For more than two hours Tuesday, dozens of critics of a proposed $500 million project aimed at addressing a key bottleneck on Interstate 5 through the heart of Portland’s Rose Quarter blasted the state’s transportation department on virtually every aspect of its plan.

The estimated $500 million proposal to add merging wider shoulders in both directions on the freeway for a roughly one-mile stretch, while adding lanes for merging between the bunched up I-84 and I-405 interchanges, represents “climate denialism,” freeway opposition leader Aaron Brown said.

A St. Johns man sang a folk song about induced demand, the phenomenon where adding lanes to a freeway encourages more drivers to use it. Others spoke of the majority minority student population at Harriet Tubman Middle School adjacent to the freeway and the air pollution they are already exposed to due to the nearby interstate.

Several speakers directly appealed to Portland Commissioner Chloe Eudaly to intervene and block the project, harkening back to the city’s history of killing freeway expansions –- like the Mt. Hood Expressway -- and shutting down others – like Harbor Drive.

“We will have your back,” Sarah Iannarone, a former Portland State University staffer and 2016 candidate for mayor, said to Eudaly, who sat at the front of the room throughout. “To ODOT, it’s not going to happen. We’ll lie on that highway before we let you build this.”

The hearing is just about over. Logging off. I will have a writeup on @Oregonian tomorrow. — Andrew Theen 🚎🚘🚲🚃🚦 🏀 (@andrewtheen) March 13, 2019

At the end of the hearing, which drew a crowd of about 200 people, Eudaly gave her own emotional account of family tragedy coping with traffic fatalities and her fears about the future.

“I feel your desperation about climate change and about air pollution,” she added.

But the transportation commissioner then threw a curveball, and she warned the largely partisan crowd that remained that they may not like what she has to say.

“I don’t necessarily think fixing this poorly designed exchange on I-5 is a terrible idea,” she said. “We’re not adding capacity at either end of it,” she said, seeming to disagree with a principal criticism of opponents who call the project a freeway-widening effort, “we’re trying to clear up a bottleneck.”

Eudaly closed by saying that while she believes the money dedicated by the state must go to the freeway project, she’s “convinced we can come up with something better, that will better serve our whole community.”

Oregon’s Legislature in 2017 dedicated funding to the Rose Quarter freeway project, a key component of the $5.3 billion statewide transportation package. The costs are still not finalized, but the state lawmakers approved $30 million per year toward the freeway beginning in 2022. That money, according to state statute, will be dedicated until the project is finished or bonds issued to pay for construction have been repaid. The agency expects to issue anywhere from $420 million to $450 million in bonds for the project over a 20- or 25-year period, paying back that debt through gas tax revenue. Construction could last four to five years, with the freeway completed perhaps by 2027.

Not all of the more than 70 people who spoke at the Oregon Convention Center meeting Tuesday opposed the project. A handful supported the plan, including a Lloyd District transportation association official and several trade workers who said the project would bring much-needed jobs. Representatives from the city of Hillsboro and freight advocates also testified in support of the project, citing the bottleneck as a critical component to the metro area and the region’s broader economy in need of fixing.

Michael Fyffe, who said he was a member of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, said stopping this project would not serve the region. He said while no project is perfect, the Rose Quarter proposal is a start. “You can’t fix everything at once anyway,” he said of the region’s traffic woes.

The public hearing came amid a 45-day public comment period on the state’s recently released 108-page environmental assessment on the project. Oregon Department of Transportation officials say if the Rose Quarter project is built it would slightly reduce emissions by 2045 compared with building nothing on that stretch of roadway. It would also slightly improve travel times for some commuters, the state said.

Megan Channell, the state’s major projects manager heading the effort, told the crowd the current proposal comes after an analysis of some 70 options dating back nearly a decade. She said the area of the freeway has "highest crash rate” of any urban freeway in the state. She touted the above-the-freeway project components – like a 36-foot-wide bike and pedestrian path on North Williams and a new overpass connecting Hancock and Dixon streets and a separate bike and pedestrian bridge at Clackamas Street as improvements.

The project also calls for capping a section of the freeway. That plan doesn’t currently allow for building on those freeway caps, a chief criticism from a group of architects and community leaders who are calling for a broader “Albina Vision” to bring housing, development and activity to the historically black neighborhood.

But none of those surface street projects appeared to have support from the vast majority of the public who attended. The state is proposing eliminating Flint Avenue’s overpass, which today serves as a popular connector for bike commuters traveling from North Portland to the Broadway Bridge.

Jillian Detweiler, executive director of the nonprofit transportation advocacy group The Street Trust, said the bike components didn’t cut it: “They don’t rise to the level and quality that we really need to make a transition away from automobiles.”

Throughout the hearing, Portland residents criticized the state for its claim that the stretch of freeway is crash-prone in particular. One man asked for a moment of silence to recognize a Madison High School student who was struck and seriously injured this month on 82nd Avenue, a state-owned and -operated highway.

What the project would mean for Tubman school in particular was a top priority Tuesday, with a handful of students in attendance.

Bryan Chu, an eighth-grade language arts teacher at Tubman Middle School, said it’s unclear if the school would be shuttered during construction or what the project might mean for the majority students of color who attend it. Chu said he can only assume there is no plan for Tubman.

“We have always been made to pay the price for Portland’s progress,” he said, before adding, “Black lives matter, black students matter, black schools matter, black lung matters.”

Others criticized the state for its recently released environmental assessment for failing to include data showing how it concluded building the project would result in a slight reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Rian Windsheimer, the state’s top transportation official overseeing the metro area, told the crowd the project Portlanders see today is very different than the one proposed three decades ago. And he said the state isn’t finished hearing from the public.

Windsheimer added that the state plans to release the data that led it to conclude its travel times, emissions reductions and congestion data as soon as possible.

The state will continue to accept public comment on the project until 5 p.m. April 1.

-- Andrew Theen

atheen@oregonian.com

503-294-4026

@andrewtheen

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