I-5 is the main north-south interstate freeway/expressway along the western U.S. coast, comparable to I-95 being the main such road along the eastern U.S. shore.
Both I-5 and I-95 were constructed during the 1950s-early 1960s.
I-5 through Portland, despite being the main north south such route, is as narrow in some spots to a mere 2 travel lanes in each direction.
I-5 is quite highly utilized and congested, as it was constructed when the nation's population was considerably less.
.
Oregon DOT has sought to reconstruct I-5 through Portland.
Numerous people have suggested this, as well as the idea of doing this within a new tunnel shell, which could clearly be equipped with exhaust filtration.
Oregon DOT proposes a reconstruction of the some one mile segment from the interchanges with I-84 northward to I-405.
The projects includes a 4 or 5 block long segment within a new rectangular tunnel box enclosure, a style of design suited for fully encasing traffic noise and exhaust. This segment is only so long as the project conforms to existing topography, e.g. converting an existing open sloped embankment trench, rather than new excavation to lower the existing roadbed profile. As this means constructing new tunnel walls, the authorities have sensibly specified a wider profile to include a minimum of two extra through lanes per direction, along with full width (12 foot) shoulders, which are absolutely necessary for emergency service personal such as tow truck drivers. Its estimated cost is $1.9 billion- that should obviously be paid by the feds, as part of President Joseph Biden's "Build Back Better" program.
Nevertheless, a clearly orchestrated chorus of new medievalist, jesuit useful idiots are spouting a nonsensical crusade to undermine the project, making it less useful, under a supposed guise of saving money.
An outstanding example of this is so-called "Smart Towns", a non profit tightly allied with wall street, working in concert with something called "City Observatory", which Smart Towns regurgitates the usual anti public service rubbish:
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/7/13/why-is-this-freeway-so-expensive-hint-because-its-too-damn-wide
https://cityobservatory.org/revealed-odots-secret-plans-for-a-10-lane-rose-quarter-freeway/
A Too Wide Freeway
What no one seems willing to do is ask basic questions about the Rose Quarter. Is the project worth $1.9 billion? Does it even need to be that big and expensive? Isn’t the skyrocketing cost and ODOT’s growing fiscal crisis a signal that we should consider some other options?
The high cost and prodigious cost overruns of the Rose Quarter are directly related to the excessive width of the project, something that ODOT has gone to great lengths to conceal, characterizing the project as merely adding a single auxiliary lane in each direction. In reality, the project would essentially double the width of I-5 through the Rose Quarter, from its current 82-foot width to 160 feet (and in some places as much as 200 feet).
A brief chronology shows how ODOT staff have repeatedly concealed or obscured the width of the I-5 Rose Quarter project. Their initial 2019 Environmental Assessment presented a misleading and cartoonish freeway cross section that appeared to show that the freeway would be widened to about 126 feet....
... ODOT’s own consultants, the internationally recognized engineering firm ARUP, concluded that the Rose Quarter project was vastly wider than it needed to be. They pointed out that no comparable urban freeway in any city has the over-wide, 12-foot shoulders designed into the Rose Quarter project [emphasis added]. ARUP concluded that the extreme width of the ODOT design was the principal reason freeway covers cost so much, and said the freeway could be 40 feet narrower than ODOT’s design. ODOT’s own “Cost to Complete” report concedes that a key cost driver is the need to lower the surface of the existing roadway in order to provide the necessary vertical clearance over the much thicker overpass beams that will be needed to span the wider roadway.
...
Covers Alone Could Be Vastly Cheaper
If this project consisted simply of building a cover over the existing I-5 freeway, it would be vastly cheaper. Washington’s Department of Transportation is proposing to build a similar cover over a portion of I-5 in Vancouver as part of the Interstate Bridge Replacement Project. The “Community Connector” cover is designed to re-connect historic Fort Vancouver with the city’s downtown. It will be about 300 feet wide, about an acre in size, and is estimated to cost $37 million.
ODOT has never explored simply building a lid over the existing freeway to “re-connect” the community. If this were simply about building a cover to re-connect the community, it could have been done by now for a fraction of the $115 million ODOT has spent so far, just on planning the Rose Quarter.
What To Do Instead
ODOT could cap the I-5 freeway at the Rose Quarter without widening it. And if ODOT is really committed to “restorative justice,” then reallocate available money for this project as reparations to the Albina community, and allow them to spend it however they see fit to rectify the damage done by the construction of I-5, Interstate Avenue, and the Fremont Bridge ramps. Oregon routinely spends highway funds mitigating the environmental damage of its freeways, on everything from sound walls to wetlands. It also has used highway funds to replace displaced structures (the old Rocky Butte Jail), and other states have used federal highway funds to replace housing destroyed by freeway construction. If we were serious about redressing the harm done to the Albina neighborhood, we’d be looking to reduce the size of I-5, spend more money improving the neighborhood, and build back the housing ODOT destroyed.
The project reconstructs a segment of interstate highway - I-5- constructed during the 1950s. It would place new tunnel walls - solid immovable objects - set further out with an existing corridor, basically better utilizing space now occupied by not very useful sloped embankments.
Why be skimp on better utilizing this existing transportation corridor, by failing to provide the space for the much needed auxiliary lanes - the segment connects two separate interstate highway interchanges - and failing to provide the required full width shoulders to better protect emergency service personal?
Why no mention even of better addressing local neighborhood mitigation with equipping the proposed tunnel box enclosure with auto exhaust filtration, as currently being proposed for New York City's Cross Bronx Expressway?
Why are not more people standing up to this nonsense from well funded high finance "investment" concerns?
Lets be honest with ourselves, organizations such as so-called Strong Towns, is clearly yet another of those mercantilist elitist AstroTurf front organizations crafted to distract people from matters of high finance broad economic manipulation to facilitate the vast transfer of wealth and benifits from the many to the few.
They use impressionable, gullible "trendy" college students, bearing
simplistic, senseless sloganeering, such as with such Jesuit theatrics
activist organizations as "Just Stop Oil".
They are mercantilists - devoted to market protectionism - whether for pharameceuticals over naturally occuring substances, or fuels. The anti roads movement is a cleverly CRAFTED enterprise to distract from the matter of adressing cleaner burning higher octane higher Ethanol content fuels.
Ethanol is un patent-able, hence the cleverly crafted disfo campaign against it upon behalf of the American Petroleum Institute for the sake of petro market size, as well as patent-able synthetic "bio-fuels".
They use impressionable, gullible "trendy" college students, bearing simplistic, senseless sloganeering, such as with such Jesuit theatrics activist organizations as "Just Stop Oil", and with there played out campaigns against any expansions of the expressways.
It reeks as a de-populationist front organization.
