Testimony to the Oregon Transportation Commission
July 24, 20225
Joe Cortright
City Observatory
Editor’s note: On July 24, 2025, the Oregon Transportation Commission voted to continue work on the I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway project, even in the face of a more than $1.5 billion funding gap, the combined result of continuing cost overruns, Congressional revocation of a $400 million federal grant, and the Oregon Legislature’s decision not to provide additional funding for ODOT in the 2025 session. Even as the agency lays of hundreds of employees, it is proceeding with ground breaking for a project which it can’t pay for. Â
Accountability means learning from experience, and especially, learning from mistakes.
ODOT’s current financial problems are largely a product of its own making.
ODOT staff haven’t accurately predicted or managed costs and have been excessively optimistic about future revenues.
They’ve marched ahead with mega-projects they didn’t have full funding for, doing anything—saying anything—just to get a project started, knowing that once it was started, you would have not choice but to provide the money to finish it.
This was foreseeable and foreseen. Highway builders have been pulling this stunt since Moses–Robert Moses in New York–and ODOT staff have shamelessly copied him.
Take the Abernethy Bridge. It was never funded in HB 2017. ODOT cobbled together $50 million from a variety of sources–including maintenance funds–just to get it started, and then promised it would pay for construction with toll revenues. It underestimated the cost (which tripled from $248 million to $815 million), and when toll revenue evaporated, it borrowed funds from Rose Quarter and the department’s commercial paper line; both of which aggravated the agency’s growing financial problem.
You obviously can’t undo that now. But what you must do–what you have a moral obligation to do in the name of accountability–is to show that you’ve learned that lesson, and not commit exactly the same mistake again on the Rose Quarter.
The funding for the project has evaporated: The federal government has taken back $400 million. The Legislature said “NO” to the anchor projects fund–at least for the time being, and maybe indefinitely. The Rose Quarter is a poster-child of bloat. Costs have quadrupled from $450 million to $2.1 billion and could go as high as $2.5 billion according to Commissioner Chapman. ODOT’s own independent engineers, the international firm ARUP, said the roadway is 40 feet wider than it needs to be. When you asked prudent questions two years ago, you were told it was too late–“pens down” because un-named federal partners would disapprove.
The lesson is: Don’t start construction for projects that you don’t have full funding for their maximum costs.
Take the time to line up a realistic, conservative finance plan that pays all the costs, and if need be, right-size the project to fit the available funds.
Now what you must do is figure out how to set the kind of absolute priority for maintenance and core functions that you have implicitly provided to highway mega-projects. Your first dollar of spending should go to maintaining the existing system, protecting traveler safety and keeping a competent ODOT operations team.
Ironically–as your staff well knows–you cannot sell bonds for a toll-financed facility unless you guarantee that the first dollar of funding goes to maintain and periodically rebuild the roadway and infrastructure. Bond holders insist on that provision to assure repayment AND because they know too often highway agencies like ODOT succumb to the temptation to divert revenues to more politically attractive expansion projects and neglect maintenance.
As I’ve repeatedly testified: It’s a management axiom that you get the behavior you reward. You need to stop rewarding low-ball cost estimates, cost overruns, and optimistic revenue assumptions. Instead, reward managers and employees for maintaining the condition and safety of the public’s considerable investment in highways.
Note:Â This is testimony as prepared; the delivered version was edited to comply with the Commission’s time limit.