Behind the CRC Boondoggle: How We Got Here

Evan Manvel

This spring the Oregon legislature created an oversight committee on the Columbia River Crossing, deciding a project of this scale and expense warranted a closer look. At that committee’s inaugural meeting, Rep. Wand asked about the criteria used to select the project and move it forward, and Rep. Bentz tried to get to the bottom of the Purpose and Need statement. Legislators, understandably, are trying to figure out how the heck we got saddled with an unaffordable mega-project, while rejecting a host of alternatives we could actually get built.

To hear the CRC staff explain it, the CRC highway mega-project has been driven by its Purpose and Need statement, which is what the federal government uses to measure proposals under the National Environmental Policy Act.

But here’s the key: if you adopt the wrong Purpose and Need statement, incorrectly measure alternatives against it, or use it as your only measure, you’ll end up with the wrong policy. That, in short, is how we ended up saddled with a bloated, ineffective, unaffordable boondoggle.

Several years ago the freight and business lobby decided they wanted a highway mega-project in north Portland and Vancouver. They got the highway departments excited about it, and tied it to the region’s light rail plans to improve political support. They also decided to frame it as a new bridge crossing the river, instead of a five-mile long highway project. They rejected most of the alternatives to their design out of hand and have worked to frame the debate as “build our mega-highway or do nothing.”

As part of that effort, the Purpose and Need statement was drawn up by the two state highway departments in 2006 and approved with a few revisions by the CRC Task Force. The two DOTs then used the carefully engineered statement to rule out any alternative that didn't include a massive increase in highways. Despite various efforts to change the statement, and an ongoing stream of requests from the public and community organizations to include key missing elements, the CRC has refused to fix it.

If we’re concerned with reaching the most cost-effective, best public policy, here are some of the questions we should be asking:

• Which investments will most improve safety?

• What investments will best help freight move?

• Which investments most improve transportation options in the region?

• How do we create the most family-wage jobs per dollar spent?

• Which investments best advance our goal of creating great cities?

• What investments will help us tackle the climate crisis?

Instead of asking broad questions, and comparing answers with price tags attached, the highway departments and their consultants asked narrow questions without price tags, pointing to more work for them. Here’s what the adopted purpose and need statement includes:

Purpose: To improve Interstate 5 corridor mobility by addressing present and future travel demand and mobility needs in the Columbia River Crossing Bridge Influence Area (BIA). The BIA extends from approximately Columbia Boulevard in the south to SR 500 in the north [and only a small area east-west of the highway.]

… The proposed action is intended to: a) improve travel safety and traffic operations on the Interstate 5 crossing’s bridges and associated interchanges; b) improve connectivity, reliability, travel times and operations of public transportation modal alternatives in the BIA; c) improve highway freight mobility and address interstate travel and commerce needs in the BIA; and d) improve the Interstate 5 river crossing’s structural integrity.

Needs to be addressed by the proposed action include:

• Growing Travel Demand and Congestion: Existing travel demand exceeds capacity … Daily traffic demand over the I-5 crossing is projected to increase by 40 percent during the next 20 years, with stop-and-go conditions increasing to at least 10 to 12 hours each day if no improvements are made.

• Impaired freight movement:... Vehicle-hours of delay on truck routes in the Portland-Vancouver area are projected to increase by more than 90 percent over the next 20 years...

• Limited public transportation operation, connectivity and reliability: Due to limited public transportation options, a number of transportation markets are not well served...

• Safety and Vulnerability to Incidents: The I-5 river crossing and its approach-sections experience crash rates nearly 2.5 times higher than statewide averages for comparable facilities...

• Substandard bicycle and pedestrian facilities... Direct pedestrian and bicycle connectivity are poor in the BIA.

• Seismic vulnerability: The existing I-5 bridges are located in a seismically active zone. They do not meet current seismic standards and are vulnerable to failure in an earthquake.

Those who have evaluated the project know this statement is rife with errors and flaws, and the models of future doom wrong. Traffic levels are already far (17,000 vehicles per day) below projections, having flattened for years before the recession. There are many more dangerous highway segments in the region and many bridges that are more seismically vulnerable. And the region’s bicycle advocacy group is opposing the new project and its substandard bike facilities. So the project – the most expensive project in the region’s history, costing over $4,000 per household – is the wrong answer to even its narrow definition of needs.

More critically, the Purpose and Need statement (and the misapplication of it) put too many blinders on the evaluation of our choices. It:

• Ignores regional impacts beyond the narrowly drawn “Bridge Influence Area,” such as impacts to Portland and Vancouver neighborhoods, I-205, and upstream and downstream on I-5. How big of an error is that? The CRC's Independent Review Panel found: “Questions about the reasonableness of investment in the CRC bridge because unresolved issues remain to the south [near 405 and the Rose Quarter] threaten the viability of the project.” Translation: if we don't have a billion-plus more dollars to expand more freeways, it's wasteful to build this project.

• Ignores costs. There’s no effort to compare proposals in terms of cost efficiency. Instead, it presumes a world where money grows on trees.

• Ignores opportunity costs. There is no requirement for the project to compare spending billions in the area against other investments in safety, maintenance, or construction around the state.

• Demands proposals include a seismic upgrade or replace the bridges, even if our seismic resources are best used elsewhere.

• Ignores our climate pollution goals. As a one-hundred year project, the five-mile mega-highway expansion will have climate impacts for generations to come.

• Ignores human health, community impacts, and equity. Both the project’s construction and ongoing use will have significant impacts on both neighbors and the users of the facilities. While the corridor of the freeway and North Portland have historically taken the brunt of much of the city’s redevelopment, this extremely costly project adds insult to injury, creating a huge knot of congestion in the heart of North Portland.

• Ignores the environment. This project will have significant impacts on the river and on salmon.

• Draws the freight bridge outside of the study area. Rail freight moves 40% of all freight in the country, and an upgrade of the 1908 BNSF rail bridge would remove 95% of I-5 bridge lifts.

The problem and our needs were defined too narrowly, and the solution is now over-constrained. This is contrary to what the Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration specifically direct agencies to do: “Care should be taken that the purpose and need statement is not so narrowly drafted that it unreasonably points to a single solution,” and “Relevant information on factors considered during the metropolitan or statewide planning processes should be presented or incorporated by reference, as appropriate.” Federal courts have upheld these requirements.

Dreaming of billions, the CRC project also rejected sophisticated, affordable alternatives that were offered up within the constraints of the Purpose and Need statement, arguing that they failed to meet the needs outlined (and that the current project would). The highway departments and its high-priced consultants were judge and jury, dismissing anything that got in their way of their mega-project.

Despite this farce, it’s not too late to change direction. The legislature can set its own requirements when it considers whether to write a half-billion-dollar check (and raise the gas tax). Legislators can, and should, consider impacts beyond the tiny area drawn by the CRC, looking at the downstream railroad bridge and the project-induced congestion in the heart of Portland. Legislators can include cost effectiveness and opportunity costs as important factors in choosing what gets funded.

Ask the wrong questions, and you’ll get the wrong answer. Welcome to the CRC boondoggle – an extremely costly, risky highway mega-project.

By Evan Manvel Nov. 17, 2011