Nearly a decade in, the ambitious project to widen Interstate 5 through Portland’s Rose Quarter is stuck in neutral. Meanwhile, its price tag has ballooned.

Oregon has spent $143.5 million on the effort since 2016, money for planning, engineering, community outreach and conducting an environmental review, according to state figures. That’s all without a shovel hitting the dirt.

Now the project faces a difficult path forward: a more than $1.5 billion financial hole since the federal government pulled back a grant worth about a quarter of its estimated cost. Some state leaders are unsure where they’ll find the money.

“We are in a really tight budget right now,” said Sen. Chris Gorsek, a Gresham Democrat who works on state transportation policy. “As far as I can see, there just isn’t another big pot of money that you can take from to finish the whole project.”

This was among the state’s largest transportation efforts, kickstarted by a $5.3 billion bipartisan bill lawmakers passed in 2017. Since the passage of House Bill 2017, Oregon has completed 19 of its 29 projects, and state officials expect to finish three more by year’s end.

But the political momentum for tackling mega projects appears to be wavering, even as traffic ticks up to pre-pandemic levels in some parts of the Portland metro area, leaving commuters and freight in gridlock.

As Oregon’s transportation agencies face financial headwinds, lawmakers in June failed to pass a bill to fund the system, including hundreds of millions of dollars toward mega projects. The looming consequence: hundreds of state employees face layoffs, threatening to leave aging roads and bridges in even worse condition.

Now, with a special session on tap Aug. 29, state leaders’ immediate priority is to stop the funding crisis, not address major infrastructure projects, increasing the risk for further construction delays and steeper costs.

“I think there is less of an appetite for big projects than there was before,” said Rep. Mark Gamba, D-Milwaukie. “I think you’re always going to have people that get excited about new, shiny, big things. Unfortunately, a lot of those new, shiny, big things don’t solve real-world problems for normal working people.”

These projects have become more expensive in the pandemic’s wake, in part due to inflation, rising construction costs, supply chain problems and what critics see as poor management and lowball estimates by the state transportation department.

In addition to the Rose Quarter, the estimated cost of a project to make a Clackamas County bridge earthquake-safe increased from $250 million to $815 million. A highway expansion project in Washington County has also seen projected costs increase from $140 million to $174 million. Officials expect to complete both suburban projects within the next two years.

ODOT “is basically your kitchen remodeler from hell,” said Joe Cortright, a Portland economist and vocal critic of the agency.

“You hire somebody who says they’ll fix up your kitchen for a very attractive price, and they come in and they tear up your kitchen, and then they say it’s going to be two times or three times what they said it was.”

Congestion problems sidelined

A primary objective of the last transportation bill’s three biggest projects — the Rose Quarter, the Abernethy Bridge on Interstate 205 and a widening of Oregon 217 in the western suburbs — was alleviating congestion on major Portland area thoroughfares. Today, those discussions have taken a back seat to ODOT’s financial woes.

With the Rose Quarter project seemingly stalling and no funding identified for another lane on the Abernethy Bridge, only the OR 217 auxiliary lane project appears to be on track. Meanwhile, rush hour congestion at the three corridors appears to have returned to roughly prepandemic levels, according to ODOT officials who compared 2019 to 2023, the most recent year for which data is available.

Lawmakers set the state on a path toward tolling, or so-called “value pricing,” in 2017 as a way to manage traffic and raise revenue. The state worked for several years on plans to toll I-205 and I-5 between Wilsonville and the Columbia River, spending more than $66 million to study the program. But mounting pushback from leaders and area residents convinced Gov. Tina Kotek to put the plan on pause.

“People are fatigued with having their taxes increased just for operations and maintenance with no actual movement on things that were promised in House Bill 2017,” said Clackamas County Commissioner Ben West.

Kotek calls proposal ‘first step of many’

Former Republican Sen. Brian Boquist, who helped pass the 2017 transportation bill, said lawmakers had originally hoped each of the projects would begin in the span of a few years to ease the flow of traffic and bolster regional commerce.

But, he said, “ODOT is so utterly incompetent that this is 2025, we still haven’t gotten anywhere,” and agency bosses haven’t been held accountable.

“It’s a shame because we have a lot of really good maintenance people at ODOT at the bottom who do a really fine job of keeping these roads open and maintained for the pittances that they do get,” said Boquist. “And somehow the lard at the top has screwed the whole thing up.”

Gov. Tina Kotek has ordered ODOT to delay the layoffs and put forward a proposal with a bevy of new taxes and fees to boost the system, which drew criticism from state Republican leaders who say Oregonians can’t afford it.

In a statement, a spokesperson said “the Governor is focused on the immediate transportation system emergency and finding critical, near-term solutions to stabilize basic functions at ODOT and local governments.”

“The Governor has been clear that this is the most immediate issue at hand, not the only issue,” Roxy Mayer, the governor’s press secretary, said in an email Friday. “It is the first step of many needed to meet our state’s long-term transportation needs, including securing the funding – either through state or federal funds – to complete transportation projects across the state.”

ODOT acknowledges ‘errors’

ODOT Deputy Director Travis Brouwer said in an interview with OPB that “the actions we took, or in some cases failed to take, did contribute to some of the cost increases. I don’t think there’s any way to get around that, or any desire for us to deny that.”

Costs increased on the Abernethy Bridge project due to “things that we did not catch during the engineering process,” and because of inadequate oversight of a consulting firm that led to design errors, he said.

For example, an effort to connect new strengthened crossbeams to an old structure needed more steel and “was more complex than originally envisioned,” a spokesperson said.

In addition, ODOT has dealt with “excavation obstructions, finding underground storage tanks and undetonated blast caps in the project area.”

“Many factors have gone into the higher costs, from inflation to change in scope to errors in the process,” Brouwer said. “But we absolutely have to take responsibility for those which fall upon us.”

The last transportation bill fizzled out on the session’s final day as Democrats, who hold supermajority power in the Legislature, failed to unify behind it.

Multiple party members told OPB they are lining up behind the governor’s proposal and hope it will get the support it needs to pass. However, they noted, it does not include funding for a wide array of top transportation needs like the mega projects in progress.

“I think it’s a very well crafted Band-Aide,” said Rep. Paul Evans, D-Monmouth. “And when you’re bleeding, sometimes a bandage is necessary.”

Rose Quarter in a bind

The highway project was initiated as part of a bipartisan legislative push to address what many see as one of the nation’s worst bottlenecks. Near the Moda Center, three major interstates converge within less than two miles, with only two lanes of through traffic for drivers, a problem transportation officials say is uniquely bad compared to other major American cities.

The trucking industry was one of the major project backers at the time, and the industry was willing to take a sizable tax increase to ensure the project happened.

Jana Jarvis, president and CEO of the Oregon Trucking Associations, said truckers have been “frustrated” by the lack of progress. It was a “priority project for the trucking industry, so to have it go to the bottom of the list and be unfunded eight years later, and very little happening with respect to investment and development in that corridor, is a disappointment to us.”

“These projects, specifically the Rose Quarter, are key to being able to move goods through our region,” said Jarvis. “My hope is that the state will understand that and make these priority investments in the short term.”

To get local leaders on board, the project expanded years ago into an effort to correct a historical injustice against Portland’s Black community by reconnecting the Lower Albina neighborhood. ODOT built the interstate decades ago through this North Portland community — which was home for a time to about 80% of the city’s Black population — displacing families and destroying homes and businesses.

“It was known as Harlem on the Willamette,” said JT Flowers, the director of government affairs and communications for the nonprofit Albina Vision Trust, which is spearheading the push to redevelop the area.

“You had world-class jazz venues, small businesses, pharmacists, cobblers, grocery stores, educational institutions, healthcare providers, and the human interconnectivity that brings a neighborhood to life,” Flowers said. “The construction of I-5 brought with it the destruction of that vibrant neighborhood.”

Part of the project evolved to include caps over the freeway, buildable covers that would support the construction of buildings on top of it, providing opportunities for further development. Proponents have long had high hopes for the project and what it could mean for the lives of families in the area.

“It would mean the rerouting of generations worth of Portlanders,” Flowers said. “Working class folks, historically displaced folks, Black folks who have been flushed out of our central city through large-scale capital construction projects because of I-5 and through decades worth of urban renewal.”

The project has faced a slew of legal challenges, including opposition from environmental groups who say that widening the interstate risks increasing drivers on the road and greenhouse gas emissions that worsen human-caused climate change. But now the issue has boiled down to a more singular question: Where will the money come from?

Brouwer, ODOT’s deputy director, said the agency plans to bring options forth to state leaders, adding: “Ultimately it will be up to policymakers.”

“With any project of this size and scope. it is beyond the resources of (ODOT),” he said. “Projects like this almost create their own funding streams if there is the appetite by legislators to move forward. If there is not, or if they weigh the benefits against the costs and decide against moving forward, then that is a critical decision that they get to make.”

Some Democrats concede the project’s future is unclear. Evans, the Monmouth Democrat, who sits on the Legislature’s joint transportation committee, said, “I think the Rose Quarter project itself needs to be reevaluated.”

“I don’t know if we have the political will to build the lids and everything else that people were envisioning,” he said.

State officials recently greenlit the project’s initial phase, partly out of concerns that further delays will make the project more expensive in the long run. At an estimated construction cost of $75 million, officials plan to upgrade stormwater systems, work on bridge infrastructure and add highway signs, among other things.

But the biggest problem has come from the recent passage of the federal government’s latest domestic policy bill, which pulled $450 million that leaders had banked on.

As part of its efforts to cut federal spending, the Trump administration has targeted government-supported efforts related to diversity, equity and inclusion, threatening to cut transportation funding on projects that often seek to support marginalized groups.

“It’s a very, very, very complicated project, with pros and cons that are legitimate on both sides,” said Gamba. “And it is highly unlikely that we are going to get money from the federal government to make this improvement to their system.”

Still, proponents remain optimistic for what lies ahead, even if the project might take more time.

“We have the power to make (the Rose Quarter project) happen as a state,” said Flowers. “This is simply a matter of us being willing to uphold our commitment to community in a moment where the Federal Government has tried to put our backs against the wall.”

If the project fails to move forward, however, Flowers said the state will be missing an opportunity.

“To fail to deliver this highway cover would be to fail to deliver on a promise made not only to a particular community, but to the nation as a whole,” he said, noting the project’s national visibility.

He added, “We’re in the midst of a moment that gives us an opportunity to make a choice, we can back down and back away from a solemn commitment that we made to a people, to a city and to our state, or we can commit to forging forward and wrapping our arms around one another.”

Abernethy project nears completion

When HB 2017 initially passed, one of its major priorities was addressing congestion and seismic deficiencies on I-205. The bill outlined earthquake resiliency improvements to eight bridges along the freeway, as well as adding a third travel lane for seven miles between the Stafford Road and Oregon 213 exits to alleviate a bottleneck on that stretch of the highway.

Funding for the project was even included in the 2017 bill until legislators made a last-minute change.

Without those allocated funds, the I-205 project was significantly scaled back in 2023, much to the chagrin of Clackamas County officials.

Since then, ODOT’s sole focus for the project has been seismically retrofitting the Abernethy Bridge spanning the Willamette River between West Linn and Oregon City. ODOT began work on the bridge in 2022, touting that once finished, the bridge would be the only freeway crossing over the Willamette River in the Portland metro area expected to withstand a major earthquake.

While the project’s expected completion date has been pushed back from 2025 to sometime next year, the work has not seemed to have had an outsized impact on daily commuters, according to West, the Clackamas County commissioner.

West said overall, ODOT has done a good job of mitigating traffic impacts for commuters and truckers. Mostly, he said, people are just relieved the freeway is not currently slated for tolling.

Costs for the Abernethy project have swelled from an estimated $250 million to more than $815 million.

West also lamented that the decision-making process that led to nixing the third lane part of the project was not transparent.

When it was initially proposed, ODOT said the extra lane would improve Oregon’s economy by creating a “safer and less congested travel corridor.”

Clackamas County Commissioner Paul Savas still agrees with that analysis, saying relieving congestion at the bottleneck by adding a third lane would make the flow of customers and goods to Clackamas County businesses easier and more reliable.

Savas also stated that had ODOT moved forward with the I-205 work — in its entirety with both bridge upgrades and the third lane — instead of spending millions on analysis about tolling, it could have locked in much lower pricing.

“No one could have predicted COVID or the extreme inflation, but had we acted, we could have saved a lot of money,” said Savas, who was a member of a state tolling committee that studied the issue.

While not confident that legislators will come up with funding for the third lane in the coming special session, or even next year’s short session, Savas, West and other leaders in Clackamas County are hopeful for 2026.

West expressed confidence in the bipartisan Clackamas County caucus, which he said played an instrumental role last year in convincing Kotek to pause tolling on I-205.

“I’ve been really pleased with the nonpartisan and collaborative effort of the Clackamas caucus and their ability to really advocate for the needs of Clackamas in many different ways,” he said.

Of the three biggest priorities outlined in HB 2017, the project to add merging lanes on OR-217 between Beaverton Hillsdale Highway and Oregon 99W remains on track. ODOT expects to wrap up the project, which broke ground four years ago, by the end of this year.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/08/05/oregon-interstate-5-205-bridges-highways-efforts-delays-costs-transportation/