Tolls Don’t Pencil for Sunrise


Yesterday’s Oregonian reports that tolls may still work to help add a lane to I-205 (although it’s challenging), but they probably don’t pencil out for the Sunrise Corridor.

At nearly $1 billion, the Sunrise Corridor project costs too much and would not attract enough toll-paying traffic to make financial sense, according to a report released Wednesday by the Macquarie Infrastructure Group, an Australian company that has been exploring the concept.

You can find the ODOT report here (PDF, 998K).

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18 responses to “Tolls Don’t Pencil for Sunrise”

  1. I think that’s just common sense…”nobody” lives there yet… At least not enough people to justify the new highway.

    However, were doing this project for the future. So why don’t we start by making it as easy as possible to implement the full plan in the future?

    We can start by purchasing all of the necessary right-of-way, including for autos and transit. And we can design a plan….

    But why sink billions into something we don’t need right now when we have some many unfunded projects that are necessary?

    Furthermore, I’m all about tolling all of our city freeways. But I don’t agree that a private company like Macquarie is the best solution.

  2. I agree with Nathan that ROW acquisition to protect this corridor for the future should be a priority. There’s no need to break ground on this project, but everything should be in place for going ahead rapidly once the project pencils out.

    – Bob R.

  3. Where it makes perfect sense to charge tolls is for bicycle all the bicycle infrastructure that is being constructed in conjunction with new and redesigned roadways. Bicycle infrastructure must be required to have a direct funding method directly paid for by the users.

  4. It seems to me that the results of the tolling studies are reinforcing that there is a disconnect between what people are willing to pay and the actual cost of a trip. That same disconnect is part of the discussion elsewhere about housing affordability and the relative costs of development on “cheap” land at the urban edge. Because the costs are aggregated, people have little ability to recover savings from reducing their burden on the transportation system.

    Most parking, insurance and road costs are paid for regardless of how much you use them. Even a large portion of the depreciation on a vehicle is a result of its age, rather than its mileage. The result is that some people, especially those who make heavy use of the most expensive facilities, pay less than the costs of their trips. Others pay the difference through higher taxes and other costs.

    We need to figure out ways for people to get more control over what they are paying for transportation.

    As a start, maybe we ought to move to universal toll charges for accessing the regional freeway network. No matter where you got on, you would have to pay a toll. The toll levels could be adjusted to maintain traffic flows. But the additional cost for using a freeway would be paid based on actual usage. And people would be able to fully recover the value of any of their own conservation efforts that reduced the demand for providing freeways.

  5. The Sunrise Corridor is very justified alternative corridor to the use of State Highways 212/224. This is critical to relieve the congestion in a very compact industrial and commerce area. Unless something is done to eliminate the delay that is experienced a significant job base associated with the distribution industry that is located in the 212/224 corridor just off of I-205 may go away.

    This corridor is also used by people heading out to Estacada and used by some as a back door to Damascus and the communities along 212 and highway 26 going up the mountian.

    The problem with the tolls is that you would have to toll the new Sunrise Corridor and 212/224 out to Rock Creek Bridge and that was going to be hard to do. If there was only a toll on the new Sunrise Corridor all of the cheep people would not get out of the 212/224 industrial corridor therefore not relieving the congestion which is the base reason for the Sunrise Corridor.

    Most of the critical land to build the Sunrise Corridor has been bought already with funding coming from Clackamas County. They know that they have to get this built or a significant number of the family wage jobs in the county can go by-by. They have used to the best of my knowledge Clackamas County has been using TIF/UR District dollars to buy the critical lands to ensure that the ROW needed is there.

    As to I-205 and making it have toll lanes or managed lanes that is a possibility but it would not be smart. We need one interstate highway through Portland/Vancouver that works and we know that it cannot be I-5. This is why I have advocated for investment in the I-205 corridor and suggest that it becomes the primary north/south interstate highway through Portland/Vancouver. If I-205 was 4-lanes and in some places 5-lanes a lot of traffic could be redirected to this corridor over trqveling in the I-5 corridor and that would be good.

  6. There were three interesting comments in the article.

    1) SALEM — The state is dropping the idea of a private toll road to handle growth in Clackamas County.

    At nearly $1 billion, the Sunrise Corridor project costs too much and would not attract enough toll-paying traffic to make financial sense, according to a report released Wednesday by the Macquarie Infrastructure Group, an Australian company that has been exploring the concept.

    The bottom line looks better for a proposal to add lanes to Interstate 205, but it works best if tolls are charged on the entire freeway, not just the new lanes, said a separate report.” (Oregonian, 1-25-07)

    2) “The project still may work if money can be found from other sources to supplement tolls, such as surpluses from other Portland-area tolling projects. Macquarie is studying a third tolling project, the Newberg-Dundee bypass.”

    3) “Under ODOT’s contract, Macquarie gets paid for feasibility studies only if the projects are abandoned.”

  7. The project still may work if money can be found from other sources to supplement tolls, such as surpluses from other Portland-area tolling projects. Macquarie is studying a third tolling project, the Newberg-Dundee bypass

    Since when did McMinnville become Oregon’s cash cow? Apparently McMinnville is expected to pay for Highway 99W (remember that 99W is one of Oregon’s original two state highways, and paid for several times over), and now a Clackamas County highway (never mind that McMinnville is some 20 miles removed from Clackamas County)!!

    If we want to impose “equity” in how people use the roads, here’s a concept:

    1. Trash the gas tax in favor of a weight/mile tax, that charges a different per-mile rate depending on where the vehicle is driven, and on what type of road. A freeway (not necessarily an Interstate) will cost more than a gravel road. A “tourist” road will cost more than a seldom-used backroad. (Yup, you Prius owners, get ready to pay.)

    2. The gas/fuel tax (the state portion, anyways should be reduced to 5 cents per gallon, and used specifically for activities to reduce pollution, including mass transit; however there will be no more exemptions. If you buy gas/diesel fuel, you pay the tax.

    3. Every bicycle must pay either a sales tax or an annual registration fee, strictly to fund bike lane/bike path projects.

    4. All on-street parking is pay-to-park. Even the street in front of your home; one must purchase a permit to park. The alternative is if every person on the street chooses to pay the cost of street maintenance in front of the home. No more public parking lots; all park-and-ride lots will have a $10/day fee slapped on them as well.

    Of course, the more I think about this, the more it favors the suburban shopping mall and office complex (with their endless expanses of self-funded parking lots). I guess that’s one good way to reduce traffic, by driving business out of downtown.

  8. It seems to me that the results of the tolling studies are reinforcing that there is a disconnect between what people are willing to pay and the actual cost of a trip.

    Umm, yeah. It’s public. There is ALWAYS and will ALWAYS be a direct and immediate disconnect between what the public actually needs and wants and what they actually get. The only thing that regulates according to demand is markets. It’s kinda like kindergarten economics.

    Don’t expect it to improve until market economics are applied again (either under freedom or socialist control ala France, Germany, and England).

    As for a universal freeway toll, HELL YEAH, that is almost exactly what I want. I do demand that we get back all those taxes we pay into the general bucket that get spent on this crap every year. So a 60-100 Billion dollar a year tax cut should be pretty decent, especially if given back based on the percentage given in!!

    The the market would ALMOST be as free as it was 50+ years ago. You know, when we had REAL transit choices and an actual FLEXIBLE (and fair) market (even with the few subsidies here and there)!! :o

  9. What if we did indeed scrap the current gas tax and other taxes used to fund highways and:

    1. Charged tolls on all major roads, including the city freeways and major highways, like 99W and 99E. We’d have to make sure that suburban areas were charged more to drive into the city, kind of like an entrance fee.

    2. We institute an environment tax on gasoline purchases. It would amount to a gas tax, but all funds would be required to go to congestion reduction, mass transit and the remediation of damage caused by gas use.

    3. We could also tax parking, even if it was a nominal tax, further penalizing those that choose to live far away and drive (and hence, cosume more public money).

    4. This ones for you Terry! We could charge a .5% tax on all new bicycle purchases for the maintence of bike infrastructure. A small but meaningful tax to support more bike projects.

    Basically we could charge motorists for both the cost of providing/maintaining roads *and* the costs associated with the environmental damaged caused by hydrocarbons, instead of forcing everyone to pay.

    We should be rewarding those that live and do business in the center city and penalizing those that live and do business far away… Because right now, the suburban areas are siphoning off public funding in order to support an unsustainable lifestyle.

  10. Terry, Tell me more about your idea:
    Where it makes perfect sense to charge tolls is for bicycle all the bicycle infrastructure that is being constructed in conjunction with new and redesigned roadways. Bicycle infrastructure must be required to have a direct funding method directly paid for by the users.

    Or if you’ve posted about this before, please send me the link. I’m curious about the logic of what you are proposing and the cost/benefits of doing such.

  11. We could charge a .5% tax on all new bicycle purchases for the maintence of bike infrastructure

    And ten times that to cover the costs of collecting it. We could add a tax on shoes to cover the cost of pedestrian facilities and a tax on wheel chairs to cover the cost of curb cuts. And a tax on children to cover the costs of schools and playgrounds.

    It’s kinda like kindergarten economics.

    Yes, it is.

    I think Erik is right about McMinnville. The idea that “tolls elsewhere” would be used to subsidize capacity for an entirely different part of the region just increases the disconnect between the value people place on a trip and its cost.

    Placing a toll on a facility places a burden not only on the people who pay the toll, but on anyone who chooses to avoid paying it by not taking a trip or using a less optimal route for the trip. The person paying the toll at least gets a less crowded road as a benefit. What benefit do the people who don’t pay the toll get? It seems to ma whatever revenue the toll generates needs to pay for alternatives.

    The problem with tolls is that they keep getting pitched as a way to pay for more roadspace. They ought to be used to pay people to stay off the road, leaving more roadspace for those who are paying the toll. Maybe we should try tolls at $10 per vehicle with a $5 refund for each adult in the car. People could make money by car-pooling.

  12. Scott,

    Please show me or let me know where I can find the cost benefit analysis as it applies to transport (and not recreational opportunities) for Eastbank Esplanade, or the proposed bicycle trail along highway 217, or the proposed bicycle infrastructure to be included in the Columbia Crossing that will be 15 feet wide, approximately 4400 feet long and cost approximately $500.00 per square foot – 33 million dollars just for the bridge portion. When you can find any ounce of cost effectiveness in these probably non-existent documents, such as a few cents cost breakdown for each bicycle user, then please let me know. Until that time, bicycle tolls make total sense as a funding mechanism.

  13. 1. Charged tolls on all major roads, including the city freeways and major highways, like 99W and 99E. We’d have to make sure that suburban areas were charged more to drive into the city, kind of like an entrance fee.

    No, ALL roads. Not some roads; otherwise everyone would pay to subsidize those “some” roads.

    If we’re going to toll let’s do it 100%. I see no reason to subsidize Oregon State Highway 205, the Frenchglen Highway, with it’s whopping 75 cars per day average daily traffic.

    The idea of gas taxes as opposed to tolls to fund highways are sounding better, doesn’t it?

  14. The idea of gas taxes as opposed to tolls to fund highways are sounding better, doesn’t it?

    No, the idea of tolling every road sounds worse.

    The problem is that some very expensive facilities are getting overused. Because those few facilities are taking an inordinate amount of money, there is an increasingly large disconnect between what people pay in gas, income and property taxes for transportation and the benefits they receive.

    Its like a restaurant buffet. You can’t offer unlimited steak and lobster and keep prices reasonable for people who are only having soup and salad. But we have been offering steak and lobster as part of the buffet and it keeps running out. The idea of tolls on freeways is like having people pay extra for their steak and lobster. Its going to reduce the cost of the buffet and the people who really want steak and lobster can still get it.

    You can see this as an equity argument. But it is also a practical question of how to control costs and still deliver services some people need or want.

  15. OK, so we toll the freeways, and the traffic spills onto the arterials.

    What freeways are there in the Portland metro area? We have I-5, I-205, I-405, I-84, U.S. 26, OR 217, WA 14, and WA 500.

    Meanwhile, the arterials are generally local streets that are “subsidized” through property taxes, while the Interstates are mostly Federal-Aid Highways and funded solely through the fuel tax, with no local funding or general fund revenues.

    Maybe the solution is to rethink the states’ transportation networks. Does it make sense that, say, Marine Drive west of I-5, is a STATE highway? Or Portland Road south of Marine Drive? Or Lombard Street? Or Powell Blvd.? Or Barbur Blvd., or T.V. Highway? All of these roads perform primarily a local function; yet are funded at the state level. That means that the state is paying for the maintenance of those roads – and that’s money that could go towards highways that have true statewide importance – like I-5.

    Besides, the City of Portland seems to have money to throw around at non-essential pet projects, so maybe it’d be better to spend the money on things that are actually part of a city’s basic responsibility, its internal transportation network. (Note, I live in Tualatin, and the city has taken over responsibility of two former state highways, Tualatin Road/Borland Road and Boones Ferry Road (south of the Tualatin River).

  16. OK, so we toll the freeways, and the traffic spills onto the arterials.

    That is certainly one possible alternative for some people. The question is whether you can use the toll proceeds to provide other, more attractive, alternatives. Where you can’t, tolling probably isn’t the best solution. Or you can take the approach suggested for the bypass in Newberg and Dundee and toll the arterial alternative as well.

  17. As a practical matter, tolling every freeway is probably a non-starter. The uproar from the retailers who have located adjacent to the freeway entrances would kill it even if you could persuade the voters.

  18. Ross said, “Or, you can take the approach suggested for the bypass in Newberg and Dundee and toll the arterial alternative as well.”

    That option seems to being met with very strong opposition. Oregon has structural problems in our economic makeup that transcends transportation.

    It is very poor allocation of revenue. Transportation problems are echoed in most Oregon public sectors. Typically, why do our transportation dollars not transulate into more concrete, or asphalt? Why do our education dollars not reach the students in an appropriate manner? Why don’t our public safety programs transulate into more OSP officers? Why does the targeted health revenue struggle to reach the patient?

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