PORTLAND – Six community advocacy organizations have filed a second lawsuit to stop the Oregon Department of Transportation’s (ODOT) $1.9 billion proposal to double the width of Interstate 5, a road expansion that would tarnish existing community plans to rebuild and heal North Portland’s historic Albina neighborhood.
“This lawsuit is our community’s opportunity to prevent ODOT from shoving all the air pollution and traffic that an expanded freeway brings through the recovering Albina neighborhood,” said Chris Smith, co-founder of No More Freeways.
No More Freeways, Neighbors for Clean Air, Association of Oregon Rail Transit Advocates (AORTA), Oregon Families for Safe Streets and BikeLoudPDX are co-plaintiffs alleging that ODOT violated federal environmental standards as established through the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). ODOT’s proposed freeway widening would double the width of the existing Interstate 5, which currently runs through the Albina neighborhood and in the backyard of Harriet Tubman Middle School. The NEPA lawsuit asserts ODOT has refused to study cost-effective alternatives to freeway expansion and that the agency must conduct a full Environmental Impact Statement that more accurately analyzes the climate and air pollution impacts of the proposed freeway widening.
“There is significant community opposition to the freeway expansion components of this project,” said Allan Rudwick, Chair of the Land Use Committee of the Eliot Neighborhood Association. “ODOT is pretending the overwhelming community enthusiasm and support for restorative investments in Albina and elsewhere in the neighborhood extends to their destructive proposal to fill our neighborhood with traffic and air pollution. Thousands of Portlanders have repeatedly demanded ODOT tell the truth about their plans to double the width of Interstate 5 and insist the agency study alternatives to widening I-5 into the backyard of Harriet Tubman Middle School’s campus. Every rendering from ODOT shows more lanes and more cars on local roads while on the bike and transit front they have fairly major disruption during the project and no benefits after it’s done.”
Community advocates are also concerned that the staggering price tag for this proposed freeway expansion will jeopardize the state’s ability to invest in the backlogged road maintenance and street safety needs of Oregon’s existing statewide system. ODOT has identified an annual $1.9 billion budget gap on the network of roads and bridges owned by the state, and Oregon has experienced a 70% increase in traffic fatalities since 2010 largely due to disinvestment in street safety.
“ODOT is broke, and the additional lanes of freeway that our lawsuit challenges are prohibitively expensive to build,” said Sarah Risser with Oregon Families for Safe Streets. “Our organization represents Oregonians who have lost loved ones to traffic violence, and we know that the surge in traffic fatalities is due in part to ODOT’s misplaced spending priorities. Given our current road fatality crisis, saving human lives should take precedence over vehicle throughput and State resources should be directed accordingly. I beg legislators to join us in pushing to right-size this bloated megaproject so we have the resources necessary to invest in safer streets across the entire state as part of the 2025 legislative package.”
According to Doug Allen, Portland Area Vice President of AORTA-Association of Oregon Rail and Transit Advocates: “For years, our members have been asking for decent transit alternatives to the continued expansion of Portland area freeways, and for years we have been ignored. We simply can’t afford to waste more time and money on projects that encourage more motor vehicle travel.”
Co-plaintiffs joined community leaders last March in celebrating the $450 million issued by the federal government to build highway caps and safer streets over the existing interstate facility. USDOT’s Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods (RCN) program made it’s single largest investment nationwide in Albina, bolstering enthusiasm for a proposal to build caps over the freeway to heal damages caused by I-5’s original construction through what was Oregon’s largest Black neighborhood. At a presentation to the Oregon Transportation Commission (OTC) earlier this month, ODOT officials proposed spending this grant funding on a proposal to dramatically expand the footprint of the I5 freeway, in direct contradiction to USDOT’s written directive to ODOT that explicitly stated these funds cannot be spent on expansion of highway capacity.
Recent actions taken by other levels of government have affirmed the legal and financial possibility of constructing highway covers to rebuild the Albina community without doubling the width of the freeway. Metro voted last month to officially decouple the funding received from the Reconnecting Communities program in a manner that makes it clear the freeway cap is a separate project from ODOT’s proposal to add more lanes.
“Portland can absolutely move forward with capping this freeway without expanding it. The inspiring, community-led and federally-supported effort to heal the Albina neighborhood with generational investments in Black wealth creation shouldn’t be delayed or blemished by ODOT’s stubborn insistence in doubling the width of the freeway,” said Smith. “This community needs livable streets and housing, not air pollution and traffic, and we hope our lawsuit inspires legislators to join us in decoupling this righteous investment in neighborhood healing from ODOT’s cynical, opportunistic attempt to hide a doubling of the freeway footprint.”
“We hope this legal action spurs policymakers to join us in recognizing the divergence of these two separate projects, and encourages them to double down on healing the neighborhood instead of paving it over,” said Rudwick.
This lawsuit mirrors litigation undertaken by similar grassroots-led community efforts to oppose freeway expansion across the country, including in Austin, Tex., Hoboken, N.J., and Davis, Calif. Over two hundred organizations have endorsed America Walks’ “Communities Over Highways” campaign launched this February, calling on state and national policymakers to prioritize investments in road maintenance, street safety, and transit improvements instead of endless freeway expansion.
This NEPA lawsuit is the second active complaint leveled against ODOT; last May, five community organizations alleged ODOT’s freeway expansion proposal failed to comply with existing, formally adopted plans, including the City of Portland’s Comprehensive Plan and Metro’s Regional Transportation Plan. The complaint cites numerous specific details of the proposed expansion that are demonstrably out of alignment with the city’s tentative approval of the expansion back in 2012. Last fall, No More Freeways also filed an administrative complaint against Metro, alleging their adoption of the Regional Transportation Plan was out of compliance with state mandates to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
No More Freeways, Eliot Neighborhood Association and Neighbors for Clean Air filed a similar NEPA lawsuit against this project in 2021; the legal action was nullified after the federal government rescinded the FONSI for the original proposal in 2022.
Plaintiffs in the case are represented by the Law Office of Karl G. Anuta.
It seems to me that widening the freeway would reduce emissions by moving the traffic faster and reducing slow-downs and jams which allow many vehicles to sit in one place and emit more pollution in a given area. Moving traffic through and away from the City in a faster, more efficient manner will reduce Portland’s pollution.