ODOT ACCOUNTABILITY RALLY

Tuesday, December 10, 4-6pm 
Oregon Department of Transportation, Region 1 HQ
123 NW Flanders St 
(accessible via Old Town/Chinatown Red/Blue MAX Station, 4 8 16 35 44 77 bus lines)
Spread the word on facebook – invite your friends!

There’s a new director of a multibillion dollar state agency that
oversees the sector of Oregon’s economy that contributes 40% of the entire state’s carbon emissions. As reported by Willamette Week and BikePortland last week, the new director of the Oregon Department of Transportation appears willing to make statements in direct contradiction to decades of empirical research in order to continue the agency’s desire to widen freeways and perpetuate car-dependency for Oregonians living across the state.

As our pal Joe Cortright wrote over at City Observatory last week:

ODOT Director Kris Strickler makes a phony claim that we can fight climate change by reducing traffic idling in congestion. The only feasible way to reduce congestion and reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to work to lower vehicle miles of travel. Unfortunately, that one proven strategy is one that ODOT has done nothing to consider or seriously explore.

Make no mistake: telling ODOT to knock it off with the billions of dollars for freeway expansions is nothing short of necessary if this state is serious about living up to our progressive environmental bonafides and actually doing something about carbon emissions. There are five hundred million other reasons to oppose this project, but at it’s fundamental core: we cannot build the Green New Deal without retiring the Grey Old Deal. And ODOT’s plans to spend half a billion bucks to widen a freeway into the backyard of Harriet Tubman Middle School, where the air pollution from the existing freeway is already so bad that students forgo outdoor recess, is exactly the environmental injustice that we need to leave behind as a shameful relic of the twentieth century.

We’re showing up at ODOT’s front door with the city’s most prominent youth climate justice advocates to ask for just that on Tuesday, rain or shine, and y’all should join.

ACCOUNTABILITY FOR ODOT RALLY
Tuesday, December 10, 4-6pm 
Oregon Department of Transportation, Region 1 HQ
123 NW Flanders St 
(accessible via Old Town/Chinatown Red/Blue MAX Station, 4 8 16 35 44 77 bus lines)
Spread the word on facebook – invite your friends!

We have one week to sway the OTC. 200+ Oregonians have chimed in.
Will you join us?

Can’t make our rally? that’s okay – you can still help us demand that ODOT conduct an Environmental Impact Statement for their proposed $500 million Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion. We’ve got a link on our website where you can join hundreds of Oregonians who have already submitted their comments directly to the Oregon Transportation Commission, the office of Governor Kate Brown, and to ODOT themselves demanding that they conduct a full study of the health, safety, climate, congestion and air pollution implications of this $500 million freeway expansion into the backyard of Harriet Tubman Middle School. 

Comments need to be received by December 15, in advance of the OTC’s hearing on December 17 – the sooner the better. We’ve got talking points provided for you on our website; please spend five minutes letting your government know what you think about expanding freeways given all we know about climate change, induced demand, and air pollution in 2019.  Visit our website and learn more about how you can contact your legislator and go on the record asking for more a more thorough study to be conducted on this proposal.

Please share our content on social media, too – the more we spread the word and ask our friends, neighbors, and colleagues to write in, the better chance we’ll have of convincing our elected officials to stand up for cleaner air, climate justice and responsible transportation investments. Find us on facebook and twitter!

🗞️ news roundup! 🗞️ 

• “House Speaker Tina Kotek (D-Portland), the city’s most powerful state lawmaker, says she favors [a full Environmental Impact Statement] —a blow to ODOT’s apparent desire to move forward immediately with its existing blueprint for addressing the Rose Quarter bottleneck.” – Willamette Week: House Speaker Tina Kotek Favors Full Environmental Impact Statement for I-5 Expansion at Rose Quarter
   
• “I would call it an about-face,” said Scott Bailey, a PPS board member who attended the meetings with ODOT. “One meeting ODOT stated [that the EIS] was their intention. … The next meeting, they said, not so much.” – Portland Public Schools board unanimously passed a resolution last week demanding that ODOT conduct an Environmental Impact Statement. – Portland Mercury: Portland Public Schools to Condemn ODOT For Rushing Through I-5 Widening Plan
  
• “This is utter and complete BS. It is scientifically disproven. Widening roads, adding capacity, improving throughput, all encourage more driving and more carbon. Not surprisingly, the ‘we’re going to save the planet by reducing the amount of emissions from people idling in traffic’ is a popular talking point for highway advocates, but it’s utterly, utterly false.” – Willamette Week: New Oregon Transportation Director Has a Plan for Reducing Carbon Emissions: Get Traffic Moving
   
• Strickler’s confidence that getting traffic “moving a little bit better” will lead to emission reductions is surprising given that research on the topic gives reason to believe otherwise. A 2012 study published in the journal Transportation Research, found that simply reducing congestion will not lead to reduced emissions.  – BikePortland: Oregon Senate confirms ODOT director who says freeway widening is a climate change strategy

Support the Rose Lane Project

 Also of note: Commissioner Chloe Eudaly and the Portland Bureau of Transportation recently rolled out one of the most ambitious proposals for climate- and transportation- justice that we’ve seen in local government in decades. The Rose Lane Project, if implemented to its full potential, would be downright transformative in making transit a more frequent, reliable, accessible option for a greater number of Portlanders’ trips across town. We heartily encourage NMF enthusiasts to check out the PBOT page about the campaign and take PBOT’s survey.  

NO BUT REALLY: See you tomorrow.

We’ve got an amazing speaker list, a ton of beautiful art put together by Sunrise PDX, and a chance to shout directly to ODOT that we won’t sit idly by as they widen freeways and squander the future of the next generation of Oregonians. The oceans are rising, so are we.

According to a Willamette Week article published Tuesday, the Oregon Department of Transportation is “prepared to conduct a full-blown environmental impact study for the project,” instead of the Environmental Assessment the agency produced this past February.

Holy smokes, this is massive.

We are delighted to learn that the Oregon Department of Transportation has conceded that their freeway expansion as proposed did not meet the standards expected by thousands of local community members and civic institutions.

First things first: Thank You.

We’re *so* grateful for the 2000+ public comments that everyday Portlanders sent in to oppose this $500 million Freeway Expansion. You can read the thousands of comments on ODOT’s Project website (they published them after we threatened to FOIA the agency for the comments), where 90% of what they received was in opposition to the project. You can read our blog archives to see all the news coverage where opposition “dominated” ODOT’s March public hearing, and you can also see the highlights sent in by our community partners on the NMF Public Comment Page.

We also thank Portland Transportation Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, Portland Public Schools, Metro, and the Albina Vision Trust in particular for their leadership in demanding ODOT conduct a more rigorous study of the impacts this freeway expansion will have on the air we breathe, the traffic we sit in, and the rising oceans on our warming planet. These entities each wrote thoughtful, nuanced critiques of the project that ODOT had proposed and demanded that the agency address numerous critical concerns that the community raised regarding the impacts to traffic, carbon emissions, air pollution and environmental justice. This is leadership, and we are so grateful.

What’s Next: Given the considerable role our grassroots initiative played in ensuring the local community was properly informed about this project, we expect and look forward to ODOT working with No More Freeways as a crucial community stakeholder in this project as they establish the parameters of this Environmental Impact Statement. We intend to make recommendations of how ODOT and PBOT can fully comply with the letter and intent of the National Environmental Policy Act and use the EIS process to more fully and fairly assess alternatives to freeway expansion that (unlike ODOT’s current proposal) will actually address carbon emissions, air pollution, traffic congestion, and provide restorative justice to the Albina community.

Stay tuned. We’re just getting started. But holy smokes, we won the first round of our freeway fight.

It’s Been a Hot Anti-Freeway Summer

Since we haven’t sent out an update in a hot minute, we figured that, in addition to our exciting news about the EIS, we’d also provide a couple snippets as to what No More Freeways has been up to this summer. Buckle Up!

📻 NMF Visits OPB 🎙️

Sunrise Movement take to Metro’s #getmoving2020 task force

No More Freeways has been working with the Portland Chapter of the Sunrise Movement and students from Harriet Tubman Middle School to testify at Metro’s Transportation Task Force. The regional government has convened an advisory committee to make recommendations for the 2020 Transportation Package, and youth climate advocates have been showing up to demand that the package doesn’t include freeway expansions or additional road capacity. We’ve also been showing up for our pals with OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon, who this summer launched their #UpWithRiders campaign (check out their video!)

You can read coverage of Sunrise youth’s testimony in BikePortland.org, and watch the Tubman students’ testimony on Youtube. We’ll be continuing to track the T2020 conversation; we’ve been livetweeting the #getmoving2020 hearings.

NMF Letter to OTC:
Future generations depend on a climate-smart hire for next ODOT director

“There’s no getting around this crucial fact – the decision of who to hire for the next head of ODOT is arguably the most carbon-consequential decision that the OTC will make in this young century.”

ODOT is currently in the final stages of hiring the next director of the agency (Willamette Week wrote about this yesterday). This process is being undertaken by the Oregon Transportation Commission (OTC), who oversees ODOT (it’s the entity that we testified in front of this past spring). We submitted a letter last Mayarticulating the urgency that the next director of ODOT be ready to steer the statewide agency towards increased collaboration with municipal partners, prioritizing decarbonization initiatives by promoting infrastructure investments to reduce Vehicles Miles Traveled (VMT), and stopping build all these damn freeways.

You can read our full letter here.

National Publication calls ODOT’s Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion
“Highway Boondoggle” 

You can read their full report here, and local coverage of their report in the Portland Mercury and the Oregonian.

Sunrise Movement Hosts Sit-in at Mayor Wheeler’s Office, Demanding End to Freeway Expansion

ELECTION SEASON IS SOMEHOW ONCE AGAIN UNDERWAY

In less than nine months, Portland voters will have the chance to vote in the May 2020 primary for two city councilors, the mayoralship, as well as numerous other seats at Metro and the Oregon Legislature. We’ll send out a questionnaire next spring to everyone who runs for local office – it’s entirely possible that a majority of Portland’s five-person city council could be opposed to the project in 2021.

We’re staunchly avoiding endorsements, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge that Sarah Iannarone, who has been on our side for years, has thrown her hat in the race for Portland’s Mayor. Credit where it’s due – she’s testified multiple times against the project, submitted detailed public comment to the EA, and even coined the #NOI5RQX hashtag at that fateful March hearing.We look forward to hearing from all candidates running for local office about their views on ODOT’s boondoggle and how they’ll work with community groups to stop this project as elected officials. We hope to uplift the voices of any candidate that agrees that climate leaders shouldn’t widen freeways. Are you running for office and want to talk to No More Freeways? Please get in touch!

Portland Forward hosts NMF, 350PDX, OPAL to talk transportation

Thanks to Portland Forward for hosting us! We enjoyed hearing from Jesse Maran and Orlando Lopez to talk about Metro’s 2020 Transportation Package, how we can decarbonize our transportation system, and all the ways we’ve been organizing against the Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion.

No More Freeways helped garner support for a handful of transportation justice related initiatives down in Salem during the end of the legislative session this summer! We were proud to wrangle support for:

• HB 2007, which created the second strongest diesel engine regulations in the country (students from Harriet Tubman Middle School, above, testified in support of this in March);
• HB 2015, which allowed all Oregonians regardless of citizenship status to obtain drivers’ licenses;
• HB 2001, a first-of-its-kind legislation which legalized missing middle housing to create necessary housing density.
• ..and we OPPOSED HB 3023-A, which would have given Uber and Lyft sweetheart deals to avoid local regulation on TNCs.

Big thanks and gratitude to our legislative partners including Oregon Environmental Council, Neighbors for Clean Air, Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility, OPAL – Environmental Justice Oregon, Causa Oregon, Sightline Institute, and 1000 Friends of Oregon for getting these important bills passed. We’ll be keeping an eye on freeway-related legislation during the 2020 short session, and we’ll be sure to let you know when we need folks to travel to Salem next January and come talk to legislators about ODOT’s boondoggles.

Look at all the progress we’ve made this summer! All of this is due to the elbow grease of hundreds of committed community members fighting for environmental justice, cleaner air, a viable climate for future generations, and healthier transportation options in the neighborhood. If that doesn’t inspire you to donate a couple bucks so we can keep up with our spitball shootin’, I know what will: our wonderful new stickers. Donate and we’ll mail you a bunch to stick on bike racks, bus stops, and outside the offices of any elected official still thinking about freeway expansion in 2019.

We’re blessed and oh-so-grateful for your help. Together, we can stop this dumb freeway.

The good news is: you can email your legislators *today* and demand that we move forward with any and all of the following bills. Whether you’ve emailed and called your legislator a dozen times or don’t even know who your legislator is, please drop them a line at your earliest convenience, for any and all of the following legislative initiatives for housing, climate, and transportation justice:

VOTE YES ON HB 2015: Drivers licenses for all. No More Freeways stands in solidarity with Causa Oregon and PCUN for transportation justice for all Oregonians, regardless of citizenship status, because we’re not racist assholes. Contact your legislator here.

VOTE YES ON HOUSE BILL 2007: Clean up Dirty Diesel. The Oregon Trucking Association is vigorously fighting a bill that would require truckers to stop using the most outdated, unhealthy diesel engines. Diesel is connected to an outrageous litany of adverse public health impacts, and the victims are too often low-income and communities of color near freeways (like our students at Harriet Tubman Middle School). You can read Timber Jim’s testimony and email your legislator here:

VOTE YES ON HB 2001: Missing Middle Housing. Legalizing duplexes and triplex in the urban core of Oregon’s cities means more homes for families in dense, walkable communities. The bill would be transformative for lowering neighborhood carbon emissions, providing more housing affordability and opportunities for Oregonians to enjoy low-car life.

VOTE NO ON HB 3023: Uber/Lyft are terrible companies that exacerbate our traffic congestion, air pollution, and take away transit riders. Local cities shouldn’t be preempted by state law from regulating them. You can email your legislators via this link by OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon.

VOTE ON HB 2020 It was 115 degrees in France today. The headlines out of the arctic are astonishing. The oceans are rising. NMF acknowledges the numerous good-faith critiques from environmental justice communities about cap and trade, but the bill has a lot of great details worth reading about in full, including language that would help discourage new revenue from being spent on new freeways. 

 

Each of these bills have passed through numerous committees, and are just sitting, waiting for the Senate Republicans to return to vote. Call/email legislators to demand we can’t wait another two years. Don’t know who your legislator is? Look ’em up.

Even if your legislator is a rock star and supports all of these, they deserve a note of appreciation for their diligence and public service during a miserably grim, dark time for Oregon democracy.

And while you’re at it, you can tell them: no more freeways.

Greetings, fellow freeway rabblerouser! We’ve been awfully busy in the last two months. Here’s a recap of what we’ve been up to, where we’re heading, and how you can help us stop the Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion. We haven’t emailed you in a while, so we have quite a few updates.

TLDR: The public comment went great, we’re testifying at committees across the state, we’re building grassroots power and momentum to stop this freeway, and if you want to help you can buy a button at the bottom of this post!

Resounding Opposition to Rose Quarter Freeway in Public Comment Period.
Will ODOT listen?

First, let’s give ourselves a pat on the back for the overwhelming turnout we got for the entire public comment period. Freeway opponents dominated the public hearing event in March, and followed that up with submitting over 2000 public comments to ODOT before the April 1st deadline. We have a round-up of dozens of letters from prominent community leaders on our public comment page of our website – here’s a selection of some of our favorite letters submitted:

“We ask that ODOT undertake a more rigorous Environmental Impact Statement to study the impact that implementation of value pricing could have on carbon emissions, air pollution and traffic congestion before moving forward with plans to expand the Rose Quarter Freeway. This position is wholly consistent with our years of advocacy and engagement with the state legislature to pass HB 2017 – implementation of value pricing should inform how ODOT moves forward with the Rose Quarter. There are simply too many significant impacts to the local community to not prioritize studying value pricing and understanding its impacts to traffic patterns before moving forward with a $500 million freeway expansion.” – Oregon League of Conservation Voters, Climate Solutions, Center for Sustainable Economy, and Sierra Club – Oregon Chapter

“The EA states (section 3.2.2) that the project does not create new capacity or add substantial capacity to I-5. This statement is not objectively true and is potentially misleading; auxiliary lanes clearly add capacity” – Oregon Metro

“We find it unjust to ask current and future Tubman students to pay decades of bonding debt to pay for this project, as well as pay for the enormous costs of the additional carbon in the atmosphere and air pollutants in the neighborhood. As parents, citizens, community members, students, and Portlanders, we state our firm opposition to ODOT’s Rose Quarter freeway widening proposal.” – Parents from Harriet Tubman PTSA

“Given the large and growing role of transportation in the State’s GHG emissions, the mandate to decrease emissions to 10% below 1990 levels by 2020 and at least 80% below 1990 levels by 2050, the inadequacy of the EA, and the history of damage to the adjacent communities inflicted by the freeway, it is the position of 350PDX that ODOT should not move forward with the I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening project based on the Environmental Assessment and should instead complete a full Environmental Impact Statement to evaluate the effects of the project.” – 350 PDX

“Given the legacy of institutional racism in Portland and how it has manifested in the location of this project, it is imperative that our leaders act with respect, courage and integrity. We are calling on leaders to tap the brakes on this project and ensure $500 million in taxpayer funds are thoughtfully invested in projects that deliver community benefit while paying more than lip service to equity.” – Business for a Better Portland

“Portland has long been known for its bike- and pedestrian-friendly allure and strong transit grid, and we know we must do more in order to preserve Oregon’s cherished natural beauty and livability. In light of the dire IPCC report issued last year, I believe we must be scrutinizing each major initiative and doing all we can, as fast as we can, to ensure a livable planet for our future generations.” – Oregon Representative Karin Power (District 41)

“The Oregon Department of Transportation is an emperor wearing no clothes, If we have any meaningful commitment to alleviating gridlock and congestion, eradicating the senseless violence of traffic fatalities, improving air quality so school doesn’t make kids sick, restoring a neighborhood scarred by the worst racist impulses of our forefathers, or tackling climate change for current and future generations, this project must be abandoned. The Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion mega project has no place in our community.”

– No More Freeways submitted our own official letter, as well as a Technical Traffic Analysis debunking ODOT’s findings and this Legal Memo that details all of the points in which ODOT’s public comment process did not follow the NEPA process.

We encourage you to check out the Public Comment page of our website, which includes these and numerous other letters, including those from the Audubon Society of Portland, Eliot Neighborhood Association, Community Cycling Center, City of Portland Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, Albina Vision Trust, Portland Planning and Sustainability Commission, and BikeLoudPDX.

What’s next for the RQ Freeway?

ODOT is now tasked with responding to each and every single one of the 2000 comments that we sent in to the public comment period. We are hopeful that the dozens of prominent community advocates and thousands of Oregonians who testified and wrote letters to point out the egregious flaws in ODOT’s traffic projections will help prod the agency to redesign or reconsider this project. It’s noteworthy the number of advocacy organizations, advisory committees, and citizens who have asked ODOT to conduct an Environmental Impact Statement – we hope the agency will honor these requests before proceeding with spending $500 million to expand a freeway into the backyard of Harriet Tubman Middle School when we as a planet have eleven years to tackle climate change.

According to a PBOT presentation at the Bureau Budget Advisory Committee this month, ODOT is expected to hear back from the Federal Highway Administration this “May/June” as to whether they have permission to proceed with their Environmental Assessment or if they will be asked to conduct the more thorough Environmental Impact Statement that all of our organizations requested.

TL, DR: We’re awaiting the federal government’s verdict on if ODOT can proceed with the project, and we expect to hear in the next few weeks. Our next steps in using the NEPA process to challenge this project depend on whether the federal government pushes ODOT to honor the community’s unequivocal voice of opposition to this expansion. Whatever happens, we’re ready to act (especially with your support – see the donation link at the bottom).

NMF road tripped to Salem to speak to the Oregon Transportation Commission.

The Oregon Transportation Commission is the Governor-appointed body that establishes state transportation policy. We weren’t sure if this governing body had been given accurate information from ODOT’s staff about how the agency had conducted themselves during this Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion debacle, so this month we took a quick trip to Salem to testify about the data misinformation, the overwhelming opposition to the project, the fierce, unapologetic necessity about urgently reconfiguring our transportation policy so that current and future Oregonians won’t have to grapple with a charred dystopian planet.

“[The Audubon Society of Portland was] deeply troubled by the Environmental Assessment. I work on a lot of EAs and EISs; its kind of what I do. For a project of this scale, complexity and cost, the EA was one of the weakest I’ve ever seen. It simply did not provide the kind of detail in order to assess the costs, benefits, the impacts, the alternatives that i would expect for a much smaller project, let alone something for a half a billion dollars.”

“The essence of democracy is transparency and honesty on the part of public servants. If we’re going to make good decisions we have to do it in an open honest and transparent way. in the case of the I5 Rose Quarter project, what’s happened hasn’t served the interests of the citizens of Oregon well. What ODOT has done is to suppress basic traffic data; they released an environmental assessment that contains no figures on average daily traffic, the most fundamental unit that you regularly use to measure traffic.”

“An Oregonian born today is likely to be alive in 2100. If we have 11 years to solve climate change, I hope that every single one of you on this Commission – and I’m not trying to be antagonistic, I’m asking and begging you, as the youngest person in this room that will remember this meeting 50 years from now – what did Chair Baney do, what did the Oregon Transportation Commission do when provided with these facts?”

Harriet Tubman Middle School’s Earth Day Demonstration

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Kudos to the students of Harriet Tubman Middle School in Mr. Scrutchion’s class who partnered with Neighbors for Clean Air to demonstrate in support of HB 2007 on the Flint Avenue overpass on Earth Day. Diesel is a carcinogen, a greenhouse gas, and has no place in our community and in our children’s lungs. We’re thrilled that the campaign to stop the Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion is bringing transportation, climate, and clean air advocates together to cross-pollinate in our advocacies and build resilience against infrastructure that makes our community sick. We’re looking forward to continuing to partner with the Tubman community in support of cleaner air and fewer lanes of freeway in their backyard.

More photos are available on BikePortland, and on the NMF Facebook page (which you should *like*, if you haven’t already).

10 public comments at Metro’s #GetMoving2020 task force. All 10 were about climate change. 

Shoutout to the Community Partners

It takes a village (and numerous community partners) to stop a freeway. Here’s what some of our trusted allies are up to, and how you can support them:

Support Local Media: Shoutout to BikePortland.org and Willamette Week, each of whom have relentlessly covered our work over the past few months. Did you know you can donate money to each to keep these important media outlets afloat?

Become a Member of Oregon Walks: Oregon Walks has a new Executive Director, and you should learn all about her at the upcoming Oregon Walks Membership Meeting. The event is on Thursday May 16.

Sign OPAL’s letter for government accountability and transparency: OPAL’s been tracking a particularly nefarious bill in the Oregon Legislature that would remove the ability for local jurisdictions to have much oversight or regulatory ability of TNCs like Uber and Lyft. Sign their letter (and help protect initiatives like the Clean Energy Fund while you’re at it!)

Fight Dirty Diesel: To learn more about HB 2007, which would create deadlines for removing the worst polluting diesel engines from Oregon’s streets, check out the Oregon Environmental Council’s webpage. Stay tuned – there will be opportunities to weigh in on this bill as it winds through the legislature in the weeks ahead.

A personal note: Aaron Brown’s testimony to ODOT, submitted 4:59pm, April 1st

For the past nineteen months (and especially for the past month and a half), I’ve spent an enormous amount of my own personal and professional time writing angry letters to ODOT. “Letters to ODOT” sounds like the name of some urban planner’s regrettable punk rock band they played bass in back in college, but it adequately assesses the general state of how I’ve spent much of 2019. I, along with literally hundreds of other community members, have been attending dozen of community meetings and watching ODOT’s staff speak demonstrable untruths with barely-concealed slights-of-hand, and spent many a rainy weekend pouring through egregiously depressing data about climate change, air pollution, traffic congestion, and traffic fatalities. Every bit of evidence furthers our case that this project highlights the urgency with which metropolitan America needs to retire the freeway industrial complex.

But instead, with my last five minutes before the public comment period closes, I want to write a quick love letter. A love letter to the dozens of parents I met at Tubman Middle School, figuring out how to build a PTSA that will stick up for their entire community and learn how to work together despite having students and families from enormously different backgrounds. A love letter to the individuals who have taken their personal trauma stemming from losing a loved one to senseless traffic violence and weaponized these unspeakable losses into voices that clamor for government agencies to be more vigilant in their investments to prevent future tragedies. A love letter to the youth who are increasingly organizing to take over the world and prevent the older generation from dooming us to climate apocalypse. A love letter to the hundreds of community members who have shown up to dig through ODOT’s public records and, frankly, out-hustle ODOT’s staff to point out the obvious clerical errors that you hoped to hide from public scrutiny. A love letter to the good community members and citizens who have stood up for freeway revolts in the past, present, and future of my hometown. A love letter to all who are working to understand the intersections of transportation, climate, social justice, white supremacy, the patriarchy, and are working to untangle all of these for a more verdant and sustainable future.

Thank you, ODOT, for giving me an excuse to wallow in the trenches for the past few months. Please kill this damn project.

Support our work, get a thank you card
in the mail and a button:

OPB, City Observatory catch ODOT hiding Columbia River Crossing traffic firehose in Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion Project

This Wednesday, Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Jeff Mapes broke the news that we at No More Freeways had suspected for the past few weeks as we analyzed ODOT’s traffic data: ODOT is deliberately putting their thumbs on the scale of their traffic projections to justify the Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion.

By baking in the assumption of the construction and completion of a $3,000,000,000, 12-lane Columbia River Crossing project (a proposal that’s been more or less dead for nearly five years), ODOT’s traffic modeling deliberately floods the Rose Quarter area with a much higher rate of traffic, which creates a significant amount of congestion in the RQ area (that then this freeway is supposed to “fix.”)

Why does that matter? We’re glad you asked. We’ll paraphrase City Observatory‘s excellent run down, which we encourage you to read in full:

✅ It’s a violation of the NEPA process to hide such a fundamental assumption
✅ The Environmental Assessment ODOT provided doesn’t study a true “No-Build Scenario” against which project effects can be judged
✅The inclusion of a new, nonexistant, currently-not-even-seriously-considered CRC inflates traffic levels to make the Rose Quarter project seem more necessary
✅The modeling suggests that the need for ODOT’s Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion is largely caused by the CRC – aka, the Rose Quarter project is needed mainly to solve the problem that a new 12 lane CRC creates
✅Hiding CRC in no-build violates requirements that EA addresses cumulative impacts

and the biggest one:

c’mon, ODOT models traffic for a 12-lane bridge that’s barely on the drawing board, but can’t model for congestion pricing, which is moving full steam ahead, and likely would negate the need for the project? 🤔

It seems wild to us that ODOT is deliberately *not* studying whether congestion pricing, a policy tool that the Oregon Legislature asked ODOT to explore for the Portland region as part of HB 2017 (it passed with bipartisan support!). ODOT recently asked the federal government to move forward with further study and implementation of congestion pricing along this stretch of freeway. Yet despite the fact ODOT is modeling traffic projections from now until 2045 on I-5, *and* the fact that congestion pricing is substantially impactful on traffic patterns and congestion…ODOT isn’t studying it as relevant to projecting out traffic on this freeway over the next two decades? But they *are* absolutely certain that a new CRC is coming to sic a firehose of traffic on the Rose Quarter?

THESE ASSUMPTIONS BAKED INTO ODOT’S TRAFFIC MODELING (AND ODOT’S UNWILLINGNESS TO STUDY OR CONSIDER ALTERNATIVES) ARE OBSCURING THE IMPACT THIS PROJECT WILL HAVE ON THE COMMUNITY, AND THEY ARE DOING IT TO JUSTIFY THE $500 MILLION EXPANSION PROJECT.

Again, we encourage you to check out the full City Observatory post, which runs down the numerous technical assumptions included in ODOT’s models. All of the assumptions are largely designed to churn out numbers that suggest that this freeway expansion will somehow be the first of its kind to improve local air pollution, reduce carbon emissions, and reduce traffic congestion. By using these overly generous assumptions, ODOT is trying to make it sound reasonable to justify expanding lanes of freeway into the backyard of Harriet Tubman Middle School when 40% of our carbon emissions come from transportation and we only have 11 years to fight off the worst impacts of climate change.

Want to stop this freeway? We need to get you on the record in the next week. Submit Public Comment in Opposition to the Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion TODAY or by April 1st. 

Did you know that the Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion includes widening a freeway to hover over the Vera Katz Eastbank Esplanade? We didn’t either! A community member asked ODOT for engineering drawings of the project on February 16 and were told they didn’t exist; when we filed a Freedom Of Information Act, we were then told there were 36 GB of files available, but that we only got less than a week to pour through these schematics. Thanks to Cupola Media for drawing up what the Eastbank Esplanade will look like with ODOT’s freeway widening – definitely seems like it’ll be much louder and a lot less pleasant a place to ride a bike. (You can follow our pal Iain’s full twitter thread about his FOIA adventures with ODOT here)

Want to stop this freeway? We need to get you on the record in the next week. Submit Public Comment in Opposition to the Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion TODAY or by April 1st. 

BikePortland.org has some fantastic coverage about the surprisingly sharp statements that came out from the Bicycle Advisory Committee, Pedestrian Advisory Committee, and Oregon Walks this week. We’ve also seen excellent letters asking for ODOT to conduct a full EIS from the Eliot Neighborhood Association, Oregon Environmental Council, Portland’s Planning and Sustainability Commission, AORTA, Portland Bus Lane Project, 350 PDX, Portland Public Schools, and the Pacific Northwest Chapter of Safe Routes to School.

The Portland Mercury’s Blair Stenvick also has a thorough roundup about our efforts, chronicling the large number of organizations that are submitting public comment requesting that ODOT move forward with an Environmental Impact Statement.

Want to stop this freeway? We need to get you on the record in the next week. Submit Public Comment in Opposition to the Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion TODAY or by April 1st. 

We were on the Sprocket Podcast yesterday – it should be ready to download around 8pm Friday. Download the episode to hear us talk about how driving cars is like the movie Avatar, how we’ve organized our campaign over the past couple years, and why the freeway industrial complex is so big and powerful. Thanks for hosting us! We were also on KBOO’s Heather McCoy show three times in the last month.

ook, we know this is the second long-winded email we’ve sent you in a week. But hey, this deadline on Monday is important. There’s no path to stopping this freeway that doesn’t entail us kicking butt and getting hundreds and hundreds of comments on the record in opposition to this project. We promise to chill out, give your inbox a break and go dormant for a few weeks after the deadline passes, but for the time being: all hands on deck! Every bit of elbow grease you can put in to submitting a public comment and reminding your friends, family, coworkers, twitter crushes, neighbors, teachers, whoever you talk to on any sort of daily basis – GET THEM ON THE RECORD.  And big ups to our pal Eric, who hosted a comment writing party this week and got dozens of letters submitted.

If you’ve already submitted public comment, thank you! Can you post this on social media (our hashtag is #NOI5RQX), bug your roommate or spouse or friends to check us out, or forward our email? Word of mouth and community-to-community organizing is more effective than any paid ads we can provide.

We’ll send one more small reminder Monday (the day the EA closes!), and we’ll probably send a big sweeping follow up thank you the following week, and then leave you alone for a while. Pinky swear. But we need your help, so please, go submit public comment. 

Top 10 highlights from Tuesday’s Hearing

1. Numerous students from Harriet Tubman Middle School testifying in opposition to ODOT’s plans for freeway expansion, testifying at a public hearing for the first time
2. Paul Rippey providing a reprise of his “Induced Demand” jingle, and getting the crowd to sing along
3. Jillian Detweiler of the Street Trust testified, stating their constructive opposition to the project as it currently is due to climate implications, desire to see the Albina Vision implemented, and inadequate bike improvements
4. Rithy Khut from the City’s Bicycle Advisory Committee, stating the BAC would be either recommending a “No Build” alternative or asking for the agency to move forward with an Environmental Impact Statement
5. Grant Sawyer, veteran of Portland’s freeway fights in the seventies who helped kill the Mt Hood Freeway, reminding us all about the political leadership back in the day
6. RJ Sheperd using his testimony to ask for a moment of silence for the sixteen year old hit and nearly killed by an automobile while crossing the ODOT-owned arterial, 82nd Avenue.
7. Bryan Chu, Harriet Tubman Middle School teacher, passionately making the case for his students, and noting that ODOT was failing a generation of young students of color
8. Eliot Neighborhood Association Member Allan Rudwick asking “y’all are calling this an Environmental Justice project? I mean, c’mon” with the whole room laughing in tacit acknowledgement
9. Tori Cole, with Neighbors for Clean Air, who testified in opposition specifically noting how children are particularly susceptible to air pollution from automobiles
10. The numerous explicit references to this project’s climate impacts, and significance of investment in fossil fuel infrastructure when 40% of our state’s carbon emissions come from transportation(and one final bonus):
11. All y’all showed up. Depending on the news source you trust, somewhere between 100-200 people were at the hearing on Tuesday, and the overwhelming majority of people were in opposition to this project. From our graphic designers to our neighborhood parents, our engaged teachers to our traffic planners, our sign-wavers and our climate advocates – we couldn’t have done it without you.

We ain’t done yet, but this Tuesday’s hearing felt like an important moment for our campaign. We’re going to need your help through the final two weeks, but let’s just acknowledge: we took over that meeting. Sincere gratitude to you all – what an excellent accomplishment representing all that we’ve worked on for over 18 months of organizing.

📰 Media Coverage 📰

(Pretty cool how all of the headlines are accurately calling this a freeway expansion and not an “improvement project”)

“If we have any backbone,” said Katy Wolf, chair of the Boise Neighborhood Association, “we should be telling ODOT to be putting a hard pause on [the project] while we wait for congestion pricing to take effect.”

Opponents Dominate Hearing On Portland Rose Quarter I-5 Expansion Project – Oregon Public Broadcasting

Bryan Chu, an eighth-grade language arts teacher at Tubman Middle School, said it’s unclear if the school would be shuttered during construction or what the project might mean for the majority students of color who attend it. Chu said he can only assume there is no plan for Tubman. “We have always been made to pay the price for Portland’s progress,” he said, before adding, “Black lives matter, black students matter, black schools matter, black lung matters.”

Rose Quarter freeway critics dominate meeting, then Chloe Eudaly throws curveball – The Oregonian

“Student Sadie Herout said, “It’s not just going to be affecting me, it’s going to be affecting a lot of people.” Manson and Herout – students at Harriet Tubman Middle School – are now concerned about an ODOT project so close by. “The air quality is very bad at our school. To add more trucks and automobiles would increase toxic particulates in the air,” said Herout.”

Portlanders voice opinions on I-5 Rose Quarter expansion project – KPTV

“At least a hundred concerned citizens gathered at the Oregon Convention Center on Tuesday evening to give the Oregon Department of Transportation their opinions on expanding Interstate five through the Rose Quarter.

Most did not like the idea.“

ODOT gets earful from community over I-5 downtown expansion plans – KGW

“Freeway expansion is climate denialism. Forty percent of Oregon’s carbon emission comes from transportation, and spending half a billion dollars on new freeway when we have 11 years to solve climate change is intergenerational theft,” Aaron Brown with No More Freeways Coalition said.”

ODOT holds meeting to discuss I-5 expansion project, community members rally against – KPTV

ODOT’s I-5 widening project weathers severe opposition at first public hearing – BikePortland.org

“That opposition had a big presence at Tuesday’s three-hour meeting—the only hearing that will be held during ODOT’s public comment period, which ends April 1. People largely framed their opposition through a moral lens, insisting that investing in freeway expansion could contribute to global warming and negatively impact the surrounding neighborhood…

The choice, from Brown’s view, is clear—on both a logistical and moral level. “We’re out of time,” he said. “I understand there are political realities; there are also physical realities. There is only so much carbon we can put into our atmosphere.”

Rose Quarter I-5 Expansion is a Moral Issue for Opponents – Portland Mercury

(…and while we’re at it, three other great links from this week!)

“A wider freeway will induce more traffic and pollution (and ironically, worsen traffic congestion), runs directly counter to the city and state’s goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, does nothing to improve safety, especially for those walking or biking, and disproportionately benefits higher income commuters from outside the city, while imposing social and environmental costs primarily on lower income households and people of color,” Cortright wrote on his City Observatory blog.“

Portland economist calls Rose Quarter freeway project ‘tragic error’, The Oregonian

“Hardesty said she opposes the plan to spend around $500 million improving the area where Interstate 5 and Interstate 84 merge in the Rose Quarter. She believes the money would be better spent on alternative transportation projects, including bike and pedestrian paths.”

Hardesty charts ambitious course: ‘I’ve been very busy’ – Portland Tribune
“Myself and other parents from Tubman–especially the other members’ parents of the PTSA–we definitely think it’s a bad idea for them to expand a freeway, pretty much behind or close to the school Tubman. I definitely believe that the air quality wouldn’t be good for our kids as we’re already experiencing bad air there,” Tadimika Edwards, president of the Tubman Middle School Parent Teacher Student Association

Not On Board: Groups align against I-5 expansion – Portland Observer

#NOI5RQX
The hashtag for our event (thanks, Sarah Iannarone, for coining it!) trended on twitter during the public hearing.

Data Delivered

Missing the hearing? Don’t fret – submit public comment and help spread the word:

We spent about $300 making Tuesday happen.

Can you help us cover our expenses?

Tuesday’s the big day! We’re having a short rally at 4:00 at the Oregon Convention Center before lining up to sign the testimony sheet which ODOT will put out at 4:30. We’re still putting together our last-minute plans for the event – be sure to check out our facebook event page/twitter for all the latest information. We understand it’s a work day, and we hope you’ll join us whenever you can! ODOT is removing the sign-up sheet at 6:00pm, so if you plan to testify you need to be at the hearing before then. We’ll have fliers, stickers, new buttons, magnets, copies of Sarah Mirk’s new zine about us, information on how to testify, and posters to distribute. The legendary Paul Rippey is rumored to be making an appearance!

If you can’t make the event, we’ll post the link to a livestream video of the hearing on social media if ODOT provides one.

Thanks to all who came to Wonk Night!

(Photo Credit Jonathan Maus)

Thanks to BikePortland, The Street Trust, Lancaster Engineering for hosting the “Wonk Night” last week, and thanks to the dozens of individuals who attended! We’re thrilled to see so many people showing up to dig into the technical details of the Environmental Assessment document that ODOT has provided and point out some of the critical flaws about the proposed designs. Check BikePortland.org for a recap of the findings from the community review of the document.

Outstanding Turnout at ODOT’s Open House

No response from ODOT:
Where’s the data?

Have you submitted your public comment yet? 

New swag! Same fundraising ask!

The public comment period closes April 1. That’s three weeks from today! That’s all the time we have left to get comments from every community members, letters from nonprofit advocacy organizations, statements from elected officials, academic documents highlighting air quality/climate/transportation research, and technical analysis of ODOT’s dubious claims into the. Every dollar you donate from here on out helps us put out posters, promote our campaign online, and solicit every possible word we can get on the record.

We’re excited for this public comment period to end and for the chance to mail y’all all the buttons, magnets, and copies of Sarah Mirk’s zine on our campaign that you could possibly want.

Thanks for your help on this final push!