I-5 Rose Quarter Improvement Project Comment

This is the public comment I wrote in response to the Environmental Assessment of the I5 RQIP.

I strongly believe that the I-5 Rose Quarter Improvement Project will not only fail to deliver the improvements it promises, but it will have an overall detrimental effect on Portland, the state of Oregon, and our planet.

ODOTs primary motivation is to improve traffic flow on I5 through Portland. To get buy-in from the city, they’re throwing in the sweeteners of freeway caps and some nominal pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure improvements. All of this for the high price of half a billion dollars and years of construction, assuming all goes as planned.

The changes to pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure are treated too much as an afterthought in this plan. The sparse details currently available have caused both the PBOT Bicycle Advisory Committee and Pedestrian Advisory Committee to endorse the No Build alternative. One concrete detail of the bike plan that particularly concerns me is the removal of the quiet Flint Street bridge, and diversion of bike traffic onto a main car thoroughfare with an unprotected bike lane. I worry that these types of concerns will fall to the wayside as the project moves forward with priority #1: the freeway.

In terms of mitigating congestion, I believe the overall approach of widening the freeway with additional entry and exit lanes simply will not work. If vehicle volumes were to stay the same, then yes, the additional capacity might provide for more smoothly flowing traffic. However, history has proven time and again that this temporarily unencumbered flow will only invite more driving, recreating just as much congestion within a few short years, and this time with more cars. This phenomenon of induced demand cannot be overlooked (as it was in the EA), especially in light of Portland’s growing population.

Once we acknowledge that the increased freeway capacity will result in more vehicle miles traveled (VMT), the claim in the EA that vehicle emissions could go down as a result of this project is laughable. This project has the potential to dramatically increase emissions as well as pollution in the immediate area, and the EA completely failed to consider anything beyond a best case scenario of zero VMT increase.

As global warming looms large in the next couple decades, we have a responsibility to decrease emissions as much as possible. Since the transportation sector makes up such a large share of greenhouse gas emissions in Oregon as well as globally, we must take an extra critical look at these types of projects to ensure that they are moving us in the right direction. Committing resources to make driving easier is questionable to begin with, and the I5 RQIP purposely ignores its environmental consequences, inadequately modifies infrastructure for alternative modes, all while failing to mitigate congestion on I5. No build!