Sigh. Here we are again, another year, and yet another uninformative, and actively misleading congestion cost report from Inrix. More myth and misdirection from highly numerate charlatans. Burying the lede:  Traffic congestion is now lower than it was in 2019, and congestion declined twice as much as the decline in vehicle travel. Today, Inrix released […]

Reporters:  read this before you write a “cost of congestion” story. Congestion cost studies are a classic example of pseudo-science:  Big data and bad assumptions produce meaningless results Using this absurd methodology, you can show: Waiting at traffic signals costs us $8 billion a year—ignoring what it would cost in time and money to have

What City Observatory did this week The case against the I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening.  This week marked the end of public comment on the Supplemental Environmental Assessment for the Oregon Department of Transportation’s proposed $1.45 billion I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening projects.  At a billion dollars a mile, its one of the world’s most

Portland is weighing whether to spend as much as $1.45 billion dollars widening a mile-long stretch of the I-5 freeway at the Rose Quarter near downtown. We’ve dug deeply into this idea at City Observatory, and we’ve published more than 50 commentaries addressing various aspects of the project over the past four years.  Here’s a

The science of induced travel is well proven, but state DOTs are in utter denial Widening freeways not only fails to reduce congestion, it inevitably results in more vehicle travel and more pollution The Oregon Department of Transportation has published a technical manual banning the consideration of induced travel in Oregon highway projects. The Oregon

ODOT’s own traffic data shows that daily traffic (ADT) has been declining for 25 years, by -0.55 percent per year The ODOT modeling inexplicably predicts that traffic will suddenly start growing through 2045, growing by 0.68 percent per year ODOT’s modeling falsely claims that traffic will be the same regardless of whether the I-5 freeway

The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) desperately wants to build a mega-freeway through NE Portland, and is planning to double the freeway from 4 lanes to 8 or 10 lanes.  But it has hidden its true objective, by claiming only to add two “auxiliary” lanes to the existing 4 lane freeway, and arguing (falsely) that

The real expense of the $5 billion I-5 bridge replacement project isn’t actually building a new bridge over the Columbia River:  It’s widening miles of freeway and rebuilding every intersection north and south of the river.  A decade ago, an independent panel of experts convened by OR and WA governor’s strongly recommended to ODOR and WSDOT

Editor’s Note:  Public Comment on the I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway Project Between now and January 4, 2023, the public will be asked to weigh in with its comments on the proposed I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway Widening project.  If you’re interested, you can make your voice heard.  For more information on how to comment, we urge

The price of the I-5 “bridge replacement” project just increased by more than 50 percent, from $4.8 billion to $7.5 billion ODOT and WSDOT are blaming “higher inflation” for IBR cost overruns As we’ve noted, the Oregon Department of Transportation has a long string of 100 percent cost-overruns on its major projects.  Almost every large