We’re all smarting from the economic recession that’s hurt our incomes and job prospects, from the decline in housing values that’s dented our wealth, and the collapse in financial markets that’s dealt a big setback to our retirement plans. We’re smarting, but, we tell ourselves, we’re smarter, too.
We’ve learned key lessons. We won’t be fooled by the Bernie Madoffs, or by claims that house prices can only go up, or that some form of complex mortgage-backed security can eliminate financial risk, or that stated-income “liar loans” were ever a good idea. At a high price, we’ve bought ourselves some very valuable lessons.
Next time, we tell ourselves, we’ll be smarter. We’ll ask the hard questions — before we sign on the dotted line. We won’t be conned by overly optimistic estimates or take some self-interested experts’ assurances at face value.
But are we really smarter? I live in the area of Portland, Oregon, and here we face the biggest public investment decision in decades. And it’s a reprise of the oldest con-game in the nation: “Hey, buddy, do you want to buy that bridge?”
In this case, the bridge is the proposed Columbia River Crossing. With an estimated price tag of $4 billion, this proposed five-mile, 12-lane freeway would be the most expensive public works project in the region’s history. The cost works out to more than $8,000 for each four-person household in the region or roughly the equivalent of 80 OHSU trams.
So far, like frenzied homebuyers a few years back, many bridge advocates seem chiefly concerned with superficial questions, such as whether the bridge will be pretty. But before we sign on the dotted line, we–and cities across the country that are considering similar investments–ought to be asking the kind of questions that will keep us from repeating the worst mistakes of those caught up in the housing bubble.
First and foremost, who will pay for this bridge?
Project proponents have vaguely promised that funding will come from a mix of federal and state sources, but there is little indication of any of this will materialize. Congressional leaders, including Washington’s Brian Baird and Oregon’s Peter DeFazio, have warned against expecting federal earmarks that would cover more than 10 percent of the cost of the bridge. The Oregon Legislature, meanwhile, approved gas tax and vehicle registration fee increases and earmarked nearly $1 billion for highway projects, but allocated not one dollar to the Columbia River Crossing.
There is no special pot of money for the Columbia River Crossing — it will take away dollars that we could use for other regional projects. Every penny we spend tearing down the existing I-5 bridges and building a new 12-lane freeway bridge is money we can’t spend somewhere else in the region.
To paraphrase John Donne, ask not for whom the bridge is tolled, it is tolled for thee. Any new Columbia River Crossing will require a substantial toll, not just on I-5, but on the I-205 bridge as well — otherwise traffic would divert from I-5 to avoid tolls there.
In the height of the housing boom, lots of buyers rationalized mortgages they couldn’t afford for houses bigger than they needed based on the belief that housing prices could only go up.
Highway advocates have a similar delusion — that traffic levels can only increase. But that’s not true. Driving has been going down in Portland, a trend that started even before the run-up in gas prices and the recession. Traffic counts have been going down on the Interstate bridges for the past three years. And according to Inrix, the nation’s leading providing of real-time traffic information, afternoon peak-hour congestion on I-5 northbound has declined more than 10 percent in the past year. If traffic levels flat-line, or grow much more slowly than in the past — as now seems certain to be the case, thanks to higher gas prices — we simply don’t need 12 lanes of capacity, plus light rail.
Projections of continually increasing traffic are not simply a justification for a bigger bridge, they are essential to paying for it. Because any new bridge will require tolls, the amount of toll revenue hinges directly on the number of people who cross the bridge. If fewer people use the bridge than predicted, then the bridge will need a bailout.
Not only are toll revenue forecasts notoriously over-optimistic — like rating agency estimates of likely default rates on subprime loans–but across the country, toll revenues are declining in the face of the recession and changing driving habits.
Historically, for the most part, we’ve relied on a “pay as you go” model for transportation finance. But the Columbia River Crossing turns that model on its head, and would likely require borrowing three-quarters or more of the cost of the bridge. Borrowing $3 billion for the project would necessitate annual interest payments of $180 million in the initial years of the project — money that would not be available for other transportation projects. And like the sales pitch for that sub-prime mortgage, the $4 billion price tag doesn’t include the cost of these interest payments.
And finally, no one should trust that this megaproject can be completed under budget. ODOT’s current largest highway project, the widening of a five-mile stretch of U.S. 20 between Corvallis and Newport, is 33 percent over budget. The OHSU Tram ended up costing triple its original estimated price. Even a 25 percent overrun on the Columbia River Crossing would end up adding a billion dollars to the price.
If we’ve learned any hard lessons from the past year about borrowing money, now is the time to put that learning to work. We need to demand a financial plan for this bridge that spells out who pays, and how much. We need independent accurate estimates — based on a world of $3 or $4 per gallon gas, global warming, and declining vehicle travel –and of how much traffic will use the bridge, especially with a toll of as much as $5.
And we should really ask whether, if we really have $4 billion to spend on the region’s transportation infrastructure, we ought to spend so much of it in one place, to facilitate more peak-hour commuting and suburban sprawl.
The current I-5 bridges are like a homely 1920s bungalow: Timeworn and out of fashion, yes, but sturdy and paid for. Rather than take out a huge mortgage to tear them down to build a glitzy new McMansion of a bridge, we ought to look at fixing them up at a fraction of the price.
The work of the project’s consultants is too reminiscent of the glossy real estate brochure providing only the most cursory examination of these risks, making implausibly optimistic assumptions, and doing nothing to quantify the consequences of error. The region’s elected officials and citizens should insist on real due diligence on these risks — preferably from parties completely independent of the project — before mortgaging our region’s future for a bridge we don’t need and can’t afford.
Joe Cortright is president and principal economist with Impresa, a Portland consulting firm, and chair of the Oregon Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors. He is also the chief economic analyst for CEOs for Cities, a national organization of urban leaders.
August 31st, 2009 at 1:23 pm
I’m just baffled. Flabbergasted.
I never thought that a public transport advocate would ever use the classic conservative “It wont pay for itself!” argument to slam highway infrastructure.
But now I have seen it all.
If you replaced all references to this highway project with the simple acronym “CHSRA”, I could swear I was reading a Randall O’Toole post.
August 31st, 2009 at 1:32 pm
“It won’t pay for itself!” strikes me as a pretty flat summary of the piece. And “transit advocate” is questionable as a primary descriptor for Joe.
JR
August 31st, 2009 at 1:50 pm
I’ve said the same thing about Arlington TX’s newest monstrosity, the New Texas Stadium. It will end up costing the midsize city of 300,000 suburbanites over $500,000,000. That’s nearly $7000 per family of four. The city is no going to recoup that, and it is not going to attract the development that was promised -these stadiums never do. To their credit, they voted to build it before we all got smarter. But still, the evidence of the ignorance is obvious to me.
August 31st, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Dallas I agree, speaking of said monstrosity I was there just last week with the Cowboys open house to experience Jerry’s World in all its glory. It is an awesome structure indeed. I had to drive of course, seeing I live up SH - 121. I got there found the parking lot and then had to fork over $10 to park to see the Boys practice. It was strange to see the stadium pretty much in the middle of a suburban neighborhood.
As for the above piece, why not suggest a public transportation plan to rival this ridiculousness? I think the progressive thinking people of Portland would likely support a plan that covers a vastly greater area than a plan that builds a bridge in one place. I bet you could even use some of the money to spruce up the current bridges and roads.
August 31st, 2009 at 4:05 pm
For your consideration:
Why Do We Get Megaproject Costs Wrong? [via Sightline Daily]
August 31st, 2009 at 9:07 pm
Portland, we in Louisville will see your pathetic little 12 lane highway and bridge and raise you a 22 lane monstrosity with TWO new bridges and two decades of construction hell all on top of our beautiful new Waterfront Park.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/80464769@N00/186598462/
August 31st, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Of all cities that are considering wasting that much money for a highway it doesn’t need… Portland has a good reputation for its greenness, but this kind of puts a dent in that.
September 1st, 2009 at 10:15 am
There are plenty of situations when taxpayers may want to pay for something that doesn’t pay for itself. A giant bridge that will only induce sprawl and suck away potential transit riders is not one of those situations.
We have a similar situation here in New York with the replacement of the Tappan Zee Bridge.
September 1st, 2009 at 10:24 am
[...] from around the network: The Dirt looks at the economic value of parks. The Infrastructurist examines Portland’s McMansion-style bridge proposal. And The Political Environment rips into [...]
September 1st, 2009 at 10:43 am
[...] from around the network: The Dirt looks at the economic value of parks. The Infrastructurist examines Portland’s McMansion-style bridge proposal. And The Political Environment rips into [...]
September 1st, 2009 at 11:24 am
What Joe fails to mention is that-
A) At the north end of the bridge is a major freeway-to-freeway interchange. There’s another one a mile north of the Columbia. Some of those 12 lanes are auxiliary lanes to and from the two Vancouver, Wash., freeways.
B) Politics dictates everyone goes home happy or nothing gets done. If there’s no LRT to Vancouver, Portland will pull out. If there’s no lane expansion on the CRC, Vancouver will pull out.
C) The bridge is the number one source of congestion in the Portland area, and the congestion is abysmal. I-5 northbound, out of Portland, is at LOS D or below most of the day. During the rush hours, the ripple effects cause backups on I-84 eastbound (as commuters try to sneak over to I-205, which has a free-flowing 8 lane bridge — but only *one* freeway-to-freeway interchange at its north end), US 26 westbound heading into Portland, and on I-5 north all the way through downtown Portland.
—-
With cars getting more fuel efficient and Vancouver already having a half million residents living in car-oriented development, it makes no sense to say “the car is going away.” The CRC needs light rail to give Vancouver the spark to start changing the way it approaches development. And it needs 12 lanes of freeway to accommodate traffic for the only north-south interstate in the West, as well as for SR 14 and SR 500, which begin at or near the CRC.
September 1st, 2009 at 3:11 pm
The author points out that there has been a recent decline in vehicle use. There has also been a recent decline in transit use. See here:
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/08/nj_transit_reports_decline_in.html
Would the author extrapolate from that decrease that transit use will continue to decrease and that expansion projects in the transit area should be shelved?
September 1st, 2009 at 7:04 pm
This is a disappointingly poor quality post for this site.
As a Portlander, a cyclist, a mass transit user, and a homeowner and property tax payer, I support the expansion of the I-5 bridge. Not because I’m a fan of the McMansion dwellers in the Couv, but because the regional economy depends on it. And by “regional economy” I do not mean “Vancouver property bubble,” I mean “our trade with Seattle and Vancouver BC and our continued growth as a hub for green engineering.” I’m afraid even green engineers need to haul turbines and parts across the river from time to time.
This bridge will carry light rail and should provide much improved bike and pedestrian crossings. Folks who make the commute by car will gladly pay the toll if it means they can recover the 1-3 hours a day they spend sitting in gridlock waiting to get the river.
September 2nd, 2009 at 4:58 am
Hey, Portland, if you can Raise the $4 billion, build yourself a high-speed connection to Seattle and Vancouver instead.
The $8,000 per household sounds high, yet, that household pays more than that on one family vehicle each year!
September 2nd, 2009 at 3:11 pm
While I acknowledge that I-5 is an important transportation corridor,I do wonder why Oregon should spend a huge amount of money to facilitate transport for people whose tax base does not go to the Tri-county area. Vancouverites have all the convenience of Portland’s infrastructure without paying for it(beyond payroll taxes). They made the choice to live over there because housing and state taxes are cheaper. So should we(Oregonians) subsidize a significant amount of this project so they can get home easier? Hmmm………….
September 3rd, 2009 at 3:04 am
“Monoraaaail, monoraaaail, monoraaaaaail!” - http://is.gd/2P9fG (YouTube)
That’s song kept playing in my head as I read this article. Whole thing seems boondogglicious, and given that we don’t know just how long this downturn will last, it’s foolish to plan anything on the assumption that car use will dramatically increase.
Those arguing in favor of using these funds for transit, or at least waiting to see what will actually be necessary in the coming years, are exactly right.
September 3rd, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Joe goes on and on in Portland like this. He keeps repeating
the idea that the existing bridges are ’sturdy’. They are obsolete
and dangerous. The maintenance on these bridges has been
less than perfect , letting rust do it’s work on every bolt and
rivet. They sit on woefully sub-standard 100 and 50 year old
wood piling. They are going to fall in an earthquake!
We are proposing a multi-modal bridge with light-rail and
bike/ped capacity. I propose a Park-Roof for this bridge. Please
visit the Alt-Urbs site to see my design.
September 3rd, 2009 at 7:27 pm
‘ I mean “our trade with Seattle and Vancouver BC and our continued growth as a hub for green engineering.” I’m afraid even green engineers need to haul turbines and parts across the river from time to time. ‘
Well, I suggest they rennovate the *BNSF BRIDGE*, which could use some upgrades, and ship that stuff by the rail line to Seattle and Vancouver BC. Those upgrades would also fix all the shipping-related issues with the Columbia River bridges. It could also pull trucks off the bridge.
Of course, the Columbia River Crossing folks refused to consider this because it was “out of scope”. This is evidence that the entire megaproject is being conducted in bad faith.
The competing package of improvements:
(1) A pair of local-traffic arterial bridges from Portland to Hayden Island to Vancouver, WA with light rail.
(2) BNSF bridge upgrades
(3) Removal of the local access to the Interstate from Hayden Island, which eliminates the “need” for the absurd number of lanes on the Interstate at the moment by eliminating a lot of conflicting traffic.
Amazingly this package of multiple bridges would cost far, far less than the proposed megaproject. And it would deliver essentially all the same benefits. But noooo, it isn’t 12 lanes, so it must not be considered!
September 3rd, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Start charging the toll NOW, with aggressive congestion pricing.
Put the money first to a light rail bridge. Then see what happens to traffic with the tolls and a commuter option. I bet the 12 lanes bridge would never need to be built.
If you build the big bridge plan the traffic jams move to the other interstate bridges (in town) which are already over capacity, and then have to spend billions to fix those.
September 7th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
I used to live in Portland, and wrote my undergraduate thesis on the history of freeway expansion in Portland. It was clear then, as it is now, that the current I-5 crossing is inadequate, and Nick is quite right to decry the terrible traffic that develops every afternoon (especially) on all of the city’s freeways. The fact that this is such a major artery in the region’s, indeed in the Pacific West’s economy, is a compelling argument that changes need to be made, and quickly. And the deterioration of those bridges, one of which was built over nearly a century ago, is of immediate concern. Meanwhile, as all those cars sit in traffic in North Portland, the mostly lower-income and minority neighborhoods surrounding the freeway (which was essentially part of its design) suffer from increased rates of asthma and other respiratory ailments, especially among children.
That said, the plan to expand the bridge to 12 lanes–even given Nick’s qualifications, which I appreciate–is disappointing to me. When I was working on my thesis, in 2006, the planning phase was in process, but I never had any idea something this big would be proposed, with such a huge cost, in such a poor fashion. Oregon absolutely must refuse any project that does not include light rail, and the new bridge must be designed in a way that does not encourage more people to drive. That means tolls, ideally variably priced, as well as partnering with businesses in the area to provide other incentives for employees who travel across the river to take transit, carpool, etc. I also agree that additional upgrades need to be made the BNSF railroad bridge, a crucial transit link that is somehow forgotten in these debates, and one that could be even more prominent given the proper policy decisions. Generally I agree with Randy that a toll could be instituted now, perhaps beginning only at rush hour, one that is higher than the price of a C-TRAN or Tri-Met bus ticket. It would also need to be charged on the 205 bridge.
There is a middle ground on the bridge–it’s not 12 lanes or nothing. But it may require additional planning and negotiation, which as I learned in my thesis research, pleases nobody 100% but is generally better for the whole community in the long run.
September 8th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
[...] Adams said he’s now leaning toward a smaller version of what Portland economist Joe Cortright calls a “McMansion-Style Highway [...]
September 10th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Now, for those that don’t live in the area:
The interstate Bridge is several things:
1) peices of it are almost a century old now. It was never intended to be in use this long (originally for horse & cart traffic)
2) The only drawbridge, from Alaska to the Panama Canal.
3) has no shoulder whatsoever. it’s not uncommon to scrape a mirror,during the southbound entrance. When there is an incident (accident, breakdown etc), traffic pretty much stops. The northbound on-ramp from Hayden Island is terribly short, and with the lack of shoulder, very unforgiving. the same goes true for the Southbound entrance from downtown Vancouver.
4) pedestrian/bicycle access, is extremely limited. The pedestrian pathways are on average three-feet wide, with protruding girders that can walkers have to duck into, so a cyclist can pass.
5) patched together. the original 1917 span was level, and had to lanes. years later, a matching second span was created, a new river channel was dredged, and the center of the span raised to an arch, for shipping.
Yes, a new bridge is needed. that being said, the current proposals are:
1) over priced. quite simply, a lot of profiteering is going on.
2) too big/wide. Three lanes each way would be fine, provided an emergancy should was provided, and the on-ramps on both end were lengthened.
3) pedestrain/bicycle access is a secondary concern to the CRC.
4) will light rail installation be significantly delayed? Many of the people that commute over from Vancouver are lower income, and tolls would create a significant hardship.
if you look at the impetus for the twelve lane monster, look to the property developers, that are sitting on hundreds of acres of what once was farmland. They can’t unload these as houses, unless people can get to the jobs easily.