(Source: Independent Cover Assessment Report, 2021)
There’s been a lot of talk about the highway covers that are planned as part of the I-5 Rose Quarter project; but there hasn’t been much chance for the public to look under the hood and have a say in what might happen on top of them.
That will change this coming Monday, April 28th as the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) and the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) co-host an event dubbed, Future I-5 Highway Cover: Lower Albina Planning Session.
These covers will play a crucial role not only in what type of neighborhood ultimately emerges on top of them, but also in how the bikeway network connects on key surface street routes.
The event will bring together staff from PBOT and ODOT, as well as the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (BPS). They’ll have an interactive work session with members of ODOT’s Historic Albina Advisory Board (HAAB) and Community Oversight Advisory Committee (COAC), and some invited guests. The session will be facilitated by ZGF Architects, the firm that helped prepare the project’s Independent Cover Assessment in 2021. Here’s more about the event:
“This session continues the exploration of how potential highway cover uses relate to public spaces and the surrounding street network, building on visioning work previously done by Albina Vision Trust in collaboration with HAAB, COAC, and community stakeholders.”
Meeting organizers will allow public comment at the end of the work session, which will be held both online and in-person. The event will be held at New Song Church Community Center from 4:00 to 6:00 pm on Monday April 28th. More info here.
Thanks for reading.
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boondoggle –
noun
verb
This will be some of the most polluted real estate in Portland. I can’t imagine spending any amount of time here, much less living or working. Fine particulate pollution is extremely unhealthy.
Fortunately, as our vehicle fleet electrifies (especially trucks and other diesel vehicles), urban particulate pollution should fall significantly.
There is no evidence that BEV trucks are going to be widely adopted any time soon. Heavy BEV truck sales are a rounding error at this point, and we have so many unresolved barriers to mass adoption:
https://artofprocurement.com/blog/supply-examining-the-practicality-of-the-ev-truck-mandate
The future is so uncertain, that I don’t think it is reasonable to discount pollution concerns for massive freeway projects like this one.
It is also true that electric trucks will almost certainly be adopted at some point. It’s not like any of this is going to matter tomorrow — people promenading on I-5 lids is still quite a ways off.
The important thing (to me, at least) is that the trajectory is clear, plausible, and inevitable.
And even new diesel trucks are significantly cleaner than the ones they replace, and since long-haul trucks passing through CA will have to be particularly clean, I-5 get some spillover benefit from that even if Oregon Democrats surrender on their clean air commitments.
I have bad news for you:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35760182/
TLDR: EVs aren’t necessarily better on particulate pollution because most of it comes from tire wear, brake wear, and road surface wear. While EVs avoid tailpipe emissions, their added weight makes them worse in every other category of particulates.
For all their upsides, EVs are not going to save us from being steeped in harmful levels of urban particulate pollution. The only thing that’ll do that is having fewer cars on the road (and making the ones that are there as light as possible).
Gasoline engines with catalytic converters emit relatively few particulates (which is why I focused my comment on diesel trucks), but EVs are still cleaner (as stated by abstract of your article*). EVs with regenerative braking also emit way less brake dust than regular vehicles, though tire dust is still a problem.
EVs don’t have to “save us” to be a hugely beneficial step forward, nor need they be the sole solution to everything or anything. Lighter vehicles (as you say) will help. Driving less will help. Eliminating diesel TriMet buses will help. Cleaning up diesel trains, garbage trucks, and the myriad point-sources throughout the city will help.
And convincing people to stop using their fireplaces and heating with wood will help, a lot.
In short, your article isn’t bad news at all.
*”When secondary PM emissions were included, the EF was always significantly lower for the EV than ICEVs”
I generally concur with Chris I below, but I think it’s also worth pointing out that lots of particulate pollution from driving is from tires, not just from diesel. I would have to read a lot more about how traffic dynamics affect wear and tear on tires to say with any certainty, but I would guess that this project will make tire particulate pollution worse on the grounds of there being more vehicles. And that is something a BEV truck would make even worse, since trucks are very heavy
Higher speeds tend to increase tread wear via heat transfer. Particulate matter tends to be the majority of pollution from cars regardless of engine type. I think the number is around 2000x more particulate matter than engine pollution, but that also depends on whether the car is old enough to be exempt from DEQ (in OR that is 25 years I think). So in general the adoption of electric cars will have a negligible effect on particulate pollution.
Will it be? Everything I’ve seen has said caps reduce reduce pollution near the freeway so it seems like the pollution on top of the cap wouldn’t be anymore than the properties adjacent to it. That mean properties next to uncovered freeways would be more polluted than the properties on the cap.
How much do the real estate developers in the AVT stand to make from all this? How much does Loretta Smith and her associates stand to profit from the freeway expansion project?
Probably some, but non profit affordable housing developers aren’t really known for being flush with cash (at least not relative to the for profit side of things).
An aspect of the project which isn’t really being talked about right this second, but which is probably directly relevant is how much the caps can hold. This a massive contributor to cost of the project, and if we decide to go with less buildable caps with a park focus there’s still the chance to do a lot of great redevelopment in Lower Albina since the area should be more practical for living in with lower freeway pollution and easier access across the freeway. That’s an aspect where – assuming AVT gets the deed to the cap-land – they directly profit from this whole scheme. But even that profit is probably heavily limited by the general plans and promises of AVT (without which, the entire scheme falls apart).
I like the idea of a bold future for Lower Albina, but to some extent money is an object here and it would probably be better to compromise on the buildings on the cap in exchange for lowering the costs for the project writ large. Redeveloping the coliseum + nearby parking and the PPS building gives plenty of room for genuinely revitalizing Lower Albina while being more attractive to the various public agencies that have to pay for this stuff. If it costs $500M to build the caps so they can support a 5 story building, why not just spend that money on directly acquiring parking lots nearby for redevelopment instead?
Exactly, if the point is to revitalize the neighborhood, how much real estate can be purchased for $500m. Nextportland seems to be out of date, so I’m not sure what is currently in the pipeline to be developed, but here are some examples from the area:
20 Hancock: market value 9m
55 Bway: market value ~2m
307 Bway: market value ~1m
AVT’s seemingly all-in to commit to the freeway expansion in order to get the caps built. But a sizable part of the neighborhood could be purchased for $500m. Judging by ODOT’s historical budgetary overrun (let’s say a very conservative minimum of 100%), the cost of the project will balloon, guaranteeing some level of cost mitigation for the caps. It’s a bizarre situation, entirely predictable, adding virtually no value to the neighborhood, quantitatively or livability-wise.
Can we just find the money for AVT from the state/city budget so they will bail on this awful project?
I remember attending a similar freeway capping event for I-405 in the early 2000s with lots of expensive pie-in-the-sky suggestions. Someone there suggested installing turbine generators on top of the caps to turn the resulting air pollution into power.
Metro Seattle has several freeway caps, including the long one over I-90 on Mercer Island that has a soccer field on it. I saw several recently in Atlanta.
There’s pie in the sky, and then there’s magical thinking. What, exactly, would turn the turbines?
Concentrated hot air from the fumes. There was a funnel mechanism in the design based on the fans that normally operate in tunnels to keep air circulating – instead of forcing air out at the ends, the air would instead be funneled up to the turbine vents. And I agree, the idea was absurd, but so was the whole notion that ODOT was going to pay for capping any of I-405.
Now show the view from the Moda Center looking east.
This is such an obvious con job. The funding isn’t there even for the stated cost, let alone the actual cost, which inevitably will be at least twice what they’re currently claiming. All ODOT wants to do is pave everything, it’s ridiculous. I wrote my city counselors about this and got no response.
All of this feels like an excuse to expand the freeways more 🙁
How is it guaranteed that this will be a renaissance of black businesses, and if it is possible to attain this with a 2 billion dollar multi-year complicated environmentally destructive mega project, why can’t it be done now or 5 years ago?
I would love to see this happen, but I am interested to see the details of the plan.