Michelle DuBarry

As the mom of a toddler who was killed by a careless driver in North Portland in 2010, I was heartened to learn that the Oregon Department of Transportation was proposing a $500 million safety project in Portland.

“Finally!” I thought. The agency is going to address the lethal roads it manages across the region: North Lombard Street/North Columbia Boulevard (29 deaths since 2010); Southeast Division Street (23 deaths since 2010); Southeast Powell Boulevard (21 deaths since 2010); Southeast 82nd Avenue (15 deaths since 2010).

Most of those who were killed were pedestrians and cyclists, so I assumed that the bulk of the $500 million would go to infrastructure designed to protect our most vulnerable road users—things like streetlights, protected bike lanes, curb bumpouts, sidewalks, crosswalk improvements. Of course, once the state transportation department lowersthe speed limit to 20 mph on these roads (the speed at which a pedestrian is likely to survive a crash), they will need new signs. Maybe there’d even be money for trees, dedicated transit lanes , and pedestrian bridges. What a relief that the agency was finally doing something about our dangerous neighborhood arterials!

But my relief turned to confusion once I learned the details of the safety project. Known as the I-5 Rose Quarter Improvement Project, it does not address any of ODOT’s most dangerous roads. Instead, the agency is using taxpayer money to add a lane to both sides of a 1.7 mile stretch of freeway in the Rose Quarter—a project opposed by a staggeringly large coalition of transportation, climate, public health and equity-minded advocates.

Half a billion for less than a two-mile-stretch? That can’t be right, I thought. Sure, traffic on I-5 is frequently congested, but I have lived in the neighborhood for 15 years and had never considered it unsafe in the way I do any number of crosswalks on ODOT-managedroads in the city. And besides, wouldn’t less congestion lead to more cars, traveling at higher speeds? And wouldn’t more cars lead to, well, more congestion?

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ODOT claims this portion of freeway has the “highest crash rate” in the state. But that’s objectively untrue. Not only are there fewer crashes in that stretch than many of Portland’s arterials, according to economist Joe Cortright, who crunched the numbers from ODOT, the crashes tend to be minor, non-injury events—your proverbial fender benders. There hasn’t been a single traffic fatality on this stretch of freeway in seven years. Meanwhile, the Tualatin-Valley Highway claimed another life just last month.

Local climate and youth activists pointed to another safety problem: The new lanes would encroach on a middle school playground where outdoor activity is already limited due to freeway pollution, potentially increasing carbon emissions by encouraging more traffic – all at a time when scientists estimate we have 11 years to head off planetary catastrophe.

Over the last several months, youth and families in the Harriet Tubman Middle School community have pleaded with ODOT to conduct a full environmental impact statement on the project. Watching the agency resist this essential bit of public accountability, I had to wonder: if traffic violence, air quality, and climate change aren’t safety concerns for the agency—whose safety are they really concerned about? Certainly not children, seniors, people with disabilities, and people of color—all of whom will suffer the harmful effects of the agency’s misplaced priorities.

Recently ODOT increased its cost estimate for the project to as much as $790 million. I don’t know what political mountains need to be moved for the agency to repurpose that money, but I am hoping our local leaders and advocates can apply enough pressure to convince them to invest in real traffic safety. They might start with the intersection ofNorth Lombard Street and North Interstate Avenue where my son was killed in his stroller on a two-block walk from our house to the grocery store.

If the state has nearly a billion dollars to invest in safety, surely we can do better than a freeway expansion.