Handout for the Columbia River Crossing meeting

Portland Peak Oil - July 2nd, 2008

What’s Being Decided?

On July 9th, Portland City Council will hold a public hearing on the Locally Preferred Alternate (LPA) for the Columbia River Crossing project. The LPA establishes support by local governments for the basic parameters of the project. The proposed LPA calls for the demolition of the existing I-5 Columbia River bridges and construction of a replacement bridge with up to twelve freeway lanes, Light Rail and bicycle and pedestrian facilities.

A point of controversy is who will decide exactly how many freeway lanes the bridge has. A committee representing local governments is being formed (Metro, City of Portland and TriMet from the Oregon side). But their role has been described by Governors Kulongoski and Gregoire as “advisory” to the two state departments of transportation.

The total project including the Freeway Bridge, Interchange Improvements and Light Rail is estimated to cost up to $4.2B.

How You Can Help

Come to the hearing and testify, or write to City Council before July 9th and express your concerns. In particular, members of Portland Peak Oil are well positioned to emphasize that large increases in auto capacity are inappropriate investments for a future that will be characterized by much higher energy prices and uncertain supplies of petroleum.

Other message points:

•    The bridge will be paid for by borrowing against future gas tax and toll revenues. If energy prices and fuel scarcity reduce driving, these revenue streams will decrease and other scarce public funds will go to repay the bonds.

•    Demolishing the current bridges wastes a public asset worth perhaps a $1B.

•    The analysis process for the project failed to take into account the effects of sprawl that will be created by the increased freeway capacity.

•    Critical project design decisions will greatly impact the community and should be under the control of local governments.

•    Independent analysis of demand projections and greenhouse gas impacts should be conducted.

Additional Resources:

http://smarterbridge.org/ - A better plan for the crossing, clearing house for advocacy

http://www.clfuture.org/projects/ShiftTheBalance/Columbia%20River%20Crossing/CRCIntro/document_view   - the Coalition for a Livable Future’s Climate Smart Crossing initiative

http://portlandtransport.com/archives/projects/columbia_crossing - three years of discussion as the project plan developed

http://columbiarivercrossing.com - official project web site

 

Hearing Details:

2pm, Wednesday, July 9th

Portland City Council Chambers

City Hall

1221 SW 4th Ave

Portland, OR 97204

Portland City Council Contact Info:

TOM POTTER, MAYOR

Commissioner of Finance and Administration

1221 SW 4th Ave, Room 340, 97204

(503)823-4120

website: http://www.portlandonline.com/mayor/

e-mail: mayorpotter@ci.portland.or.us

SAM ADAMS

Commissioner of Public Utilities

Position Number 1

1221 SW 4th Ave, Room 220, 97204

(503)823-3008

website: http://www.portlandonline.com/adams/

e-mail: sadams@ci.portland.or.us

NICK FISH

Commissioner of Public Works

Position Number 2

1221 SW 4th Ave, Room 240, 97204

(503) 823-3589

website: www.portlandonline.com/fish

e-mail: Nick@ci.portland.or.us

RANDY LEONARD

Commissioner of Public Safety

Position Number 4

1221 SW 4th Ave, Room 210, 97204

(503)823-4682

website: http://www.portlandonline.com/leonard

e-mail: randy@ci.portland.or.us

DAN SALTZMAN

Commissioner of Public Affairs

Position Number 3

1221 SW 4th Ave, Room 230, 97204

(503)823-4151

website: http://www.portlandonline.com/saltzman

e-mail: dsaltzman@ci.portland.or.us

 

Blue Oregon Guest Post on CRC by Ron Buel

The Portland City Council will be holding a public hearing on the proposed $4.2 billion, 12-lane I-5 bridge on Wednesday, July 9 at City Hall.   

If you haven’t been playing a role in this little drama, if you haven’t even been following it closely, you are missing a perfect opportunity to understand how politics works in Portland and Oregon in these times.   The most crucial decision the City and Region will make in the last 25 years will have passed you by, when you could be affecting the outcome.

Why should you join those of us who are opposing this mega-bridge and show up next Wednesday at City Council to add your voice to the fray?   

You can help stop the scripted, managed lobbying effort that is about to achieve a big win.   By stopping the powerful forces in the auto, freight, oil and highway construction lobby who have put this effort together, this is a chance for Portland to put a final nail in the coffin of the paving mentality that threatens our planet with climate change, and has made all of us dependent on oil from the Middle East.  

You can join us to call for a new political era that builds a dense, compact, sustainable city and region, a city and region that require less driving, build a competitive-with-the-auto transit system, and actually reduces fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions.   And you can help us to hold the local and state politicians’ feet to the fire – hold them accountable for their own words, their own pledges, their own stated laws and policies.  With this big new bridge project, they have strayed far from their own votes, their own rhetoric, from the goals and objectives of their own resolutions and bills.  

Governor Ted Kulongoski is most to blame.   He is quoted in The Oregonian last week saying “I want Oregon to lead the nation in cutting greenhouse gases…”   He has appointed a new blue-ribbon commission, chaired by Angus Duncan, to develop a statewide climate change plan and legislation for the 2009 session of the legislature.  

The Governor knows that 35% to 40% of the greenhouse gas emissions here are caused by fossil fuel use from transportation.   He knows that the only real way to get on track against the climate change goals he has championed through the legislature is to reduce driving, to reduce vehicle miles traveled.   

Yet, he talks out the other side of his mouth when he enables the addition of six lanes of highway capacity in this big new bridge and the surrounding “bridge impact area”.   He calls for a bridge that he knows will induce significant single-occupancy-vehicle travel, and sprawl in Clark County.   He knows it is contrary to his stated beliefs, policy and state law.   

Ted simply yields to the political pressure for building this new freeway capacity.   When Mayor-elect Sam Adams and Metro President David Bragdon ask for the design pencil in their hands (because they understand the deception involved here, the contradictions and the lies), Ted gives them private reassurances, but in public, he stands behind his Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) and says the local governments will only be advisory.   Which are our local elected officials to believe – Ted’s private assurances or the long ODOT track record of paving everything it can get its hands on?  David and Sam – I advise you to bet on ODOT to win.

Kulongoski  and the Chair of his Transportation Commission Gail Achterman, a supposed environmentalist, are doing nothing to reform ODOT or to come to terms with the contradictions inherent in this project.   Where is their talk of tapping the gas tax for transit, which we need an initiative or legislative referral to do?   Where is their tough talk with the freight lobby, telling them the truth, that if we get single-occupancy vehicles off the road, get drivers onto transit, there will be room for freight on our highways?  Where is the Governor’s call for Tri-Met (which the Governor appoints) to put together a real transit system for our region, one that is grade-separated so it is competitive with the auto on a time basis, one that has a network of origins and destinations that serves the dispersed work and shopping locations throughout our region.  Kulongoski and Achterman and Fred Hansen of Tri-Met want us all to act as if a single light rail line to Vancouver is a meaningful contribution to our need for transit, fulfilling the region’s commitment to transit, when what it really constitutes is a ridiculous green-washing of this big new bridge, and a denial of our commitment to deal with climate change.

Of course, David Bragdon and the Metro Council aren’t off the hook yet themselves.  Their Regional Transportation Plan calls for reducing auto travel, increasing density and transit improvements – big surprise.   But they have rejected efforts by Robert Liberty to bring this project into compliance with the principles of that plan.  Facing incredible political pressure, they called for a replacement bridge in their advice to the Columbia River Crossing Task Force, but one that “reduces vehicle miles traveled.”  Rex Burkholder, the leading advocate for the big new bridge, objected.  He said, “This is a bridge project.  How can it reduce vehicle miles traveled.”    But Bragdon voted with Collette, Hosticka and Liberty for the amendment, which carried 4-3.   As Metro’s vote for the replacement bridge as the Locally Preferred Alternative nears, Bragdon and Metro must rely on the Governor’s private assurances that they can significantly downsize the bridge, that Metro can control ODOT, that they can reduce vehicle miles traveled.       

The City Council has similar problems.   Not only did the City Council recently vote unanimously for the resolution of the Peak Oil Task Force to reduce fossil fuel use by 50% in the City by 2030.   They are also ignoring the advice of their own Sustainable Development Commission – advice to wait on the decision to sort out peak oil and $4-a-gallon gas, and the fact that driving on the I-5 bridge is down in the last year, as is driving in the region.   Facing the political pressure, the City Council unanimously signed a letter to the CRC Task Force, prior to any public hearing, calling for a replacement bridge but asking for a set of conditions mostly similar to those asked for by Metro.   Again, when the vote comes up for the City to decide on the replacement bridge as the Locally Preferred Alternative, the Council members must rely on the Governor’s private assurances that the council’s conditions for creating a gentler, prettier, cleaner bridge will be met.

How do the Governor and the City Council and Metro find themselves ignoring their own policies, their own plans, their own votes, their own rhetoric?   How do they go along with a project they can’t finance, one that will cut dramatically into the money that we need  to build the alternatives to the auto, in order to reduce vehicle miles traveled and deal with transportation-caused greenhouse gas emissions?

It’s not a thing you like to admit about progressive Oregon and Portland, with a nation-leading track record of smart, compact growth, sustainability and light rail.   But the reason is special interest politics.   The campaign for this big new bridge is led by a unified Portland Business Alliance, the Columbia-Pacific Building Trades Council and the Oregon Truckers Association.   The CRC Task Force employs some of our leading architectural and planning firms as consultants.   Progressive Tom Markgraf, who worked for Congressman Blumenauer (who has been strangely silent through this matter), is a good example.  Tom is on the CRC Task Force Staff and has masterfully put together this clever, winning lobby effort, gaining the support of The Oregonian and the Portland Tribune as well.  

If you testify at City Council next Wednesday, here are the holes in the lobby campaign:

The CRC task force has acted as if there is no such thing as induced travel.  Induced travel means the scientifically-proven additional travel you get when you add to highway capacity.  The Clark County land-use projections used for the false No-Build 2030 projection are the same land-use projections they have used for the big, new replacement bridge.  How can this be?   What this means is that they have vastly under-stated the impact of the big new bridge.   They have stated that, because of tolls and transit, the big new bridge won’t cause much more traffic than if we don’t build one.   They have ignored the 6,000 acres of un-developed farm and forest land zoned for housing in the “urban growth areas” and the suburban fringe towns in Clark County near I-5 – towns like Battleground, Ridgefield, and La Center.  With the price of oil what it is, this housing won’t be built if we don’t build the big new bridge.  But the history of the Glenn Jackson Bridge and other highway capacity additions across the nation shows that it will be built if we construct the big replacement bridge, and there will be resulting travel increases.

On the other side of the coin, the lobby campaign has vastly over-estimated the need for the big new bridge.  Not that there isn’t congestion on the bridge today.  But the project staff and politicians have repeatedly stated that, in the No Build scenario, the congestion will more than double in the next 22 years.  It truly strains credulity to ask us to believe that people will choose to live in Clark County and commute to Portland in the face of such growing congestion.   But there is an additional problem that is ignored, downplayed and lied about by the Task Force Staff.   As oil hits $4 a barrel and gas prices rocket skyward, there is a paradigm shift going on.   People are driving less and riding transit more.   Big, gas-guzzling SUVs and Pick-ups are a glut on the market.   Waiting lines in Portland for hybrids are up to three months.   Purchases of gas and deisel are down.  Freight is converting to rail, as much as rail capacity allows.   This throws into further question the need for the additional highway capacity planned for the big, new bridge.   Traffic on the bridge was down in March by more than 3% from a year ago.   What does the future hold – the assumptions of a 40% increase in vehicle miles traveled in the region between now and 2030 as projected by CRC Task Force staff, or something else caused by Peak Oil?  

If tolls are put on the big new bridge, they would need to be bonded.  Bondholders will have the right to say that we must pay them the projected toll amounts, and that we can’t do projects to reduce driving if it means they don’t get paid.   

There is no carbon tax regime or a cap-and-trade policy on carbon in the planning for the big new bridge.  

There is no commuter rail planned to and from Union Station and Vancouver Station.  Rail is largely absent from the DEIS except for the single light rail line in the corridor.

With respect to climate change, the hole in the CRC Task Force analysis is a gaping one.  The Task Force has said that greenhouse gas emissions will actually go down if the big, new bridge is built, because the cars going through the bridge impact area will be going faster.  They won’t be sitting in a stop-and-go situation, emitting greenhouse gas.  This analysis is nothing short of ridiculous, ignoring all second-level effects. It ignores induced travel and the fact that when you add capacity to reduce the congestion in one bottleneck, you simply move the congestion down the road to other locations.   

The States of Oregon and Washington mandate, on projects like this, that there must be a lower-cost alternative as part of the range of alternatives being considered.   Do we really need to spend $4.2 billion, laws and policies ask.   Metro asked the CRC Task Force for such a low-cost alternative, the so-called A-plus alternative, which involved an arterial bridge for local traffic, for light rail, and for pedestrians and bicycles.  ODOT, Wash-Dot and the CRC Task Force staff systematically ruled out all such low-cost alternatives, and sold the larger 39-person task force on not broadening the range being considered by local governments.   Such alternatives didn’t meet their narrow, congestion-based statement of purpose and need.  They wanted a clear-cut decision on a big, new replacement bridge – yes or no only.   

Join us Wednesday at City Hall to ask for a supplemental environmental impact statement that includes a low-cost alternative.   If the City Council won’t play ball, the big new replacement bridge won’t go forward.    You can help Council do the right thing.