On Monday, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek announced that a proposed tolling project on Interstates 5 and 205 would not commence. The project was meant to reduce congestion and fund future transportation projects, but rising costs and uncertain toll revenues led the governor to bring the projects to a halt.
Rep. Annessa Hartman is a Democrat who represents the 40th District in the Oregon House, which covers Oregon City, Gladstone and parts of Clackamas County. She joins us to share more on why she opposed this project and what the governor’s decision to shelve it means for her constituents. We’ll also hear from Indi Namkoong, the transportation justice coordinator at Verde. She shares how tolling can be a viable tool to address climate change, but how the Oregon Department of Transportation’s approach wasn’t what they had hoped for.
This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. There will not be tolls on Interstates 5 or 205 in the Portland area anytime in the near future. On Monday, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek paused the state’s years-long work on the project. Tolling has been a big part of the state’s plan to reduce congestion and fund transportation projects. But rising costs and uncertain toll revenues led the governor to bring the project to a halt. Annessa Hartman is a Democratic state representative from Oregon City, Gladstone and parts of northern Clackamas County. Indi Namkoong is the transportation justice coordinator at Verde. They both join us now. It’s great to have both of you on the show.
Annessa Hartman: Thank you for having us.
Indi Namkoong: Yeah, thanks for having us.
Miller: Annessa Hartman, first. What went through your mind when you heard the governor’s announcement? Maybe you knew earlier, but we all found out on Monday.
Hartman: We all found out at the same time. I was driving to an event up in Northeast Portland when my chief of staff called and told me the news. And both my daughters were in the car, and I screamed. Then they were like, “what is she doing?” And then I cried a little with tears of joy.
Miller: So first of all, you’re on one of the transportation committees that has done a lot of work on this. But tears of joy that the governor says we’re pausing work on this tolling project? Why?
Hartman: It’s years of work with trying to get our community’s voices heard. It was sometimes a very painstaking process to just even get someone to listen to us. And when I say us, I mean, Gladstone, West Linn, Oregon City as a core group, and then it sort of expanded out from there. It just felt like even with the efforts that we were doing in the legislature it was still inevitable, it was still a process that was going to happen.
And then when I read the article and heard the news, it was like, “Yes, we have been heard. And now it’s time to have that comprehensive conversation around that.”
Miller: When you say, “we have been heard” or “before, we weren’t being listened to,” what were examples of what you’ve been hearing from your constituents? For listeners who know the Portland metro area or parts of Clackamas County, you have a really diverse set of constituents. There is a pretty wide economic range first of all. But what are examples of what you’ve heard from your constituents over the last more than a year now?
Hartman: So it is my constituents in the way of Gladstone and Oregon City, but we very much are a close group of Clackamas County as a whole and the urban areas. Really, there’s one thing that has always floated to the top and it’s the word “diversion.” We were very concerned about the diversion impacts of our cities that were coming off the freeway to avoid the tolls. And we never really got a clear answer from ODOT, Oregon Department of Transportation, on how they were going to mitigate that.
Miller: Meaning, people who say, “well, if you’re gonna charge me X number of dollars to ride here, I’ll just go on surface streets instead.”
Hartman: Correct.
Miller: What kinds of questions were you asking of ODOT? And what kinds of answers weren’t you getting?
Hartman: The big one was how are we going to mitigate diversion? How are we going to work with our partners? How are we going to share revenue? They took it upon themselves to get what they called nexus projects lists from these individual cities, giant lists of what might be needed to mitigate diversion. And then it was sort of silence about how we’re going to do that. So there was never really an answer given. It was an acknowledgment that we do have to figure this out together, but never a solid answer as to how we are going to do that together.
Miller: Indi Namkoong, what went through your mind when you heard about the governor’s decision?
Namkoong: I think surprise, and also some hope or optimism that this can lead to the kind of conversations that my organization, my communities want to be having about this flavor of tool that we call “pricing.” Tolling is one way to do it. ODOT’s tolling plans are one very specific way to do it. We think there’s potential, an opportunity to use other designs of these tools, other kinds of these tools to really advance mitigating congestion, meeting our climate goals, and reinvesting in that surface street safety, in those alternative ways of getting around that we need if we’re going to price roadways, but we also need right now in communities for folks who don’t drive or don’t drive frequently.
Those are the conversations we want to be having. But as Rep. Hartman has pointed out, it has been really challenging to start that conversation in the context of the plans that we’ve been seeing. So I’m hoping this is a doorway to that.
Miller: Can you just remind us what the idea here was? I should say that this goes back a number of years. It was lawmakers in 2017 who paved the way for tolling to start to happen here. It’s been a long time in the works. What’s the basic idea of tolling when it comes to generating money for projects, or making it so people will be less likely to drive?
Namkoong: So those objectives are really different, and sometimes in tension. In 2017, legislators set out this initial direction to do I think they called it “value pricing” at the time, and indicated in a budget note that they’d like to see those revenues paying for some of the really large freeway projects that were also committed in the same year. In 2021, I think it was House Bill 3055, that direction was really locked in, to say the revenues from these tolls are going to get reinvested in paying for these really large freeway projects.
The flavor of ODOT’s tolling program and the purpose is really about raising and maximizing revenue. That’s the core approach that I think we’ve seen in their plan so far.
Miller: As opposed to a congestion pricing plan, where the core idea of it is to get people to drive less at peak times?
Namkoong: Yes.
Miller: So there are other places, you’re saying, that when they implement tolling, they explicitly have a different goal in mind?
Namkoong: Yes. So with ODOT’s tolling plans, we’re primarily trying to hit a revenue target. If we’re doing something like congestion pricing, same core tool attaching a price to the use of the roadway, really different target and purpose. The purpose is maximizing performance. And so that can mean mitigating congestion, improving trip efficiency, but also reducing vehicle miles traveled to meet our climate objectives. It can mean improving safety across the system, including off the freeway. It can be about reinvesting in those alternatives like transit, bike, ped options.
And if we’re trying to hit those performance targets, what we see generally is that the prices people are paying for use of the roadway at the most congested times only need to be large enough to influence a little bit of behavior change. It’s a much lower cost to drivers in general, because you’re just trying to shift enough trips to another option. The revenue doesn’t get tied up in repaying debt on expensive mega projects. So we can reinvest it in improving the travel choices that people have. We can reduce congestion and drive alone trips. And we can really provide meaningful true choices to people who don’t want to pay that price.
Miller: There’s a key distinction that I’m pretty sure I hear, but I want to just drill down to make sure that I understand correctly. You’re not just saying “we didn’t like the way ODOT went about planning for tolling.” Maybe even the bigger issue from your nonprofit’s concerns is you didn’t like what they maybe were going to do with the money that they raised. Is that a fair way to put it?
Namkoong: That’s a critical component of program design that really decides what are the benefits that you get out of it. Just from a financial responsibility of what are we doing with people’s money, I think ODOT and the state have an obligation to really maximize the benefits that people are getting. When they’re chipping in a few bucks, they should be seeing this is paying for alternative options, this is paying for sidewalks and crosswalks in my neighborhood. This is helping people who can’t afford even the lower cost of a congestion pricing fee to still be able to get to work on time because we’re still building transit out in their neighborhood.
I think there’s been a lot of frustration. The process is a big deal, don’t get me wrong. I think there’s a lot of incredibly valid frustration that I share with how this has gone and how people have been heard or not. But that fundamental component of where’s the money going, that I think has a lot to do with making this a viable and realistic option for people. I’d like to think that people are more willing to be open minded to something like this in the future if they trust that the money is going to go somewhere that makes sense to them.
Miller: I’m curious, Rep. Hartman, do you see a different path that ODOT could have taken that would have addressed regional or local concerns and addressed equity issues - that we can get to in terms of how much low-income people would pay - and would still raise enough money to do what they want to do, and would make it so you would say yes? I’m wondering at base, if there’s any way that you can imagine saying, and having your constituents say, “we support this”? Or if on some level, the answer is always going to be “we just don’t want tolls”?
Hartman: I think it’s a great question. I want to add on to a little bit of what Indi is saying, I think this will segue into what some of the frustrations have been.
When it was congestion pricing and that was the direction, at some point, probably before I entered these conversations…
Miller: Meaning, because you were a freshman lawmaker. In 2022.
Hartman: Yeah. Somewhere along the road it shifted to a revenue generator. And that felt new to a lot of people that were involved in this conversation from 2017. And those people, whether they’re Clackamas County commissioners or previous legislators or mayors of cities, that turn there where we’re balancing congestion pricing to some of our climate goals, it shifted to how can we maximize the most revenue possible to pay for projects that they were not willing to share what that money was going? I wanted to add a little bit more into that because I do think it’s very crucial to the frustrations that I am hearing from constituents and locally elected officials.
I think that there was an interest from a lot of people, at least that I have heard from, to be a part of a meaningful engagement table on how can we be partners in this process? How can I as a representative go back to my constituents and say, “tolling is absolutely needed”? But I was never given, nor were anyone ever given the definitive answer as to why this was needed for this particular project or the region when it comes to regional mobility pricing. We were never given the answers as to, “Well, we studied gas tax, or we studied increasing the vehicle registration fees. If we did this and this, then we would avoid tolling. Or if we did this and this, it’s still not going to make up the deficit of the gas tax.” And so there was really never that collaborative conversation between local partners, people who are real experts in transportation to have that conversation of how can we meet our climate/environmental goals? How can we avoid the bottleneck - that’s really what we were after on I-205 - while also figuring out how we fill the gap of the deficit of the gas tax, but not putting an undue burden on the citizens of Oregon City, Gladstone, and West Linn, and the surrounding areas?
What’s key to something that Indi had said is we don’t have other options of travel where we live. We don’t have the MAX that goes down there. We have one or two bus lines. We don’t have an option other than to drive, or to take the one or two buses that are down there. So we were stuck. There were many constituents of mine that live in Oregon City, go to high school in West Linn. Or they go to the doctors in West Linn. We have parents of children who have to go to the doctors three times a day, and they have to cross that bridge just to live. And then once you pull in Charbonneau, those folks, they have to just leave and get on the freeway just to get their necessities. In my opinion, we were not centering your everyday person.
I know that they attempted with the Equity Mobility Committee to come up with a low toll program. Still was at 400% of the poverty level, and you only get 50% off. Sometimes $5 is all you have left. And we should not be putting the burden on people just to spend money to go to work.
Miller: Indi Namkoong, what was your take on the way ODOT came up with the discount for low-income Oregonians?
Namkoong: I think there’s a lot of very real frustration. I’m struggling not to respond to a couple of things that you shared, Rep. Hartman, I have a lot to say. But I’ll start with the Equity and Mobility Advisory Committee. ODOT set up this committee to advise them and guide them on how to stand up this program equitably without exacerbating burdens on low-income drivers and other folks who are being harmed historically and now by the transportation decisions that we’re making, and then really diverged from a lot of those recommendations. We saw [at the] end of last year at the Oregon Transportation Commission where some considerations for funding that discount at 200% of the poverty level. The Equity and Mobility Advisory Committee (EMAC) is recommending we go to 400%. That’s a gap, that’s people falling through the cracks, and ODOT setting up these internal accountability mechanisms and guidance mechanisms and then saying “no, we’re going to do what we want.” That’s a simplification, but that’s how it reads to a lot of us in advocacy, in decision-making roles. And I think that’s what generates a lot of that frustration.
Miller: Do you see this as a pause right now? Or as the end of tolling in these stretches of roads, at least? We can talk about bridge replacement in a second. But do you think this is actually going to be revived? Or is it over?
Namkoong: If it’s revived, if it proceeds, I hope we get to start fresh with an honest evaluation of where we are in 2024, what our transportation needs are now, and what we think they’ll be in the future. And that we aren’t starting from this point of a plan that has very reasonably lost a lot of public trust and confidence and has a lot of structural problems. As Rep. Hartman pointed out, not only did we introduce this really firm commitment to revenue generation part way into the process, these tools are really hard to design to both generate revenue well and reduce congestion well. We’ve seen this in Seattle with State Road 99. They set up tolling, it was supposed to generate revenue to repay the debts that it took to construct the thing. They were so effective at reducing congestion on the road that not enough people were paying the tolls to pay back the loans. They had to get bailed out by the state legislature.
Miller: But as you both know, and as the governor mentioned in her letter on Monday, the phrase she used is a “catastrophic funding challenge” that ODOT is facing, something like $700 million over the next five years. And this is something we’ve talked about in the past, something that Rep. Hartman mentioned in passing - the two biggest things are reductions in revenue being generated by gas taxes and big increases in the cost of a lot of the projects that ODOT needs to do, whether it’s maintenance or new things. This is something that lawmakers are likely to take up in 2025.
What do you see as possible solutions here? I’d love to get both of your takes, but Annessa Hartman first.
Hartman: Thank you. So I think it’s absolutely going to be a discussion in 2025. I think back to your question of whether or not this is just a pause or indefinitely, I think there are always as Indi mentioned before, there’s always going to be proponents that support tolling.
Miller: And there are always going to be people who are always against it.
Hartman: Absolutely, we got all the sides of the spectrum here.
Miller: I think both of you, if I understand correctly, are “yes, but.” You’re not an “always,” but you’re saying it can work, but the ingredients have to be right.
Hartman: I would say I’m probably less of a “yes, but” and more of a “you need to show me the alternative options.”
Miller: It’s a huge “but,” in other words.
Hartman: It’s a huge “but.” Because the location specifically of where this planned tolling was, and like I’ve said before, doesn’t work for our community. It is just an arterial road for us.
Miller: But I derailed you. I want to get your broad thoughts on how the state can or should fund transportation in the coming decades.
Hartman: The subcommittee on transportation planning had this roadshow. And after the one in Gladstone and after all of the listening sessions we did across this tri county area, it was clear to me that we absolutely should be doing a holistic audit of ODOT. I had called for that in a press release. I will continue to call for a holistic audit of ODOT.
Miller: From the Secretary of State?
Hartman: From the Secretary of State. We need to absolutely understand where all the money is going, what is happening. I will absolutely support that there is a deficit in the gas tax, there is a decline. There is also an imbalance amongst our vehicle weight mile tax and our trucker community. We have seen that, we see what’s going on in the news. There has to be a conversation overall about how we’re gonna sustainably fund our Department of Transportation. But we have to include our local partners. They are part of this process with us. We need to come together and have that conversation. We can’t just say “here we go with tolling” without exploring all of the other options. Many, many smart people, way smarter than me, have been offering as an option.
And like Indi had said, I hope that this pause or this stop to this is an opening of the door. It is time for us to bring everyone together and really solve this problem so that my kids are not having to deal with the tolling in eight years.
Miller: Indi Namkoong, what’s your solution for what the governor calls a catastrophic funding challenge?
Namkoong: I think I absolutely agree with Rep. Hartman. We have these challenges with our existing funding streams. Without tolling, we’re talking about billions of dollars of anticipated revenue that are no longer coming for these mega projects. So where does ODOT want this money to come from? Is that something that’s going to work for Oregon as a whole? I don’t want to see funding for Oregon schools or for winter snow plowing in rural Oregon jeopardized because they can’t figure out another way to pay for their freeway expansions in the Portland metro area.
We’re struggling with these revenues. I want to see us diversify. States like Minnesota and Colorado are trying some exciting new things. We already have a pilot for road user charging as an alternative to the gas tax. And we need to diversify and really change the way that we’re doing things, learn how to do some new things.
But the spending is also an issue. It’s not just about revenue. And I think what we’ve seen with tolling is that ODOT has really struggled to be accountable to legislators, to the public, to the governor, to their bosses. Something’s broken down there, and I think we need greater accountability mechanisms looking at changes to governance. And I think we need to talk really honestly about where this money is going, where we’re spending it, and does it align with our values and priorities?
Miller: Indi Namkoong and Annessa Hartman, thanks very much.
Namkoong: Thank you.
Hartman: Thank you.
Miller: Indi Namkoong is the transportation justice coordinator at Verde. Annessa Hartman is a Democratic Oregon State Representative from Gladstone, Oregon City and other parts of unincorporated northern Clackamas County.
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