nhs expansion

NW Broadway is a federally controlled
piece of the National Highway System.
(Photo © J. Maus/BikePortland)

We continue to track an interesting policy development that could have wide-ranging impacts on several local streets here in Portland. As we first shared back in September, the new federal transportation bill, MAP-21, included an expansion of the National Highway System (NHS) to include “all urban and rural principal arterials.”

In Oregon, that means as of October 1st there are 600 new miles of roads that are now part of the NHS.

Locally, this means several key streets that used to be solely managed by the City of Portland are now under the purview of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). As such, the streets have an entirely new system of oversight, they must adhere to federal design, engineering, and performance standards, and so on. That gives PBOT much less leeway and independence to do innovative designs and to make changes to the streetscape without a potentially onerous process of seeking federal approval.

New information from ODOT about the implications of this policy make it clear that it’s on the issue of design standards where the NHS expansion could have the largest impact on Portland.

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Officials at the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) say they are “scrambling” to comply with a provision in the new federal transportation bill (known as MAP-21) that will add 600 miles of roads in Oregon to the National Highway System (NHS). This expansion of the NHS goes into effect October 1st of this year and includes roads currently managed by both ODOT and cities.

The implications for Portland (and other cities) could be significant, because it would mean several of our local streets — including ones that are crucial for bicycling — would suddenly be required to conform with design standards laid out by the Federal Highway Administration, instead of the more flexible local and state standards used today.

Among the streets that are impacted by the new law are NW Broadway from SE Grand to Burnside, Sandy Blvd from Burnside to NE Columbia Blvd., W Burnside from I-405 to the E. Burnside/Couch couplet (to 14th), SE Calle Cesar Chavez (39th) from NE Sandy to SE Powell, and others. The map below is a screenshot from an online map created by ODOT to help explain the impacts of the changes (the layer I have showing is new NHS roads not managed by the state):

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