A report predicting a significant traffic increase on the Glenn Jackson Bridge on Interstate 205 has Metro Councilor Bob Stacey looking for answers.
Stacey e-mailed Metro staffers on Tuesday, asking for more information about a report by Joe Cortright, an economist and staunch critic of the Columbia River Crossing project.
Cortright's report, "CRC Tolls Will Produce Gridlock on I-205," says that nearly 50,000 more drivers daily will choose to use I-205 to cross the Columbia in 2016, when tolling would start on I-5 – and about 45,000 fewer drivers would choose to use the Interstate Bridge.
The report cites data from CDM Smith, a consulting firm analyzing the finance plan for the proposed Interstate 5 replacement bridge over the Columbia River. It also says those numbers run counter to what officials projected in their federal environmental review.
"Because our staff provided technical assistance to CDM Smith in the performance of its work, I hope we can obtain either validation or correction of these traffic estimates," Stacey wrote in an e-mail to staff and Metro councilors. "It would also be useful to understand whether our model was used to estimate the impact of this traffic on the facilities Cortright mentions."
The spillover numbers matter for two reasons: every driver who chooses I-205 instead of I-5 is a driver who isn't paying for the new I-5 bridge, and the daily traffic jams that clog the Portland region because of Interstate 5 could shift east as drivers seek to evade tolls, which could range from $1.45 to $6.11 each way depending on the time of day and whether the driver has an electronic toll collection device.
But in a letter to state officials Friday, Oregon Department of Transportation director Matt Garrett said CDM Smith's work was "fundamentally different than the traffic analysis completed for the Final Environmental Impact Statement, and with very different goals in mind."
In other words, said Metro Council advisor Andy Cotugno, the CDM Smith data looks at how toll financing for the Columbia River Crossing would work under a variety of traffic scenarios – and isn't trying to project exactly what the traffic would be.
"Since the report is a toll financial capacity analysis, it didn’t take the next step that a traffic management study would to focus on how to mitigate expected impacts," Cotugno said.
In his letter, Garrett stressed that the CDM Smith analysis Cortright used has to make "prudent assumptions that will not overstate revenue." On the other hand, the projections for the federal report have to "make assumptions that will not understate traffic and its impact on the environment."
According to a February report outlining the revenue forecasts, the numbers Cortright later used are based on Metro's population and employment forecasts for the region, but looks at a lower rate of return for the tolling project.
Advocates for the Columbia River Crossing are calling for tolls to cover between $1.1 billion and $1.3 billion in construction costs on the $2.8 billion project. Those tolls would pay back bonds for 40 years.
CDM Smith's February report looked at scenarios ranging from 52,300 to 79,300 cars a day using I-5 once tolling began in 2016, and projected that would raise between $61 million and $84 million in toll revenue. By 2022, when the new bridge would open, CDM Smith's study looked at scenarios ranging from 66,800 to 109,602 cars a day using the I-5 bridge, generating between $91 million and $167 million in revenue.
In 2012, 128,373 cars per day traveled over the Interstate Bridge.