A volunteer board of Oregon leaders comprising the state’s top transportation decision-making body will decide next week what to do with the $500 million Rose Quarter project.

The Oregon Department of Transportation posted an agenda for the Oregon Transportation Commission’s Dec. 17 meeting. The meeting includes a 50-minute slot for a presentation and decision on next steps for the project, which, if built, would add shoulders, merging lanes, a freeway cover and a bike and pedestrian bridge spanning Interstate 5 on the one-mile stretch of freeway.

But the meeting documents posted this week don’t include a recommendation from state transportation staff about how to proceed. A document dated Dec. 6 asks the commission for direction.

“There probably won’t be a staff recommendation,” said Don Hamilton, a state transportation spokesman.

Hamilton said it’s “not wildly out of the ordinary” for the agency staff to leave a decision completely up to the commission.

Hamilton said he’s not sure what will happen, given that the commission won’t meet until next week.

The commission could vote to accept the state’s Environmental Assessment released this April, which stated that the freeway project would have a marginal effect on travel times while reducing air pollution and carbon emissions.

Hamilton said the commission could, alternatively, vote to “ask for more information” about the project’s effects. That could ultimately lead to a more extensive Environmental Impact Statement, with federal highway officials’ approval.

House Speaker Rep. Tina Kotek joined the growing chorus of state and local politicians and organizations last week in calling for further study of the project.

In April, freeway opponents under the banner known as the No More Freeways Coalition, blasted the Environmental Assessment report as dubious at best. “The Rose Quarter Freeway Widening project would somehow be the first freeway expansion in North American history to reduce traffic congestion, air pollution and carbon emissions,” the coalition said in a statement to The Oregonian/OregonLive at the time. “These findings fly in the face of decades of research in the fields of public health, transportation planning and carbon mitigation, and contradict the numerous headlines we’ve seen in local and national newspapers throughout the past eighteen months.”

The $500 million project was specifically included in the 2017 statewide transportation package, which was approved by the Legislature.

-- Andrew Theen

atheen@oregonian.com

503-294-4026

@andrewtheen

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