-offs of project components,” Yohannes said. For AVT, the benefits of the estimated (and likely to be higher) $1.9 billion project outweigh the possible harms. Yohannes also knows that the $450 million federal grant to build the project (which would not have been awarded without AVT) would be in jeopardy of the widening elements were stripped away.
“This project represents the braiding of climate, community and statewide economic development goals,” Yohannes told the committee. “At this point, we ask that you continue to stand with us, not us a rubber stamp for a project, but as vigilant partners committed to forward momentum. We do not want to see this council be the one that snatches defeat from the jaws of victory on a project that represents over a decade of hard-earned work and community building.”
Before Yohannes and her co-testifier, AVT Director of Government Affairs & Communications JT Flowers, completed their remarks, Yohannes shared one last comment — one that directly undercut the testimony that would come next from No More Freeways.
“One last note here about the slogan, ‘Lids not lanes.’.. There is no highway cover without a complete project… so unless you know someone has a secret plan for delivering just the covers [and not the lanes], I want to be really realistic and just honest on the record and saying that that is not a real position.,” Yohannes shared.
At that point, and with an eye on the clock, Councilor Morillo suggested having NMF reps Cortight and Smith give their presention, so that both groups would have equal time to share their remarks and a Q & A with the committee could be held after hearing information from both sides. But Committee Chair Clark overruled Morillo and allowed a discussion to begin.
Councilor Loretta Smith was the first to speak. She was glad Yohannes and Flowers made a clear argument that the lids and lanes were inseparable and said, “I think the public is getting confused as if we could [just] do the lids.” Smith wanted to get a clarification on the record so she asked Flowers, point-blank: “Do you think we can do these lids without doing the whole project?”
“There’s absolutely no path, financially or politically, to developing a highway cover without the expansion of the freeway,” Flowers replied.
Smith was pleased to hear that and quickly accepted it as incontrovertible fact. Smith might be so accepting of AVT’s views because she appears to have worked for them in the past. Smith is a registered lobbyist with the State of Oregon via her Dream Big Communications company, which she lists on LinkedIn as being principal of from 2019 to the present. According to state records from the Office of Government Ethics Commission, Smith lists AVT as one of her clients as of January, 2024.
(UPDATE, 2:00 pm: In a phone call with BikePortland today, Smith confirmed she was hired by AVT last year to help them earn $25 million in state funding for a housing development. Asked if her conduct at Monday’s meeting was influenced in any way by her prior relationship with AVT, Smith said “No, because I didn’t work on [the I-5 Rose Quarter Project]. They have different people who work on different projects. I never worked on the I-5 Rose Quarter.” Then Smith added, “Don’t make something out of nothing. This is no big deal… I don’t appreciate you trying to check me on this. You can try to write something up, but I would be very careful [then laughed a few times] about how you characterize my interaction [with AVT] as being favorable. It is not a good thing to do just because you are more favorable, obviously, to the other group.” “I never said that,” I replied. To which Smith said, “Well, you’re calling me on something, so you must be favorable to the other group.”)
After hearing Flowers response, Smith said the public must be “confused,” she implied that anyone who says otherwise is spreading “misinformation,” and she characterized NMF’s concerns that the actual freeway ODOT wants to build could be much wider than they’re letting on as, “totally ridiculous.”
“I wish ODOT was here to be able to tell their story,” Smith lamented. “I want the misinformation to stop. I want people to tell the truth about the project and not confuse it.” These comments shocked me as I listened in real time. I’ve never heard anyone cast such aspersions on the work of Chris Smith or Joe Cortright, two widely respected advocates who’ve devoted countless hours to their work on this project. And Councilor Smith’s initial comments were just a precursor to what was to come.
In his presentation, NMF Co-founder Chris Smith laid out his organization’s concerns with the project and attempted to get the new council members up to speed. NMF believes any investment in widening freeways is “adding more harm that could go to proactive investments like transit, walking, biking, that could reduce greenhouse gasses,” Smith said. NMF is suing ODOT to force them to do a comprehensive alternatives analysis that would consider whether congestion pricing and/or transit upgrades could alleviate traffic concerns in lieu of lane widening. “We have never had a full alternative analysis at that level,” Smith explained.
And he also responded directly to Yohannes’ assertion that “Lids not lanes” is not a real position. “We do believe in ‘Lids not lanes,'” Smith said. “And if ODOT won’t allow us to imagine a project that will do that, we need a better political imagination.”
Smith then passed it over to his fellow NMF co-founder, economist and City Observatory publisher, Joe Cortright.
Cortright shared graphics of a massive freeway (above), much wider than anything ODOT has shared publicly for many years (this project has been bouncing around since 2012, but its current form took shape in 2017). The images came from ODOT themselves and NMF acquired them through public records requests. “This is something they never show anymore, because what they’re really proposing is a massive freeway-widening project,” Cortright explained against the backdrop of a freeway rendering and a technical cross-section drawing created by ODOT that puts the total width of the freeway at 162 feet. “ODOT is proposing is to essentially double the width — and in some cases triple the width of I-5 through the Rose Quarter.”
Cortright also pointed out that independent consultants hired by ODOT as part of their analysis of the highway covers told the state agency they could narrow the planned freeway widening by 40-feet and still achieve project goals. Then, as Cortright warned the committee that once ODOT gets shovels in the ground (a “classic Robert Moses technique from the 1930s” he said), the city and other partners would be obligated to build the entire project no matter the costs (which Cortright believes will be much higher than the $1.9 billion estimated today (of which a $1 billion gap still remains)) — Committee Chair Clark cut him off and told him it was time to wrap up.
After an abrupt ending to their presentation, Councilor Clark was first to respond. “I think some of the data you’re talking about is outdated,” she said, in reference to Cortright’s claims that ODOT plans a much wider freeway than what’s proposed. She then said she would have PBOT and ODOT come to the committee to “rectify some of the misunderstandings here.”
“I appreciate your passion,” Clark added, before trying to pass the baton to Councilor Smith.
But NMF’s Smith forcefully interjected: “The physical dimensions are correct. The striping underneath is a matter of opinion about what ODOT would do in future.”
“We’ll wait for to hear from ODOT and PBOT,” Clark replied, in what felt like an attempt to quiet the NMF advocate.
Then Councilor Smith began her questioning. She implied they weren’t ODOT documents because she didn’t see the ODOT logo on them. When Chris Smith reiterated they were indeed authentic ODOT documents, Councilor Smith not only waved-away Smith’s comment, she dressed him down. “I agree with the Chair. That is outdated information and that’s really unfair and disingenuous of you to bring it here as if it was released yesterday.” (Asked in a phone call today how she knows the doc is outdated, Smith replied, “ODOT said it’s outdated.”)
Then the councilor asked: “Do you think you can actually do the lids without expanding the freeway?” As NMF’s Smith answered and Cortright attempted to add some context of his own, Councilor Smith spoke over Cortright, saying, “Excuse me, you don’t have the floor. I do.”
With Cortright silenced, Councilor Smith asked again: “Now, could you please answer the question Chris? That’s what I’m asking you — not your political, environmental plan — I’m just asking you, as it stands right now, can we do the lids without doing the freeways?”
“The goal of a full EIS [the larger alternatives analysis called for in NMF’s lawsuit] is to answer that question,” Smith responded.
“Thank you,” Councilor Smith replied. “I would appreciate, when you come to this this committee, that you give us real information and not what you would hope. That is a question I would ask ODOT if they were here.”
It’s unlikely Smith would get a clear answer from ODOT either, but according to documents currently published on the official project website, the width would be even wider than what Cortright shared at the council meeting. Asked about the exchange via text message after the hearing, Chris Smith told BikePortland, “It’s frustrating they’re focusing on the date of the document and not the width of the freeway.”
When Cortright spoke up to remind Councilor Smith that ODOT’s own consultants said the freeway could be narrower, Councilor Smith said, “But you don’t want any freeway, whether it’s narrow or wide, so it wouldn’t matter if it’s a narrow freeway or not.”
“I don’t think we said that,” Cortright replied, and then Councilor Clark cut off the exchange and gave Councilor Mitch Green the floor. Green stated his strong opposition to the project, saying he’d rather invest in better transit service instead of more lanes and that he doesn’t trust ODOT to be fiscally responsible.
After that, Clark closed the hearing.
Watch the meeting below. The player starts at the end of Chris Smith’s presentation:
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With district representation, Portland will likely see a lot more of this, of politicians who one might think of as “liberal” taking extraordinarily conservative positions on traffic safety and congestion. There are a lot of people in District 1 for example who fully support more highways, more lanes, etc, but who would prefer not to see it on I-205 but rather on I-5 (i.e. not in their back yard, but rather in someone else’s back yard). Long ago there was a push for a 3rd Columbia bridge or tunnel at 33rd as well as an outer bypass near Troutdale. You get these projects in every metropolitan area, adding more beltways, adding to diver’s perceived “improvements” in traffic but also a perception they live in a top-tier US city with a second, third, or even fourth bypass beltline, much like a skyscraper that is too tall. Obviously induced demand is meaningless to such people, that traffic and congestion always gets worse as more is built – induced demand is counterintuitive to most US drivers – and Portland is no exception to this way of thinking, alas.
But there is a very clear path to building the highway without the cover, which I think is at least a not-too-unlikely outcome of the project when the parts deemed least essential by ODOT come at the end of a complex project that is likely to have big cost overruns.
I do agree that “Lids Not Lanes” is an unrealistic position — that outcome is simply not going to happen, and anyone advocating for it comes off as dishonest or naive. “No Lids, No Lanes” is much more coherent.
It certainly appears that with ODOT, Metro and our pro-highway City Council squarely supporting this project, the best hope for killing it is for NMH to hold their nose and appeal to the Trump administration.
Agree that Lids Not Lanes is pie in the sky in the current political environment. But also, conversations and movements are started by pie in the sky ambitions. Sometimes, it’s the job of advocates to take the extreme position that isn’t tenable in order to lay the groundwork for progress being made on the time scale of decades, instead of years.
I agree, but I don’t think this is an example of that. Spending a huge amount of money to recover a small bit of urban area doesn’t strike me as a particularly viable goal in any foreseeable timeframe. There was a brief moment when the optics of the project might have been enough to push it over the finish line despite its enormous expense and obvious illogic, but that time has passed and probably won’t return.
It is absurd to build this project without tolling, demand management and transit alternatives.
ODOT, Gov Kotek, PBOT, and some on the city council are failing us.
This project is not going to solve congestion.
There are 17 lanes of travel piling into 3 lanes of Eastbound I-84
1 SB from the North ====== I-5
1 SB from Swan Island ==== Greeley Ave
1 SB from NW PDX I-405 === I-405
2 SB from NE Broadway === Wheeler
1 SB from Inner NE ======= MLK
1 EB from downtown ===== Morrison Bridge
1 EB Broadway Bridge ==== Wheeler
2 EB from NE Interstate === Ramsay
1 EB Irving NE 12th Ave === NE 16th
2 EB from SW PDX ======= I-405
1 WB Irving from Sandy ==== NE 16th
1 NB from Inner NE ======= Grand
1 NB from NE 16th ======== NE 16th
1 NB from the South ======= I-5
—
17
Of course it won’t — it wasn’t designed to be a solution to congestion; before ODOT tried to pitch this as the solution to everything, it was primarily a safety project (reducing the chaotic flows of vehicles between I-405 and I-84), and was intended (I believe) to help justify the IBR project further north, which is in turn part of ODOT’s long-term goal of making I-5 a better corridor for freight traveling N/S. While the “About” section of the project website does mention congestion, once, it also mentions almost everything else you could think of.
“I-5 is the main north-south route moving people and goods and connecting population centers across the West Coast of the United States from Mexico to Canada.”
As I recall that is mostly BS in terms of actual use. There is no evidence the rose quarter or the Columbia bridge are significant barriers for freight use. Yes, the freight companies always want bigger and wider highways but they aren’t critical for their business. The cost of a freight truck and driver is under $100 per hour.
I’m not defending the project (far from it — I strongly oppose it), I’m just saying that “not solving Portland congestion” is not likely an effective criticism because that’s not really what the project is about.
I don’t know about the realities of west coast freight movement, but I do know that planners everywhere love neat clean lines and blocks of color on maps that often disregard realities on the ground (one reason I support planning decisions to be made as locally as possible), and so having one remaining constriction on the map of I-5 probably drives ODOT planners crazy.
I can’t say that I’m surprised that the councilors from Districts 1 and 4, the two most car dependent parts of the city, are carrying water for ODOT’s freeway widening ambitions, but yeesh, the ladies doth protest too much, methinks.
“This project represents the braiding of climate, community and statewide economic development goals,” Yohannes told the committee.
To claim that there is anything in the Rose Quarter project that is pro climate is laughable. Maybe if your climate “goal” is to cook the planet, you’d have something.
ODOT is a wealth extraction machine running an imperialist / colonizer playbook. Loretta Smith and Olivia Clark are ODOT proxies.
These words you use! A bit of a stretch to link the British colonialists who sent the produce of poor farmers in Bengal and Ireland to Downton Abbey instead of feeding the millions that died in famine,…to ODOT.
You lost me there.
Loretta Smith is the only councillor gives a crap about the drug dealing, paid gang bangs, and sexual harassment along the bike paths and side streets in District 1.
So yes she gets support from old poor whites and young poor black and brown people–the people the progs say they support but don’t actually listen to.
It’s cool that Loretta Smith represents her district. What has the Rose Quarter freeway widening got to do with those other problems happening in District 1? Does she owe more to the people that give her votes, or to the people that cut the checks?
It’s important to look at the relationships of people who are in a position to spend public money. It’s also important to look at where the money is going to go. The $1.9 billion, or more, that the meeting was about isn’t going anywhere near those bike paths and side streets.
Many of the people in District 2 (North and NE Portland) who were displaced by the well-documented gentrification in the 1990s ended up moving to (cheaper) District 1 (many others left town altogether). A lot of the traffic on I-205 is “pass-through” and many folks in District 1 feel that it really ought to be moving on I-5 rather than I-205 (as well as the related noise, congestion, and air pollution), so naturally they support making I-5 at least 20 lanes wide to match the new Columbia River bridge, particularly since the Glenn Jackson 205 bridge is unlikely to be expanded. Many District 1 community advocates would like to see much more subsidized public housing all along the I-5 corridor (i.e. in Districts 2, 3, & 4) rather than have it mostly concentrated just in District 1, to even out citywide poverty, youth, BIPOC populations, crime, and so on.
That’s interesting. How did you reach these conclusions? Is there a study with data maybe?
I served as a transportation advocate in East Portland 2007-15 and talked with an awful lot of folks, particularly other advocates – we did in fact do a survey. What I wrote about subsidized housing reflects stated policies of the East Portland Action Plan and the goals of its various committees plus its 13 NAs. The displacement is well documented by BPS as are traffic patterns by PBOT and ODOT.
Personally I condemn all highway projects. I’ve heard several NCDOT officials tell me that they expect both the RQ and Columbia Bridge projects to eventually fall through (in fact they and VA-DOT are both betting on it – they both want Oregon’s share of national funding for their projects).
tell me more about the paid gang bangs on the bike path.
And please provide links to any… uh… video evidence you might have.
Sorry you are lost. It is actually pretty simple. ODOT is a powerful agency that funnels massive amounts of taxpayer money to consultants and builders. They offer flailing local politicians support, financial, political, etc., to keep the money flowing. There is a revolving door between ODOT and the private sector that they enrich. The behavior of Loretta Smith and Clark clearly shows that they are coming to the table to willfully ignore important information and to eliminate dissent.
Colonizers that extract local resources and transfer them to powerful wealthy outside groups often offer a quid pro quo to local officials to further their interests. The extent to which ODOT has gone to such great shameful lengths to manipulate local opinion is deserving of this analogy. You would agree if you had been following this saga closely over the past decade.
But, I guess ODOT’s PR stunts are working. Sounds like some are happy to beat up on “the progs” for the price of wasting their taxes on the ODOT grift.
“The only councilor who cares…” this has to be a joke.
“Smith said “No, because I didn’t work on [the I-5 Rose Quarter Project]. They have different people who work on different projects. I never worked on the I-5 Rose Quarter.” Then Smith added, “Don’t make something out of nothing.”
Its not something out of “nothing” and that she doesn’t understand that she has a real conflict of interest is a problem. The question is whether she can she oppose this project and keep her consultant work on “different projects”. Can she maintain good (and lucrative) relationships with the organization’s leaders and oppose this project. The answer is likely no.
This is a gentrification project. The lid is financially feasible only as a high cost urban land creation project. The idea it will provide significant land for affordable housing is ludicrous. Its an empty promise that will at best be fulfilled with a few token projects for some non-profit housing developers.
That’s assuming that central Portland revives as the regions economic center and land is valuable. If not, it will be a big open space being targeted for development only with large public subsidies from a city desperate for a developer.
The treatment of opponents is not a surprise since they can’t vote for them. Why should they care what they think. It is the nature of districts. People need to make sure they bring people from every district to these hearings so everyone on the council is talking to their own constituents.
Very good point. Smith owns a company that does consulting work for Albina Vision Trust. She has a direct financial stake in the success (or at least continuation) of the work of AVT. Even if she isn’t doing work on the Rose Quarter Project, she benefits financially from that relationship with AVT and has a vested interest in the point of view that is espoused by her client. If she were to publicly side against AVT, you can bet that any future work would be directed to different consultants.
If we lived in a world where ethics in politics and leadership was actually something that was valued and expected, it would be a no brainer that Smith should recuse herself from any oversight or decision making of projects that AVT are involved in. Even the appearance of a potential conflict would make her participation suspect and potentially discredit the things that she says.
I’m guessing she understands that there is a conflict of interest. She just really doesn’t like someone pointing that out.
From an article in Willamette Week about ODOT’s budget hole:
“…state Rep. Shelly Boshart Davis (R-Albany), the vice chair of the Joint Transportation Committee, said ODOT has a lot of work to do before her caucus will support additional funding for the agency.
“A billion-dollar budget mistake coupled with a more than 300% increase on the cost of the Abernethy Bridge [on Interstate 205] are just two examples, although massive, of problems that need to be fixed and accounted for before we ask Oregonians for another dollar,” Boshart Davis said.”
This may be the weak point of ODOT’s Rose Quarter freeway widening project. We can’t let them run around with the charge card, they have expensive tastes. They are relying on federal funding that may not be coming, but they are more than happy to tie up Oregon’s bonding capacity for decades at a time when the current administration has just made the cost of borrowing a lot more expensive.
This is a point I like to bring up a lot when I contact my representatives in Salem. “Imagine what else we could do with $1 billion if we redirect it away from a highway widening project that we know won’t accomplish what its ostensible goals are.”
Will the project not improve safety by reducing lane weaving? I think a stronger argument is that the goals are either unnecessary or can be achieved by less dramatic means.
Mark my words: this project will move ahead, the lanes will get built, then they will run out of money to do the lids, either from cost overrun or federal oversight.
It was tragic when the freeway cut through the heart of the black community, and it is foolish to believe that this project will provide any reparations. AVT, you’re being played.
I suspect AVT is as much a player as they are being played.
It was pretty telling at the last Metro meeting that they had contractors specifically talking about how great all the contracts were, made it clear that everyone’s just trying to make their buck off of freeway expansion.
I don’t at all get the sense that AVT is the puppet master in its relationship with ODOT.
AVT feels to me like the Frog Ferry (or the Portland Diamond Project) in the sense that there is a non-profit dedicated to keeping a certain vision alive, and that vision is attractive enough that the enterprise manages to keep its lights on despite the obvious problems with that vision. In this case, ODOT has a strong incentive to keep AVT relevant (for now, at least) because they provide cover for the RQ project, which the legislature has told them to build. Frog Ferry does not have a comparable partner.
Just like how PPS ran out of money when it was time to fix up Jefferson High.
ODOT did such a great job of using our taxpayer dollars to buy off the folks in NoPo!
I want to give some imagination fuel, while this figure is a little old so it would be need to be adjusted for inflation. Trimet says that the yellow line could $350 million to build in this document https://trimet.org/history/pdf/max-yellowline.pdf.
With the current budget of the project that’s ~5 yellow lines we could build. Adjusting for inflation it’s probably closer to 2 but I feel the point still stands.
$1.9 Billion is a lot of money to throw at a “solution” that very likely won’t solve the problem
Great point Dale. $350m in today’s $ is ~$550m, but it still shows how, if we prioritized transportation modes and strategies that are actually effective (e.g., congestion pricing), we could have a huge ROI. Highways are a terrible investment as evidenced by the enormous backlog of maintenance required on the current system.
Aside from the merits of the discussion, I was just shocked by the gaslighting and bullying behavior of CM Smith and CM Clark. It was Trumpian in tone, completely incorrect/uninformed, and rude. The deference to ODOT was deeply troubling given their horrific track record and the public’s obvious interest in holding ODOT is accountable to taxpayers and community (AVT included). I’m really bummed at times like this that no D2 reps are on the transportation committee, but I am going to share my thoughts with them, since we are the ones having this massive highway expansion rammed through our neighborhood. It’s absolutely shameful that a place with massive democratic margins at every level is spending this much time and money on highway expansion when we haven’t even built a transit system with basic functionality.