WETLANDS:
West Eugene
Transportation, Land and
Neighborhood Design Solutions
SLIDESHOW:
virtual tour, hidden history
WEP would worsen traffic
Osprey
Group report
ignored
WETLANDS alternative
&
2001 "No
Build"
consensus
City, County, State, Fed governments
June 2006: last gasp?
Federal Highway - new route
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WEP alternatives:
$17, $88, or $169 million
WEP
would have more
traffic lights than
WETLANDS alternative
hospital
siting
downtown boondoggles
disaster preparedness
Region 2050
TREES:
Transportation
Energy
Environment
Sustainability
The WEP would worsen traffic, not solve it
The Beltline carries more than twice the traffic of W 11th.
The Beltline currently has a lower level of service than W 11th (it is the busiest road in the region).
The 20 year plan only has money to study problems on Beltline, and no money for construction. Relocating McKenzie Willamette hospital to the Delta / Beltline intersection would make the traffic snarls there much worse. It would take MUCH more than a few million dollars to fix the problems there - and the new hospital location is perhaps the most inaccessible location inside the UGB. (Downtown or Second and Garfield would be far superior locations.)
The Beltline is a freight route, National Highway System (NHS) highway, and state highway. West 11th is a local arterial.
The Beltline has a chance of providing expressway-level of service from I-5 to the UGB (and could even be upgraded to Interstate status via the WETLANDS alternative). The combination of west 11th / WEP, 6th & 7th couplet and I-105 are not going to provide that level of service. Even if the WEP is built, in 20 years the rest of this route to I-5 will be failing and less safe. The WEP's "Purpose and Need" states that it is to connect 126 with I-5, which the WEP clearly does not do.
The 6 / 7th couplet has dangerous intersections. The WEP would add more traffic to these congested streets which would increase safety problems.
The WEP would also increase traffic on Oregon 126 across Fern Ridge, making it unlikely that there would be money to add shoulders to this overloaded, narrow highway. Some of this increase would be caused by the UGB expansion that would happen once the WEP would be built. Some would be caused by the phenomenon of "induced demand."
Spending so much on WEP would also make it unlikely that a serious level of public transit could serve west Eugene, Bethel, Veneta, etc. after Peak Oil, when transit demand will probably be much greater than it is today.
1990 - LCOG exaggerated traffic congestion (in EIS)
www.sierraclub.org/sprawl/transportation/congestion.asp
Expansion Induces Traffic
| What does "Parkway" mean? |
Parkway means nothing formally, it is merely propaganda to make a major highway seem more environmentally friendly than it is. This term has been used to “greenwash” lots of controversial highways.
The “Salem Parkway” was built along the route of never built I-305, which is less intrusive onto the urban landscape but has nearly identical environmental impacts to an interstate upon the natural environment. The recently constructed Bend Parkway is a limited access highway that is facilitating more sprawl in that metastasizing city, not a winding, low speed road like Amazon Parkway in south Eugene. Houston’s proposed “Grand Parkway” would be the FOURTH Beltway around that city. The 1999 Taxpayers for Common Sense / Friends of the Earth “Road to Ruin” report gave the Grand Parkway the title of “most redundant” highway in the country (archived at www.taxpayer.net/TCS/RoadRuin/index.htm). The Fairfax County Parkway in northern Virginia is a part of the piece-mealed Outer Beltway around Washington, D.C.
It is bizarre that ODOT and FHWA call the proposed relocation of Oregon Highway 126 (the WEP) as a “Parkway” when these agencies secretly decided in 1999 that that the public lands in the path are no longer legally considered parklands for the purposes of Section 4(f) of the Transportation Act (which prohibits federal-aid highways through parks). Calling freeways designed “parkways” is a distortion of language similar to calling a factory an “industrial park,” since the WEP would reduce the amount and quality of natural parklands in Eugene.
Genuine “parkways” are actually designed for scenic travel through parks, and exclude delivery trucks. Some “parkways” built before World War II (Merritt Parkway in Connecticut, Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia and North Carolina, Baltimore-Washington Parkway in Maryland) are more legitimately titled “Parkways.” Perhaps there was a conference sponsored by FHWA, AASHTO or the highway construction lobby sometime in the last few years to strategize new public relations techniques for persuading skeptical citizens, and that was the genesis of the current practice of renaming major expressways and freeways as “parkways.” Whatever the name, these new highways would still decimate the natural areas in their path, cost huge amounts of money, and exacerbate climate change and oil depletion.
The WEP is designed for 55 mph (and more) speeds west of Belt Line, and is considered an “Expressway” under the criteria in Oregon Highway Plan Action 1A.2. Therefore, “West Eugene Expressway” would be more accurate than “Parkway.” Parkway conjures up the image of a meandering scenic drive through a park, not a high-speed, almost-freeway that would decimate parklands that shelter endangered species in order to facilitate the expansion of the Urban Growth Boundary.
Oregon Highway 126 Relocated, is technically more accurate than “Parkway.” The 2002-2005 State Transportation Improvement Plan states that WEP Phase 1A (Belt Line to Seneca) would be Highway 126 from mile post 55.6 to 57.25 (mile post zero is at Highway 101 in Florence). The Oregon Highway Plan list of expressways states that the WEP would be part of 126.
The WEP would be part of the “National Highway System” – a designation adopted by the National Highway System Act of 1995 to expand the highway gravy train to major roads that don’t quite qualify for interstate designation. While the WEP would not have any driveways (like West 11th Street or 6th / 7th Avenues), the WEP would have at-grade intersections controlled by traffic lights, and therefore would not qualify for interstate highway designation (at least in its initial construction). Belt Line from Roosevelt Road to I-5 currently meets FHWA standards for interstate highways, but for some reason, ODOT has not applied to the FHWA and AASHTO (American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, originally known as AASHO - really!) for interstate designation of the freeway segment of Belt Line. If they did, Belt Line could be called I-305, I-505 or I-705.
north-south access roads made worse - and 11th street intersections
WEP vs. where population is in Eugene (the highway would not go to where
the demand is)
Eastern terminus 6th / 7th Avenue (and "connector" to 105) -
three options
ODOT and its new subcontractor crafted five new designs for the project are toying with different designs that would allegedly not cause as many traffic problems, although they have not solicited any public input in these new designs.
IF IT’S OK FOR LCOG TO CHANGE GROWTH MODELS - FACTOR IN PEAK OIL
In 2003, the Oregon Department of Transportation, Lane County and the
City of Eugene spent a half million dollars redesigning the highway and
changing the traffic and growth models because they determined that the
WEP won't work as previously planned. Their consultant's traffic projections
showed that the WEP would clog west Eugene roads -- they have planned
a parking lot, not a parkway.
During 2003, the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) spent about
a half million of our dollars to determine if they can craft a new highway
design that would not completely clog west Eugene roads, since previous
analyses revealed that the WEP would create enormous traffic snarls. In
other words, it would be a parking lot, not a parkway.
In the summer of 2003, LCOG developed an entirely new growth forecast
for west Eugene to give the WEP another chance for approval. ODOT's consultant
found that the severe traffic congestion levels predicted on the WEP in
the 1997 SDEIS (projections made for the year 2015) became completely
unmanageable when pushed back to the year 2025 (when ten more years of
sprawl would further increase the traffic snarls). As a consequence, LCOG
scaled back growth projections in west Eugene so that the WEP would not
need to accommodate as much traffic, but did not bother to solicit even
token public input for this effort. No public notices were sent out informing
the community that they were spending our money to do this. No public
(dis)information meetings were held. No public hearings to solicit public
testimony. No forums by the Cities, County or any one else were offered
for citizens to learn what their employees were doing to the long term
plans for the region. How is this democratic? How does this meet Goal
One of the state land use laws that require public accountability and
participation? How does this meet public involvement requirements for
Environmental Impact Statements? Will there be any reprimands of those
who worked in secret to bypass the public from participation in these
issues?
This development is one of many reasons why a new EIS is needed if the
local governments and ODOT continue to promote this failed freeway project.
It would be preferable for ODOT to honor its June 2001 pledge to pick
NO BUILD for the WEP,.
the Lane Council of Governments (LCOG) and ODOT revised the traffic projection
estimates for west Eugene for the Year 2025 (the target date for WEP completion).
LCOG scaled back the projected "growth" in that area in order
to tinker with the traffic statistics. This sets up a "Catch 22"
-- previously, we've been told we need the highway because there will
be lots of sprawl in west Eugene. Now, we will be told that there won't
be so much sprawl, and therefore the highway is now permissible (because
it won't overwhelm the road network).
CITY OF EUGENE
ODOT's new version of the WEP would not meet ODOT traffic standards east
of Belt Line (too much congestion). Therefore, it would be fair for the
City to pay for this alleged local road built to their design standards,
and not ask the State to pay for that construction (this argument will
probably annoy the City officials who want the WEP).
The City of Eugene has not offered to pay any construction costs, even
though the Belt Line to 99 WEP segment would be built to the City's traffic
congestion standards (which allow for more gridlock than ODOT's design
requirements). ODOT's highway budget is already strained by the unexpected
costs of rebuilding the I-5 bridges over the Willamette and McKenzie Rivers
and the enormous I-5 / Belt Line interchange expansion (in part for Peace
Health’s relocation).
cost
ODOT is in a quandary because they know that the full cost is unaffordable.
$112 million instead of $88 million isn't a big price increase - but that
is still in 1997 dollars, so the real cost is considerably more than this.
If construction inflation is factored in, and the $13 million for the
extension from WEP to Veneta is included (Lane County's cost estimate),
then the unofficial $150 million estimate from Spring 2002 is still accurate.
The cost to extend WEP to I-105 (the Washington / Jefferson bridge) has
not been estimated, but a transportation insider has privately suggested
that $50 million would be a low starting figure. The WEP officially is
supposed to connect "126" with "I-105/I-5," and the
traffic models show that WEP would overload 6th and 7th, therefore requiring
some sort of new connection at the WEP's eastern terminus to 105.