Lessons from Baltimore

What does 'restorative justice' have to do with Oregon's Interstate 5?

Until a cargo ship ran into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge and knocked it down, how many Americans even knew it existed?

Considering what cargo ships carry — just about everything — it wouldn’t be surprising if many of us have acquired something that once passed through Baltimore’s harbor.

We take so many things for granted. Everything we buy and own has a story of how it arrived in our lives.

Portland activists will denounce anything that doesn’t mesh with their political values. Bridges, for example. They provide passage to cars, trucks, pickups — any vehicle with an internal combustion engine. They are all big sinners in the fight against climate change.

Had the Francis Scott Key Bridge gone down in Portland, Grant High alum and climate activist Adah Crandall might have been first on the scene with her teenage cohorts from the Sunshine Movement waving protest signs and demanding that the bridge replacement be downsized.

The situation in Baltimore is a reminder of how Portland and Oregon have dithered around and taken for granted what bridges — and freeways — actually do. They transport people and freight. They move the economy. We all benefit from them, whatever our politics.

All transportation is interrelated. Yet how long have Oregon and its largest city been agitating about how to replace the six-lane I-5 Bridge? (Half of it is 107 years old.) How long have they been arguing about whether and how to add lanes to ease congestion in the Rose Quarter area of Portland?

For years Rose Quarter congestion has been reverberating across the state in many ways — from onion farmers in Ontario who couldn’t get produce shipped out on time, to truckers who have to drive later and later at night to avoid congestion, leaving supermarket employees to handle deliveries at odd hours.

A major point of contention in Portland is that the planned bridge is too big and adds more freeway lanes, which will only invite more traffic. Critics want more space for light rail, bicyclists and pedestrians.

In 2017, the state legislature passed House Bill 2017 — “Keep Oregon Moving” it was called. It was $5.3 billion worth of taxes and fees to reduce congestion in the Portland area and make highway, bridge and transit improvements around the state.

It was hailed as the most comprehensive transportation bill Oregon had ever passed. It was a top priority for then-Gov. Kate Brown (D).

HB 2017 also earmarked roughly $450 million for the Rose Quarter freeway expansion but linked it to the probability that there would be toll revenue. Just recently, Gov. Tina Kotek (D) took tolls — which proved to be unpopular — off the table until 2026.

Like so many of Oregon’s good legislative intentions this century, HB 2017 has grown more complicated, with more money continuously in play. Where are the results?

This headline from The (Vancouver) Columbian newspaper in 2022 sums up how the I-5 bridge replacement has devolved into other issues: “Equity front and center on I-5 Bridge Replacement Project.”

As the story points out, Johnell Bell, the Interstate Bridge Replacement Program’s principal equity officer, hopes to make equity a primary concern on transportation projects as a response to Portland’s historically black Albina neighborhood being destroyed to create the Rose Quarter and Interstate 5.

The story also quotes Greg Johnson, the program’s administrator, whose family had to move so a highway could be built.

“Equity, Johnson and Bell say, is not just a box to be checked off, but an integral part of the program, which they hope will set that standard for future projects, creating a blueprint others can follow,” The Columbian reported.

“‘I think that some of the things that we’re doing will get duplicated around the country,’ Johnson said. ‘Having a principal equity officer, a principal climate officer, those things are new and different for transportation projects and mega projects in general.’”

Is it any wonder that after the bridge catastrophe in Baltimore, there was a brief moment of absurdity when someone on Facebook found an old clip of  Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg allegedly calling the Francis Scott Key Bridge a “racist” bridge.

USA Today and other news outlets quickly fact-checked it and found “at no point has (Buttigieg) called the bridge ‘racist,’ as the claim states. The Facebook post distorts a comment he made more than two years earlier about how some bridges and roadways were designed. He did not refer specifically to the Key Bridge.”

That Buttigieg’s quote was ever considered plausible is revealing.

A couple of months ago, Buttigieg visited Portland and Vancouver along with Irene Marion, Transportation’s Director of Departmental Office of Civil Rights and met with the Interstate Bridge Replacement program staff, tribal leaders and other advisory group members.

According to ODOT’s March newsletter on its Interstate Bridge website, Buttigieg said he was “energized by the benefits that the right kind of inclusion and right kind of process can bring not only for the (Interstate Bridge Replacement) program, but for the country as well. …This can stand as a national model that can inform what we do on large and smaller projects; that’s why we are paying such close attention.”

Buttigieg’s staff did their homework well. Oregon — and Portland in particular — love casting themselves as “national models.” (The state briefly became a national model for legalizing hard drugs in 2020 after voters passed Measure 110. When the results were more drug overdoses and crime, the state legislature tried to make amends last month when it passed legislation re-criminalizing some drugs.)

ODOT’s newsletter also noted: “Local college and high school journalism students joined leaders from the (Interstate Bridge Replacement) program in February for two events that gave them an up-close look at the transportation issues the program seeks to address. The program sees youth ages 16 to 25 as an important audience to engage with, as both an equity priority community and the fact they are the future users of a replacement bridge aimed at serving travelers over the next century.”

“An equity priority community.” These youths, age 16 to 25, will not stay in that age bracket. As they age out, will they lose their priority if the youths who replace them have different politics? They and everyone else will still need transportation, including those freight workhorses — trucks.

Before there was the current debate over the Interstate Bridge Replacement, there was the proposed Columbia River Crossing, which cost more than $150 million from 2005 to 2013 for studies and design concepts. One sticking point was light rail. Oregon legislators wanted it; Washington lawmakers didn’t. The two states will share in the costs of the bridge.

Then-Gov. Brown and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) revived the project in 2019. The estimated price tag had gone from $3 billion to $5 billion. It is now expected to cost as much as $7.5 billion.

During the governor’s race in 2022, Kotek said that if she won, she would prioritize getting the I-5 bridge replaced. She emphasized the bridge should support increased public transit rather than more automobiles.

In December, the Interstate Bridge Replacement Program was awarded $600 million in federal funds. Oregon and Washington Legislatures each committed $1 billion to the project. Again, lawmakers from each state highlighted different preferences. Washington’s U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D) cited added lane capacity. Oregon’s Gov. Kotek talked about reducing emissions with light rail.

The latest design includes both light rail and two more lanes.

At the time of Transportation Secretary Buttigieg’s visit to Portland and Vancouver a couple of months ago, he called the Interstate Bridge Replacement one of the largest and most complex projects in the country but couldn’t say if there would be more federal funds.

That was before the Francis Scott Key Bridge went down.

A few days after that collapse, Buttigieg urged Congress to provide funding to rebuild the Baltimore bridge.

How will that affect the Interstate Bridge Replacement? Will it make increased funding less likely?

A detailed analysis by John Ley in Clark County Today draws comparisons between the Interstate Bridge replacement and the Key Bridge replacement.

Ley, a retired airline pilot and long-time critic of the Interstate Bridge replacement costs, also looks at the 2007 collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis and how that 8-lane interstate bridge was replaced in 13 months with a 10-lane bridge.

Of the Interstate Bridge replacement, Ley notes, “The constantly rising price tag raises questions on what the people are paying for and what are the benefits.” (He had hoped to run for a Washington state House seat on this issue but was challenged on his place of residence.)

What those other cities don’t have are the constant squabbling in Portland and the deliberate intrusion of issues that have nothing to do with transportation.

Look at the Rose Quarter Expansion, which was supposed to add lanes to Interstate 5. To fully appreciate how congested it is, note this Q-and-A on its official website:

“Did you know? I-5 between I-84 and I-405 is the top traffic bottleneck in Oregon and the 28th worst freight bottleneck in the nation as of 2021.”

“Did you know? In the project area, there is an average of 12 hours of congestion each day. As congestion and safety issues increase, travel on I-5 between I-84 and I-405 becomes less reliable for drivers and freight movement.”

The I-5 Rose Quarter expansion project was sold to the Oregon Legislature in 2017 as having a price tag of $450 million; that jumped to $795 million in 2019, $1.45 billion in 2021, and now to as much as $1.9 billion.

The price keeps going up because the project is no longer just about congestion. It’s also about race.

In addition to expanding lanes to widen the freeway, a portion of I-5 will be “capped” or covered with concrete. Multi-story buildings will be built on top of these freeway caps, along with greenery and sidewalks to create community spaces for  development and economic opportunities — primarily for black-owned businesses, to make up for last century’s urban renewal that hurt the historically black Albina neighborhood.

The Rose Quarter expansion and its freeway caps have yet to be built, but the project’s designers, ZGF Architects, have already received honors from the American Society of Landscape Architects: “A highway cover cannot undo the harms of the highway’s original construction, but it can help prepare the ground for the long path towards restorative justice.”

BikePortland’s Jonathan Maus offers an enlightening look at this project in “Let’s Talk About the I-5 Freeway Cap.” The freeway caps would add about seven new acres of land to the Rose Quarter.

In March, after the Biden Administration announced a $450 million grant to construct the highway caps, the Oregon Department of Transportation’s Historic Albina Advisory Board met via Zoom, and Maus shared some of his observations.

Historic Albina Advisory Board member James Posey, co-founder of the National Association of Minority Contractors of Oregon and president of the local chapter of the NAACP, is skeptical of the project.

Maus writes that Posey wants to make sure black firms and contractors, plus Portland’s black residents, benefit directly.

“I hate to be a naysayer… but the truth of the matter is there are a lot of people that are concerned that very little of that money will go into the hands of the black community. Some of us are concerned that we’ve seen this movie before…,” Posey said. “You’re using black people. You’re using this community, and some of us feel like we’re going to be played.”

The comments following Maus’s story are also worth a read. There is good back-and-forth.

Among the more trenchant (but not popular) opinions: “This is going to be the most expensive real estate in Portland. … And it’ll come with exhaust fumes! – until the EV revolution happens, of course.”

Maus’s assessment is that Albina Vision Trust is in the driver’s seat. If there was support for widening the freeway, he writes, ODOT wouldn’t be talking about caps to benefit the Albina Vision Trust, which does have political support.

“And since AVT has made it clear in past statements they don’t need the freeway expansion to realize their vision, ODOT’s influence and necessity seems to be waning. Maybe in the end, AVT will be in charge of cap development, the City of Portland will manage the surface street changes, and ODOT will be reduced to nothing more than a landlord.”

Where does that leave the Interstate Bridge Replacement, an economic link for the entire West Coast and at risk of collapse in a major earthquake?

Baltimore will probably have a new bridge, while Portland and Oregon lawmakers will still be trying to figure out what to do.