This Tuesday, May 26 (time TBD), the Oregon Transportation Commission will vote on an amendment to the State Transportation Improvement Plan (STIP) to allow ODOT to spend up to $6 billion on “Phase 1” of the $15 billion Interstate Bridge Replacement. We need you to testify to the OTC and tell them to reject this amendment. As recent reporting has affirmed, the IBR as currently planned is oversized, too expensive, lacks a financially sound plan to raise the necessary revenue, and jeopardizes our ability to ensure ODOT has the necessary resources for basic maintenance and preservation of the rest of our state’s roads and bridges.
We need you to email the members of the Oregon Transportation Commission ASAP and demand that they reject the IBR STIP Amendment.
You can submit written testimony using the form below; if you’d like to sign up for oral testimony on the issue or include an attachment in your commentary, you can use this link. More information about this vote – and ideas for what you can write in your testimony – are included below.
Submit Testimony Here:
It’s been a lousy few months for the Interstate Bridge Replacement, and for anyone who wants Oregon and Washington to deliver a right-sized replacement for the aging bridge between Portland and Vancouver. Willamette Week uncovered in January that the project has ballooned in cost to $15 billion, more than double the price tag the IBR team shared with legislators in 2023, and IBR staff were apparently keeping this information secret from elected officials for months. Just last month, the Oregon Journalism Project reported on the IBR’s efforrts to hide the Investment Grade Analysis, a document that revealed some alarming facts about the updated traffic projections for the bridge. Rush hour tolls on the bridge are expected to start as high as $4.60, installation of tolls is expected to reduce future levels of traffic on the I-5 bridge far lower than today’s traffic levels despite plans to build the bridge with nearly twice the traffic capacity, the light-rail component to Vancouver has been significantly diminished, and tens of thousands of drivers are expected to shift to I-205, bringing further traffic and air pollution to East Portland.
Most alarmingly, the updated traffic projections in the IGA suggest that the IBR will bring in significantly less revenue from tolling, adding an even larger budget gap to a project with astonishing cost escalations and no certainty of continued receipt of federal funding. We now know that in it’s current form, the Interstate Bridge Replacement faces at $2.5 billion shortfall just to complete “Phase 1,” an amount that Oregon and Washington taxpayers will have to cover. This STIP amendment allows massive freeway construction but does not complete the transit or active transportation components; with the inevitable risk of further cost overruns, these components will be the first to be cut, and there’s no additional funding sources identified. With statewide roads and bridges suffering from decades of disinvestment and transit agencies proposing devastating cuts to existing service, Oregon literally cannot afford to let this project advance without greater guardrails to right size this project’s budget and size.
Please submit testimony – whether you’re concerned about the lack of funding for fixing Oregon’s epidemic of traffic fatalities, concerned about the cost overruns on this costly boondoggle bridge, upset about the lack of government oversight and accountability that has allowed private contrators to make hundreds of millions of dollars on this project over the last two decades without ever delivering a project, outraged that the latest proposal cuts miles of originally proposed light rail to Vancouver’s transit center, or just plane grouchy that the OTC has let this project’s cost skyrocket while we struggle to afford to fix the entire state’s roads and bridges, it’s critical to get as many voices as possible on the record.
If the OTC votes to approve this amendment, the Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation (JPACT) will be voting on a similar amendment to include the Interstate Bridge Replacement in the Metropolitan Transportation Improvement Plan (MTIP) at an in person meeting at 7:30am on June 18. Stay tuned for opportunities to submit testimony.