Comments on the Columbia River Crossing Draft EIS

[Kevin]

We're sharing these comments submitted to the environmental review process for a major regional transportation project in the Pacific Northwest in case some of the general perspectives may be of wider interest - perhaps in particular the two summary points called out with numbers...

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Re: CRC DEIS COMMENTS

To: Columbia River Crossing
c/o Heather Gundersen
700 Washington Street, Suite 300
Vancouver, WA 98660

Dear CRC Team et al.,

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the draft environmental impact statement for the Columbia River Crossing project (CRC DEIS). We are participating as the Editorial Board of ArchitectureWeek magazine, the premiere professional architecture and planning periodical based in Oregon.

We have reviewed this document, fully recognizing that our cities, state, region, nation, and indeed our planet are at a critical crossroads of change with regard to transportation planning. In one direction, the road continues the general tenor of analysis and hence the kind of conclusions seen in business as usual over the last half-century. In the other direction, the road to-date less traveled, lies the substantive response to the threat and reality of anthropogenic climate change.

We fear that the CRC DEIS lies in the main direction. In terms of analysis, because of the fatally-incomplete review of impacts due to induced traffic related to land use changes, the current work is inadequate to properly authorize such a significant project at this time ( http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1214029515244280.xml&coll=7 ). In terms of conclusions, the expansive alternatives represent unacceptable misallocations of essential resources in a time of unfolding crisis in U.S. transportation.

The State of Oregon has adopted goals by legislation for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 10% below 1990 levels by 2020, and to 75% below 1990 levels by 2050. While the latest climate science suggests those goals are not stringent enough to prevent triggering disastrous climate switches, the adopted goals are sufficient for immediate planning purposes.

Transportation planning that projects to meet those adopted goals, as it is morally imperative that the CRC DEIS must, will need to show assurance of high levels of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) reduction over time.

In fact, simple calculations using stabilization wedges as well as other approaches show that to project transportation sector compliance with greenhouse gas emission reduction goals, using currently-demonstrable or reasonably-expected technologies, VMT reductions on the order of 50% are required over the next 20 years or so.

This reality has two profound implications, which are difficult to avoid:

1) The only new large transportation projects that can be considered acceptable at present are those that are aimed directly at reducing VMT. This implies, for instance, that 90% or more of transportation funding needs to be allocated to low-emissions public transit for people and rail for freight, rather than conventional over-the-road vehicle capacity building.

2) Projects that are proposed primarily for congestion-reduction and capacity building are literally pointless. When we make the correct alternative investments to reduce VMT, we will see continuing and increasing drops in highway traffic levels - as we have in fact started to see already in 2008 over 2007 under the influence of higher gas prices.

Conservatively, each extra lane-mile added to a congested highway will increase emissions of carbon-dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, by more than 100,000 tons over 50 years, even assuming major improvements in vehicle fuel efficiency, as shown by the Sightline Institute and others ( http://www.sightline.org/research/energy/res_pubs/climate-analysis-gge-new-lanes-10-07, http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/gcindex.html ).

A sprawl-inducing bridge expansion would increase regional VMT, at a time when all significant transportation investments must be concentrated on safely and economically reducing VMT.

As part of an ongoing program of climate change research and communication, we have studied and published on these issues in ArchitectureWeek magazine. Some of our recent coverage includes:

New Urbanism in Charlotte
http://www.ArchitectureWeek.com/2008/0409/index.html

Tackling Climate Change
http://www.architectureweek.com/2008/0423/index.html

Climate Action Now
http://www.architectureweek.com/2008/0430/index.html

Reviewing the words we have written and conclusions we have reached ourselves in the national arena highlights some hard questions on this more local issue.

How much more public resource must Oregon devote to going down the wrong path, before we turn to the new path - as we know we must? Will Portland go down in history as spending billions on one of the last horrible dinosaurs of the backward, unsustainable 20th Century approach to highway planning? Or will we go down in history as one of the first regions to act in accord with our own knowledge and rhetoric, leading forward in this new millennium?

This is one dimension of the future for which the crystal ball is as easy to read as a mirror on the wall. We must stop now in building large new highway projects to support traffic increases that will not even be there - traffic increases that cannot be allowed to be there - traffic increases that we must indeed plan and build so as to eliminate.

Now is the time to rise to the call of an epochal emergency.

Do the math; don't do the project.

Sincerely,

ArchitectureWeek Editorial Board

Kevin Matthews
Editor in Chief
Nancy Novitski
Associate Editor
David Owen
Associate Editor

ArchitectureWeek
PO Box 1588
Eugene, OR 97440

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[csintexas]

I might have also pointed out the quickly increasing cost of building and maintaining an infrastructure that will prove to be uncompetitive as oil becomes more expensive. Personal vehicle size and usage is also going to be reduced as oil continues to run out.

You are correct, massive highway infrastructure is a dinosaur. We have no more than thirty good years of oil remaining before we get into the real crunch. Spending large sums on such infrastructure now will mean that when the time comes when we can no longer afford it we will be stuck with an obsolete system and unprepared for what must follow.

We simply need to invest dollars more wisely.

[modjohn]

Not only will the costs of highway maintenance increase as people buy less fuel because of increased cost, so too will governments receive less fuel tax dollars for road maintenance. Some municipalities are already seeing this problem. It will only get worse as people drive less.

We will not be able to maintain the roads we already have, let alone invest in new roads.

Also, if you accept some of the oil statistics floating around, we may have already reached peak oil production. Lending some validity to this argument is the fact that oil producing countries cannot seem to pump more than the current 85 million barrels per day or so for any extended time frame. There could be numerous causes for this, but regardless, the quantity does not seem to increase even though demand keeps rising.

If we have not already reached peak oil production, it may only be a few years away. Then the current problem will amplify as production begins to diminish.

Bottom line, invest in railroad stocks.

[csintexas]

Getting Off the Road:
Adjusting to $7 per Gallon Gas in America
Jeff Rubin and Benjamin Tal
http://research.cibcwm.com/economic_public/download/sjun08.pdf


We stand at a turning point for US transport. Real
gasoline prices have already surpassed the peak levels
that followed the second OPEC oil shocks, and even
when adjusted for potential fuel efficiency improvements,
have increased to the point where they will dramatically
change driving behaviour in America.
The some 57 million Americans who own a car and
have direct access to public transportation will start to
act more and more like Europeans, who have long paid
much higher gasoline prices. By 2012, average miles
driven will have shrunk by more than 15%. SUV and
other light truck sales, which until 2006 accounted for
almost 60% of total motor vehicles, will plummet to
less than half that level, reversing the last fifteen years
growth in market share.
More fundamentally, the freeways are about to get
less congested. Not only will the number of vehicle
registrations in the United States not grow over the
next four years, but by 2012 there should be roughly 10
million fewer vehicles on the road in America than there
are today.
For the past half century, America has spent the bulk of
its infrastructure money on building highways—only to
see that soon, $7 per gallon gasoline prices will lead to
fewer and fewer people using them.


Gasoline prices in America have risen from around $1.80
in 2004 to the current $4 per gallon mark. The most
recent surge in pump prices has, in inflation-adjusted
dollars, already taken pump prices to a buck a gallon
above the record prices seen in 1981 (Chart 1). And in
percentage terms, the latest increase is almost twice the
increase in oil prices that followed on the heels of supply
disruptions after the Iranian Revolution.
Yet as daunting as these price increases have been, there
is much more to come. Our updated oil price forecast of
$200 per barrel oil by 2010 points to Americans paying
as much as $7 per gallon for gasoline within the next
two years.
Even the temporary 1979-1981 oil shock led to huge
changes in driving behaviour. The prospect of a permanent
price regime of $200 per barrel oil should trigger changes
that will dwarf the adjustment we saw nearly thirty years
ago.
That change is already starting to happen. As gasoline
prices have risen steadily since 2004, car sales have just
as steadily trailed off. After averaging close to 17 million
units per year over the first half of the decade, sales
have already declined to 14 million, and are expected to
decline further as pump prices rise to as much as $7 per
gallon. In fact, we expect vehicle sales to fall to as low as
11 million units by 2012, the lowest level since the early
1980s. While some of the current weakness in vehicle
sales can be attributed to the economic slowdown, we
estimate that higher gasoline prices have had almost
twice the effect (Chart 2).
Tumbling car sales and more prudent driving habits are
already starting to hit fuel demand. Overall gasoline
demand in the United States has fallen sharply since the
beginning of the year and is headed for the first annual
drop in 17 years. Per capita consumption has fallen
by close to 5% since 2004 (Chart 3), and, like vehicle
sales, will continue to decline as long as gasoline prices
continue to rise.

[csintexas]

here is another good article on highway and road funding:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-highway21-2008jul21,0,512955.story