In the past week, decisions in Salem and Washington DC have driven a stake through the heart of the $2.1 billion plan to widen a mile-and-a-half stretch of I-5 near downtown Portland.
The metaphor for this project is quickly changing from “driving stakes” to mark the start of construction, to driving a stake through the heart of speculative financial plans ODOT has spun.
On June 28, the Oregon Legislature adjourned sine die, without passing a major transportation bill. HB 2025 would have allocated $125 million per year to an “anchor project” fund that would have been used to finance the Rose Quarter and other megaprojects. Just prior to the session, ODOT conceded that it had a $1.3 billion “financial gap” in paying for the project. And that was before ODOT conceded that the cost was going to be even higher, rising from $1.9 billion to $2.1 billion.
On July 3, the US House of Representatives passed HR 1, the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” which has trillions of dollars of tax and spending cuts. Among its least noticed provisions is Section 60019, which rescinds the funding for the “Neighborhood Access and Equity Grant Program,” which is the statutory name of what the US Department of Transportation has called “Reconnecting Communities.”…