The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-08-11
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Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Portland City Council's Transportation and Infrastructure Committee convened on Monday, August 11, 2025, with roll call confirming attendance and the standard conduct statement read into the record. After adopting minutes from prior months by unanimous consent, the committee considered a PBOT-sponsored ordinance amending the parking space reservation code to authorize temporary street use permitting staff, alongside parking enforcement, to install signage creating temporary parking reservation zones, described as a housekeeping change involving roughly six words of code language. Discussion covered permit volume, duration limits, and typical uses such as moving trucks and construction. A motion to refer the ordinance to full council with a "do pass" recommendation was made and seconded; a roll call vote occurred, with outcomes recorded in the vote ledger. The remainder of the session was devoted to a lengthy presentation and discussion on the Interstate Bridge Replacement Program, featuring remarks from elected officials, IBR program staff, PBOT leadership, and invited community, labor, freight, and advocacy stakeholders, covering topics including funding, tolling, transit integration, active transportation design, workforce development, equity commitments, and community engagement history. The meeting extended past its usual 11:30 end time, concluded with announcements of upcoming September agenda items, and was then adjourned.
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Procedural markers in this session
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0 Oh, there we go. Okay, great. Just forget to.
1 Good morning everyone. Looks like everybody's just having a great time out there. Time to get serious. I'd like to call the meeting of the transportation infrastructure committee to order. It is Monday, August 11th at 930. Diego, can you please call the roll?
2 Good morning. Koyama Lane Morillo here. Green here. Smith, here. Clark here.
3 And, claire, can you please read the statement of conduct?
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4 Good morning, and welcome to the meeting of the transportation and infrastructure committee. To testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the committee agenda at Portland.gov/council agenda slash transportation and infrastructure committee. Or by calling 311. Information on engaging with the committee can be found at this link. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting. In person. Testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals may testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise, your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The chair preserves order disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered. When testifying, please state your name for the record. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. And finally, virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
5 Thank you claire. Thank you very much. We have a little bit of committee business to do, but the real show here is to actual agenda items. First we're going to hear a code alignment ordinance from PBOT. It's an administrative change to the parking space reservation code. And then we're going to have a presentation and discussion on the interstate bridge replacement program, which is this committee's first opportunity to really hear from our elected leaders and program staff and community stakeholders on the issue. We're very privileged to have some very distinguished people in the audience today to talk to us. But before we do that, we just need to adopt the committee. Minutes. Colleagues from the last three months. Let's see. Can I get a motion to adopt the minutes?
6 So moved.
7 Seconded.
8 Thank you. The minutes can be approved by unanimous consent. Are there any objections? Great. Seeing none. The minutes are approved. So, diego, can you read the first item for us?
9 Item two. Amend parking space reservation code to allow for flexibility in the distribution of responsibilities.
10 Thank you. So this ordinance comes to us from PBOT. So I'm going to hand it off to dca, donna paul and the PBOT staff to provide a summary of the code changes before us.
11 Good morning chair, clerk and councilors. For the record, I'm priya dhanapala, the deputy city administrator for public works. Today, we're bringing forward an update to the Portland city code that will align the code with our operations already function in the metered districts, and give us more flexibility for the future. Currently, in metered parking areas, a temporary street use permitting staff are already installing no parking signs as part of their work, and the code still says only parking enforcement officers can do this. So this change simply makes the code reflect our current practice by formally authorizing the staff as installers in the meter districts, we are freeing up parking enforcement officers to focus on their core duties while keeping them available as backup. In short, this is a housekeeping change that improves efficiency, matches our operations to our code, and sets up for a more responsive customer service going forward. I'll now turn it over to taylor. The temporary street use permitting supervisor with PBOT to walk through the specifics of this amendment.
12 Yeah, share the presentation here. Can you see that? Okay, there we go. Yeah. Hi, everybody. My name is taylor huschka. I supervise temporary street use permitting within PBOT. Just a little bit about my team. Temporary street permitting issues. Over 20,000 permits a year. Sorry. Temporary permitting issues. Over 20,000 permits a year for the use or closure of the public right of way, which includes sidewalk, travel Lane, bike Lane, full street and parking reservations. Typical uses of our permits range from anything from larger scale construction or development, to just the reservation of a parking space. For someone trying to get a moving truck in front of their home or apartment for a residential move, the reservation of parking in particular. This code change is why I'm here today, until June of this year, parking enforcement was responsible for the placement of these devices to create these temporary reserve zones. In June, my team worked closely with parking enforcement to take on this activity, which included hiring two new staff dedicated to this work. The amendment adds temporary street use, permitting staff as authorized installers to create these reserve zones. In addition to parking enforcement, they remain there as as backup. One of the main benefits of this change is it frees up parking enforcement officers to complete sort of their core duties enforcing parking rules, writing citations. In my opinion, one of the even bigger benefits, though, is just embedding these installers within the permitting team allows them to be more familiar with the permit details, the timelines, overall customer needs, and ultimately provides a better end product for our customers. So that's that's the main change. Again, this is a small change. I think it's a total of six words. That's the change for metered areas. There's a small change to one word for non metered areas, which basically it currently reads the permit. Thank you. The committee will be responsible for placing parking reservation parking reservation devices. And we want to make an amendment for that to say the permittee may be responsible for placing parking reservation devices. And this just allows the city to potentially offer the same service that we currently offer in meter districts in non metered areas in the future. We don't have any immediate plans to do that, but it gives us the flexibility to start working on a pilot project to do so. So again, that was short. Sorry I didn't click over the slide soon enough there, but does anyone have any questions? Here's the actual code change again, it's a total of six words.
13 I counted them. Thank you taylor, could you just one more time? Repeat what these are used for mostly.
14 So basically in metered areas right now when someone wants to temporarily create a reserve zone for a particular use, like they want to reserve a zone to place a pod because they're storing materials in it, they're remodeling a storefront, or they want to create a reserve zone on the entire block because they're bringing a crane in, and they need that parking gone. Right now, parking enforcement is the only one in code that is authorized to place those signs on the street and create those reserve zones. And this just again, adds another group, my team, that's authorized to do so.
15 Do you have any idea what the bulk of the usage is? I'm just curious.
16 It really varies. A lot of the permits that we issue are, again, like someone that just wants 20ft of parking for their moving truck. We do. That's kind of our bread and butter. We do thousands of those a year. The longer duration ones again are can be construction or utility work. But we issue permits for tree trimming. I mean it really varies.
17 Is there a time limit.
18 Six months is the limit. Obviously those are edge cases. And we, you know, can be approved by parking control. But most of the permits we issue are very short in duration. Again, someone that's needs to reserve parking for a moving truck. They're going to need a permit for a day or and we are sort of cautious of how much parking we are taking out of the public inventory because it has impacts.
19 Great. Thank you. Colleagues, are there any questions or our witnesses on this ordinance? Yes.
20 Thank you for bringing this forward. It's a very subtle, small code change that I think has the opportunity to be kind of a resource leveraging a moment. It's I think I see it as part of the vision of centralizing and bringing more efficiency to our broader enterprise approach. So I fully support this. Thank you. Yeah.
21 Councilor Smith.
22 Thank you. I think this is a great opportunity for us to use common sense and have common sense ways that we can amend code. So I do support this wholeheartedly. Thank you.
23 Great observation. Thank you. So if there aren't any other comments or questions, I'd like to entertain a motion to send the ordinance document number 2025 301 to the full city council with a recommendation to pass.
24 So moved second.
25 Great. So councilor Smith moves the ordinance document number 2025, dash 301 to the full council with a due pass recommendation. And councilor Morillo has provided our second. So the motion has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Seeing no discussion, will the clerk please call the roll.
26 Koyama Lane I Morillo.
27 I.
28 I Smith.
29 I.
30 Clark I. With five eyes. The ordinance is referred to the full council with a recommendation it be adopted.
31 Great. Thank you colleagues, and thank you to our witnesses for this common sense change. We appreciate it. Diego, can you please read the next item?
32 Item three interstate bridge replacement program.
33 Oh. That's it. Okay. Typically we are very efficient and ahead of schedule. And I see that. I don't believe that one of our witnesses is here yet. But let me just say that this is our committee's first opportunity to learn about the interstate bridge replacement program in detail. Clearly, the bridge is vital to our economy. No one doubts that. But it is the only stop sign on I-5 from the mexico border to the canadian border. It's amazing. We have this stop sign. Yesterday I wrote in the bridge pedal, and that's always fun to be able to cross all the bridges and look at the city without cars from the top of, say, the fremont. And one day I really look forward to the opportunity to ride my bike safely across the river, the interstate bridge. I'm really looking forward to that. They are even walking across and being able to appreciate the columbia and appreciate both sides of the river. So today we are very privileged to hear from several elected officials, leaders who have been working on this effort for quite a while. And then we'll have a presentation from the program, the teams from the ibr program and PBOT. And then finally, we have a number of community stakeholders with us today that we have invited to provide their perspective. So I'm going to ask my colleagues to hold any questions that you have until our three panels have had their opportunity to speak. And we can also invite any other speakers back up to answer specific questions should they arise. So with that, I'd like to invite I don't believe that the honorable susan mcclain is here yet. I haven't seen her in the audience. I'm sure she's on her way, but we'll get started with mayor anne mccarney. Ogle up, please. And we have metro council president lynn peterson joining us online. And let me just say that president lynn peterson has served as the president of metro council since January of 2019. And prior to this, president peterson was the secretary of transportation in Washington state and helped prior held prior elected office as the chair of the Clackamas county commission and as a lake oswego councilor. Her background is in engineering. She also served as the transportation advisor to former governor john kitzhaber, and also worked at TriMet, where I first met her. Mayor anne was the first woman to be elected as Vancouver mayor. I understand she's held this position since 2018 and was a Vancouver city councilor Prior to becoming mayor, but before holding elected office. And I know councilor Koyama Lane will be interested in knowing this. Mayor anne spent 30 years as a public school teacher. I believe possibly a math math teacher. Is that right? And let me just say that before representative mcclain gets here, who is a current state representative from district 29, the far west Washington county, she has is also a former metro councilor and spent 42 years as a teacher in Oregon. Isn't that cool anyway? And she's parking right now. Oh, terrific. Okay, so she's on her way. So why don't we. Let's see. Why don't we start with mayor anne, you're at the dais, and we'll proceed. Thank you so much for being here.
34 Thank you, councilor Clark and councilor and council vice president is honored to be here. I'm an Oregonian by birth. Eugene. Yay! I'm sorry for the only 45 years in Vancouver. This is a project that I personally have been working on for 27 years. This particular second phase of the interstate bridge replacement project started about eight years ago. And just for a little bit of background, I'm sure you're aware of it, but I'll remind you and those listening, this is a bridge that was built on douglas fir trees. You take the douglas fir trees, you wrap them and you sink them in mud. And then you build the bridge on top of that. So for those of you who have walked the bridge, who have been sitting as the bridge goes up and you feel that bounce, that is why you bounce. Because these are douglas fir trees in mud. But you'll hear today in the presentation from staff that this is a bridge of national significance. It's not just a commuter bridge for those 71,000 people from Clark county to come into Portland, or those 37,000 from Oregon into Washington, it's the $132 million a day in commodities that go across that bridge, and you see them in the semi trucks. When the I-5 bridge lifts and all of the world stops, $36 billion of commodities up and down I-5 across that bridge each year. This is the bridge of regional significance for our entire economy. And so for more than 30 years, individuals knew that this bridge was not structurally sound. In case of a seismic issue, and wanted to make sure that we got rid of the lift and that we made it sound. Because if this bridge goes down in the big earthquake, you won't find the cars. The water is deep enough, fast enough. They'll be in astoria and our entire region economically will fail. So these individuals who have been working on this for more than three decades. And thank you, representative, for joining us. Do so not for us, not for our current needs, because we know it will take quite a while to build it, but we build it for the future and the future of our region. So thank you so very much. Representative mclean, I you found a parking spot.
35 Welcome. Representative mclean. I'm sorry we started without you. I did share a few details about you with the committee, the fact that you were a longtime public school teacher, which we have another public school teacher on the dais here. But I also want to thank you for all the work that you've been doing as a co-chair of the legislative joint transportation committee. Thank you for all that effort. We're waiting with bated breath to see what happens later this month. But anyway, thank you for being here today. We really appreciate your time and are very anxious to hear your comments about the bridge.
36 Well, thank you very much and thanks for understanding that. You know, sometimes it takes ten minutes, sometimes a half an hour. So that was this morning. I want to thank you for inviting us all here today. And the experts are behind us, and they'll be up to tell you all of the details and all of the important information that we all have been trying to share with each other for almost seven years now, and we are so thankful for all the community members and for all of the partners that we have for partners on the Oregon side and for partners on the Washington side. And we just have to get this bridge done. And I will tell you that I was a metro councilor for 16 years, and as a metro councilor, I was the substitute for the bridge way back in 2013 when we made the effort that time. But it has to be a much different effort this time it's going to happen and this time it's got to happen, not just for some of the things that I heard the mayor talk about as far as safety and resilience and really just understanding that we're a regional community and that Vancouver and Portland really do function as a unit in many, many ways out on your streets and your byways. There were busses and there were cars and there were bikes and there were pedestrians. And this bridge, as it's being designed, is not only an equitable and environmentally friendly, but it also is truly multimodal. And I just I want to thank the Portland council for everything they've done up to this point. We're partners, we're connected at the hip. We've got to get all the information to help everybody feel comfortable with why this is such an important investment for our economy, for our people, and for just a good way of life. Being able to get from a to b, whether it's to work, whether it's to school, whether you want to just go down and enjoy the waterfront or anything else, we have to have the opportunity for the wider and the bigger community to enjoy Portland and to really appreciate all the things that you have to offer your personal community as well as the rest of the state. So because I'm late, I'm going to keep it short. There were two elements that I wanted to say, though. I don't know if you said them. If we did, it's just being a teacher in me and I'm just going to repeat it because first you tell them, then you remind them, and then you tell them for the final time. So it's an important element to know that equity and climate based work were not just foundational values, they were filters that were putting absolutely everything through. And I think that's extremely important. As a fifth generation Oregonian who really cares about their schools, their infrastructure, and really wants our communities to sing, we've got to be able to have something that's going to carry us into the future, and also have something that's going to help us create the kinds of community that people want to see and want to be part of, and we want them to thrive. So thank you so much. I'll come back any time and I'll I'll plan ahead. Better for parking.
37 Thank you so much, representative mclean. We really appreciate your being here, and I hope that both of you will stay at the dais. I'm going to ask metro president lynn peterson to speak now. And before you came in, representative mclean, we also asked you to stay if you can, because there may be questions that come up later after our panel discussion.
38 So I'll be right.
39 In the back. Stay right. Good morning. Lynn, how are you?
40 Good morning, chair Clark and councilors, I'm honored to be with you here today to talk about this important project. And thank you for allowing me to be virtual. After several attempts to replace a failing bridge for both safety congestion and lack of multimodal options, we can complete one of the most important projects in the region and the state. And I think that's the important thing, is that we need to complete this project. As you know, not only is it congested and holding back the flow of goods and services as previously mentioned, but it is clearly creating more delays with no real options for families on both sides of the river. Having worked on the replacement of this bridge from the perspective as the chair of Clackamas county governor kitzhaber, senior policy advisor on transportation, and for governor inslee as the secretary of the department of transportation for the state of Washington. I can tell you the last iteration was a political failure because the two sides of the river were not listening to each other, and the dots did role the local concerns. But this time, as you have already heard from mayor anne and from representative mcclain, this time the narrative and the commitments are truly bi state collaboration and partnership. The leadership in Vancouver has been incredible to work with, including port officials, citizens, businesses, and of course, marion. Vancouver has undergone a transformation in their downtown that is truly incredible. And they have built an award winning bus rapid transit system. We all acknowledge the need to connect their brt into Oregon, and the design of the bridge must add to their well planned community and not diminish the placemaking and investments. Also, Vancouver has acknowledged the need to connect Vancouver with the extensive investments that the Portland region has made in placemaking and our light rail system, and together we have all worked very hard, very hard to minimize impacts to our communities by rightsizing the bridge, which I am happy to talk more about later. But more importantly, Portland needs to invest in itself to have a brighter future and signal to the world that we are willing to invest in ourselves to grow our economy. We need these jobs that are coming from building this bridge. We need the accessibility to markets for small and medium sized businesses so they can grow and create more jobs and more local wealth. And we need to be proud of what we accomplished together. We as individuals may not agree with everything about the project, but there is no question it must be replaced. There is still time for this council to influence decisions like low income tolling, program design and bridge design. So help us finish this project so we can move on to other important projects like albina vision trust, expansion of light rail and bus rapid transit with more affordable and low income housing that we so desperately need. I just want to close by saying I was honored to work with commissioner Hardesty, and she was a true champion for the replacement of this bridge and a great partner. Her advocacy for the best bridge for the greater region was stalwart. She was a stalwart, but always kept us moving forward to get outcomes for people. I ask you to join that legacy by working with us to move this project forward as a region for the region. Thank you.
41 Thank you, president peterson. I really appreciate those comments from all three of you. I will I'm sure we'll have you back up at the dais, but we're going to move on to our first panel or actually not a panel, but our experts. I'd like to invite priya back up to the dais to introduce the presentation, and then she's going to hand it over to administrator greg johnson from the ibr project and assistant administrator ray, is it? And maybe, I hope, maybe mr. Johnson will be followed by our own PBOT director, millicent williams, and caitlin reff, to discuss portland's role in the project. Thank you all so much for being here on this beautiful, hot day.
42 All right. Good morning. My name is paul. I'm the deputy city administrator for public works for the city of Portland. Thank you. Accounts committee chair. Clark, vice chair, Morillo and council committee members for devoting time today to hear about those deeply engaged on the work related to the ibr program. I also want to thank representative mclean, mayor anne and metro council president peterson for your ongoing support and efforts to advance this critical program and for your time today at council. This morning, as chair Clark mentioned, you'll be hearing from PBOT director millicent williams on the city's role and the priorities for the program, followed by our program leaders on key scope elements, schedule, finance, plan and community engagement, as well as permitting and approval process. And this this project reimagines the current interstate I-5 crossing over the columbia river, a critical connection between Oregon and Washington. It also looks for looks to make improvements in both Portland and Vancouver for not only those driving, but also walking, biking, and taking transit. We are joined today by many people who are committed to the success of this program, and maximizing the benefits it can bring to our region. As the as you heard from the elected officials, the ibr program is more than just a transportation project. An investment of this scale will shape the growth of our northern half of our region for generations to come. From the year 2019 to 2022, the city of Portland worked closely with the ibr and regional partners to reflect our goals in the modified locally preferred alternative, or mlpa, and director williams and administrator johnson will speak to these elements in more detail, but I want to emphasize that the 2022 adopted mlpa is now advancing through the federal environmental approvals and processes, and it provides a dramatic increase in public transit and extension of our light rail system onto the hayden island and into Vancouver. It also reduces the impact of the interstate highway on hayden island, and provides an opportunity to restore the street grid, creating more walkable areas and neighborhood connections. It also creates a transformative investment in the network of corridors for biking, walking, and rolling across north Portland on hayden island and Vancouver. And it has a commitment to variable rate pricing, which is a pricing to help manage vehicle demand in a way we have not seen in the pacific northwest. There is still more work to be done if we continue to work together to build the best project this can become. This effort has a potential to help us to continue to grow our economy, improve the lives of portlanders and Vancouver, and create better and safer connections for all modes of travel. With that, I would now like to welcome ibr program administrator greg johnson and ibr assistant administrator ray may be to present, followed by PBOT director millicent williams.
43 Welcome, mr. Johnson. Good to see you.
44 Thank you, councilor Clark councilor Clark. Good morning. Members of the transportation and infrastructure committee. Once again, my name is greg johnson. I'm the ibr program administrator and have been toiling at this over the last five years seeking to get this program into construction. So myself and my colleague ray, we're going to go very high level and March through this presentation and try and leave plenty of time for questions. So let's go to the next slide. So this slide is a showing of the area that we are working on. The ibr is actually a misnomer. This is more than a bridge replacement. This is a five mile corridor. And transforming this corridor into a multimodal corridor that facilitates movement with things other than motor vehicles. So those light blue circles you see are the seven interchanges in this five mile stretch that act as one big interchange and creates the congestion and safety problems that we see in this corridor. With this corridor being the highest incident corridor for both states in this in this area. So this is something that's very important. You see the port of Portland and the port of Vancouver both have facilities very near the bridge that put approximately 11% of the traffic is commercial traffic and spoke of the $132 million a day worth of goods that come through this corridor. I'm a lot of it is being generated by port facilities that are very near this area. So let's go to the next slide please. So once again this is a bridge of local interest. We have engaged the community. Tremendous. You're going to hear from some folks who have sat on our community advisory group. And it is a local concern, but it also is state and regional as well as national significance. I-5 is the only interstate that connects mexico and canada on the west coast. The ports that put freight traffic on this community are some of the largest ports, not only in the nation, but some of the largest ports in the world. So we are we are putting the economic viability of this region on a on one of the spans that's over 108 years old. The second span is 67 years old. They have served this region well, but it's time for them to be replaced. So we also are looking at making investments that will make this a viable structure in case there is a major earthquake. Currently, as the bridge is situated on the wood piles that mayor anne spoke of, we are unsure that this bridge would withstand a mid to major earthquake. And as you have seen, when there's a police action on I-5 or I-205 and one of those routes are closed, it creates gridlock and chaos for both communities on each side of this river. But there are some other good news things that this program will bring. We know that for every billion dollars that we spend on construction, we're going to create over 5000 direct jobs and over 10,000 close to 11,000 indirect jobs that are supported. So this economic benefit from this construction will pay dividends for this region for a number of years. Let's go to the next slide please. So once again, this is not the first time this program or this bridge has been attempted to be reconstructed. Ibr is the second generation. We are building on past work that was done during the columbia river crossing. We learned a number of excellent lessons that we improved on things that the community felt that wasn't done well. We it was talked about the modified locally preferred alternative by paul. This was developed as a partnership between the eight partners and the two dots to say, this is what we want to study. So we got feedback from partner agencies and the community on what is important to this region to move forward. So in 2022, we had all partner agencies and commissions endorsed this modified locally preferred alternative. And this is currently what we are studying in our supplemental environmental impact statement. You see the list of partners at the bottom of the slide. Oregon metro president peterson has just been fantastic to work wit. Her counterpart on the Washington side is the rtc. Once again, great partners. Trimet c-tran. On the transit side of things, both cities and both ports have been fantastic partners in moving this program to where we are. Next slide please. So one of the things that we heard is that the community voice really needs we really needed to be accented in the work that we're doing. So one of the first things we did was create a community advisory group, as well as an equity advisory group, to make sure that community voices were reflected in everything we did. So once again, these groups have been functioning for four and a half years and have been vital in helping us develop where we are today. And you will hear from the leaders of that community advisory group in a later session. So next slide please. So why are we here? Why are we working on the interstate bridge? Number one is safety. This bridge and this corridor have narrow lanes, no shoulders, poor sight distance. All of the things that make crashing and congestion a feature in this corridor. The impaired freight movements, freight is tremendously important for the economies of both states. And we need to be able to get freight through this corridor in a reasonable fashion. And currently we cannot, given that once again, there's a lift span and there is over 10.5 hours of congestion every day, so that congestion is a reflection of 143,000 vehicles seeking to cross this bridge every day. Those interchanges, those seven interchanges that folks say, well, why are you working on those? Those interchanges carry over 70% of the traffic that comes through this corridor, either get on or off on one of those seven interchanges. Earthquake vulnerability I spoke of. This is one of the key reasons why we are here. The inadequate bike and pedestrian paths. I've been a cyclist for most of my life. I refuse to ride my bike across here because I think it is unpleasant, and I don't think it's the safest thing, but I've walked across that bridge over 45 times and it is once again not a pleasant walk. And we're looking to improve, to make and attract people to walk and bike across this bridge, to make it a multimodal corridor. And with that, we are looking to extend the yellow line trimet's yellow line for approximately 1.9 miles to evergreen street in Vancouver. And we think that this is one of the ways you can encourage folks to stop taking those single occupancy vehicle trips and give them alternatives, reasonable alternatives of how to travel through this corridor. So let's go to the next slide please. So once again this is a graphical representation of the modified locally preferred alternative. It's a busy slide. But you can see the extension of light rail from the expo center. You can see the bus on shoulder that will be utilized through this corridor. We are also looking at the improvements on hayden island. We heard from folks on hayden island that says the current interchange just divides the island. Can you make it more reasonable? So we are looking at a partial interchange on hayden island to lessen the burden on the folks who live there, and also putting a arterial bridge that connects hayden island to north Portland. And so folks do not have to get on a freeway to get off of hayden island or to get onto hayden island. So some some stellar improvements that we're looking at, this is once again was approved by the unanimously by all of the partner groups. And this is what we are studying in the current supplemental eis. So next slide please. So the transit investments that we are making once again a 1.9 extension of the 1.9 mile extension of the yellow line with three new light rail stations, one on hayden island, one on the Vancouver waterfront, and the terminus station at evergreen boulevard in Vancouver. We will be rebuilding the expo station. Light rail vehicles are going to be purchased to help support this additional load on the yellow line. We're looking at parking rides to help support ridership. Express bus service is currently provided by c-tran, and we propose to continue that and help support making that more efficient through this corridor. So let's go to the next slide. And this is a fly through of the program. So if we can queue up that video. And as it's moving forward once again we are we are not in final design. A number of folks want to have the final design details. We are still in the environmental process. So you see us starting from the south end near interstate boulevard heading north. This is going towards the marine drive interchange, which will be totally reconfigured and be much more efficient. And you can see on the right hand side that arterial bridge that will connect hayden island to the mainland. And as you see, this is a much bigger facility than it currently exists. We are building a lanes that meet current freeway standards and shoulders that meet freeway standards. This will be the signature bridge that crosses over the columbia river. We have to maintain both vehicle traffic as well as river traffic as we are constructing. So that is going to be a large challenge here. You see some of the bike and ped facilities that are peeling off and connecting to the waterfront, and then we are going over the bnsf rail line, and here we're coming up to evergreen street, where the city and washdot successfully obtained a grant for a community connector. Mil plane is where the port of Vancouver truck facilities on come on and off of this freeway in a major way. And now we are coming up towards the to the north end. Fourth plane is a part of the interchange complex with mil plane and finally ending at sr 500 on the north end of the project. So with that, I'm now going to turn it over to my colleague ray mabee to walk us through some of the finance and schedule details.
45 Yeah. Good morning, chair Clark. Council members, my name is ray mabee, assistant administrator for the interstate bridge replacement program. A pleasure to be here this morning. I'll step through a few slides here. First, our program funding slide. We are fortunate as a program to have much of the puzzle pieces of our funding assembled from the kind of, I think from president peterson mentioned earlier, kind of the political will that didn't appear on crc. We started off with that political in a positive way from both legislatures and Oregon and Washington, bringing $1 billion each to this program. And you can see that in in the pie chart there with the existing funding that they brought. So 1.1 with Washington and 1.2 with Oregon, excuse me, 1.1 with Oregon as well. That commitment really showed that we were all in as a region. But that partnership that administrator johnson johnson mentioned earlier also is key because the feds like to make an investment in areas where they're the last dollar, but also that they have regional and local support for a program so that that. Partnership that we've created in support for the program allowed us to successfully compete for two record size grants in two programs the bridge investment program grant from federal highway administration. We got a $1.5 billion grant there, and then a $600 million us dot mega grant for a total of 2.1 billion from usdot federal highway administration. We also have achieved approval for tolling authority from both states and from our early studies on traffic and revenue analysis show that we can get 1.24 billion in net toll revenue. But right now, the two state transportation commissions are studying that further. And then we are also seeking an additional usdot, federal transit administration capital investment grant, investment program grant for $1 billion. That is a grant that we are currently in the process of seeking. It's a stepped and measured process to ensure delivery, and we are in the first stage of that, which is project development and are working through the various steps. With fta, we expect that grant application to be submitted in 2027, with hopefully a full funding grant agreement in 2028. As you see the total funding there, we've got around 6.5 billion or so. We've got also an estimate that we need to match up to, and our current estimate shows a range of 5 to $7.5 billion. And that is escalated into years of construction. The estimate is done in 2022 with a finance plan in 2023. We are updating that this fall and will periodically update that as we move forward to make sure that we are looking at current cost pressures, commodity prices, as well as industry industry pressures. And as we're seeing today, the potential impact of tariffs. Next slide please. As I mentioned the commissions are looking at tolling for the program in more detail. It's important also to note that the dot's or either Oregon or Washington do not set toll rates or policies. It is the commissions of both states, the transportation commissions that actually set those toll rates and policies. And a bi state tolling subcommittee was set up between the two commissions to come together, recommend those rates and policies back to the commissions they have met and approved for toll rate scenarios to study, and an investment grade analysis to make sure that we can meet our funding goals. As you can see here, the toll rates range from $1.1 $0.55 to 4.74 per trip. They're looking at also the truck rate multipliers. As minister johnson mentioned, we've got 11% trucks running through this area. That is a significant amount compared to other parts of the state. And so that multiplier is important to the bottom line. There. Also, in each one of those four scenarios, the commission's agreed to study a low income toll program. This is an important piece that we've heard from our community and partners to make sure that is embedded in our toll program, and it's heartening to see that the commissions have decided to study a 50% discount for individuals at or below 200% of the federal poverty level. And it is, like I said, in each of those scenarios. So that's that's encouraging. And we're also looking at the committees are looking at the potential of tribal exemptions as well. There is a tribal exemptions that exist for a couple tribes in Washington right now, but they're looking at a broader tribal exemption discount. We'll continue to look at this and refresh the analysis they're doing. But we will look at a results from this work in 2026, early next year with pre-completion tolling starting in mid 2027. Next slide please. This is our overall program schedule. As greg says this is one of our most important slides. It shows a lot of the work that has been mentioned as the program is re-initiated from. From the past project starting from that past work. But but starting in a way that that does listen to our local communities and partners and factor that in. And we've been working hard on on bringing back the documents for design to see and bring the locally preferred alternative through screening of equity and climate and our various partner desires and study that in our environmental process, our national environmental policy act process. And it is a supplemental working off the past work. But we are nearing the end of that. We're seeing light at the end of the tunnel and expect a final supplemental environmental impact statement and record decision early next year such that we can begin the work of right of way acquisition, utility relocation and construction. As we do that work, we continue to look for opportunities for additional funding. As greg mentioned, the city of Vancouver and Washington dot were successful in that connecting communities grant for the community connector, and we'll continue to find those opportunities working with our ten federally recognized tribes on ongoing tribal consultation is important and that government to government connections, not only as we develop the project, but as we actually build it. As we know, this is a culturally, culturally rich area. And then lastly, the ongoing community engagement is something that we heard from the past crc days is that that cannot go quiet. And we continue to continue to engage the community and many different venues. And you'll hear today from our community, co-chairs of our community engagement group. Next slide please. This is not a small project. As mr. Johnson mentioned earlier, it's five miles of interstate. Interstate seven interchanges and billion dollars of work. We are not going to be able to do this in one fell swoop or one contract. We want to make sure that we have contracts that that reflect opportunities for our local firms, our small businesses, our. Dbs, and we build this in a way that manages and provides three lanes of traffic in each direction throughout construction. And to do that, you've got to break this up into reasonable chunks. And so we've done that with a packaging that shows 28 different construction and purchase packages. And the colors you see here represent those construction packages. It's important to note that, as greg mentioned, all modes of the corridor, whether you're walking, biking or rolling or in a truck or a car or on a train or a bus, go over that bridge. And so that is a keystone, the project. And that's one of the key pieces where we're start is the columbia river bridges themselves, as well as the approaches on sr 14, and then a touchdown on hayden island and continue to build outwards from there. Lots of projects are transit specific projects as well as we extend light rail. As greg mentioned from the expo center into Vancouver, the recently brought a step amendment to metro that included work for additional design as well as and right of way utility work, as well as the work for the interstate bridge replacement piece itself, as well as pre-completion tolling. These things will really enable us to begin construction as soon as we get that regular decision. Next slide please. Now, as I mentioned, that billion dollars worth of work and those jobs that mr. Johnson mentioned earlier means that we've got to we'll have heavy demands on a workforce that is already fairly tapped, and we will need not only workforce we have here, but across the country to help build this program. And we are actively working with not only labor, but workforce development groups and the trades to find opportunities to work together to develop that workforce, to create the jobs that are needed and bring the talent to bear as people come and develop jobs that will bring. Well-paying jobs to help them throughout their careers. We're also implementing our comprehensive strategies to reach out to those firms I mentioned before, our disadvantaged businesses, our sba, and various workforce communities throughout the northwest. Something to add on that, greg.
46 Just the fact that we did appear before the workforce committee earlier this year and laid out some of our specific plans of how we plan on investing in pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship programs as we move forward.
47 So next slide please. And it doesn't stop there. We know that there is a big need for small business support. And in that this program will provide plenty of opportunities to help small businesses develop and grow. And we're working with Washington northwest and native apex, as well as other organizations to focus in that area. Next slide please.
48 So we are once again have a lot of details that we've put in front of you, but we are turning towards construction. So what's on the horizon for us? We're having a construction industry webinar sometime in early to mid September, where we're going to be talking to the construction industry and putting out the values that are expected to be accomplished and seen on this program. Ray mentioned that we will be putting out our cost estimate and financial plan update late this year to update our cost estimates. As, as you know, and as you've seen in city programs, inflation and escalation are are chipping away at our ability to get big things done. So we will be putting those numbers out once again, our amended record of decision we are anticipating sometime in the spring of next year, and that will give us the ability to go into construction, but we will continue our community engagement. We appear at community fairs, festivals and events. And if there are things where the city needs us, where you think we would be of help in explaining this program to different groups, we will make ourselves available to do that. So the bi-state tolling subcommittee work continues on. We also are looking at design elements. We have a in-person workshop with the partners to talk about esthetics. So we look forward to having the city help weigh in on what our team is contemplating for esthetics, for this corridor and for the bridge itself. And so I think our last slide is just how to stay connected with us. We have a award winning website. We have office hours, either virtual or in person, for members of the community who want to come and get their questions answered. We have a monthly newsletter that we encourage folks to sign up for, and we have a calendar on our website where folks can know where we are meeting, what things are coming up. So that's the end. And thank you for having us here at this committee.
49 Thank you, mr. Johnson. That was very thorough overview. I really appreciate all the outreach that you do as well. So now we'll turn it over to director millicent williams.
50 Thank you so much, councilor. Good morning to the city council president. Excuse me, chair Clark, vice chair Morillo and the committee. For the record, my name is millicent williams. I am the director of the Portland bureau of transportation. I want to reiterate my appreciation for representative mclain, mayor mcinerney and metro council president peterson for your time today, and my colleagues working tirelessly on the ibr program. Administrator johnson and assistant administrator mabee, as well as the panel of community representatives dedicating their time today that will be speaking soon to share critical perspectives and expertise on priorities for how to advance the ibr program. I have a few slides to share for context around what this program means for the city of Portland and our role in completing the work. I will provide an overview of the city's identified priorities, planned program benefits, ongoing opportunities, and our next steps. I look forward to hearing from community representatives and the subsequent council discussion. Next slide. It's important to remember the interstate bridge replacement is not a city of Portland project. We do have we do not have a financial obligation. Let me let me say that more clearly. We do not have a financial obligation to this project, but rather have a seat at the by state table. It is a project prioritized by two states and their respective state leadership, with federal support to address an undeniable need for earthquake resiliency and more. Our job as a city has been to help the states structure a project that identifies, avoids, minimizes, or mitigates potential impacts, and that also helps to uplift the vision we have for the city and the region. Odot and washdot are jointly leading the program in collaboration with eight partner agencies, as has been mentioned. And as you see on the screen, the city of portland's role, while one partner at the table includes participation and engagement across our city structure, including seven bureaus with PBOT as the lead bureau, highlighting the program's governance structure. You can see the program administrator there in the center. The program also has three advisory groups, including the equity advisory group, community advisory group, and the community benefits advisory group, which sunset in may of 2025 after accomplishing their stated goal of providing guidance to the program on community needs. The city has several seats within the program's governance structure, including on the esg equity advisory, equity steering group, executive steering group. Excuse me, I should note that the equity advisory group and as decision makers with jurisdictional authority for permitting on the esg or executive steering group, we have, as our representative councilor Clark, and our staff rep is brenda martin, who is a PBOT project manager. In 2019, then mayor ted wheeler wrote a letter to ibr stating the priorities of the city as a program partner, working toward restructuring the previous bridge replacement effort, the columbia river crossing. The city's priorities included the importance of having high capacity transit on the bridge, prioritizing active transportation and local street connections, and rightsizing the hayden island interchanges to reduce the impact of the interstate on local communities. Those initial priorities helped to inform city participation, and in 2022, the Portland city council adopted the modified locally preferred alternative, or the mlpa. The mlpa stated that the program would include transit investments, including new light rail transit service into Vancouver, improved interchange configurations for hayden island marine drive, new and improved active transportation facilities, and limit highway expansion to one auxiliary Lane in each direction across the bridge. City council's support also included an exhibit of several conditions of approval. These conditions were based on existing city policy codes and guidelines, as well as feedback and recommendations from public advisory bodies. The conditions fell under 13 different themes, providing a lens in which the city continues to engage with the program. I want to highlight some of the benefits of the. I want to highlight some of the benefits of the ibr program for the city of Portland, specifically the improved multimodal connections that will be added by the program between Portland and Vancouver. One of the main priorities for the city in supporting the mlpa was the addition of high capacity transit on the bridge. Once complete, the project will expand transit service to provide the community a one seat ride on light rail max from downtown Portland to downtown Vancouver. This connection will be a huge benefit for people accessing employment centers, visiting our downtowns for shopping, dining, and cultural events. Health students go to school or visit our many parks and open spaces. The program is also improving the shared use paths on victory boulevard around expo center, and making dramatic improvements to the paths over the columbia river. A new 24 foot wide path will be built on the new span, creating a more comfortable and safe crossing for those biking, walking and rolling. Improved local street connections from north Portland neighborhoods like Kenton and bridgeton to hayden island will also be included in the program, primarily with the addition of new local bridge separating local trips to and from hayden island from I-5. Highway trips a welcome improvement for locals traveling to and from the island. Now, I'd like to focus on hayden island as one of the main areas impacted by the program's footprint. As a reminder for council, hayden island is identified as a neighborhood center and transit station area in portland's 2035 comprehensive plan and the 2009 hayden island plan. The program has committed to major improvements on hayden island, including creating new street connections on tomahawk island drive and hayden island drive and hayden island drive, new local connections on some street segments running north and south across the island, and as mentioned before, a new local bridge connecting north portland's bridgeton neighborhood to hayden island. The city also sees opportunities to capitalize on these program improvements to elevate the land use visions of hayden island plan. Creating more vibrant and walkable streets can help develop the port. Help develop the island as portland's front door on the columbia river, we can leverage new local street improvements like those planned for tomahawk drive and the new max light rail station, to help realize the plan's neighborhood center designation. The program will also change the bridge's existing footprint, creating a potential for more developable land close to light rail. This opens opportunities for future mixed use development along the corridor. Pedestrian oriented storefronts and buildings close to and oriented towards sidewalk. Finally, the city continues to look for opportunities to create connections to the river on hayden island, either with the potential for future riverwalk park or simply a place to access the water from the island. The growth and vibrancy opportunities on currently underused city land could be transformative to hayden island, its residents and its visitors. City staff is focused on a few items over the next six months to one year, as the program progresses forward into design and construction. Continued collaboration with ibra on the city's remaining unmet conditions for approval, implementation of the final recommendations from the community benefits advisory group, and unresolved issues that will be discussed during the program's design phase. City staff and the team have already begun discussions about city required permits, specifically those needed for the first two construction packages that the program will be initiating in early 2026, including a type four demolition permit for the existing historic river bridge. Engagement on architectural elements through advisory groups. Two workshops are being held this summer that have city leadership representatives attending to provide feedback on bridge esthetics and design elements, as has been mentioned, and coordination in preparation for initial design packages for the main. River bridges and their approaches. The program will speak more to these packages or has already spoken to these packages in their presentation. And finally, a new intergovernment intergovernmental agreement for design and construction phases will need to be signed by June 2026 to cover city staff time and city focused scopes of work. The city anticipates being involved in about 15 to 18, 15 to 15 of the 28 packages being planned by the program, and I will now hand it back to you, councilor Clark, to welcome our next panel.
51 Thank you so much, director williams. I know we are thoroughly engaged in this project as a city. I do hear about it. Thank you all so much for being here. I hope you can stay. I'm assuming we'll have questions for you after we hear from our panelists that have invited testimony. Thank you so much. So, colleagues, we've invited three different panels and stakeholders. We've got lots of community groups that have been active in the project, as you've heard. So we've invited a number of those to be here today. And I'd like to call up the first group in in three groups, and that would be the community advisory group co-chairs, ed Washington and lynn volunteer. Some of you here at the dais know mr. Washington and his public service as a former metro councilor and many other things for the community. So thank you both for being here and thank you for your service on this important project.
52 Thank you for the invitation. I'm lynn, volunteer co-chair of the community advisory group, and I'm also a Washington resident who lives in Washington but works in Oregon, which makes me one of those highly invested commuters who is the community advisory group. The program took a deep look at what was needed for this project to be successful, and they felt that community input was critical. Consequently, we stood up a group of 32 individual and community members representing a wide variety of interests back in. We started this work in 2020 when I was asked to co-chair. I really thought about it and I, I thought about the different opportunities I had to give back to my community. And I said yes because I couldn't think of anything more important for my community, our community, than to get a new bridge built. It has impacts for economic development as well as professional and personal commuting. We lean on significant public process that has already occurred. To build a bridge for our community. We need efficient river traffic. We need efficient travel, for trucking, for deliveries, for commuters, and to enable people to visit family and friends. We are one economic area. We need a bridge to improve the seamlessness and impact of our metropolitan, regional and interstate economy. There's a personal side as well. I grew up in Portland. I attended sunset high school. My mom still lives in the house that I grew up in, but increasingly traffic impacts my ability to get there and home round trip. It can take three hours. When my dad was nearing end of life, the added stress from not being able to get there quickly made a difficult situation even more so. We need a replacement bridge in any large scale public effort. There will be divergent opinions and this project is no different. And indeed that reflects the American way. But in the words of one of our community advisory group members, when we were sharing our hopes for the project back in 2021, the best bridge is the bridge that gets built. Thank you.
53 Thank you so much, mr. Washington.
54 Thank you, chair Clark and council members, it's a pleasure for me to be here. Lynn and I worked together on the team, and I. I like to consider myself the cleanup batter because she hits the home runs always. And she's such a pleasure to work with as well as the committee. And I think that our committee is so strong in the sense that they build the bridge. And that's what we're trying to do. And when greg spoke this morning about coming across the bridge, you know, I tell you, coming across that bridge, for me, it's frightening now. And maybe that's because I'm getting younger. And as you get younger, sometimes you get frightened by those kinds of things. But it's a real trip crossing that bridge at 5:00. So I, I honestly, resoundingly say, let's get the bridge built. Greg has been so good. I mean, this man is he's an angel. And I think we owe it to the angels and the home run hitter to make sure and all of the citizens on both sides of the river to get this done. And. The. I have coffee over at starbucks, and there's a group of mostly guys, but women come in there too. They have coffee in this room, and they always refer to it as a room of enlightenment. And I think that's when I, when I first heard of, of the mayor was when he stopped by for coffee and they invited him into the room of enlightenment. So you're all invited to come to the room of enlightenment, but with one idea in mind, we've got to get this done. This just cannot fail this time. And I'd like to say one thing in closing, representative mcclain and I served on metro at the same time, and I would not be here speaking to you today. As a former metro councilor, had it not been for representative mcclain, there was a time when she broke the tie and gave me the gift. So let's give the city of Portland and Vancouver a gift and get the bridge built. Thank you.
55 Thank you both so much for being here today. Taking the time and five year commitment. I'm sure it's going to go on. I just appreciate the fact that you've been involved that long. Thank you so much. Let's call up our next panel, lauren bowling from the ironworkers. He's a political director, joe cortright from no more freeways. And sarah andren from she's the executive director of street trust. I think everybody's here. Thank you all. Thank you so much for coming today. Lauren. Do you want to kick it off?
56 Sure.
57 Chair Clark, vice chair Morillo and members of the committee. For the record, my name is lauren bowling, and I'm here on behalf of the ironworkers local 29. We represent more than 1600 journey workers, state registered apprentices and retirees across Oregon and southwest Washington. We are in strong support of the ibr project. I won't belabor the points that have already been made by the folks who testified previously, but ibr for us means a seismically sound bridge, more transit options, less congestion, and better safety outcomes. Ibr is vital to the future success of our region. For Oregon and Washington residents, the project also represents the very real opportunity to get into a career in the skilled trades that comes with family wages, health care, and the ability to retire with dignity. With a project estimate timeline of a decade. This means 2 to 3 generations of registered apprentices, depending on the trade, could complete their apprenticeship on one project and be ready to go to other future projects across our region. For the elected officials who may be on the fence about labor standards or think this is a union versus nonunion issue, I really hope that you can understand one aspect about why apprentice utilization requirements are so crucial and must not be negotiated, negotiated out, or have waivers granted. A more diverse contractor pool and workforce. This is because of the fact that you need a large amount of capital and demonstrated work experience or relevant licensing to get a cobid certification for your contracting business. Only focusing on minority contracting hours is shortsighted and registered apprenticeship in business go hand in hand, and this will help to ensure that we have the skilled and local workforce we need. However, as the folks on the team have pointed out, for those who are not as familiar with the programs in place, technical assistance is important. But I think it is disingenuous to say that bipoc contractors cannot figure out healthcare or apprenticeship requirements when they can understand thousands of pages of very complicated building codes. Additionally, I would say that all building trades affiliated unions offer non-signatory contractor agreements so you don't have to become a union signatory to access registered apprentices. It's also very important to note on the equity lens that a 2021 study done by the university of Oregon labor education research center on apprenticeship in Oregon found that for 46% of women in apprentice union apprenticeship programs, entering the trades had a wage of $4 or higher an hour, compared to only 19% of those in nonunion programs. And then similarly for bipoc workers and union programs, 55% of those workers were making more than $40 an hour, compared to only 20% in nonunion. This project needs to be done right, and steps should be taken to ensure that the communities most impacted by this project benefit the most. The ironworkers are again in strong support of the ibr project, and the opportunity that this represents for our constituents. Thank you again for your time and I'm happy to answer any questions.
58 Thank you very much for coming here today. Appreciate your testimony. Should we go, joe? Should we go with you next? Welcome. Get some slides.
59 Yeah.
60 Thank you very much. For the record, joe cortright, I'm with no more freeways. Just like to hit about six points. First of all, you should be very, very afraid from a fiscal standpoint. The cost estimate for this project is badly out of date. It's from 2022. For 20 months now, greg johnson has conceded that they're working on a new estimate and it will be considerably higher. He said it will be available first in June of 2024 last year. Then he said it would be available in summer this year. Now, the slide he presented today said it would be either late this year or early next year. The record of ODOT cost overruns. Sorry, let me see if I can advance the slide. Oh, there it is. Should make you again very afraid. You look at vintage 2022 estimates by ODOT and the rose quarter project has gone up 43% since then. The abernathy bridge project 64%, and the hood river bridge is more than doubled in that time. So we know that the risk this is not going to be a $7.5 billion project, it's likely to be in excess of $10 billion.
61 Excuse me just a second, joe. We are having a little technical difficulty with the slides. Okay. Can diego, can you take care of that for us or somebody.
62 See if I can?
63 Yes. If you hit.
64 Some of these or.
65 I think you might need to allow the allow button on the, on your screen.
66 On your pop up window.
67 Yeah. Down there. This this that.
68 Oh.
69 Oh okay.
70 Okay. Simple. I'm sorry.
71 Too much for the technical support. I very much appreciate it. I hope everybody can see the slide now. Yeah. So basically all of these projects, the 2022 vintage estimates we know are wildly wrong. And it's going to be considerably higher. That will push the cost up. And as you know, they don't have full funding for even the existing budget. And that that's even more problematic based on what's happened in Washington, dc, where the house appropriations committee, which marked up the budget for next year, essentially eliminated all the funding for new capital investment grants. That is, they're continuing the funding of the projects that are approved, but no more money for additional projects. And ODOT, ODOT and ibr have not even applied yet and don't anticipate applying for next year. You should also be aware. Sorry, I'm having trouble advancing slides here.
72 Need some technical help?
73 Yeah, I'm not sure why this isn't advancing. In any event, mr. Johnson referred to the problem with congestion on the bridge, which has been a problem in the past. But we know that traffic problems, traffic patterns have changed dramatically. He cited a figure of 143,000 vehicles a day using the bridge. The latest ODOT numbers show that that number has fallen to 127,000 vehicles per day, more than a 10% decrease. The level of traffic on the I-5 bridge today is lower now than it was in 2005. And again, this project is not a bridge replacement. If it were just simply a replacement, we wouldn't be here today. It's really a 12 mile long, five mile wide freeway project, freeway widening project that involves rebuilding seven interchanges, which is the bulk of the cost of this project. Essentially, they're designing a project for a vast amount of traffic that simply hasn't happened, and their projections are profoundly wrong. And that's before you impose a toll on the I-5 bridge. It's 127,000 vehicles per day. If you toll that, it will drop substantially their own level two analysis, which they didn't tell you about, says that 50,000 fewer vehicles will use the I-5 bridge once you toll it. Most of those will divert to I-205. So you'll produce gridlock on I-205 and have a vastly underutilized I-5 crossing. And you should pay particular attention to tolling, because they still haven't done the gold standard. The investment grade analysis to tell you exactly how much the tolls have to be in order to generate the $1.2 billion that they're expecting. And because traffic is much lower than they anticipated already, and we know that tolling will reduce traffic further, that means that you will need either much higher tolls, or you will get a much lower level of revenue than they've anticipated. And finally, I just have to comment on climate because they said that they've had a climate filter or a climate lens. Nothing could be further from the truth. This project is designed on traffic assumptions that are completely at odds with our adopted state, regional and city climate plans. Our climate plans say we are going to reduce vmt vehicle miles traveled by an aggregate of 12% over the next 20 years or so. The traffic projections assume a 25% increase in vehicle miles traveled. So essentially, they've built a project that's designed to violate our climate policies, and they haven't addressed that. Thank you very much for your attention. I apologize for the technical difficulties.
74 Thank you, joe, thank you for raising those points. Sarah, would you like to start? Thank you.
75 Yes. Good morning, chair Clark, vice chair Morillo and councilors. My name for the record is sarah iannarone. I use she her pronouns. I am the executive director of the street trust, and I'm a registered lobbyist with the city of Portland. We are the lobbyist on behalf of the people who can't or don't drive and depend on a safe, complete, multimodal system to meet their daily needs. I also served on the regional advisory committee until it was passed last year. The street trust and our partners in the public and active transportation advocacy space take the interstate bridge replacement project very seriously. Our organizations have been engaged since crc 1.0, and we remain committed to ensuring that the public and active transportation connections of this project are safe, comfortable and seamless on both sides of the columbia river and along the bridge itself. The project must be more than a highway expansion, and it is in fact a highway expansion. It must be a complete multimodal connector. You wouldn't strand freight haulers with missing off ramps and force them onto grades they couldn't climb with a load. And yet that's exactly what the current design risks doing to people walking, biking, rolling and accessing transit. It also potentially poses harm to low income drivers in our region. If the low income toll program is not in place from the start of pre-completion tolling, our community has operated in good faith for over four years with the ibr team. But as our no vote on last month's mtp amendment at metro demonstrated, we will not accept token engagement. We've seen how quickly years of coalition work can be erased. As we painfully learned in Salem last month, it's far easier to kill something than to build it. If our concerns about safety, network completeness, comfort and intermodal accessibility are not addressed by the design, a rapidly cooling support for this project will be withdrawn entirely. As we are seeing across all levels of government right now. From the Portland mayor's public safety discussion in northwest Portland to the governor's tourniquet for ODOT going before the legislature this August non-drivers the 30% of Oregonians and washingtonians who rely on walking, biking and transit are treated as expendable. We can be engaged for months and even years as stakeholders, only to be ignored when final decisions are made. If public and active transportation advocates are going to stay at the table, we need concrete commitments from every level of government, city, region, state and our team that our needs will be met. Here's one example. The current alternative separates the multi-use path from the light rail alignment, forcing active transportation users into a half mile spiral spiral ramp. On the Vancouver side, an unwieldy, block sized, high cost, high maintenance facility. Instead of providing direct, safe and accessible connections, we have been told that co-locating the path with light rail is not feasible and off the table. If that is truly the case, then we need to know asap how the design team will address connectivity concerns for multimodal users and another way that meets or exceeds the comfort, safety, and accessibility benefits of co-location. If this bridge is built, it will be the single largest piece of active transportation infrastructure our region has ever taken. We support it, but we support getting it right. The street trust is ready to work with you, key stakeholders and director johnson and his team to ensure that it is more than a highway project. It must be a model of climate friendly, accessible and connected transportation for all users, including the people who can't or don't drive. Thank you for hearing our testimony today.
76 Thank you so much, sarah. Thank you to all three of you for coming today and sharing your thoughts and questions. I'm sure we'll be following up on some of those. Let's call up. Our final panel. Is janet jarvis here or is she online? She's online. Okay. And contran, are you here? There you are. Who's the policy director for the national association of minority contractors? And jan jana is with the Portland freight committee. Hi, janet.
77 Thank you. Thank you for the invitation to speak today. I'm janet jarvis, chair of the Portland freight committee and president and ceo of the Oregon trucking association. I really appreciate the opportunity to testify virtually since I am over in central Oregon in bend at our annual leadership convention at the moment. So thank you for that. The interstate bridge replacement project is vital to the freight industry. It lists 31st on the nation's top 100 bottlenecks, according to research done by the American transportation research institute. At peak times of the day, which equates to about 7 to 10 hours of congestion, traffic moves an average of 37.5mph, creating uncertainty in the timely delivery of goods and adding cost and unpredictability. Interstate five is recognized as the most important freight highway on the west coast, linking regional, national and international markets. It provides direct links to the ports of Portland and Vancouver, as well as the majority of the region's freight consolidation and distribution terminals. This section of the I-5 corridor is not only critical to portland's economy, it's the very heartbeat of oregon's financial health. An average of 13,500 freight trucks cross the bridge daily in 2019. I'm certain the number has increased by today, which is as as was mentioned earlier, 11% of the daily traffic. These freight trucks carried over $172 million of commodities daily, made more significant in the fact that trucks moved nearly 75% of the nation's goods. Because this is such a critical freight route, it's imperative that we replace this bridge. Parts of the bridge are over 100 years old. It is not seismically sound and that the wooden pilings don't sit on bedrock in a portion of the country that is vulnerable to earthquakes. The risks are high that this bridge will collapse, impacting not only product moving over it, but product moving down the river. The risks are high, the need is there. We need to move forward with replacing this bridge with one that is seismically resilient and provides much needed capacity. Thank you again for the invitation to speak today.
78 Thank you jenna, thank you for taking time away from your leadership conference. All right. Next.
79 Good morning, chair Clark and vice chair Morillo and members of the Portland transportation and infrastructure committee. For the record, my name is khan tran. I am the policy director for the Oregon chapter of the national association of minority contractors, or namc for short. We are a business association that represents minority owned construction firms across the state, working to ensure equitable access to public contracting and workforce opportunities. Oregon wholeheartedly supports the interstate bridge replacement program as a critical regional infrastructure investment, and as a once in a generation opportunity to correct historic exclusion in public contracting and workforce development. We advocate for intentional inclusion of contractors and design firms of color from preconstruction to project delivery, including scopes of work, project packaging, bonding assistance, and strong community benefits agreements that are both flexible and effective. Namc has been deeply involved in shaping ivers equity approach through the community advisory group. Our ceo, nate mccoy, elevated economic justice alongside transportation outcomes in the executive steering group. Namc brought forward workforce and contracting equity priorities to agency leadership. And in the equity advisory group, we've shared models for equitable procurement, capacity building and workforce pathways for businesses owned by people of color. We've also championed policy solutions like an owner controller insurance program, which could make it easier for smaller and emerging firms to participate without facing prohibitive insurance costs. This project can generate hundreds, maybe thousands, of contracting opportunities and create a pipeline for diverse talent in skilled trades, engineering, design, construction, you name it. But only we addressed the known barriers barriers like access to financing, bonding and timely payments for small firms, contract bundling and pre-qualification requirements that can unintentionally exclude emerging firms. The need for consistent accountability, transparency and enforcement for equitable commitments, and of course, funding, which is the overall kind of big issue. If we solve these issues, we strengthen oregon's construction economy for the long term. They make Oregon would like to thank the city of Portland and city council for your continued efforts and partnership and contributions on this project. This is about more than building or replacing or expanding a bridge. Ibr can be a national model for how infrastructure investments deliver both mobility improvements and generational economic impact and opportunity in communities that have historically been left out of projects of this scale. As always, thank you for your time, for your leadership to this great city.
80 Thank you. Thank you for coming. Okay, colleagues, and get my voice back. What a great set of presenters. We've learned a lot today, and I know that the committee has lots of questions. Councilor Smith, would you like to start?
81 Yes, ma'am.
82 Thank you, madam chair. Could I have the panel of ibr. Is priya here? And. Millicent.
83 Come on down.
84 And the assistant administrator of ibr.
85 Maybe.
86 Thank you. And the mayor of Vancouver. Do we have space for her? Now? This is what I would consider a starting five, right? This is the best in the west. And I want to thank all of you for joining us today and providing a very informative presentation. And I especially want to thank you, mayor, for coming across the river to join us. I saw your comments in the news last week regarding how delaying construction of the bridge will lead to costly delays, and I totally agree with you. Delaying construction of the interstate bridge will be terribly expensive due to rising inflation, increasing costs of materials due to new tariffs, and other factors. Additionally, people are waiting to get to work on all the construction projects needed in the interstate bridge replacement program as a whole, and we saw that in the presentation today. It's just not a bridge. I have a few questions about the numbers and types of jobs that the ibr program will create. Once it is fully and up and running, but I would appreciate hearing about the workforce aspects, and I want to thank our, our our our new one. What what do we call it now, priya, that you're the dca over.
87 Service area, the service area of public work service.
88 Yeah, the public service. I have to get used to it. But I also want to thank PBOT as well, because you all have been great partners and facilitating the necessary information to the ibr project for many years. And going forward, I I'm especially concerned and you all know this about jobs in the workforce and how this will impact our community. I so appreciate that we've been able to hold on to this project and make sure that our voices are heard about the importance of the $132 million worth of commodities that cross our our bridge every day. But I want to get more specific because I noticed something that you said, administrator johnson, about every billion dollars worth of commodities that equal, well, not commodities, but of the of the project of the bridge equals up to 5500 jobs. Could you explain to me further? Because, you know, I'm very interested in understanding how we can help to create jobs and what we can do from an apprenticeship standpoint to make sure that we have the folks that you need to make this bridge happen.
89 Thank you, councilor Smith. Members of the committee, once again, this program is looking at a significant investment over a 10 to 15 year period, which means we have some folks who are currently in junior high who may be able to journey out on this project. So the investments that we're talking about, we believe will create over 18,000 person year jobs, and that is significant as we see some of the national headlines about the economy slowing. These are the type of job opportunities that can keep a region economically afloat. So we are we are tremendously committed to the pre-apprenticeship programs, to making sure we are reaching out to diverse and underserved areas on both sides of the bridge to bring those folks to the table for these type of job opportunities and pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship programs.
90 Okay, perfect. And assistant administrator ray, what are you all doing for the contractors in terms of insurance? I know that's always been a big deal. How do they pay? How do they pay for insurance? Are you all going to be doing any special programs to help them with that?
91 Yeah. Councilor Smith, that is something that we are looking at with both states on. Want to provide an insurance as a possibility? There's other programs as well. We do know that that has been a issue that industry has experienced. And these are not going to be small projects. And we know we've got to set up the right levels of insurance requirements so that we don't have barriers to competition and participation. Those difficult questions that that go into the kind of the fabric of both states and their various risk shops. And so we're working through those as we speak.
92 But if it if you all paid for the insurance for the and they would basically pay into that, wouldn't it be cheaper if you did it as a, as an umbrella.
93 So yeah, I think you're talking about the Oregon controlled insurance programs and yeah. And we're looking at those as options. It's not something either state has done in the past. So starting up something like that is can be a bit daunting. But this is a also a unique and sizable program. So we're having those conversations now.
94 And I just wanted to make sure that I bought priya and. Director williams up because I was asked a question by councilor and she said, how much money are we putting into this project? And so if she asked me this question, I know people who are watching this online, they want to know how much money the city of Portland is putting into this project.
95 The city of Portland.
96 Is not putting any money into the project. The city of Portland is working in cooperation and coordination with the program, with the state, to make sure that we have the seat and voice at the table. The program actually invests in the city to be able to get their input and recommendations. So the staff that are dedicated to this program are paid by the program, but the city is not investing any dollars in the success or the outcomes of this bridge.
97 Thank you. And donna paul, are there any things policy wise that we need to do from this transportation committee to help this project get over the finish line?
98 I defer to director williams. Yes.
99 Thank you so much, donna. Paul, you what we will need to have is the continued voice at the table. Since the councilor has been councilor, Clark has become a part of the executive steering group. She immediately dug in to get as much information and a wide a broad understanding of the history of the project, the future of the project and the needs of the project. And so we have on a monthly basis been providing updates as to where the project is going and what the project needs to do. There are some small pieces, as was mentioned in the presentation. There are some small details that we're working through, and some of those are specific to parks and recreation's needs, or bds's needs or pbot's needs specifically around the movement in the project influence area, and how we would ideally like to see things move. But having that strength of position and authority and showing up physically and very intentionally in the space is what we appreciate and what this program continues to need. And then when we have concerns, feeling like we can bring those forward. And I know that the program has been open to receiving all of the feedback that the city of Portland has brought forward over the course of the past several years, over 100 recommendations have come forward from the city of Portland alone, and the program has sought to address every one of those. Are we always getting everything we want? Not necessarily. But are we getting the things that we most definitely need? We. I can certainly attest to the fact that we are getting that.
100 Thank you, I appreciate that. I have one last question, madam chair. I I'm going back to the last speaker, administrator johnson from the street trust. The street trust had clear ideas on how to keep their support in play and what they would need in a multi-modal system, not just a highway. Do you have any response to what sarah was talking about earlier?
101 Thank you for the question, councilor Smith. I appreciate the interactions that we've had with the street trust as well as no more freeways. We don't just speak to folks who support us. We speak to folks who have complaints about our program. We invite folks in to express their ideas. So we have been working with the biking community on both biking, walking community on both sides of the river to make sure that we are designing something that will be utilized in the future. We have not yet accomplished final design and folks are are wanting to jump steps and get to final design. We're not there yet. We hear that folks want to have the bike, the biking facility, biking, walking facility on the opposite side of the bridge. We heard different from the biking community earlier because they said they wanted the view of mount hood and they wanted that unimpeded view. So we're still working with folks to get to these solutions. Nothing is written or carved in stone yet, and we will continue to listen. We have open office hours where anyone is available to come and talk to us about their ideas.
102 Thank you. Thank you all for your comments.
103 Great questions. I would just say that we are used to conflicting policies and conflicting goals, and we appreciate the fact that you're finding the middle path down all of these. It's a very difficult thing to negotiate. Councilor Morillo.
104 Thank you so much, chair. Clark, thank you all so much for being here. It's a pleasure to meet some of you for the first time, and I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedules to come talk to us about one of the biggest projects that our region is facing. And as the only transit dependent person on council who also doesn't drive, this is uniquely important to me. I think I've shared this before, but for some reason, my mom knew how to ride a motorcycle and never learned how to drive a car. And then after she had kids, she never rode her motorcycle anymore. And so we all are always transit dependent, and I have a lot of questions about this project, and I know that our regional transportation plan anticipates that we are going to have a transit tunnel under the Willamette river at some point through downtown Portland, and I'm sort of curious about how that was integrated into this, because if there is the possibility for that happening in the future, how are we future proofing this project to ensure that we if we get more max trains downtown or more transit tunnels, that that wouldn't inadvertently prevent this from happening.
105 I think I can tackle that question. Councilor Morillo. We are working diligently with TriMet and with metro on what what things are the responsibilities of this program? This program touches a lot of different areas and could expand all the way down to eugene. If folks thought that we could pay for it, we have to limit our involvement. Our budget is already at risk and we are working diligently with all the partners to identify what things are the ibr program impacting and what things should we be responsible for? We're working with TriMet to say, okay, if we're creating more trains, we may have to create a larger overnight facility for TriMet. If we are going to be impacting the footprint at expo center, we have to work with the metro council to make sure we are mitigating those impacts. So we are looking at everything that we are touching very closely and working with the partners to make sure that we are meeting our responsibilities for the impacts that we are having.
106 Thank you, I appreciate that. I think what what I'm trying to get at, though, is that while Portland is not directly investing dollars, these any dollars that go into this very large highway expansion are dollars that don't get used elsewhere for other infrastructure. And so we do have a vested interest in how this is going to be developed in the years to come. And I think that we absolutely need to ensure that this project does take into account other modes of transportation, whether that be bike infrastructure, pedestrians or transit infrastructure. And so what I'm looking for is if we're going to build something that's going to be set in stone for the next 20, 30, 100 years, how are we building it to ensure that we are not inadvertently preventing the expansion of public transit in the future? And I hope that that's something that will be accounted for in this project.
107 Can I interrupt just for a second? I see that chair peterson has her hand up. Did you want to address this particular question, lynn, or.
108 Yeah, just a quick overview. Councilor, chair and councilor, I really appreciate the question. This is a project that is also near and dear to my heart, and we had included in the transportation ballot measure in 2020 that went down. It would have been able to fund the planning and design, but not the construction. Right. Because we know that we do have capacity constraints across the steel bridge going into the future. And so I think that that's a great part. That's a great example of a partnership between the city of Portland and the region that we need to start figuring out how do we prioritize these larger projects as we go forward. And that is one that I know is the top of trimet's list. It's the top of our list, and I can tell it's the top of your list. So we'd love to talk more about that. My opinion is that this project, the I-5 bridge, has been on the docket for much longer. It is in the queue. It is an important project and it needs to be done. We need to finish it so we can get on to these other things like av, right. And the lid and keeping the blazers here. And that is actually a project that that needs to be meshed with this conversation about what do we do with light rail and a tunnel. That's that's where to really focus the time and energy. I-5 is too far to the north and has. Has a smaller scope to that part of the region. But I think combining that with av would be the real way to kind of proceed forward so that we know that we're getting a rail connection that we need in that area.
109 Thank you. President.
110 Yeah. Sorry.
111 Thank you, president peterson, for answering that. I think I mean, hearing that honestly gives me even more anxiety as I'm thinking about the fact that we don't have funding for the rose quarter, either, and that it sounds like the funding for this is also unclear as far as how much it's going to cost our region, and therefore how much how many other projects are going to be deferred as we do some of these highway expansions. But I have more questions as far as the path that users are going to have access to pedestrians, will they be able to transfer to transit stations at all the stations, or were the will there only be certain ones that they're able to transfer to. At this point in the design, there will be access to all of the transit stations for both walkers and bikers.
112 Wonderful. Thank you. And my final question is, are they also going to have access to elevators at some of the critical junctures, like at hayden island and the Vancouver waterfront, where the elevation changes a lot?
113 Yes we are. We have elevators as part of what we are studying for the access. So yes, we know that all of these stations will be elevated above existing ground level and getting folks up to the station level is key critical in making ridership gains and ensuring that folks want to ride this. This section of the expansion of the yellow line.
114 Wonderful. Thank you. And I guess I just want to close by saying that I'm I'm really grateful that we have such a wide variety of partners here, including folks from the labor movement, and that I think that creating a clean, energy critical infrastructure is not in opposition to labor whatsoever. I think that there are a lot of things that we can build together that are going to ensure that generations to come have a livable, thriving future, and that includes labor. So thank you.
115 Great questions. Councilor councilor Koyama Lane.
116 Hi. Thank you so much for all of the presentations today. It's clear that a lot of hard work has been put in already, and I, I recognize the interstate bridge replacement program is something that many of you in this room have been working on for years and years. So I really recognize and see that there are experts and partners in the room. And while I'm newer to understanding all the specifics of this program, I want to share a little bit about my lens and my experience that I think would be helpful for you to know. So you know that I represent district three. I most recently have been teaching at sunnyside environmental school, live in the sunnyside neighborhood. My own kids ride their bikes to school. District three has a ton of bike busses, and before teaching at sunnyside, I was teaching at fabian school. And so as soon as I first started looking at these maps, I was it was it stood out to me that I saw where a lot of my students, when I taught fourth and fifth grade at fabian, where they were. That catchment is for fabian school. Hayden island is in that sunderland, concordia, east columbia, and I actually don't know who signed up my fourth and fifth graders up for this program, but we did a whole week where the street trust came and they brought bikes, and there were so many of my fourth and fifth graders that did not know how to ride bikes and really hadn't ridden around that neighborhood, and it was so powerful to watch them learn how to ride bikes and feel more confident and have more ownership of their neighborhood. As I saw kids literally learn how to ride bikes for the first time, I know we've talked about the need for every district to be represented on each committee, and I think I'm feeling it deeper than I have before, that there's not someone from d2 on this committee. I know we're going to work to redo our committees and make sure that happens. And while we don't have someone from district two up here right now, there are people up here that really care about district two and have lived there and have worked there. So that's the lens that I bring. Knowing that it's so important that we're paying attention to history areas that have been historically marginalized. I see historic vanport right there on the google map as I'm looking at this, and. I also share with what councilor Morillo brought up concerns around the connectivity from ground up to the deck. Sounds like that is going to be prioritized. It's really important. Elevators are very important for many users. Those with mobility needs someone pushing a stroller. And while I hear the line we need to build this bridge, let's get the bridge built. And I feel that urgency. I also know that the best group projects are ones where there are many different perspectives, and there's pushing and asking questions. I think that that makes projects better. This does remind me of something that I've spoken about quite a bit, which is really just wondering how we can be genuinely bringing community into the conversation and meaningful ways I. I see a really big line. I'm newer to politics between like community and just government and what I'm constantly thinking about with community, with volunteers is how can we try to break that wall, break that line. And we have some teachers in the house. So sometimes I literally was just saying this to the mayor a couple days ago. I also think once a teacher, always a teacher. I mean, I'm thinking even about like the diverter controversy in northwest Portland right now and, and other issues that that come up. And we seem to have community advocates on one side and then like capital g, the government on other side. And I think about as teachers how as much as possible, if you can bring in like I'm thinking about when you have challenging caregivers or parents or just really loud ones that that keep bugging you and they won't go away, what usually works the best is to figure out ways to really make sure that they're heard and brought in, and also to remember that, and I'm not exactly sure. I haven't had deep conversations about the history, but a lot of times, also community members feel tokenized or upset about the process partly because of how it's going, but also sometimes it's like the system or historical disinvestment or other politicians that have ignored them. And I know as teachers, I'm like looking at you specifically as a teacher. Sometimes when caregivers, parents would come in with that energy, I would have to know, like, okay, even though I didn't do this, sometimes if there's been a history or a pattern of feeling really ignored, then that's that's really important to just know that, that that is something that we have to really change. So I'm saying all this because I'm just really trying to think of how can we reframe some of this and make sure that community genuinely feels brought in, which I do feel like community advocates have to be the one that decide if it does feel meaningful and if their voices are are being heard. Because also, it's always best to have these loud people who really care on your side rather than feeling like they're fighting against. So I'd like to know, and this can be something that you can respond to. And also. Also something that I can hear about a little bit later too, after some reflection, like what is the plan to work on the relationship with a lot of the community advocates who are feeling really unheard and worried? Thank you for listening.
117 Vice president, if I might, after 30 years in the classroom, I know exactly what it's like to develop the math curriculum textbook and have the community involved. Everyone took math in school. If you have the opportunity, I would invite you to look at all of the different youtubes and meeting videos of not just linen editors advisory group, but the bike and pedestrian advisory group, and especially the community benefits advisory group that met for nearly two years and brought in communities not just in Vancouver and Portland, but our sister cities on in southwest Washington and around Portland. A number of different opportunities. And the page after page after page of community benefit that each one of them added to and tweaked and rewrote and is now in official documents that the technical teams are moving through and working through and implementing. I think you'll be very excited that the textbook that is being developed and that has is out there now is one that a half a million people or more have had the opportunity to give input in for the last seven and a half years. So this might be new to you and we appreciate you coming in. But one of the problems that happens with a project this large and what happened with crc, the longer it takes, the more individuals want to redesign the tile in the bathroom. This project is this close to finishing. Please take a look at all of the documents and videos for the last many, many years. To answer your question, it is really a great stew right now. This is the opportunity that if you asked for it, it's in the 10,000 comments of this supplemental. The draft supplemental eis, or the bike, pedestrian and or the community benefits piece. And it has been there and they're working through it.
118 If I if I may councilor I want to offer a I share in mayor ann's sentiments around how much work has gone into ensuring that there has been voice, diverse voices around the table. Several years ago, I had the opportunity to serve the ibr program as the facilitator for the executive steering group, and at that time, I had the opportunity to work with each of the key stakeholders from all of the entities represented to determine what those big, hard questions were and to really ensure that the community's needs were being addressed. I can say also, having now served as PBOT director for two years and seeing the work that was going into the program as the esg facilitator, that district whose needs were front and center when we were discussing the bridge influence area. And so when there's been reference to the project being long and wide, it is because of the voices of communities saying this is changing based on the bridge. What are we doing about that? Mlk will be different because of the bridge. What are you going to do about that? This delta park is going to be different because of the bridge. What are we going to do about that? And so the bridge program has sought to, in very intentional ways, be responsive to, as has been indicated, thousands of questions, thousands of comments, thousands of concerns, hundreds of people who have not shied away from bringing forward their concerns. They've been quite vocal and persistent, not in a negative way, but persistent in making sure that their points were heard. And so I'm not asking that this committee rubber stamp it based on what we're saying, but I do want to encourage us to have a conversation about the ways that Portland, specifically the communities that are most directly affected, have had the opportunity to have their voices, if not directly heard, through the seven bureaus that are represented from the city that are helping to shape the design of the bridge. We got down to stop stop sign placement. It was that finite and minute in some spaces where we were concerned about how traffic was going to be moving, and the program has been responsive to that, hundreds of thousands of dollars has been spent on modeling to determine the effects to community, and how we could offset some of those things through the program and the bridge influence area and the design. So I'm encouraged by this conversation. I'm encouraged about the opportunity for us to continue to engage, but I do want to make sure that we have the opportunity to connect you with the information and the resources and the background on how we got where we are and how those very distinct voices have been heard and not just heard, but accounted for in the outcomes that you'll see.
119 And if I could add one more thing, councilor Koyama Lane. Our program has been recognized for some of the creativity and innovation that we have brought to community engagement. One of our dbe firms that is working in the community engagement space, put an idea on the table for us of how you can bring more people to the table. And so we gave out many grants to community based organizations on both sides of the river to amplify our reach into the community, to get folks to come to meetings, to come to the table. We also give stipends to folks who participate in our community advisory group and equity advisory group, and community benefits advisory group. So we have pulled all of the stops to make sure that folks are coming to the table and having their voice heard. One of our one of our folks on our team coined the phrase, we invite people to put down the stones that they're planning on throwing at us, and pick up pencils and come in and work with us. So we have we're an open door.
120 Thank you so much. And I look forward to speaking more. And I look forward to checking out videos. And if there are any specific ones you want me to focus on, you can let me know. And part of that conversation or a response. Now, you know, because I am looking at some of the suggestions from this active transportation working group, and some of them make sense, and I'd love to hear about your responses to especially the Vancouver dip and the concerns that there are lack of connections to existing 40 miles of safe, active infrastructure that is already there. So I'd love to hear more about that.
121 Thank you. Councilor Koyama Lane I thought I knew a lot and I've actually learned a lot today too. Having been involved in this, the last iteration of this project, we've come a long way. Councilor before I call on you, councilor Green, let me just check with my colleagues. We normally end at 1130. I'd like to ask if we could stay a little longer. And if the folks at the dais and in the audience can stay a little longer, we'd like to keep having this dialog. Okay. Great. Councilor Green.
122 Thank you, madam chair, and I'll keep my comments questions brief. Thank you, everyone for coming today and presenting. I can I can appreciate how complicated and long running this this project has been. And there's a lot of moving pieces. So thank you for your steadfast support. I first of all, I, I 100% agree that we need a replacement as soon as possible. It is urgent every day that goes by that we do not have something that replaces this bridge. We're exposed to, to, to, to a catastrophe on a scale that I don't think anyone can possibly comprehend. I do share the concerns of no more freeways for the cost estimates, and I would be excited to. I'll be looking forward to seeing what those are down the road. But if we're going to pay a lot for this and we will, there's no question about this. We are going to pay a lot of money for this. We should get the maximum benefits for this. And from my perspective, and I think what councilor Morillo was, was really introducing here was that when we engineer this, we need to have platforms for the light rail piece that can accommodate four car trains. So it's not just about the tunnel. The tunnel is a piece and that's metro's piece. It's about can this bridge accommodate the future expansion potential of trimet's light rail system? And if we don't have platforms that can accommodate more than the two car standard that we have today, that we've put a bottleneck in the future, that we don't we don't want to have. Okay. And that's that will be very expensive in the future to fix if we decide we need to fix that. So that's that's my one comment there. The other piece is. You know, I, I like a good view of, of mount hood and myself. But I think the much more important consideration when we think about the relationship between the bike path and the light rail is what is rationalizing our transportation and our active transportation system. It's going to be a much more efficient system that bike commuters can use if it's co-located along with that light rail. That's a high priority for me. And so I so I appreciate, mr. Johnson, you you saying that the design's not done yet and there's still opportunity for voices at the table. So I'll be advocating very, very much intention to see what wiggle room we still have to put that bike path alongside there. I want to work with you guys because I think I think that will pay dividends if we're trying to encourage people to get out of the cars. I do actually have a question in here, which I don't know who's best suited to talk to tolling, but I have some tolling questions. I'm a supporter of tolling on this bridge, not just to pay for the bridge piece, but because we are at a serious lack of resources for transportation dollars in general. And I think that motorists should pay their true cost of use, which is what was captured by a toll. Right? But the comments from the numerous freeways folks raised an issue in my head. If you have tolling on only one of the bridges and not the other, you're going to get a consumer choice response which says, okay, well, I'm going to avoid that cost and go to 205, which will introduce not just traffic on 205, but surface street traffic throughout Portland system. So has there been any discussion or is there any possibility and this may be, you know, for other elected officials in the room of doing tolling on both of the bridges? Because if you have tolling on both of the bridges, you get rid of that marginal cost disparity. And then then it's not about avoiding the fee, it's about using the right path that you might have. So I wonder if there's any comment on that or if that, that that consideration has been in place so far.
123 Yeah. Happy to answer that question, councilor Green. Once again, my name is ray mabee, assistant administrator for ibr. That's actually a question we get quite often is what's the diversion look like? Are we tolling I-205 as well? And the quick answer is no. And if you recall, ODOT was pursuing a broader tolling program and it was tabled by the governor. And is under further consideration by the legislature. However, the tolling for the ib program is continuing. As we looked at our traffic modeling and those traffic and revenue analysis for tolling the I-5 bridge, we did see a small amount of diversion to the I-205. But there's an important point to note that administrator johnson mentioned earlier in his presentation portion was that 70% of the traffic that goes over the bridge comes on or off through one of the interchanges, so that the predominant volume of that traffic is already coming on the interstate and wants to use that bridge. And I think we've heard comments earlier about traffic projections and numbers and potentially decreasing. But I don't know if you're like me, but every time I use that bridge is congested. And as mr. Johnson mentioned, it's up to 10.5 hours of congested conditions. Whatever the number is, it's congested for 10.5 hours. And if you look at the I-205 system, it's also at capacity. And then your feeder routes to get from one or the other are also capacity. We see that that version would happen initially because of the tolling, but likely come back. And that small diversion is also factored into the revenue projections. So it's accounting for that to make sure that we're not counting for revenue, that we might not get from that small diversion. So there aren't any future plans right now. And that would be another by state agreement between Oregon and Washington to toll an interstate bridge.
124 Thank you for that. And I see that representative mclean has approached the dais. Do you want to perhaps talk to this? Is that what you came up?
125 If you don't mind? I feel like we have to remember. I think we've said all over this session that this is a lot of partners. And again, those state partners, there's only one here today, but it's a situation where we have a quite active bi state committee. We also have a very active transportation commission on both sides of the river. And those folks are the folks that work on tolling. I think that's real important. And it also was pointed out that the governor put a stop on tolling. She didn't put a stop on tolling on the I-5 bridge, but it was that larger tolling that we put on the sideboard to come back. It is not dead, but it's to come back to actually look at what some of those issues are. But ray just talked about the most important ones, and that is the change of patterns of our our transportation, whether it is our light rail system that we already have, you know, in the community. And understand that when you talk about light rail, talk about light rail as and heavy rail and, you know, fast speed rail, there's a lot of different connections that could be made all the way from british columbia down to california. And there are certain roads that are for certain purposes. We have local roads, we have highways. And so it's a very complicated system. When you say train, it's not all the same kind of train. I voted yes on for light rails right here in this area. Okay. That light rail system has to be kept whole as well. I really appreciate your comment on the light rail and the, you know, the ridership of folks that might be coming on with a bike. I think that's really important. And I think that's something that we do still have time to really look at that design. But understand you've got a committee working of state legislators on both sides. You've got mayors working on both sides. And we have been working at this this time almost seven years. So to your point about do we want to design and redesign, you better take a list of how many checkoffs you have to do again. And one of the biggest one is something you all care about. And that's the nepa review. So let's remember we are doing quite well with the nepa review. We have gotten a lot of compliments on the nepa review, and so it's extremely important for us not to lose ground in trying to improve the system. We will continue to take good ideas, check it out and keep going. But folks, there is a there are deadlines in this world. And there was one other thing that was said that I just have to say, and that is, you know, street trust is one of my favorite groups in the whole world. And sara has worked really hard this year on working on our transportation project and package and trying to make a future for transportation in a multimodal way come forward, both for the state of Oregon as well as for this bridge. It's part of that system from british columbia to california. And I go to national meetings. And what do they want to talk about? How you do it on the I-5 bridge? They care. These people were from utah, virginia, different places, but they care. So there you go. I just couldn't listen that long and not have to say something. But I just want you to know that we care. You are part of the table. You are a big part of the table. Just like Vancouver is a big part of the table. But you will have plenty more meetings to go to and plenty more times to insert your thoughts and ideas. We care. We want to help make this something you can be proud of and you can utilize for 100 years. And one final thing, and that is I'm a teacher too. I mentioned that once, so I really appreciate everything you're saying. I work with everybody. I have two folks in the back that are looking at me like, how many of my emails have you read? Every single one. Okay. I want to make sure that you understand. You don't you don't work just with people that agree with you. You work with everyone. So I hope you have these meetings more often, but I am going to check out if I can get down on my favorite train and see how close I can get. So it might be better right than my parking experience. Thank you.
126 Thank you so much for presenting me.
127 I really, really appreciate you having this. It's been really enlightening.
128 Thank you for being here and thank you for all you do, not just for our region, but for the whole state. We really appreciate what you do. I know we're going to lose one of our members here in just a minute, and I don't know if hopefully you didn't have any other questions.
129 Well, I could talk at length about this, but we're out of time. And I thank you for your engagement with me on this. Questions. Thanks.
130 If I could take just one, one moment to correct a misperception regarding when the release of our estimate is coming out, we do what is called a risk based estimate. It is a washed out, nationally recognized. It's called cost estimating verification process. Covid. And this is a months long process. And we were waiting until we got through the draft supplemental process. And that got delayed out of our control several times. And so we had to wait until we got that and then go into this process. So we have not been purposely holding back information from anyone. We know that the cost of this program is going higher. We see it all across the country. So this is no big mystery or some smoke filled room. We had to wait until we had the draft supplemental and the input answering questions before we could say, okay, this is what we're estimating. So that is the reason why this cost estimate has been delayed.
131 And if I might add a point, susan, you were right about the different partnerships and deadlines. We don't always have control on those deadlines. And when everything goes to the federal government, they the ibr project team, cannot move forward until the federal government says the box has been checked. Move on months and months and months. Stuck on a desk at the federal government is out of this body's control.
132 Esoteric issue.
133 Yes, on language, on numbers and how many pages and where the page number goes. So we appreciate it. But we understand that is why it is so important to keep the communication open and moving forward. But there are some steps that we would love to have had this done a year ago.
134 Thank you. Thank you for those comments and the clarification. I we're really running out of time. Is it possible that we could take our questions offline? Is that okay with.
135 You, madam chair? Just just to end with, while we're on this conversation about the feds, the one last question was the record of decision. And I think we kind of glossed over that that is the time that we know when we're going to get approval from the feds, and that's expected in 26. Yes. Correct.
136 Yes.
137 And I think we lumped in av with ibr. So there are two separate projects, but they do feed into each other. But ours is a standalone. We're we're we're not connected to the funding sources that av is connected with and who have in the last couple or three weeks they've lost their funding. We are clear. We have we still have our funding in place, correct?
138 Yes, that is correct.
139 Okay. Great. That's all I wanted to end with. Thank you so much.
140 I think councilor Koyama Lane just wants to make a comment before we conclude.
141 And more of a we can talk more about this, but what I'm wondering, for someone that can really speak to the current design, which it sounds like it's maybe still under discussion a bit, is what would it feel like if I'm crossing the bridge on foot with my two kids? Or one of my former students is riding their bike and they get a flat, or they're sick halfway across, how what would that look like? What would that experience be like? How could you access help? How could you get off? So that's something I'd like to chat more about. Thank you.
142 Great. We don't have to answer that today. We do. We do need to go. You're dying to say something.
143 One last thing. I think in the middle of September, I think on the 16th, we are given a bridge tour to city and staff and welcome the council to join us.
144 Thank you. We've been asking for that. Thank you so much. And thank you all for your time, for your persistence for all these years. We appreciate you being here today. All the information. I think we learned a lot here today. We'll have you back in the future and you're going to get a lot more questions. But thank you. As we make slow progress, we appreciate it very much. Thank you for being here.
145 Make sure you climb to the top of the bridge.
146 Oh.
147 And make sure you go to the Green room.
148 Okay.
149 Mature.
150 Got it. Thank you, thank you. Just really quickly we have a couple of announcements before I gavel us out. We're going to have a presentation on the national emergency preparedness month in September late this month. And we're going to also have a presentation on pbot's traffic safety projects group to hear about some of the great community projects that have been going on and that are waiting on the list. And then later in September, we're going to have the street plaza program ordinances come to us, and vice chair Morillo is going to pair that with examples of innovative use of the right of way and other public spaces. So with that, I will adjourn our meeting. Thank you so much.
151 Okay.