Would Rose Quarter stifle benefit from new bridge?

Critics of a new Interstate 5 Bridge argue that the multibillion-dollar project may well ease congestion at the river, only to shift the morning traffic jam a few miles south.

The American Transportation Research Institute’s bottleneck analysis of 100 freight-significant highway locations is linked at http://www.atri-online.org.

They contend it doesn’t make sense to spend as much as $3.6 billion to widen the freeway in one location, especially if it compounds a notorious traffic chokepoint farther south in the center of Portland.

“Are you creating system failure elsewhere?” Metro council President David Bragdon asked this year.

Sure enough, a new study of 100 “freight significant highway locations” nationwide identifies the confluence of I-5 and Interstate 84 near the Rose Garden arena among America’s most notorious traffic bottlenecks. The American Transportation Research Institute, which compiled the ratings, did not evaluate the I-5 bridge.

The Rose Quarter, at No. 30 on the list, was the only location studied in Oregon. It fared worse than three spots monitored in and around Seattle.

Yet Oregon transportation officials have no immediate plans to fix that stretch.

Instead, the overwhelming focus of money, time and attention has been on replacing the I-5 bridge between Vancouver and Portland. The project also would improve four miles of freeway and extend Portland’s light rail transit system into downtown Vancouver.

Bragdon, who heads the Portland area’s regional land use and transportation agency, worries that a wider bridge will swamp the notoriously congested freeway connections around the Rose Quarter with commuters from Washington.

Proponents say building a new bridge takes a higher priority than fixing the Rose Quarter because it will improve access to the Portland-Vancouver metro area’s industrial core.

“If you feel like you had to fix the entire system, you would never do a project,” said Susie Lahsene, transportation and land use policy manager for the Port of Portland. “You bite things off and make them as efficient and effective as you can.”

Planners for the bistate crossing office have a relatively narrow focus, encompassing four miles of I-5 between Portland’s Marine Drive interchange and state Highway 500 in Vancouver.

Yet almost a decade ago, an earlier transportation panel appointed by Oregon and Washington governors considered a broader area covering about 16 miles of I-5 between I-84 in Portland and the confluence of I-205 north of Vancouver. The group identified the Rose Quarter as a problem, but ultimately left it to Portland officials to devise a solution.

They haven’t.

Portland officials were contemplating major changes to I-5 along the east bank of the Willamette at the time, recalled Ed Barnes, a Vancouver resident who served on that panel. Barnes said Portland and Metro preferred to handle it through a locally driven process.

Barnes is exasperated by complaints from Portland-area politicians now.

“If there’s a problem at the Rose Garden, they created it by not allowing us to look at a bigger fix,” he said.

Henry Hewitt, a Portland lawyer who co-chairs the CRC Project Sponsors Council, served on the previous panel with Barnes. The group concluded that congestion in the Rose Quarter should be examined in the context of the entire loop connecting I-405 to I-5 between the Fremont and Marquam bridges, according to Hewitt.

“We expected that the proposal to have Metro, Portland and the state of Oregon examine the issue would lead to a solution and reconstruction of the Rose Quarter interchange,” Hewitt wrote. “Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened, yet.”

I-5 narrows to just two lanes with a convoluted series of on- and offramps in and out of downtown. Long backups are a fact of life for motorists connecting to I-84, also known as the Banfield freeway. Crossing the Marquam bridge, meanwhile, requires southbound motorists to weave to the right to avoid being funneled into downtown on I-405.

Fixing the Rose Quarter stretch won’t be easy or cheap.

“That might get funded in my lifetime, if I eat better and exercise more,” quipped Portland Mayor Sam Adams, 46.

Even so, an Oregon state transportation official says state and Portland city officials are planning to appoint an advisory group to begin looking into it as soon as this summer.

“There’s no project right now,” said Mike Mason, a community affairs coordinator for the Oregon Department of Transportation. “It’s a planning effort, so it would look at the Rose Quarter, I-5, the I-84 interchange and the area around it.”

The new report from federal officials confirms the area is badly congested.

The new tool, developed with just under $100,000 in funding from the Federal Highway Administration, measured the severity of congestion during weekdays in 2009. It measured average speeds during peak congestion periods as well as off-peak hours to derive a congestion index. Travel during peak periods averaged 35 mph on I-5 near the Banfield, according to the tool, and 43 mph before and after rush hours.

The tool is primarily intended to help long-haul truckers plan their trips, but federal transportation officials said it should also help prioritize areas in greatest need of work.

“Obviously, if you have a road that’s more congested, that helps you understand where the needs are and where the priorities should be for funding,” said Nancy Singer, a spokeswoman for the Federal Highway Administration.

What about the bridge?

The new model did not measure congestion on the I-5 bridge.

“To include all of the congested points in the United States would be quite an undertaking,” said Jeff Short, senior research associate for the ATRI in Atlanta. “We’re going to continue to grow this list so we can monitor more locations, including the I-5 bridge.”

State transportation planners contend that just because the latest study didn’t measure congestion at I-5 across the river, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem there.

“The fact that we have just two river crossing locations makes them very important to function well,” said Carley Francis, a Washington Department of Transportation spokeswoman working in the CRC’s Vancouver office. “A key reason to do this project is about safety. With growing congestion, safety gets worse.”

The sharp curve onto the bridge, lack of shoulders, and weaving between packed-together interchanges all contribute to the highest accident rate in the region.

Francis noted that a traffic survey compiled for the CRC project found that roughly two-thirds of all the automobiles crossing the river during peak travel periods are getting on or off within the four-mile “bridge influence area.”

However, the same study notes that the bulk of southbound traffic — about 65 percent — is headed for destinations south of the bridge influence area — toward the Rose Quarter chokepoint.

Erik Robinson: 360-735-4551, or erik.robinson@columbian.com.