Month: November 2022
-
The black box: Hiding the facts about freeway widening
State DOT officials have crafted an Supplemental Environmental Assessment that conceals more than it reveals The Rose Quarter traffic report contains no data on “average daily traffic” the most common measure of vehicle travel Three and a half years later and ODOT’s Rose Quarter’s Traffic Modeling is still a closely guarded secret The new SEA…
-
The Week Observed, November 18, 2022
What City Observatory did this week The Rose Quarter’s Big U-Turn: Deadman’s Curve? The redesign of the I-5 Rose Quarter project creates a hazardous new hairpin off-ramp from Interstate 5. This supposed “safety” project may really creating a new “Deadman’s Curve” at the Moda Center. A key part of the project’s re-design is moving an off-ramp about…
-
ODOT: Our I-5 Rose Quarter safety project will increase crashes
A newly revealed ODOT report shows the redesign of the I-5 Rose Quarter project will: creates a dangerous hairpin turn on the I-5 Southbound off-ramp increase crashes 13 percent violate the agency’s own highway design standards result in trucks turning into adjacent lanes and forcing cars onto highway shoulders necessitate a 1,000 foot long “storage area”…
-
The Rose Quarter’s Big U-Turn: Deadman’s Curve?
The redesign of the I-5 Rose Quarter project creates a hazardous new hairpin off-ramp from a Interstate 5 Is ODOT’s supposed “safety” project really creating a new “Deadman’s Curve” at the Moda Center? Bike riders will have to negotiate on Portland’s busy North Williams bikeway will have to negotiate two back-to-back freeway ramps that carry…
-
ODOT reneges on Rose Quarter cover promises
The soon-to-be released Rose Quarter I-5 Revised Environmental Assessment shows that ODOT is already reneging on its sales pitch of using a highway widening to heal Portland’s Albina Neighborhood. It trumpeted “highway covers” as a development opportunity, falsely portraying them as being covered in buildings and housing—something the agency has no plans or funds to…
-
The Week Observed, November 11, 2022
What City Observatory did this week Risky bridges. The Oregon and Washington highway departments are blundering ahead with a $5 billion plan to widen I-5 between Portland and Vancouver, and are making many of the same mistakes they made with the failed Columbia River Crossing a decade ago. A key difference: last time, there was…
-
Highway officials misrepresent Coast Guard permit requirements
The Interstate Bridge Project falsely claimed to a legislative committee that the USDOT/Coast Guard agreement on bridge permits doesn’t apply to the IBR project. This is part of a repeated series of misrepresentations about the approval process for bridges and the impact of the Coast Guard’s preliminary navigation determination that a new crossing must provide…
-
The Week Observed, November 4, 2022
What City Observatory did this week Risky bridges: If you’re going to spend several billion dollars, you might want to get some independent expert advice. Oregon and Washington are on the verge of committing 5 billion dollars to the construction of the so-called I-5 “Interstate Bridge Replacement” project between Portland and Vancouver. But they’re doing…