Transit projects running on empty

$10 billion wish list - A group is updating a 20-year spending blueprint because "the old model won't work"

Monday, November 27, 2006

JAMES MAYER

The Oregonian

Metro Councilor Rex Burkholder likes to provoke conversation about reshaping the Portland area's $10 billion wish list for transportation projects with this startling statement:

"Every penny we spend on transportation is wasted."

Burkholder, a former bike advocate, chairs the powerful Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation, known as JPACT, that helps Metro decide how state and federal transportation money is spent in the region. The group is rewriting the 20-year spending blueprint known as the Regional Transportation Plan, a federal requirement to be completed next November.

Metro estimates that the state's 24 cent gas tax, last increased in 1993, would have to be raised $1.40 a gallon to pay for everything in the current plan. That's clearly a fantasy, Burkholder says, and he wants to bring a dose of reality to the process.

He doesn't really want to halt all transportation projects, but he starts with the premise that the least expensive solution is avoiding travel completely.

The region faces a viselike squeeze with a million more residents on the way, needs that vary from more bike lanes in Portland to more highway lanes in Washington County, and far less money available to pay for it all.

After years of thinning the soup to keep everyone happy, there's very little meat left. "We're down to fumes," says Washington County Commissioner Roy Rogers, a veteran of many years on JPACT.

"The old model won't work," Burkholder agrees.

But changing the JPACT political culture won't be easy, and there's no consensus on how to go about it.

The old model was based on cheap land and a steady flow of federal highway and transit money. The entire freeway network fits this model. Interstate 205, completed in 1982, was the last freeway built in Oregon.

"We could actually meet the needs of a population that had to drive everywhere. We built this huge system," Burkholder says.

But the money available now is barely enough to maintain that system, much less build anything new, and it's clear that people aren't willing to pay higher taxes, he says.

Bridges' repairs tap funds

The current version of the plan, approved in 2004, lists more than 900 projects, totaling $10.4 billion, ranging from $512 million for the proposed Sunrise Highway in Clackamas County to $5,775 for a bikeway on Portland Avenue in Gladstone.

The plan also includes a "financially constrained" list of 527 more essential projects with a total price tag of $4.2 billion. The list includes $515 million to extend light rail to Milwaukie.

But Burkholder says even that 2004 "constrained" figure was based on a 1 cent annual gas tax increase. Not only has that not happened -- voters overwhelmingly rejected a nickel increase in 2000 -- the amount available for new projects is even less because it will be needed to pay the debt for the state $1.3 billion bridge repair program.

"Given these resources, what are we capable of doing?" he asks. "Is it enough? And can we do things differently?"

Burkholder says meetings with neighborhood associations, business leaders, and environmentalists have revealed a desire for more compact development along the lines of the Pearl District or the proposed high-density community in the Tanasbourne area as the best way to stretch the transportation dollar.

If people can live near where they work, and walk and bike more, it can free up space on the highways for freight and necessary travel, he says.

Burkholder says he expects the revamped project list to be smaller. Projects that survive will meet these criteria: clean air, safe and pleasant neighborhoods, reliable -- if not necessarily speedy -- commutes, and freight reliability.

Clackamas County Commissioner Bill Kennemer, a JPACT member, says he's worried Metro is thinking too small.

"I think we should have audacious goals, not timid goals," he says.

Congestion hurts livability

Clackamas County is expected to absorb much of the population growth in the coming decades, Kennemer says, particularly in the Happy Valley-Damascus area, and it needs roads and other infrastructure to handle it.

He believes the region might support a gas tax increase for transportation if it was sold correctly, pointing out how well money measures for schools and law enforcement did in typically tax-averse Clackamas County in the recent election.

Congestion hurts livability, the region's most precious resource, Kennemer says.

"I don't think less is going to be acceptable," he says.

Measure 37, which changed the land-use planning landscape, throws transportation planners a curve as well, Kennemer says.

Clackamas County has added 20,000 acres of potentially developable land through Measure 37 claims, and no one knows how that will affect transportation.

Washington County's Rogers says there's a more fundamental political problem: There is no regional system, and that makes it hard for regional government to be accountable. There are state highways and county roads and city streets. But Metro doesn't own an inch of pavement or operate any buses or trains, and yet the regional government decides how the money will be spent.

Metro does a valiant job of trying to get people to work together, "but it's hard to do when you don't know what the mission or the product is," Rogers says.

Burkholder says he knows his efforts to change the way the region's political leaders approach transportation planning face a long road ahead.

But he comes back to the cost of a system that forces people to drive.

"People making $40,000 a year or less are now spending more on transportation than on housing. Is that a good idea? Every trip avoided is actually money in my pocket."

James Mayer: 503-294-4109; jimmayer@news.oregonian.com