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1. The double-decker truss bridge will produce impacts in terms of noise pollution since vehicular sounds of engines and tires are reflected off the deck of the upper level. Mitigation of these hard surface are difficult due to the need to inspect the structures for cracks or other failures. This noise will affect public and private properties on both sides of the river, including the new Vancouver Waterfront, downtown and Hayden Island. Similar to the Marquam Bridge, real estate is devalued on adjacent properties and parks are highly unpleasant to use. This is a critical issue to study as the bridge type selection moves forward.

1. This project is being described as a bridge replacement project, but it's actually a freeway widening and interchange re-building project that's justified by the need for the replacement of aging bridges. This is deceptive to the general public. Focus on the bridge replacement and two adjacent on-shore interchanges. Let WDOT carry on with its freeway widening projects later, if warranted. 3. Avoid any impacts to the Ft. Vancouver National Park property and its historic buildings. 2. Simplify/reduce impacts of interchanges on both shores where possible. Treat local arterials as such rather than freeway to freeway interchanges. 3. Reconsider round-abouts on Marine Drive. Pedestrians and cyclists are at a disadvantage using round-abouts due to drivers only looking left before acceleration. Use stop signs or signalized intersections. Limit land consumptive physical project impacts where possible. 4. Reconsider single point urban interchange on Marine Drive. These SPUIs are oversized and very confusing to drivers. 5. Reconsider deleting the I-5 ramps onto Hayden Island, an interchange which is too close to Marine Drive. With the local bridge over the new harbor, drivers can use this connection to the island. Reduce the number of lanes over and on Hayden Island.

Hello IBR Advisory Committee Members, I am one of many many people who chooses not own a car and regularly travels between Portland & Vancouver as I work in building and construction. As it is that I am fortunate to be able bodied, I typically ride my bike for transportation. I have driven over the I-5 bridge numerous times and, as inadequate the bridge is right now for people driving it is much much worse for people crossing the river outside of a car. There is no protection from the 100+ decibel noise of the roadway and the sidewalks are barely wide enough for two people to pass on foot or on bike. The new bridge needs not only adequate pedestrian and bike access, these need to be tied next to any transit services that are programed for the bridge. Putting transit lanes between vehicle lanes and the multi-use path on the bridge will make the space more welcoming and healthier for people riding and walking so they aren't exposed to the noise and are less directly exposed to tailpipe emissions when traffic inevitably grinds to a halt. Further there needs to be better bike and pedestrian connections into downtown Vancouver so that, as soon as people exit the bridge to the north, they aren't forced into vehicle traffic speeding to get to the bridge. The same goes for the Portland connection; it needs to get directly to already well established multimodal corridors at Denver in Kenton as well as Williams and Vancouver. This bridge has the opportunity to stand as a testament to the ingenuity and creativity of all the people of the Portland and Vancouver metros. Right now it seems like it is only being built by and for people relying solely on the fossil fuel and oil industries to get around. It needs to rise to meet the low carbon needs of now and the quickly approaching future. Thank you for your time, -Paul

The Interstate Bridge Replacement project must ensure complete and safe connections to the existing walking, biking, and rolling corridors in Oregon. These pathways need to be as physically separated from freight traffic as possible, especially in areas where new ramps and interchanges will be constructed. Maximizing this separation is key to creating safer, more attractive, and therefore more heavily used walking, rolling, and biking routes.

The IBR design must improve safety and comfort for people who walk, bike, roll and use transit. The current plan is inadequate. Please collaborate with local advocates and advocacy groups, like The Street Trust and BikeLoud, to formulate a plan that better considers active transportation.

The IBR as currently scoped is too enormous, too massive, too costly and unnecessary. Focus on the core needs of the region that reflect our modern budget realities. Focus on the bridge crossing, re-examine less costly options such as an immersed tunnel, and pull out most of the unnecessary auxiliary lanes and interchanges which are not justified by any measure. Oregonians and Washingtonians have waited a long time for this project to commence, let's get it right for the sake of our children, which includes ensuring this project is part of the region's carbon-reduction goals. As currently proposed the IBR would induce demand for driving and increase carbon and diesel emissions. That is the wrong way. Let's get on the right track: reduce the size of the bridge, reduce the number of lanes, increase the areas of the bridge that are dedicated to transit, walking and biking connections. Thank you.

The new bridge crossing reflects Oregon’s old school approach to transportation improvements where the legislature identified and funded projects which, almost exclusively, improved travel times for auto/truck drivers. Southern Oregon’s “expressway” was constructed under the 2019 transportation bill along with projects throughout the state - identified as much to distribute the spoils rather than to address a real transportation need. The “real” transportation need at this point given the climate, social justice, housing affordability and health is investing in walking and bicycle networks within urban areas of the state. The interstate bridge will not solve intercity transportation problems and will, in all likelihood, make them worse by increasing congestion and climate damage. I’m perplexed why ODOT would propose a project that will, without question, increase vehicle miles of travel in Region 1, contrary to the State goal of reducing them by 30 percent. You’d think that ODOT would have learned that you can’t add capacity without inducing demand and thus undermine any benefit the project sponsors might have originally forecast.

My daughter loves squirrels. There is a squirrel rescue in Vancouver she would love to volunteer at. But, we do not drive, and when looking at the options for getting to Vancouver, I told her volunteering wasn't in the cards. So when the IBR SDEIS came out, I was optimistic that we'd have better multi-modal routes (transit and bike) to help my daughter's dream come true. Unfortunately, the configuration of the bridge was a major disappointment: - The bridge was so impossibly high that even my ebike would have a hard time. - The configuration of transit and bike path connections/ramps introduced delays and extra travel. To make the bridge useful for active transit- which is required to hit the goals listed in the SDEIS! - the design should include transit and MUP next to each other (with transit lanes as a buffer to car lanes), more elevators, and connections to Evergreen in the north and Vancouver/Williams in the south. These are all vital changes needed to make using this bridge for transportation work.

When the new size of the IBR budget was announced two years ago, Representative Pham asked IBR Administrator Johnson, how confident he felt in the new budget and how to avoid cost overruns. The Administrator's response did not inspire any confidence. He said he "felt really good" about these numbers and that the best way to avoid overruns was to "get the project started as soon as possible." He seemed to ignore the almost inevitable outcome that this project could cost 50% more than budgeted, like many other megaprojects do. He was unwilling to entertain the idea of paring down the project by avoiding the interchange rebuilds (and whatever the implications of that would be). At one point, one of the leads of the legislative committee blurted out that, if we don't build this bridge, the federal money goes away! It seemed like he was giving away the game. This did not feel like a group of citizens trying to find a constructive way forward to benefit everyone in our region; it seemed like a small group of people had a thing they wanted to see done, costing as much as possible, and anyone standing in the way was seen as an obstructionist. I have two children who I hope will grow up and age in the Portland area. My concerns with this project are not about the short-term impacts of "free" federal money. My concerns, along with most others, are about the impacts of a poorly-conceived project that saddle the region with debt, emissions, and worse transportation options, for decades to come. I ask the IBR to right-size the project to the bare minimum needed to accomplish the goals of a seismically resilient bridge. Perhaps even one that is low to the river, and supports only transit and active transportation, like the Tillikum Crossing does. As we see in the case of the Tillikum Crossing, these investments can have massive impacts, like the imminent development of the area for Major League Baseball. Using Zidell Yards for an MLB stadium would have been impossible without the Crossing. A similar crossing of the Columbia could have similar impacts on both sides of the river. The delays created by such a project would be more than offset by the price savings, and the far better generational impact. If such a project isn't deemed possible politically, then there are still many areas to cut scope to save money, such as limiting the width of the bridge, using a lift, and not rebuilding the exchanges (or rebuilding them last, only if the rest of the project is on budget).

Hello IBR team. I am a business owner, and part of making good decisions is basing them on good data. If, for example, I want to grow my business through advertising, I would look at the performance of previous ads. If I had questions, I would run experiments. For more complex analysis, I would rely on more complex modeling. The most important aspect of any model is that it can predict past performance. If the model couldn't, why would I use it? How could I justify basing a business decision on a model that can't pass its most basic test? Unfortunately, the IBR modeling seems to fail this most basic test. Other comments have explained the issues with the modeling at length, so I'll focus on the impacts of the invalid model. Everything has a tradeoff. The SDEIS makes evaluating such tradeoffs impossible, because it does not model impacts properly. How can we choose between 0/1/2 auxiliary lanes? How can we evaluate whether the interchange rebuilds are needed? How can we evaluate the impact of a lift bridge? We're being asked to weigh in using a model that doesn't correspond to reality. It is depressing that the IBR team responsible for public engagement seems to realize this. At their presentation to the Southeast Uplift Transportation and Land Use group, they were unwilling to explain their modeling choices and limitations. They claimed that Metro provided the model, and the number of regional trips, and they just make it all work out. There was no explanation for the lack of acknowledgement of induced demand. This would not have been a suitable response for a college assignment; it is certainly not appropriate for a project that will cost $7+ billion dollars. I would ask the IBR to perform a new EIS with better modeling so we can properly evaluate the impacts of this generational project.

Please make sure mass transportation and cycling/pedestrian are considered and put close to each other for ease of use and "Multimodal" transport.

If our region is going to meet our climate goals and reduce congestion, the Interstate bridge replacement must be designed in a way that prioritizes the comfort and convenience of people taking transit, bicycling and walking. The multi-use path should extend to the northern limits of the project area and the project should include connections to low-stress bikeways on all sides. The path and light rail line should be on the same side of the bridge; it's very common for commuters to take their bikes on light rail. The bridge should be designed to anticipate increasing transit capacity in the future, not private vehicle capacity. The current design makes it clear that biking, walking, and transit were an after-thought.

If the Interstate Bridge is ever built, the pedestrian/bike infrastructure must be improved significantly from the current design of a 100' separation in elevation from the path to the MAX station to be built. As a 76 year active bike rider, I would find the cork screw ramp to gain 100' in elevation daunting if not impossible to ride. It is very important to think about how to integrate the pedestrians and bike riders from the bridge path into use of MAX.

As a parent and an educator, I am deeply invested in working towards a healthy, livable planet for my child and my students. While I understand the need for seismic upgrades and a safe way to cross the river, I don’t believe that we should be spending public resources on building new infrastructure that will increase emissions. I am concerned about adding lanes that would encourage more people to drive. Induced demand is a major concern — it is heartbreaking to think that, in trying to reduce congestion, we would instead multiply it. Instead, it is critical that transit be convenient, that connections are realistic, and that people be able to move freely between public transit and active transportation. I would love to be able to visit my cousins in Vancouver without driving, but instead I rarely see them because it feels like such a journey. If there was fast, convenient public transit, we could see each other more often. I could take my kid across the Columbia on a summer day to go swim in the Washougal. Please center public health and climate justice in building a bridge that is accessible through active and public transit. Make more space not for cars, but for people!

I am a NE Portlander who travels to Vancouver twice per week, during rush hour once. I would love to see a mode of transit where I could take my bicycle and/or train to get there. It is important to add side-by-side transit options to make it easy for me to do both-- it would be such a relief to not have to deal with car traffic and be able to move seamlessly from bike to transit and back to bike. Although I have a car and have that option, there are those who do not and this would be a boon to economic justice for communities who don't have cars and need an affordable way to travel between cities. Please make our cities connected and safe by bike and transit.

Instead of spending billions of dollars to fail to manage congestion, the departments of transportation should be working on congestion pricing and increased public transit to move people toward more efficient modes of transportation. Please listen to the Just Crossing Alliance's recommendations, and don't waste our money on this boondoggle.

The DSEIS itself includes no discussion of induced demand (topic not found in index). The Transportation Technical report has some discussion of “induced development” (i.e., land use changes) increasing travel demand (based largely on a 14-year-old memo from Metro in Attachment G) but ultimately concludes that land use plans already anticipate completion of the project (p. 6-1). There are multiple mechanisms behind induced demand that are included nowhere in the DSEIS. What follows is the transcript of a November 8th, 2024 "Science Friday" podcast in which author Megan Kimble discussed impacts of highway expansion including induced demand. Segment Transcript IRA FLATOW: This is Science Friday. I’m Ira Flatow. Have you ever been stuck in traffic? Well, maybe you are right now, and you had the thought, if only this highway was a little wider so it could fit more cars. Well, you aren’t alone because many states have been expanding their highways across the country for decades. New York Governor Kathy Hochul recently announced a $1.3 billion project to expand one of the state’s highways for a whopping six-minute travel savings. Other widening projects are underway in states, including Texas, California, and Maryland. In 2022, federal, state, and local governments in the US spent $127 billion on highway construction. These DOTs say expanding highways is necessary to reduce congestion, especially in areas with growing populations and to encourage economic development. But you know what? Decades of research shows the opposite effect. When highways are expanded, the travel time actually increases. When more lanes are added, people just clog up the new ones. So how does this happen? And why do we keep expanding highways, even though the research says it doesn’t work? Here to explain the science behind highway widening and how some states are actually rethinking their approach to traffic is Megan Kimble. She’s a journalist and author of the book City Limits, Infrastructure Inequality and the Future of America’s Highways. She’s based in Austin, Texas. Welcome to Science Friday. MEGAN KIMBLE: Thank you for having me. IRA FLATOW: Lots of highways in Austin, right? MEGAN KIMBLE: Lots of highways. I’m one mile from I-35 right now. IRA FLATOW: Well, let’s get to the point. It does seem logical that if you want less congestion, you just widen the road. But that the data shows that widening actually makes traffic worse, right? MEGAN KIMBLE: Yeah, it’s certainly intuitive. Like you said, if you’re sitting on a highway in traffic, you think, one more lane will get this traffic flowing more quickly. But yeah, it’s actually been well understood for decades that when you add capacity to a highway in the form of new lanes, more cars will rush to fill up that capacity. So that was first articulated in 1962. So just a few years after the interstate highway program began, an economist looked at all these new highways that were being built in American cities and saw that as lanes were added, as capacity was added, the total traffic was increasing. And this is because travel is a good like any other. It follows the rules of supply and demand. So when you increase supply, demand also increases. So people change their behavior. They maybe move farther from their job and they take on a longer commute because they think they can get there quicker, or they take more discretionary trips, so they go to the grocery store three times, instead of one time. And overall, traffic volumes increase. So the sort stated goal of fixing traffic congestion by adding lanes fails. In project after project, city after city, when highway departments widen, highway travel times actually increase. IRA FLATOW: But states are also talking about climate goals. We’re going to reduce smog and pollution and greenhouse gases. But more cars are just the opposite. When you widen the highways, you’re having an environmental impact. MEGAN KIMBLE: Yeah, you’re measurably increasing greenhouse gas emissions. A stat I found when I was reporting my book that absolutely floored me is that on-road emissions in Texas, so the emissions generated by our cars and trucks, account for half a percentage of total worldwide carbon dioxide emissions. So like the highway expansions that I profile in my book, whether those go forward will have a measurable impact on global climate emissions. Every one of these highway expansions contributes to that number. There’s been a lot of research lately that shows that highway widenings are the number one lever for states to pull to either reduce or increase their greenhouse gas emissions. So you have a lot of governors saying, we are committing to ambitious climate goals. And then their state DOT are funding highway widenings. IRA FLATOW: Can you point to any benefits of highway expansion? MEGAN KIMBLE: You certainly can allow more cars on the highway. So you do, in fact, increase the total number of people that can drive on a road. If you expand something from two to four lanes, more cars fit on that road. But I think the question is, do we want to encourage driving? Do we want our public policy decisions and public funding to be spent in such a way that it encourages people to drive? So the highways enabled the growth of the suburbs. They allowed people to buy more affordable housing out in the fringes of cities because they promised speedy access back to job centers and schools. But what is often not factored in is that has come at an enormous cost. So there is certainly a benefit in the sense of it has allowed kind of cheaper housing. But when you combine housing and transportation, when you factor in the cost of gas and car insurance and the externalities of greenhouse gas emissions, it actually is not so cheap anymore. IRA FLATOW: Yeah, and these highways are also pretty expensive to maintain, right? MEGAN KIMBLE: They’re expensive to build and they’re expensive to maintain. Yeah. I started reporting this book because I learned that the state of Texas had allocated $60 billion– that’s billion with a B– to expand highways in five major Texas cities. It’s an extraordinary amount of money to be spent, as we started talking about not actually solving the problem we set out to solve. IRA FLATOW: Yeah, and you point out in the early days of thoughts about highway expansion that when it was studied, there were even recommendations that the money would better be spent on public transportation. MEGAN KIMBLE: Yeah. This is one of my favorite stories that I encountered while reporting my book. So when Eisenhower sold Congress on the interstate highway program, he promised it as one of national defense, so it was going to connect the country in the case of an atomic bomb or nuclear attack, and also build economic prosperity, that we are going to enable trade across this vast nation of ours. So it very much was a program to connect the country. And what the interstate highway program did is it enabled $25 billion, the largest public works project ever attempted in American history, and the federal government would pay 90% of the cost of construction of these interstate highways. And so the money flowed directly to state departments of transportation, which were called Highway Departments with essentially no oversight by the federal government. And so what states started doing because they had lots of money flowing into their coffers and people were buying cars in record numbers, is they started building massive highways in the middle of cities. And so they started trying to use that federal money to solve this sort of local problem of urban congestion. IRA FLATOW: Yeah, that’s not what Eisenhower wanted it for, right? MEGAN KIMBLE: Yeah, that’s not what Eisenhower intended. And we know that because he appointed this guy, John S Bragdon, as a special assistant to the president to oversee the implementation of the interstate highway program. And Bragdon looked into the matter a few years after the program passed and found that it was running significantly over budget, and it was running over budget because states were using this federal money to build urban highways, which are much more expensive to build than rural ones. And so he asked Congress, was that your intent of the program, was to solve this problem of local congestion? And he presents his findings to Eisenhower in the spring of 1960. And it’s a really remarkable presentation. I found the actual note cards in the Eisenhower Presidential Library of the text that Bragdon presented to Eisenhower. And in it, he says, practically all the experts on the traffic problem of cities agree that the way to solve urban congestion, rush hour congestion, is through transit. People take up less space than cars. And urban transit is the solution. But what cities are doing currently is they are using this federal money through the interstate highway program to rip out existing transit systems and build massive highways in their place. And Eisenhower responds, and he agrees. He says those who had implemented the project, the program in this way, had done so against his wishes. He had never intended these massive highways to be built through the center of cities. IRA FLATOW: And when they started ripping out places to build these highways, the demographics were not quite equal for Black and white, were they? MEGAN KIMBLE: No. This coincided with the era of urban renewal, in which city planners were looking at, quote, unquote, “blighted neighborhoods” predominantly occupied by Black and Hispanic families, neighborhoods that had been blighted by the same federal government a couple of decades earlier through the practice of redlining. And they saw an opportunity to clear those neighborhoods. So it’s very clear in the historic record that planners intentionally routed interstate highways through Black and Hispanic neighborhoods and displaced half a million people from their homes along the way. And so it very much had a disproportionate impact on those neighborhoods. And that impact is still being felt today. People who live next to highways suffer higher rates of respiratory diseases. And those are still mostly communities of color. IRA FLATOW: And as you say, specifically in Texas– and I didn’t know they have the largest highway in the country, 26-lane Katy Freeway in Houston? MEGAN KIMBLE: Yeah, the Katy Freeway is like the textbook example of induced demand. It’s 26 lanes, including frontage roads. It is this massive highway. And TxDOT expanded it about a decade ago. And within five years, rush hour travel times got worse. And people in Houston drive on that highway. They understand that. I was really struck reporting my book. I went door to door with a lot of activists who were trying to stop a different highway expansion. And people in Houston understand the phenomenon of induced demand. They don’t necessarily call it that. But when you live in a place that is covered by highways and you still sit in crushing traffic, you might wonder, why do we keep doing this? IRA FLATOW: Yeah. And let’s talk about that. You wrote about the efforts of anti-highway expansion groups in Texas, and there were some successes. MEGAN KIMBLE: Yeah, so a group in Houston called Stop TxDOT I-45 started going door to door to stop this massive highway expansion. It’s called– locals call it the I-45 expansion, but it actually impacts three interstate highways and will rebuild and reroute the entire downtown loop in Houston, along the way, displacing 1,200 people from their homes, consuming 450 acres of land. And it’s currently an $11 billion project. And a lot of the people who are in the footprint of the expansion didn’t know that their homes would be taken. They didn’t know they had any way to fight back. The authority of eminent domain is absolute. TxDOT can say, hey, we want your home, and all they can do is negotiate on the price. But this group of just volunteers started going door to door in those neighborhoods impacted by the expansion, saying, hey, do you want this? Hey, do you know that you can say– you know that you can voice your opposition. TxDOT’s own analysis found that the people impacted by this highway expansion were predominantly minority. And so a few of those people filed civil rights complaints, saying this project violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act because it disproportionately impacts Black and Hispanic people. And as a result, the federal government actually, under Pete Buttigieg, intervened to pause that project. So they said, hey, TxDOT, we need you to stop work on this project while we investigate these serious civil rights complaints. And those were filed just by normal people, people who I spoke with, who live in the footprint of the expansion, and said, hey, this isn’t fair. This is unjust. IRA FLATOW: Wow. And this is happening in cities across the country, people fighting back, and cities, some of them, actually taking down their highways. MEGAN KIMBLE: Yeah. There’s this kind of new resurgence of freeway revolts, which people might remember in the 1960s, there was this massive resistance to highway construction. As these highways came into American cities, tens of thousands of people poured into the streets and said, we don’t want this. And they stopped highways from being built, in Baltimore and Portland and Seattle. Across the country, there were really successful examples of freeway revolts. And there is this sort of burgeoning movement today of this new generation of freeway fighters, many of whom are galvanized by climate, who see the climate impacts of these highway expansions. And they’re really trying to stop highway expansion across the country. IRA FLATOW: And you’ve mentioned in your book that there are cities that are actually taking down their highways. What cities are those? MEGAN KIMBLE: Yeah, about 18 cities across North America have either taken down highways or committed to doing so. So one of the ones I profiled in the book is the city of Rochester, New York, which had this inner loop highway circling its downtown, this kind of moat, this sunken highway, that really cut off downtown from the surrounding neighborhoods. And that highway enabled people to actually leave the central business district. And so the downtown had been kind of hollowed out. And starting about two decades ago, city leaders started talking about, what if we just took that highway away? What if we removed it? And in 2017, the city got a grant from the Obama administration, and they filled in the inner loop highway. They brought it up to grade. And they made a two-lane city street in its place, built this really wide, beautiful sidewalk and bike lane. So there are now apartments built on land that used to be a highway. Most of those apartments are rented to families earning below the median income, three or four story buildings, and it’s pretty remarkable to go walk. You can see part of the inner loop highway remains. The city of Rochester is in the process of actually filling in the rest of it now. But you can go today and see this sunken highway and then walk two blocks and see a neighborhood, a city. It’s populated. People are walking. They’re riding their bikes. There’s a brewery right there. And it’s really remarkable to see, we can reclaim that space. I think a lot of people, myself included, I’ve only ever grown up in cities wrapped by highways. It’s very hard to imagine them gone. It’s hard to imagine anything different. But a lot of cities are tearing down highways and building something else in their place. And that can happen over five years. That can happen very quickly. IRA FLATOW: And Colorado is actually taking a different approach, right? What are they doing? MEGAN KIMBLE: Yeah, so that really shows how this is a climate story. So Coloradans elected a Governor Jared Polis, who made climate a top priority of his administration, and the legislature, passed a bill requiring all state agencies to make a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2050. And so the Colorado DOT looked at its portfolio of projects, which included widening I-25 through the heart of Denver, and said, hey, we can’t actually widen this highway and meet our greenhouse gas targets. And so they took that widening off the books. They said, we’re not going to do this, and we’re going to allocate that money to something else. And that something else is bus rapid transit. So basically, we’re going to help build a more robust transit system in Denver so that people can ride the bus, which lowers greenhouse gas emissions, and get people where they’re going without a car. And that is a really remarkable example of climate policy dictating transportation funding. IRA FLATOW: Very interesting. You’ve been reporting on this issue for a long time. You’ve written the book City Limits. What’s your biggest takeaway on this topic after all of these years? MEGAN KIMBLE: Yeah. I started reporting the book with kind of the same question that you have in this program, which is, if widening highways doesn’t work to fix traffic, why are we still spending billions of dollars to widen highways? And the answer I have come to after four years of reporting is that there is this persistent belief in the US that cars help create prosperity, that cars enable economic development, and that without a car, our economy will collapse. And so many other countries disprove that. Lots of cities in the US disprove that. There’s so many different ways to tilt at that narrative. But that is this persistent belief from politicians of both parties, that cars create prosperity. And until we counter that, we’re going to keep making the same mistakes. IRA FLATOW: Do you think that might be changing? Are people thinking differently, starting to look at highways in their neighborhoods in a different way? MEGAN KIMBLE: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like I said, it’s definitely becoming a climate fight. People are realizing that widening highways is only increasing our emissions, but I think it’s also becoming a quality of life fight. Young people don’t want to drive. They want to live in places that are walkable. They want to not spend the money on cars. A car is often the largest share of a household’s disposable income after housing. And so people don’t want to spend the money, and they don’t want to spend the time driving. So I think there is a real shift, particularly as younger generations move into the housing market. They don’t want to just live in the suburbs and drive everywhere they have to go. IRA FLATOW: Yeah, this is a fascinating book, Megan. As someone who loves to read about highways and traffic and stuff, you’ve done a wonderful job here explaining the whole thing to us, especially the history of it, which is fascinating itself. Thank you very much for taking the time to be with us today. MEGAN KIMBLE: Oh, thank you, Ira. Thanks for having me. IRA FLATOW: Megan Kimble, journalist and author of the book City Limits, Infrastructure Inequality and the Future of America’s Highways. And you can read an excerpt from that book on our website, sciencefriday.com/highways. Copyright © 2024 Science Friday Initiative. All rights reserved. Science Friday transcripts are produced on a tight deadline by 3Play Media. Fidelity to the original aired/published audio or video file might vary, and text might be updated or amended in the future. For the authoritative record of Science Friday’s programming, please visit the original aired/published recording. For terms of use and more information, visit our policies pages at http://www.sciencefriday.com/about/policies/

I live in Portland and I ride my bike frequently and I use the bus and MAX as well. I hope that pedestrian and bicycle and mass transit will be a key feature of the new design. Especially as e-bike use grows, more people will be able to commute farther by bike, such as between Portland and Vancouver. Bikes and mass transit are a better long-term solution to traffic congestion than increasing road widths, which does not have a long term impact on traffic congestion. Thank you!

As a resident of Multnomah County, I urge project planners to reconsider expansion and instead focus on a simple bridge replacement that would improve user experience for public transit and active transportation. This would put the project in line with the OCFEC and with Metro's 2023 Regional Transportation Plan to reduce per capita VMT by 31% by 2045. It would also reduce the cost of this project and help protect adjacent communities and our river from dangerous air, water, and noise pollution. Right-sizing it would help ensure we meet our climate goals and ensure that our region has a more sustainable future.

I am providing this input about the future I5 bridge crossing the Columbia at the request of Chris Smith. I hope it will accomodate: 1) safe and efficient roadway for cars, trucks, pedestrians and bicycles 2) provision to automatically track and invoice bridge users with licensed vehicles similar to Washington State's toll system. 3) some form of webcam allowing people to see traffic and weather conditions at will

I believe the current IBR plan to add an auxiliary lane in addition to the 3 lanes available in both directions is based on a model that has not been shown to be accurate. Real data shows that traffic is not increasing at a rate where adding another lane is necessary. In addition, the bottleneck for traffic tends to occur more south of the bridge, in Portland, compared to where the bridge is, so adding more car lanes to the bridge would not help congestion issues.

I live in Portland an an an all modes of transit user, including driving, transit, walking, bicycle… I am very opposed to the idea of more lanes (even as auxiliary lanes) being added to I5 and north Portland and downtown Vancouver both being damaged for decades to come by the IBR, all while failing to design the bridge in the correct way to integrate the bike paths and the transit connection. This is a bad choice for the future of these cities, and the induced demand that will erase supposed traffic benefits means it’s also a bad choice for the planet more broadly and our climate goals.

I am writing to demand that the IBR promotes infrastructure that ties communities together and invests in a brighter, cleaner, safer future. This means reducing the freeway component of the project but includes the seismic replacement, light rail extension and bike and pedestrian improvements. No freeway expansion!

I believe the ibr project as planned will increase the amount of vehicle miles traveled, and directly contribute to global warming. Not to mention the 8+ billion dollars used for the project would be better used to take care of our community and the people living in Portland. This project will effectively defund this we need by putting us in debt for a bridge instead of schools, addiction services, and affordable housing. Portland could cost effectively build a new bridge for less cost without expanding i5, demolishing homes and taking funding from elsewhere. Having a tunnel would allow for the water to be used by the people, instead of prioritizing cars. Put the people first.

The IBR billboard on Hayden Island states "this bridge is so 1917" and implies that a new one should be built as an update. The plan for the bridge replacement in the DSEIS seems to be so 2000! I was involved whole heartedly with the Columbia River Crossing planning when residents of the island were actively invited to participate in the process. This new IBR project has shunned Hayden Island residents and not connected at all. Yes, the Public Engagement calendar shows they have visited here 7 times in five years but most residents are in the dark and very suspect of the project. We don't trust the numbers, the theories, and the conclusions. Hayden Island will be severely impacted by construction, noise, vibration, and air pollution. There is loss of property value, loss of business, loss of employment. It is hard to find one good thing about this project! Let's get back to the billboard ... this bridge project seems "old" before it is even built. There is a lack of forward thinking, future planning, and exciting design. All bridge designs in the DSEIS are dull and boring and not grand enough for this iconic project. Let's start over and do better!,