The cost of the $1.9 billion Rose Quarter freeway is driven by its excessive width

ODOT is proposing to more than double the width of the I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway through the Albina neighborhood

ODOT could easily stripe the roadway it is building for ten traffic lanes

The high cost of building freeway covers stems from the project’s excessive width

WSDOT plans to cover I-5 in Vancouver for less than $40 million

The fundamental problem with the Rose Quarter project, and the reason why it has blown through its budget is that really a massive freeway widening project.  The agency claims its just adding a couple of “auxiliary” lanes, but in reality, its doubling the width of Interstate 5 in a complex urban environment, and its plans for a much wider roadway are the principal reason the project, and its covers, are so expensive.

A too wide freeway.

What no one seems willing to do is ask basic questions about the Rose Quarter.  Is the project worth $1.9 billion?  Does it even need to be that big and expensive?  Isn’t the skyrocketing cost and ODOT’s growing fiscal crisis a signal that we should consider some other options?

The high cost and prodigious cost overruns of the Rose Quarter are directly related to the excessive width of the project, something that ODOT has gone to great lengths to conceal, characterizing the project as merely adding a single auxiliary lane in each direction. In reality, the project would essentially double the width of I-5 through the Rose Quarter, from its current 82-foot width, to 160 feet (and in some places as much as 200 feet).

A brief chronology shows how ODOT staff have repeatedly concealed or obscured the width of the I-5 Rose Quarter project.  Their initial 2019 Environmental Assessment presented a misleading and cartoonish freeway-cross section that appeared to show that the freeway would be widened to about 126 feet.

City Observatory challenged these claims about the width of the freeway to the Oregon Transportation Commission in December 2020, and the commission directed the staff to meet with us to discuss the issue.  The staff refused to answer any questions during this meeting, and instead later issued a written report obfuscating the actual width of the freeway.

In March 2021, No More Freeways obtained three different internal project documents indicating that the actual width of the roadway would be 160 feet.  These included 2015 engineering drawings, as well as architect’s illustrations and computerized CAD files.

As we’ve pointed out at City Observatory, this cross-section could easily accommodate  10 travel lanes, and regardless of ODOT’s labeling, once built, the road could be re-striped in an afternoon.

Even the project’s Supplemental Environmental Assessment, released in November 2022 conceals the actual width of the project.  Here is the project’s own plan showing the freeway cross-section.  The plan omits measurements, so we’ve added scale markings showing 200 foot widths.

ODOT’s own consultants, the internationally recognized engineering firm ARUP, concluded that the Rose Quarter project was vastly wider than it needed to be.  They pointed out that no comparable urban freeway in any city has the over-wide 12 foot shoulders designed into the Rose Quarter project.  ARUP concluded that the extreme width of the ODOT design was the principal reason freeway covers cost so much, and said the freeway could be 40 feet narrower than ODOT’s design.  ODOT’s own “Cost to Complete” report concedes that a key cost driver is the need to lower the surface of the existing roadway in order to provide the necessary vertical clearance over the much thicker overpass beams that will be needed to span the wider roadway.

Covers alone could be vastly cheaper

If this project consisted simply of building a cover over the existing I-5 freeway, it would be vastly cheaper.  Washington’s Department of Transportation is proposing to build a similar cover over a portion of I-5 in Vancouver as part of the Interstate Bridge Replacement Project; The cover, called the “Community Connector” is designed to re-connect historic Fort Vancouver with the city’s downtown.  It will be about 300 feet wide, and about an acre in size and is estimated to cost $37 million.

Vancouver’s proposed Community Connector cover I-5 for just $37 million

ODOT has never explored simply building a lid over the existing freeway to “re-connect” the community.  If this were simply about building a cover to re-connect the community, it could have been done by now for a fraction of the $115 million ODOT has spent so far, just on planning the Rose Quarter.

What to do instead:

ODOT could cap the I-5 freeway at the Rose Quarter without widening it.  And if ODOT is really committed to “restorative justice” reallocate available money for this project as reparations to the Albina community, and allow them to spend it however they see fit to rectify the damage done by the construction of of I-5, Interstate Avenue and the Fremont Bridge ramps.  Oregon routinely spends highway funds mitigating the environmental damage of its freeways, on everything from sound walls to wetlands.  It also has used highway funds to replace displaced structures (the old Rocky Butte Jail), and other states have used federal highway funds to replace housing destroyed by freeway construction.  If we were serious about redressing the harm done to the Albina neighborhood, we’d be looking to reduce the size of I-5, and spend more money improving the neighborhood, and building the housing ODOT destroyed.

 

The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) is falling short of its own goals of contracting with disadvantaged business enterprises

One-tenth of one percent of I-205 contracts went to Black construction firms

ODOT professed a strong interest in helping Black contractors as a selling point for the
I-5 Rose Quarter project, but instead advanced the I-205 Abernethy Bridge project, which has provided very little opportunities for Black-owned firms.

ODOT has been dangling promises of lucrative construction contracts for Black construction firms if its proposed $1.9 billion I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening project goes forward.  Not surprisingly, as we reported earlier, these firms and many in the local community were angered to hear that the Rose Quarter project was being delayed, probably indefinitely, because ODOT lacks funds—and shifted the funding it did have to a different project.

ODOT has prominently advertised that it intended to hire Black contractors to undertake a significant portion of the I-5 Rose Quarter project.  Even though the project was, according to the agency, only about 15 percent designed in 2010, the agency signed a contract with a joint venture (Sundt/Raimore).  One of the partner firms, Raimore Construction, is Black-owned.  An article published in The Oregonian quoted ODOT officials as saying that Raimore would be expected to bill more than $100 million in project costs (this when the project’s price tag was estimated at a mere $795 million).

Now it appears that the Rose Quarter project is going nowhere fast.  ODOT’s latest financial plan reports that the agency has almost no money to meet the project’s $1.9 billion construction cost.Par

A lot of this has to do with the project’s exploding cost, but as we noted earlier, ODOT diverted the funding that was originally earmarked for the Rose Quarter (a project in Oregon’s historically Black Albina neighborhood) and instead used it to pay for the I-205 Abernethy Bridge project in the wealthier and much whiter suburb of West Linn.  The members of the Historic Albina Advisory Board, which include Black contractors, have expressed anger that ODOT isn’t moving forward with the Rose Quarter Project—which now as a $1.35 to $1.75 billion funding deficit.

A disparity in Black contracting

The $622 million I-205 Abernethy Bridge project is the biggest source of highway construction contracts in Oregon in nearly half a century, according to ODOT. but so far, African-American construction firms have gotten just one-tenth of one percent of contract payments, according to ODOT reports.  While the I-5 Rose Quarter project was supposed to provide $100 million in contract payments for its lead Black contractor (and likely more for subcontractors), Black contractors have so far gotten just 142,000 of the $126 million disbursed for the Abernethy Bridge.

Apparently, ODOT is only committed to hiring Black contractors when they can provide politically valuable leverage for a project in Northeast Portland.

The one big ODOT highway project that is moving forward has provided only a tiny amount of work for African-American contractors.  ODOT’s I-205 project dashboard shows that the agency is well behind in meeting its diversity goals and that only about one-tenth of one percent of contracted payments have gone to African-American firms.

ODOT set a goal of providing 14 percent of contract revenues with certified disadvantaged business enterprises (which include women-owned and minority-owned businesses).  To date, ODOT has disbursed $126 million to all contractorsand Its current dashboard shows $12 million has gone to certified disadvantaged business subcontractors, only about 9 percent of the total–well below its goal. The bulk of these funds have gone to businesses owned by women, Asian-Americans, and Native-Americans.

Only about $142,000 out of $126 million, a little more than one-tenth of one percent, have gone to African-American businesses.

The $622 million that ODOT plans to spend on the I-205 Abernethy Bridge, makes it the biggest source of contracting opportunities in recent memory.  On its website, ODOT brags:

“The I-205 project is the largest ODOT highway project in 45 years.”

If ODOT were seriously interested in bolstering opportunities for African-American businesses there’s no reason that they should not be able to qualify for contracts.

The members of ODOT’s “Historic Albina Advisory Board” (HAAB) are hopping mad.  As related by Jonathan Maus at Bike Portland, they feel board betrayed by a decision to postpone construction of the $1.6 billion I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening project.

For years, the staff of the Oregon Department of Transportation have been promising the HAAB a bonanza of community improvements and lucrative construction contracts as part of its I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening project.  A key part of ODOT’s marketing of the freeway widening is a claim that highway covers (really oversized overpasses) will be instrumental in providing restorative justice to the Albina neighborhood that was ripped apart by three different ODOT highway projects over several decades.

At its June 27, 2023 meeting, ODOT staff dropped the bombshell that after more than five years of planning, ODOT simply doesn’t have the money to pay to actually build the Rose Quarter project.  Members of the HAAB feel they’ve been betrayed.

 

‘This is not okay’: Black committee members respond to Rose Quarter funding shortfall at emotional meeting

 

ODOT staff tried to claim that the project’s apparent demise was because of a May  decision to suspend tolling for at least two years, to 2026.  At the HAAB meeting on June 27, Brendan Finn squarely put the blame on Governor Tina Kotek’s decision to postpone tolling in Oregon:

Something’s happening down in Salem that I want to share with all of y’all . . . we have been moving forward on two separate tolling programs.  The Rose Quarter project is intertwined with those tolling programs in that they are supposed to help pay for portions of construction  . .  . we’ve known going through the design process together over the years that this project is under-funded— it was way underfunded.  . . . Governor Kotek came into office   . . . and said to us you got to take a little bit more time with tolling . . . so she delayed the implementation of tolling . . . that has reverberations on all of our projects and the timing of implementation . . . we have put together a a financial plan for for these pieces that takes into account the fact that we are not going to be getting the revenue from tolling.

As a result, Finn conceded, the Rose Quarter project would be put on life support, with barely enough money to keep planning moving forward, and construction delayed for at least two years (and likely much longer).  The members of the HAAB could tell they were in deep trouble, but Finn’s explanation—effectively blaming Governor Kotek’s suspension of tolling—isn’t right.  The actual cause of the project’s demise is much different.  Every step of the way, over the past five years. ODOT has taken actions that undercut the progress of the Rose Quarter project and instead elevated and accelerated another project, a $622 million rebuilding of the I-205 Abernethy Bridge in the wealthy and predominantly white suburb of West Linn, rather than the Rose Quarter (in Portland’s historically Black Albina neighborhood).

Along the way, ODOT:

• “found” money to move the I-205 project forward when the Legislature appropriated nothing for its construction.
• diverted state gas tax funds originally earmarked by the 2017 Oregon Legislature for the Rose Quarter to pay for the I-205 bridge
• Used Rose Quarter funding to enable the I-205 bridge to circumvent federal environmental review (which has delayed the Rose Quarter project)
• Accelerated signing construction contracts for the I-205 bridge, putting it ahead of Rose Quarter in line for state funding
• Proceeded with the I-205 bridge even though its cost as increased by 150 percent since 2018, from $250 million to $622 million
• Officially told the federal government that it wasn’t “reasonably foreseeable” that the Rose Quarter project would be financed by tolling revenues.

As a result of all these decisions, the I-205 Bridge is moving forward, and ODOT, by its own admission is committing to paying for the bridge even if that state raises no toll revenue.  Meanwhile, the Rose Quarter project is languishing, and is no closer to construction than it was six years ago.

It’s baffling that Finn would blame ODOT’s financial woes on Governor Kotek’s recent actions.  It’s been apparent for years that ODOT has lacked the money to actually build the Rose Quarter project, and Kotek has been Governor for just six months.  In 2021, as House Speaker, Kotek voted against the bill that allowed the diversion of funds from the Rose Quarter (HB 3055) and urged ODOT to “right-size” its mega-highway projects.  And in May, as Governor, Kotek finally insisted on injecting a note of fiscal realism into ODOT’s work by requiring this new financial plan for its megaprojects.  As we’ll see, all of the financial problems plaguing the Rose Quarter project pre-date the Kotek Administration and are the direct product of decisions made by ODOT staff, including Finn.

About the HAAB and the I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway Widening Project

The I-5 Rose Quarter project would widen about 1.5 miles of freeway in North and Northeast Portland.  Part of the project involves constructing a partial cover over a portion of the freeway, ostensibly to make up for the damage the freeway did in dividing the historically Black Albina neighborhood.  (Construction of I-5 in the 1960s was actually one of three ODOT projects that divided and helped trigger the decline of Albina.  Facing community resistance to the project in September 2020, ODOT unilaterally disbanded an earlier community advisory group—which was raising uncomfortable questions—and instead created the Historic Albina Advisory Board.  ODOT rebranded the project as contributing to “restorative justice” in part by building the covers, and in part by implying it would hire Black contractors to do much of the work.  In City Observatory’s view, there are multiple fatal flaws with the Rose Quarter project:  it’s vastly too expensive, doesn’t fix any safety problem, won’t reduce congestion, will actually increase pollution, and doesn’t revitalize the neighborhood.  

A 2017 Earmark for the Rose Quarter:  Diverted by ODOT

The Legislature’s landmark 2017 transportation package specifically included the $450 million in funds for the Rose Quarter in the form of a 2 cent per gallon statewide gas tax.  The bill contained no funding the I-205 project.  Even so, in 2018, ODOT used its discretion to divert more than $50 million from a variety of sources to move the I-205 project forward.  Here’s a list of the funds ODOT scraped together to pay for I-205:

Then, in 2021, ODOT convinced the Legislature pass HB 3055, to open up the $450 million set aside for the Rose Quarter project for other projects, including the I-205 Abernethy Project.  ODOT quickly used that discretion to effectively commit all of that money to paying for I-205, rather than the Rose Quarter.

Evading federal environmental review for I-205 by using Rose Quarter funds

ODOT used the Rose Quarter funding diversion to evade federal environmental review of the I-205 project. ODOT assured the Federal Highway Administration that the Abernethy Bridge could be built without any toll revenues, by diverting the funds originally earmarked for the Rose Quarter.  This enabled ODOT to get an exemption from federal environmental review—a CE or “categorical exclusion.” If ODOT hadn’t offered those assurances, FHWA would have had to perform a lengthy Environmental Assessment on the I-205 bridge project (called “Phase 1a”), something that has slowed the I-5 Rose Quarter project.  Here’s the FHWA’s official finding:

[Emily Kline, “Re-Evaluation of the Categorical Exclusion for the I-205: Stafford Road to OR 213 Improvements Project, Federal Highway Administration, May 4, 2022, page 3.]

A key reason for the Rose Quarter’s delay, despite its head-start over the I-205 bridge, is ODOT’s flawed project development process and environmental assessment.  The City of Portland pulled out of the project in 2020 citing a lack of community engagement.  And the Federal Highway Administration rescinded the project’s Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI), in part because of flaws in the ODOT-prepared Environmental Assessment. Only the personal intervention of then-Governor Kate Brown revived the project.

ODOT gave preferential treatment to the I-205 bridge project

ODOT also chose to launch the Abernethy Bridge construction first, expediting a construction contract, even though the bridge repair came in at double ODOT’s cost estimate. (And in an unnoticed part of ODOT’s new financial plan is an acknowledgment that the Abernethy Bridge Project will now cost $622 million, up from $500 million a year ago).

Now that the Abernethy project is launched, ODOT is dissembling about the role of tolls.  The agency’s finance director flatly contradicted the FHWA finding in his testimony to the Oregon Transportation Commission on June 28.  Brouwer said:

. . . we’ve already put the Abernethy Bridge Project out to bid based on the assumption of being able to toll this and it is under contract, under construction so we have now that the situation where if for any reason tolls on I-205 do not move forward whether that’s due to action at the federal, state or regional level it would punch a significant hole in the finance plan.

As a result, the failure to toll I-205 now will likely jeopardize funding for the Rose Quarter, because ODOT is contractually obligated to pay for the Abernethy Bridge even if tolling doesn’t materialize.

Rose Quarter:  Cost Overruns and No Funding Plan

As we’ve documented, the Rose Quarter has chalked up an impressive string of cost-overruns, with new, and much higher cost figures, arriving every 18 to 24 months.  The project was originally budgeted at $450 million when approved in 2017, jumped to $795 million just two years later, and then to $1.45 billion in 2021, and now $1.9 billion

In September 2021, the Oregon Transportation Commission, shocked by the new cost figures, directed ODOT staff to come back with a new finance plan by December of 2021. As Willamette Week reported, OTC was hoping somebody else would ride to the rescue:

The OTC told ODOT staff to come back with a funding proposal by Dec. 1 that includes significantly more than the $500 million to $700 million available from the state. The commission directed ODOT to include specific information in the funding plan, including (1) an estimate of the amount of dedicated funding needed to build the project and (2) “a discussion of whether a viable plan to secure that dedicated funding from federal, state and/or the city of Portland, Metro, Multnomah County, TriMet and other organizations in Portland is reasonably likely to be authorized and appropriated by July 1, 2023.”

The department completely missed that deadline.  More than 18 months later, in May 2023, the staff showed up at a Commission meeting and asked for yet another year of delay to prepare a financial plan.  This project’s financial woes are not the product of the recently announced tolling postponement; they’re a long-standing dereliction of financial duty by ODOT.

Rose Quarter is now permanently behind an even more expensive Abernethy Bridge.

Now that the Abernethy Bridge has started construction, that project takes absolute priority over the Rose Quarter project. As ODOT Finance Director Travis Brouwer testified to the Oregon Transportation Commission on June 28, because the agency had started the I-205 Abernethy Bridge, that was “locked in.”

. . . we have started on the I-205 Abernethy bridge and so that is locked in . . .

OTC Vice Chair Lee Beyer confirmed that in his comments in the meeting:

. . . one of the fiscal realities is we have to move forward on Abernathy because we’re in the midst of construction we really don’t have an alternative there . . “

But the loss of funding was only part of the problem:  ODOT has badly botched the design of the Rose Quarter project, leading to an escalating series of cost overruns.  The project which was estimated to cost $450 million in 2017, jumped to $795 million in 2018, to $1.45 billion in 2021, and now to $1.9 billion.

Rose Quarter’s Fatal Flaw:  A Too Wide Design

All of these cost increases are driven by ODOT’s decision to build a massively wider freeway.  The current roadway is about 82 feet wide; ODOT plans to double it to 160 feet (and in places 200 feet).  ODOT has got to great lengths to conceal the actual dimensions of the freeway, and claims that it’s adding just one auxiliary lane in each direction.  The reality is its intent on building a roadway broad enough for ten travel lanes (up from four today).

ODOT’s own consultants, the internationally recognized engineering firm ARUP, explicitly said that ODOT was designing an excessively wide roadway, with shoulders in the covered section wider than in any city in North America.  It recommended reducing the width of the roadway by more than 40 feet.

The excessive width of the roadway is the biggest cost driver.  It necessitates huge and expensive columns and girders to carry local streets across the widened freeway.  And because the beams supporting the road (and proposed covers) have to be much taller than current beams, ODOT has to depress the roadbed of the freeway below its current level—excavating at great expense to assure adequate vertical clearance for the new road.

ODOT’s attempt to package the I-5 Rose Quarter project as “restorative justice” for the damage a series of ODOT highway construction projects did to the Albina neighborhood from the 1950s to the 1970.  Grafting elaborate (but still very constrained) covers on to its overly wide freeway is plainly uneconomical.

 

On June 28, 2023, City Observatory’s Joe Cortright testified to the Oregon Transportation Commission about the agency’s dire financial situation.

Background:  The Oregon Department of Transportation is pushing a multi-billion dollar freeway widening program in Portland, dubbed the “Urban Mobility Plan.” The agency has never fully identified how the plan would be paid for, and recent plans to put tolling on hold for two years, prompted Governor Tina Kotek to direct a new look at project plans and agency finances.  ODOT has cancelled one project (Phase 2 of I-205), and effectively admitted it has no way to pay for another, the I-5 Rose Quarter project.  The new plan reveals yet more cost-overruns on these already bloated projects, and in reality, provides no explanation of how they might be funded.

For the record: Joe Cortright. I’m an economist with City Observatory and a member of No More Freeways. I’m commenting on the Urban Mobility Finance Plan developed by your staff. This isn’t really so much a plan at all as as it is a belated and only partial admission of the deep-seated structural financial problems for which your staff has no serious solution. The “plan” that they are offering is a vague hope that more federal and state funds will magically appear for the projects in the Urban Mobility plan.

The fiscal crisis that ODOT is now in was foreseeable and foreseen to anyone who took a serious look at the at the agency’s finances. Your revenue model and your expenditure processes are broken: the gas tax is already coming in below projections and is projected to decline further. Vehicle miles traveled, according to your own forecasts, are in permanent decline. State climate goals call for a 50 percent decline in gasoline sales which will further reduce your revenue.

And we received notice earlier this month that the Highway Cost Allocation Study shows that because of ODOT spending patterns we’ll have to reimburse trucks and heavy over-the-road vehicles about $220 million per year. So your revenue situation is far worse than you’ve acknowledged.

In the face of this, the Urban Mobility Plan is confronting you with huge cost overruns. We’ve seen that the Rose Quarter Project’s price tag has now ballooned to $1.9 billion —more than four times the $450 million that the Legislature was told that this project would cost when it approved it in 2017.

Despite these cost overruns, there is not one word in this plan about right-sizing any of these projects, which are all over-built. I would note that then-Speaker now Governor Tina Kotek called for right-sizing these projects in 2021 when she voted against House Bill 3055 which authorized the commission to do additional borrowing.

Please take a close look at the scale of these projects, because your staff has concealed exactly how large these projects are. This is the reason they’re so expensive is that the Rose Quarter project is a 10-lane wide freeway project and the Interstate Bridge Replacement is a 12-lane wide freeway project. If these projects were right-sized they would be vastly less expensive.

Finally you’re counting on toll revenues to bail out your financial situation. As an economist I can tell you the effect of tolls will be to reduce traffic, which in many respects is a good thing. But by tolling these roadways to pay for them, you will essentially obviate the need for additional capacity. ODOT’s own studies of the Rose Quarter project show that implementation of Regional Mobility Pricing will be more effective in reducing congestion than the now $1.9 billion cost of widening the roadway through there.

In the past you’ll pursued a piecemeal approach to these projects. ODOT is in the midst of a serious financial crisis: the cost of these projects is exploding. It’s time to take a serious objective look —and I just have to say as somebody who’s been commenting on these projects for more than a couple of decades now— some engagement by your staff in a serious fashion, rather than just two minutes of enduring the comments that we make and then simply ignoring them would be much appreciated. We have technical expertise and would be happy to engage with your staff and assist the commission to deal with the gnarly financial problems that it faces.

What City Observatory did this week

Myth-busting:  Idling and greenhouse gas emissions.  Highway boosters are fond of claiming that they can help fight climate change by widening highways so that cars don’t have to spend so much time idling. It’s a comforting illusion to think that helping you drive faster is the solution to climate change.  But as careful research shows, widening roadways to reduce congestion simply backfires, and leads to more driving, and more emissions.

This particular myth was busted by research from Alex Bigazzi and Miguel Figliozzi of Portland State University. They showed that induced demand means that faster roadways generate more vehicle miles of travel (and more carbon emissions), and that metro areas with higher travel speeds and less vehicle delay have higher rates of greenhouse gas emissions than other metro areas.

Must Read

Krugman on Congestion Pricing:  An Act of vehicular NIMBYism.  Economist Paul Krugman weighs in on New Jersey’s lawsuit against congestion pricing in Manhattan.  Congestion pricing makes sense on both efficiency and equity grounds.  As Krugman points out, each additional auto trip to Manhattan likely imposes costs of $100 (or more) on travelers and residents.  The proposed fee will likely reduce traffic and lower the burden of those costs.  But some auto commuters, especially from New Jersey will pay more.  That’s where Krugman points out the equity issue:

What’s really striking is how few people stand to benefit from New Jersey’s attempt to block or delay congestion charges. Fewer than 60,000 New Jersey residents, out of a state labor force of almost five million, commute into New York City by car. They are also, as it happens, relatively affluent, with a median annual income of more than $100,000, relatively well able to handle the extra cost. For this, New Jersey is trying to sabotage crucial policy in a neighboring state?

New Jersey politicians are sticking up for a relative handful car commuters, who are outnumbered by the several hundred thousand New Jersey residents who commute via transit to New York. They stand to gain handsomely from much improved travel times when pricing unclogs streets and throughways.

Why congestion pricing is good for cities.  At Planetizen, Michael Lewyn takes on claims made by columnist and economist Tyler Cowen that Manhattan’s proposed congestion pricing would somehow be bad for the city’s economy and health.  Cowen reasons that the congestion charge will function as a barrier to entry to the city, discouraging people for traveling there and reducing activity, spending, and jobs.  But as Lewyn argues, those cities that catered most to the car were the one’s most devastated by disinvestment and sprawl; places like New York that avoided car dependence have seen less decline, and more resurgence.

The argument rests on an assumption that a city is most appealing when automobile commuting is easy. But this assumption seems inconsistent with historical reality. . . . a “drivable” city is not necessarily a prosperous one. So if making cities like Manhattan easier to drive through doesn’t make them more appealing, it logically follows that making them harder to drive through won’t make them less appealing.

While the congestion charge may make the city less attractive to cars, it iws likely to make it more attractive to people, and easier to access and travel through for the people who value being there.  Ironically, Cowen’s argument mimics the early and now long forgotten arguments against parking meters in cities.  Charging people for urban space causes them to use in more efficiently, and tends to allocate it to users who value it highly (and who contribute greatly to the local economy).

New Knowledge

Traffic calming and traffic evaporation.  One of the chief concerns with road diets, low traffic neighborhoods and other systems of bike/pedestrian improvements is that such measures will divert and concentrate traffic on other nearby streets. A new literature review from Germany summarizes the results of evaluations of such projects in several European cities and concludes that, contrary to these oft-raised concerns, traffic largely evaporates, rather than being displaced.

The authors conclude:

Overall, the empirical findings from Germany and abroad invalidate the fears that consistent traffic calming measures will merely shift the problem to the adjacent road network. On the contrary: Almost all surveys confirm the phenomenon of “traffic evaporation”– the volume of traffic does not just flow away one-to-one like a liquid elsewhere, but is reduced as a whole.

The authors report that studies show that traffic tends to decline in  extensive traffic calming projects between 15 and 28 percent, within entire inner cities by between 25 and 69 percent, in the area surrounding individual redesigned streets by between 4 and 52 percent.

The effect can be explained by a change in traffic behavior: the more attractive footpaths and cycle paths are, the more people use them.  Although the measurements certainly show displacement effects in adjoining streets, these are usually moderate

Uta Bauer, Sonja Bettge & Thoams Stein, Traffic calming: discharge instead of collapse! Measures and their effects in German and European cities. German Institute for Urban Studies (Difu), Berlin, 2023.  (Text in German). (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0965856421000872#!). (Quotations translated from German via Google Translate and abridged)

What City Observatory did this week

Few highway construction dollars for Black-owned firms in Oregon.  The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) is falling short of its own goals of contracting with disadvantaged business enterprises. One-tenth of one percent of construction contracts for the I-205 Abernethy Bridge, ODOT’s largest current project, went to Black construction firms.

ODOT professed a strong interest in helping Black contractors as a selling point for the
I-5 Rose Quarter project, but instead advanced the I-205 Abernethy Bridge project, which has provided very little opportunities for Black-owned firms.  Apparently, ODOT is only interested in helping Black-owned businesses if it helps the agency sell a project in Northeast Portland (home to Portland’s historically Black Albina neighborhhood.

Must Read

How the mighty have fallen.  Bloomberg Business Week looks back at the history of urban economic success (and decline) in a data-fueled column.  His thesis is that despite its current challenges, San Francisco is unlikely to become an economic basket-case.  The case is buttressed by a look back at the nation’s highest income metropolitan areas from 1949.  It’s a fascinating list:  Some are still at the top; but others have fallen.  Surprisingly, from today’s perspective, the richest metro list is populated mostly by the industrial powerhouses that have struggled in the intervening seven decades.  Detroit was number one; and no fewer than six Ohio metros ranked in the top fifteen.

Nearly all of these older industrial centers have fallen out of the top rank of US metros.  As Fox points out, their places have been taken chiefly by emerging tech centers in other parts of the nation.  The cities have have consistently been in the top rank include New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington DC.  These large, diverse, knowledge-driven urban economies are the ones that have adapted best to economic transition, and are likely to do so in the future.

A new look at the destruction of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street.  The folks at Segregation by Design have a powerful new animation showing the demolition of the Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood.  The neighborhood, often called “Black Wall Street” was famously destroyed in the Tulsa Massacre of 1924, but then rebuilt and actually reached its zenith years later, only to recieve its final coup de grace courtesy of the Oklahoma highway department, that plowed two interstate freeways through the heart of the negibhorhood.

Via twitter, Segregation by Design has a short animation showing how highway construction obliterated hundreds of homes and businesses, producing scars that have yet to heal.

New Knowledge

Low wage workers have seen significant wage gains since the pandemic.  Labor economist Arin Dube tweeted the most recent data on wage changes since the pandemic.  Strikingly, the gains in wages have been proportionately higher for front-line workers (the production and non-supervisory workers who make up 80 percent of the private sector workforce), compared to other workers.

Wages for both categories of workers surged during the early days of the pandemic (due primarily to a composition effect–part-time and low wage workers had fewer hours of work during the pandemic.  As the dashed line on the chart shows, the latest data show that wages for front line workers are significantly outperforming wages for all workers , and that they are about on trend for where they were prior to the pandemic.  Wages for all workers are rising more slowly and sare still below trend.

The data are evidence of “wage compression”–i.e. a falling difference in wages between the highest paid and lowest paid workers.  The continued tight labor markets that have persisted since the pandemic appear to be bolstering the wages of the lowest paid workers.

 

 

What City Observatory did this week

We have an in-depth series of reports on the Oregon Department of Transportation’s imploding I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening project.

The cost of the I-5 Rose Quarter project has now quadrupled to $1.9 billion—it was a mere $450 million when it was sold to the Legislature in 2017.

ODOT hasn’t admitted its Rose Quarter project is actually dead, even though it has a $1.7 billion funding shortfall.  Instead, the agency is playing a game called “Extend and pretend“—spending $40 to $60 million over the next two years to advance design work on the main part of the project to 30 percent completion, in hopes that someone will magically provide the needed funding.

Despite the project’s ballooning price-tag, ODOT officials claim its too late to do anything to reduce the size, scope or cost of the project, claiming they’ve reached a “pens down” moment.  That’s factually untrue:  the agency is still in the throes of designing the project, and just released yet another previously un-seen design concept including a new flyover ramp last month.  Nothing in federal regulations precludes “right-sizing” the project even after funding and initial environmental approvals are received: that’s exactly what FHWA allowed with Cincinnati’s Brent Spence Bridge which was just sliced by about 40 percent in size and cost.  Finally, federal regulations prohibit environmental approvals for projects that don’t have “reasonably available funding” and the Rose Quarter is nowhere close to that standard, by ODOT’s own admission.

The apparent collapse of the Rose Quarter project has angered many in Portland’s Black community, who were promised the project would somehow help restore the neighborhood devastated by the original freeway construction, as well as providing a bonanza of jobs and contracting opportunities for the community.  Instead, ODOT took $450 million originally earmarked for the Rose Quarter project and diverted it to paying for the I-205 Abernethy Bridge, in suburban (and vastly whiter) West Linn Oregon.  ODOT’s even signed contracts and started construction on this project, and its cost has now increased to $622 million.

Must Read

Freeways and the damage done:  don’t just acknowledge, change.  Transportation for America has a powerful new report—Divided by Design—on the damage that freeways have done to the nation’s cities, and the policy changes that need to be made to repair that harm, and prevent further destruction.  Case studies of Washington and Atlanta show how urban freeways have decimated neighborhoods, displaced people–especially people of color–and harmed local budgets.  Lately, its become fashionable for highway agencies to publicly acknowledge this harm; but most of that acknowledgement is purely rhetorical and performative, because the same agencies, including the US DOT are doubling down on their historic mistakes by pumping more billions into the same failed policies and projects.  The Transportation for America reports decries this duplicity:

 [Federal and state leaders] intent to do things differently or better than their publicly racist forebears in the 1950s and 1960s is irrelevant when many of those previous practices are still deeply embedded in the transportation policies and standards of today. Today’s leaders must understand how the past is still shaping current practices. They must reevaluate how their decisions are made and who their decisions serve.  Congress and the federal government are right in part: it is time to fix the harms of our transportation system, but creating tiny new programs will fail to address the damage.

Transportation for America has a series of specific, substantive recommendations for addressing and correcting the inequities woven into the current structure of transportation policy in the US.

Utah’s smart road usage charge experiment.  Kea Wilson at Streetsblog reports on Utah’s application of the latest technology to road use charging.  It’s increasingly apparent that the gas tax is in terminal decline as a way to pay for roads, and state and federal governments are scrambling to come up with an alternative.  The choice is likely to come down to some kind of VMT (vehicle mile traveled) fee, but the big policy question is whether it will be a smart fee, or a dumb one.  The simple minded approach is to charge a flat fee per mile, but not all vehicles and not all miles are created equal.  Providing capacity for travel at peak hours is much more expensive, as is accommodating heavier, more dangerous and more highly polluting vehicles.  Utah’s monitoring system provided by technology startup ClearRoad allows road user fees to vary by vehicle, by time of date, and by road traveled. Utah is testing

a new GPS-equipped dongle that will not just monitor how much motorists drive, but exactly where they do it, down the specific lane on the highway they choose. Then, communities can consolidate that data into a single road usage charge that can be automatically adjusted based on their unique priorities — think extra tolls for using the express lane, or graduated fees for low-income motorists who truly have to drive — and automatically distributed to the agencies that manage the exact roadways those drivers’ actually traveled.

We get one chance a century to change the way we pay for transportation:  we need to get this right.  Smart technology can enable a smart choice.

In the news

City Observatory Director Joe Cortright was named one of the 100 Most Influential Urbanists, Past and Present in a poll conducted by Planetizen.

 

What City Observatory did this week

Yet another exploding whale:  One of the Internet’s most popular videos shows employees of the Oregon Department of Transportation blowing up a dead whale carcass stranded on an Ocean beach, with bystanders running in terror from a rain of blubber.  ODOT’s latest fiasco is the exploding price tag of its 1.5 mile I-5 Rose Quiarter Freeway project.  This week the agency announced the price of the freeway widening project in Northeast Portland had increased yet again, to as much as $1.9 billion, more than four times the price quoted to the Oregon Legislature when it voted to approve $450 million in funding six years ago.

In addition to a ballooning price tag, ODOT spent the money the Legislature originally appropriated for the project on another freeway (in Portland’s suburbs) and is, according to OTC Member Sharon Smith “out of money.”  It looks like the Rose Quarter is a dead freeway walking.

Must Read

Portland’s “Missing Middle” reforms start bearing fruit.  Just a year ago, the Portland City Council approved the city’s “Residential Infill Policy” to allow a greater variety of housing, including multi-plex units to be built in the city’s previously exclusively single family zones.  It’s still early days for the policy, but an interim report from the Portland Planning Bureau shows that more housing in the pipeline, on its way to getting built.

The city reports that in its first year, new policy produced permits for 271 units of middle housing (duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes and sixplexes) in what were formerly single-family zones. Three-quarters of these were in fourplexes.  And over the past year, permits for “middle housing” in these residential zones well outpaced permits for conventional single family homes (just 78 were permitted).  This appears to represent strong demand for additional density.

Overall, the policy resulted in approving the construction of about 3.4 units on each lot.  Middle housing provides considerably more housing per lot than the city’s permitting of accessory dwelling units (ADUs): the 126 houses and accessory dwelling units built in conjunction with a house were built on 102 lots (about 1.2 units per lot).

Americans prefer walkable neighborhoods and will pay a premium for them.  A new survey from the National Association of Realtors shows that Americans are looking for places that are walkable and have an abundance of amenities and destinations close-by.  And importantly, most signal that they are willing to pay more for to live in these walkable places.

The realtor group’s findings confirm a growing body of research, including our own City Observatory analysis, showing that houses with higher walk scores  command higher prices than other, less walkable houses, even after controlling for a wide array of characteristics that influence home values.  The premium for walkability is an indication that we haven’t built enough walkable neighborhoods in the US, and that we haven’t built enough housing in those places with high levels of walkability.

New Knowledge

Accessibility:  Proximity to Activity Centers.  Adie Tomer and Caroline George of the Brookings Institution’s Metro program have a new research report looking at the connection between activity centers and travel in the nation’s large metropolitan areas.

The report studies how distance to activity centers (concentrations of workplaces, stores, institutions and other common destinations) influences the travel behavior of households.  The study relies on detailed mapping of large US metro areas, and anonymized data from mobile devices to measure travel patterns.  Here’s a map showing person miles of travel for the Portland metropolitan area.

The key takeaway is that living in a more accessible location, in this case, defined as being within 3 miles of at least five defined activity centers, produces a significant reduction in daily travel.  In Portland, for example, households living within 3 miles of five or more activity centers travel about a third less than households living seven miles or more from 5 activity centers.  As Brookings points out, less driving translates into lower travel expense for households–and reduced carbon emissions.

The Brookings report is a helpful reminder that land use patterns–particularly accessibility to a rich set of destinations–is a key to reducing automobile dependence.  Essentially what we have to do is reverse the pattern of the past several decades, where people and activities became more dispersed, leading to greater driving, travel cost and pollution.

Metropolitan America has now spent nearly a century undercutting the importance of proximity. Urban land area grew 1.4 times faster than the population between 1960 and 2020, leading to drops in overall population density, significant increases in roadway lane miles, and longer distances between where people live and where they need to go. The result is a multi-decade expansion of the average mileage each person travels per day, or what’s known as PMT: from 19.5 miles in 1969 to 40 miles in 2017. Covering those kinds of distances overwhelmingly favors car usage, so it is little surprise that 92% of American households now have access—often by necessity—to a private vehicle.

Adie Tomer & Caroline George, Building for proximity: The role of activity centers in reducing total miles traveled, Brookings Institution, , June 29, 2023,

Building for proximity: The role of activity centers in reducing total miles traveled

Note:  City Observatory reviewed and commented on a prepublication draft of this report; City Observatory was not compensated for its review.

In the news

Axios Portland quoted City Observatory Director Joe Cortright in its story on Oregon lawmakers voting funding for the Interstate Bridge Replacement Project.