Happy Earth Day, Oregon! Let’s spend billions widening freeways!
Despite legal pledges to reduce greenhouse gases to address climate change, Oregon’s transportation greenhouse gas emissions are going up, not down. | City Observatory
What City Observatory Did this Week The misleadingly mis-named “bridge replacement project: Only a fifth of the multi-billion dollar cost of the IBR project pays for a new bridge over the Columbia. The Interstate Bridge| City Observatory
The Interstate “bridge replacement” gets marketed primarily as a project to serve cyclists and pedestrians. But its really about widening five miles of freeway, ostensibly to move 180,000 cars a day, something you’d never know by looking at project renderings.| City Observatory
On and off ramps for the Interstate Bridge Project on Hayden Island, south of the Columbia River.Calling it just a “replacement” is PR gimmick to conceal all these elements of the project. But it also conceals where the real money is going: the reality is that the “replacement” of the two existing I-5 bridges, is just a small part of the project’s total costs—only about one fifth of the cost of the project, according to its own estimates.| cityobservatory.org
How can we trust Metro’s model to predict the future, when it can’t even match the present?| City Observatory
The case for the $7.5 billion Interstate Bridge Replacement Project is based on traffic projections from Metro’s “Kate” travel demand model. But there’s a huge problem: Kate doesn’t accurately model even current levels of traffic. | City Observatory
Oregon and Washington have commissioned not just one forecast of future traffic levels on I-5 and I-205, but three different forecasts.| City Observatory
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The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT’) has a big management problem: huge cost overruns on highway mega-projects. Just three Portland area highway projects—The Interstate Bridge Replacement, the I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening and the I-205 Abernethy Bridge have chalked up cost overruns totaling $4.8 billion in just the past five years.| City Observatory
Just 13 months after raising the price of the Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) project by more than 50 percent, the state DOTs ay it will cost even more| City Observatory
The Oregon Department of Transportation is launching a series of boondoggle freeways, with no idea of their ultimate cost, and issuing bonds that will obligate the public to pay for expensive and un-needed highways.| City Observatory
Must Read Crime is down in supposedly “crime-ridden” cities. The Trump administration is using false claims of a surge in crime and violence as a pretext for sending armed troops to major American cities. While| City Observatory
What City Observatory Did This Week A bridge too low, again. Just as a decade ago, the Oregon and Washington highway departments are trying to build a bridge across the Columbia River that is too| City Observatory
You can’t build a bridge across a navigable waterway in the United States without a permit from the US Coast Guard. The Coast Guard has always been clear that it wants a 178 foot clearance| City Observatory
What City Observatory Did This Week Federal funding of the Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) Project is in jeopardy, largely due to self-inflicted delays and questionable planning. The IBR now seems headed for the perfect political-bureaucratic-financial| City Observatory
The Interstate Bridge Project is in deep trouble The IBR is two and a half years behind its own schedule, and its environmental review will take almost five years rather than about half that much| City Observatory
What City Observatory Did This Week The Interstate Bridge Project continues to fall behind schedule. In 2020, IBR told legislators they’d have a record of decision in the summer of 2023. It now appears that the| City Observatory
Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gases in the Portland area, and is increasing, at a time when our plans call for GHGs to be decreasing. Metro’s Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) counted on congestion| City Observatory
Traffic levels are going down on the I-5 bridges connecting Portland and Vancouver, even as the Oregon and Washington Transportation Departments are proposing a massive expansion that could end up costing $10 billion.| City Observatory
Economic Segregation| cityobservatory.org
The Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) project is once again delaying releasing a new cost estimate. It’s an ominous sign that the cost is going to be much, much higher.| City Observatory
New and Improved ODOT! Now with “accountability*”| City Observatory
Score this round for the Detroit freeway fighters: For years the Michigan Department of Transportation has been trying to sell the city and neighborhoods on rebuilding I-375, a roadway that devastated historically Black neighborhoods in Detroit. Now, to use the preferred highway department euphemism, they’ve “paused” the proposed reconstruction.| City Observatory
America’s unshakeable belief in a non-existent trend in murder. File this under extreme cognitive dissonance. As we have always pointed out at City Observatory, the data shows decades of steady decreases in crime in US cities. By every measure, but especially by murder rates, crime is vastly lower now than it was in the 80s or 90s. Despite a blip in disorder and crime in the wake of the pandemic, crime rates are again continuing to decline, almost everywhere. But survey research s...| City Observatory
HB 2025 doesn’t fix the Oregon Department of Transportation’s financial problem—it makes it even bigger| City Observatory
IBR is once again delaying releasing a new cost estimate for the Interstate Bridge Project. It’s an ominous sign that the cost is going to be much, much higher.| City Observatory
A new report purports to provide a roadmap for accountability at the Oregon Department of Transportation. In short, its a work of conflicted consultants, with a long history of cost overruns and excessive spending, offering slightly recycled versions of measures that have failed to control costs for the past decade.| City Observatory
Despite legal pledges to reduce greenhouse gases to address climate change, Oregon’s transportation greenhouse gas emissions are going up, not down. | City Observatory
The City Observatory is a study of modern-day cities and urban development practices.| City Observatory
