tl;dr – there are two in-person events on Saturday December 2nd to tell legislators to stop the Proposed $1.9 Billion Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion, and written testimony to the legislature is taken until 4pm Monday December 4th. This is the first time that any state legislators have been present for a public hearing on the Rose Quarter since the project started in 2017 (!), and since the legislature control ODOT’s finances, this is a huge opportunity. Please consider testifying, either in-person or with written comments. Here’s what No More Freeways submitted as testimony. Below you’ll find a comment generator, more info on the hearings, and some potential talking points for either written or oral testimony.
SUBMIT WRITTEN TESTIMONY by 10am, Monday, December 4:
Testimony will be emailed to members of the Joint Special Subcommittee on Transportation Planning, and uploaded to the committee’s public record. Be polite and respectful! and don’t forget to demand an EIS.
Attend one of two subcommittee hearings on Saturday, December 2.
Let’s talk Rose Quarter Saturday morning in North Portland
First, the Joint Special Subcommittee on Transportation Planning will be holding a hearing on the proposed Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion on Saturday morning. This is our opportunity to directly tell the legislators responsible for figuring out how to pay for the Rose Quarter that it’s a ludicrously expensive, destructive, polluting, and unnecessary project, and that toll revenue should instead be spent on traffic safety, maintenance, and diversion projects. ODOT’s own studies demonstrate that implementation of tolling policy will immediately solve the congestion concerns in the corridor, and the $1.9 billion freeway widening project is instead going to induce more driving and rob money we should instead be using to address Oregon’s horrendous increasing in traffic fatalities.
Rose Quarter Hearing
Saturday, December 2nd
10am-12pm; public testimony to begin at 11am after invited testimony – testimony sign up sheet posted at 9:30am, so show up early if you want to be certain you get time to speak!
Moriarty Arts and Humanities Auditorium
Portland Community College, Cascade Campus
705 N. Killingsworth St. Portland, OR
Accessible via 4, 44, 72 bus lines, short walk from Yellow Line MAX Killingsworth stop
Join us in the afternoon in the Jade District to tell legislators to get tolling right
Second, the same committee will be hosting a hearing on December 2nd to look over ODOT’s tolling proposal. We’re big fans of using congestion pricing to minimize traffic on our roads – unfortunately, ODOT is using congestion pricing to maximize the amount of money they want to extract from motorists and use that giant slush fund to widen more freeways, including the Rose Quarter. We could really use your support to show up and demand investments in safer streets, cleaner air, public transit and congestion relief instead of letting ODOT dictate how the state will spend any new revenue from tolling.
East Portland hearing on Tolling
Saturday December 2nd
4-6pm– – testimony sign up sheet posted at 3:30 pm, so show up early if you want to be certain you get time to speak!
Portland Community College, Southeast Campus
2305 SE 82nd Ave, Portland, OR
Accessible via FX2, 72 TriMet bus lines
Need some talking points? Here’s what to say:
ultimately, it’s most important that you demand an EIS and write whatever’s in your heart. Be polite and respectful – this is the first time legislators are hearing from us directly! – and help us make sure they understand how much community support exists for looking at alternatives to endless freeway expansion. If you’re stuck, here’s some specific suggestions.
For written testimony / oral testimony on the morning hearing:
- Demand an Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion that studies alternatives to freeway expansion, as No More Freeways has been insisting since our founding back in 2017.
- Share why you, personally, oppose the $1.9 Billion Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion: No More Freeways encourages you to share your personal story of how this proposed freeway expansion would harm you and family, and your community. There’s plenty to discuss! Are you concerned about air pollution in the neighborhood? The increased carbon emissions this freeway expansion from increased driving? Your concerns about increased traffic in the neighborhood? Your frustration that the expansion of lanes will make it more difficult to truly heal and restore the Albina neighborhood? The fact that ODOT is neglecting to spend money fixing up their dangerous orphan highways during an epidemic of traffic violence? How about that the project is now slated to cost $1.9 BILLION and will almost certainly continue to escalate in cost? The fact it’s absurd that nobody at ODOT seems to believe in induced demand? We and other advocacy groups will deliver all the technical details, but legislators need to hear your story.
- What *do* you want to see for Oregon’s transportation future? Do you dream of frequent passenger rail service across the Willamette Valley, or maybe just TriMet buses showing up every ten minutes? Do you want to see the state prioritize safety investments to build sidewalks and crosswalks on every busy street to eliminate traffic fatalities? Do you want to see ODOT prioritize fixing up the 700 seismically vulnerable bridges that the state owns, or do you just want someone to pave the dang potholes? Oregon has suffered from decades of disinvestment of our transportation system because almost all the revenue we’ve raised has gone towards these massive freeway projects. Rethinking the Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion provides us with the opportunity to actually invest in the basic safety and maintenance projects that Oregon’s roads and streets need.
- You’re also always welcome to cite the No More Freeways testimony that we submitted Wednesday.
For oral testimony on the Afternoon hearing:
note: the afternoon hearing is more focused on tolling specifically than the Rose Quarter, and you should prepare your testimony as such, but don’t hesitate to remind them the Rose Quarter’s a bad idea and needs an EIS.
- Tell your transportation story, and how you want tolling to help it: Maybe you live near a busy ODOT street that you’d like improved with safety investments. Maybe you’re terrified about climate change and want to see the state prioritize policies that reduce the 40% of Oregon’s carbon emissions that come from transportation. Maybe you just really, really, really like public transit and wish that the state was prioritizing making sure buses showed up frequently and reliably. Maybe you think East Portland has uniquely suffered from decades of disinvestment and that tolling revenue from I-205 must address the local needs of the neighborhood to prepare for possible traffic diversion. Maybe you just think East Portland really needs friggin’ sidewalks, and are sick of dodging potholes on roads across the state because ODOT continues to avoid spending money on maintenance projects.
- Tolling policy should be designed to minimize traffic, not maximize revenue. Congestion pricing can be designed to prioritize reducing traffic congestion and air pollution, or instead to maximize the amount of money that ODOT raises from motorists so they have a slush fund to build tons of freeways – but tolling can’t do both. We need to tell legislators that tolling should be used not as a mechanism to extract hundreds of millions of dollars from drivers to give ODOT the resources to build freeway projects like the Rose Quarter or the I-205 expansion but instead used as a way to eliminate traffic congestion and invest in our community’s actual needs.
- We should toll freeways before expanding them. This will ensure that we don’t needlessly spend billions building roads much wider than we ultimately need – since we know that tolling reduces driving, we should first figure out how much traffic is on our roads before spending billions to make them larger.
- Revenue should be directed towards local street safety, transit projects. It’s critical that congestion pricing revenue be directed towards building the infrastructure and programming that encourages alternatives to driving, like safer streets and transit investments. Directing revenue from congestion pricing to build more freeways is like instituting a carbon tax and using the proceeds to build more coal plants. We should be charging people to drive during peak hours and providing more transportation options so transit is a more attractive alternative.
- Any low income benefit should be multimodal. We appreciate the work of ODOT’s Equitable Mobility Advisory Committee (EMAC) and agree with their recommendation that some form of benefit must be provided to low income families facing freeway pricing. However, we believe strongly that such a benefit should assist all those affected by the project, whether they drive or not, and should encourage non-automobile travel options. Therefore, in addition to toll credits or discounts, we must have transit or bike/ped options (e.g., help buying an eBike). While this has not been central to discussions of Abernethy Bridge tolling, it is much more important for portions of the freeway network in urban Portland. The legislature must also aggressively pursue resources to not just make transit affordable to all Oregonians but make it in fact attractive to all Oregonians, primarily by dramatically increasing TriMet service frequency.
Whew! That’s a lot. It’s okay if you just say “stop widening freeways, invest in transit and street safety,” too.
Thank you for your help! Can you share this link on social media, or with any friends, colleagues, roommates, neighbors, or anyone else you know that might support our cause?
Written comments are due by 4pm Monday!