3/24 update: Take action today!
After approval by JPACT last week, the Metro Council is scheduled to vote THURSDAY MARCH 27 on an MTIP amendment that would approve another allocation of hundreds of millions dollars to move forward with the proposed $1.9 Billion Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion (read BikePortland for more background). While we still oppose the MTIP Amendment, there’s good news – spurred by the literal hundreds of emails sent by NMF volunteers in the last few weeks, JPACT members added language to the MTIP Amendment promising to reevaluate their support for the freeway expansion if the Trump Administration revokes the $400 million Reconnecting Communities grant (as we fully expect Trump to do).
We need your help to tell Metro Councilors that they must still oppose the MTIP amendment and that we fully expect regional elected officials to utilize this offramp when the federal government inevitably revokes funding for the highway caps. You can read No More Freeways’ testimony here.
Please submit even a short email as public comment – if you’d like to join us in person, No More Freeways and our partners including Neighbors for Clean Air and Families for Safe Streets will be testifying in person Thursday morning, 10:30am at the Metro Regional Center (600 NE Grand) – learn more about signing up to testify here.
Thank you for submitting a comment! Be sure to share this page in your networks / on social media!
Background on how we got here
Last week, the Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation (JPACT) voted to advance an amendment to the Metropolitan Transportation Improvement Plan (MTIP) that would advance the proposed $1.9 BILLION (with a B!) Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion (for more information, check out BikePortland’s coverage of the TPAC discussion). JPACT’s amendment must be approved by the Metro Council, which votes on Thursday March 27th. The Metro Council has an opportunity this month to have a candid conversation about the difficulties facing the proposed Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion and discuss whether the region would be better suited dropping this proposed doubling of the I-5 freeway in favor of prioritizing investments in basic local and county road maintenance, safer streets, and transit investments. This is all the more urgent considering the high likelihood that the federal government will refuse to provide the remaining $400 million not yet granted from the Reconnecting Communities program secured last summer.
Our city and region cannot afford to continue to rubber-stamp ODOT’s proposals to continue spending billions to widen freeways, especially given ODOT’s notoriously awful record at cost overruns, the desperate need for funding for other critical transportation priorities, and the need for Portland to take seriously the climate crisis.
What to testify:
Need some ideas on what to say? Here’s a handy guide of what we’d like for you to share in your testimony:
- Make sure you include your testimony with an explicit demand that the Metro Council should vote to reject the MTIP amendment to advance the proposed Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion.
- Thank the Metro Councilors for their willingness to reconsider support for this MTIP amendment in the high likelihood that the federal government revokes funding for the Reconnecting Communities program – and demand that they exert this right to revoke the MTIP amendment in the months ahead.
- It’s important for regional leaders to understand that advancing the Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion gravely jeopardizes our ability to find funding for any of our other sorely needed transportation improvements across the region. Metro Councilors are acutely aware how decades of disinvestment have left us the Portland region with dangerous arterials like TV Highway and Powell Boulevard, enormous backlogged maintenance needs, and gravely inadequate funding for basic transit operations. By giving ODOT a thumbs up to move forward with construction on the Rose Quarter despite increasingly dire funding options for the $1.9 billion proposal, needed transportation investments around the region will have an uphill battle finding support if every spare dollar that could be spent on these other needs will instead be given to ODOT for the Rose Quarter, a project that has already witnessed enormous cost-overruns, has spent $130 million already (with 70% of it to consultants), and will only get more expensive. We have so many other urgent priorities to fix for our transportation system – the Portland region cannot afford to keep giving ODOT billions for this doomed boondoggle.
- And let’s be clear – ODOT wants to get shovels in the ground, but the main construction is not slated until 2027, and more importantly this project is in bad shape. The federal government is currently withholding the $450 million granted to this project in 2024, leaving ODOT with an even larger $1.4 billion (and growing) budget hole. The project also faces legal scrutiny, with pending litigation and state and federal levels of government, and the state legislature hasn’t signaled commitment to funding this project to completion in the 2025 transportation package. The desirable parts of the Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion – the investments in highway caps supported by Albina Vision Trust, as well as the Clackamas Avenue bike/ped bridge over I-5 – are largely relegated to “Phase 2” of this project, which seem very unlikely to ever secure funding, and would be significantly cheaper to build without doubling the width of the I-5 freeway through the neighborhood and increasing the amount of traffic and air pollution in the North Portland neighborhood. Voting for this MTIP amendment would allow ODOT to build a new lane of freeway without much improvement to the freeway caps – with no coherent plan to find funding for the desirable parts of the project.
- Share why you personally oppose freeway expansion. Do you live in the neighborhood and worry about the air pollution from the additional traffic? Are you horrified by the fires in Los Angeles, and don’t wish to see Portland move forward with a freeway expansion projected to create an additional 21,000 tons of Greenhouse gas emissions every year. Would you rather see the city of Portland demand that ODOT instead direct those funds to support affordable housing in the Albina community instead of additional freeway lanes? Are you upset that traffic fatalities are skyrocketing, and the entire Portland region has numerous other ODOT-owned highways that instead need safety improvements that would stop needless traffic violence on our streets? This is your chance to make sure that regional leaders understand that freeway expansion is an unacceptable policy failure in 2025, and that you are demanding regional leadership to push back against the ODOT.
- Share that you want Metro to direct ODOT to conduct an Environmental Impact Statement that studies alternatives to freeway expansion while still building caps and remediating the neighborhood.
- The City of Portland and the Metro Council should remove support for the Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion from their lobbying agenda for the 2025 state transportation package. With dire funding needs for the entire region’s transportation system, we simply cannot afford to continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on this project, especially as matching federal funds are jeopardized. Cities and counties across the Portland region should demand the legislature prioritize investments to make streets safer, maintain existing city and county roads, and expand public transit options. We urge local elected leaders to tell their legislators that funding for fixing potholes, building sidewalks, and improving lackluster bus service are a better use of limited funds than continuing to dump billions into a freeway expansion with an ever-escalating price tag.
- Short on time? not sure what else to say? Even just submitting a sentence saying “I oppose this MTIP amendment, for the reasons outlined in the letter submitted by No More Freeways” is very helpful. Every email counts.