Columbia River Crossing Press Conference

We’re in Piccolo Park on this beautiful morning with folks from 1000 Friends of Oregon, Environment Oregon, the Bicycle Transportation Alliance, Coalition for a Liveable Future and other environmental, biking, and land use groups to talk about tomorrow’s city council vote on the Columbia River Crossing.

“We are not here today to oppose progress,” says Jules Kopel-Bailey, candidate to represent this district in Salem next year. “We’re here to say Portland needs to move forward…” but in the right way. The city council “needs to ask tough questions before we move forward on the Columbia River Crossing.”

“We stand here today to show not what could go wrong, but what could go right,” Kopel-Bailey says, referencing this park–which would have been part of the Mt. Hood Freeway, had that project gone forward.

“Resources are few, and just like the family that is struggling to make ends meet… we have to make sure that every dollar that is spent is spent wisely,” he says. “This study has 15 years of history behind it, but whether it’s gas prices or home prices, we know that in the last 15 months a lot has changed.” This coalition is asking the city council to go back and ask tough questions to make sure that “on the largest project in Oregon’s history, we do it right.”

More after the cut…

Bob Stacey of 1000 Friends of Oregon is saying that “we all know that no matter how clean our cars get, we have to have less driving.” The city council is talking about congestion pricing and light rail to provide choices, but they aren’t talking about the expansion of capacity–the bridge has 12 lanes proposed, for an extra 14 lane miles. That means “far more greenhouse gases,” says Stacey. “Oregon’s going to have to four lane I-5… in other words we’re going to have to build a mega project that will rival the $4.2 billion mega-project itself” to accommodate this expansion at other points in the highway system. Indeed, as Commissioner Sam Adams mentioned to me last night, he’s interested in seeing of toll revenues from the CRC could go to something like the the I-405/I-5 split; a recent Oregonian story mentioned the addition of a lane there (aka, more capacity) to address the tangle.

Environmental justice advocate–and one of only two no votes on the Columbia River Crossing task force–Jeri Williams is critical of the project’s old data and “potential health effects these plans could have on our community.”

“We have recently been told there are over 15,000 comments in the public comment period, and yet we haven’t seen them. We’d received half of them before we [on the task force] were asked to vote [on a locally preferred alternative] before the end of the public comment period,” she says. She’s has such strong concerns about the project and its process that she voted no, and she emailed Gov. Ted Kulongoski about her concerns, after the vote. She got an auto-response, but hasn’t actually heard from him.

Sylvia Evans, “mother of three, a grandmother, and the I-5 freeway has been a neighbor” for years. Not long after moving in near the freeway, her daughter had her first asthma attack. “Instead of trying to transport people from one state to another, pay attention to what they’re going through. They’re going through our neighborhoods, and we all deserve a healthy place to live, work and play.”

“The BTA has been participating in the Columbia River Crossing process mostly from a standpoint of looking at the bicycle facilities,” says Scott Bricker, executive director of the Bicycle Transportation Alliance. “The BTA supports transportation options, light rail, congestion pricing… between the two communities,” but has concerns about this project. He points to the cost, while bicycle sales are “booming.”

“A project from Portland to Vancouver would carry a lot of commuters… however, this project has dire impacts. Not only is the cost so high that we aren’t sure what the impact will be on the rest of the region,” but there are costs we don’t understand, like the freeway interchanges. “Typically interchanges… are places that bicycles and pedestrians can’t cross.” Those are half of the cost of the project, but they haven’t been talked about much. “We know first hand that people want to live close to where they work, and when they do they’re much more likely to take transit, they’re much more likely to take transit and walk… without a great project, this bridge has the potential to increase sprawl… and that’s unacceptable for our region.” The BTA’s asking the city council to “slow down their deliberations,” and making sure they retain local control.

Environment Oregon’s Jeremiah Baumann says the bridge amounts to a “refusal to acknowledge” current issues around climate change. “Approving $4 billion dollars to let people drive more is closing our eyes to the present” and the future.

“Let me talk about global warming for a minute…” he says. “The Columbia River Crossing planners have mapped out that future for us. They say if we do nothing, there will be a 40 percent increase in traffic” at the crossing, but that’s a fundamental error, he says, as traffic has decreased recently.

Climate change experts will say there are three ways to address global warming: More fuel efficient cars, but Oregon has done all it can do on that. Cleaning up carbon content on fuels is another, but “this bridge can do nothing about the fuel people choose to put in the cars before driving across it.” The last is reducing vehicle miles traveled—even if we can hit the other goals of fuel efficiency and fuel options, we “still need to keep vehicle miles traveled at current levels,” he says.

But if you add light rail and use tolling, “their own estimates say you get 25 percent less traffic than if you do nothing,” but the added lanes “almost completely erase that improvement,” he points out. “To approve a 12 lane $4 billion bridge is to refuse to deal with global warming, and is to refuse to give Oregonians the options they’re looking for.”

Questions from reporters: What about the increasing population? “It’s impossible if we keep building neighborhoods the way we have and transportation systems the way we have,” says Stacey. But we can keep traffic levels steady if we rethink transit and land use planning and plan communities “so everyone is connected… and compactly.”

“Instead of asking Clark County to chase jobs in Portland,” he’d advocate for creating jobs around the region.

“Portland should be taking our share in this city of the region’s growth; that means more compact development, more South Waterfronts and Pearl Districts, more four story condo buildings on streets like SE Division, more bike routes,” to make more short trips feasible by walking, transit and biking.

He’s also for improvements at the crossing, like decreasing speeds and enhancing safety, without adding capacity.

(P.S. — there’s a Barack Obama “community organizer” here, taking notes… )

Should we toll people now? Stacey’s still responding… “doing it now without a transit investment hurts people, doing it with transit” could be a transitional way to address the issues.

The reporter from KEX (I think) is obsessed with thinking this project is “setting up Clark County against Portland,” which sure is a catchy story…

Baumann says that’s not the case: “We’re saying both sides of the river need to work together” to solve these problems and share possible solutions. Why not add a bridge for transit, pedestrians, bikes, and maybe local traffic only, without building a “giant bridge”? That option’s not on the table.

Bricker is addressing the idea of cost–of it being too expensive to live in Portland. Transportation, he points out, is most households’ second highest cost. “Are people going to be willing to pay a four or five or six dollar toll? The reality is if you’re coming into Portland you’re going to be paying a high toll.”

Will the BTA be rescinding their resolution endorsing the project? Bricker says their basic position hasn’t changed, but the issue right now is local control. “Our concerns remain that will the city of Portland’s transportation funding be stripped dry?” He’s interested in seeing ODOT’s letter to the city that will apparently promise local control.

“Everyone here is saying that this corridor needs work,” Bricker says. “Our ideal project probably would be a light rail, bike/ped bridge. Perhaps a freight only lane… This corridor needs to be addressed.” If the DEIS said a 6 to 12 lane bridge, or promised local control, then “maybe we wouldn’t be having this press conference.”