Traffic problems? Better buckle that seat belt

(Doug Beghtel/The Oregonian)

Better Naito? Bellissimo! Portland Mayor Charlie Hales is pressing to permanently evict motor vehicles from one northbound lane of Naito Parkway so pedestrians and cyclists have a little more breathing room along Waterfront Park.

But Better Marquam? Better Rose Quarter? Better Powell? Better Ross Island Bridge? The betting odds on one less manic bottleneck on your afternoon commute?

Surely, you jest.

I was double-parked on Interstate-5 at 4 p.m. Wednesday when the Oregon Department of Transportation reader board at South Waterfront gave me the latest update on metro-area congestion:

If I were stupid enough to remain in my Subaru, it would take 64 diesel-fumed minutes to reach the juncture of I-5 and I-205 in Clark County, 11 miles north.

Those are vintage San Diego Freeway numbers.

Even as we set out the orange cones and orange bikes and celebrate small victories on downtown promenades, traffic congestion strengthens its chokehold on this city.

The state Department of Transportation figures motor vehicle volume has increased 6.3 percent in the last year, almost twice the national average.

As Art Pearce - the policy, planning and projects manager at the Portland Bureau of Transportation - points out, the gridlock could be worse.

Of the 40,354 new commuters the city gained between 2000 and 2013, 71 percent walk or bike to the office or work at home. If they spent as much time in their cars as I log in mine, the city's arterials might be in lockdown.

But we've passed the tipping point. Congestion is overwhelming dozens of intersections around town, including the west-side approaches to the Hawthorne Bridge; Southwest Sheridan and Barbur Boulevard; Northeast Lloyd Boulevard and 11th; and entire neighborhoods at both wretched ends of the Ross Island Bridge.

The evening rush hour on I-5 begins at noon. You better be armed with Waze or a deft feel for the back roads to Northeast Columbia if you have an evening flight out of Portland International Airport.

"The congestion problems are legion and intractable," notes Tom Fuller, the communications manager at ODOT, "but we are dedicated to untying the Gordian knot."

Better define "dedicated."

So much of Portland's problem is freeways and bridges that are still living in the '60s, right beside the Oregon Legislature.

"Since the middle of the last decade," says Travis Brouwer, the Oregon Department of Transportation's assistant director, "the Washington Legislature has passed three major transportation packages. And three increases in the gas tax to pay for them."

In the last year alone, Brouwer adds, the state gas tax in Washington has increased 12 cents per gallon. That's twice as much as Oregon's gas tax has increased in 23 years.

The result? Seattle is spending $4.56 billion to replace the SR 520 bridge and $3.1 billion more in the tortured effort to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a tunnel.

Last November, Seattle also passed a $930 million transportation package that will provide 30 percent of the city transportation budget into 2024.

The City That Works?

We're still mooning over the $135 million Tilikum Crossing and congratulating ourselves that voters passed a temporary gas-tax increase that will provide $64 million for road repairs and safety improvements for pedestrians and cyclists.

Fixes for the aging bridges and Gordian bottlenecks that stop so many Portland commuters in their tracks?

"At this point, we don't have that scale of transportation infrastructure teed up," city planner Pearce says.

I wonder if that has something to do with the fact that ODOT wasted years of our time, and $200 million for consultants, on the abomination that would have been the Columbia River Crossing.

In the absence of more thoughtful investments by the state, the city is doing its best to prepare for the 260,000 new residents, and 140,000 new jobs, that will arrive in the next 20 years.

It's evolutionary, not revolutionary. Biketown, the city's long overdue bike-share system, has launched. Flanders Crossing finally has the funding to span I-405.

The Portland Bureau of Transportation is devoted to eventually reducing drive-alone trips and carbon emissions - "A single person in a single vehicle is the least effective transportation system we have," says Chris Monsere at Portland State University - through autonomous transportation and pricing strategies.

But the best efforts of the city to reduce congestion will eventually fail without a level of statewide funding, leadership and innovation that remains foreign to these parts.

-- Steve Duin

stephen.b.duin@gmail.com