What’s that About the Sellwood?


An alert reader pointed us to this section of HB 2001, the much-discussed transportation bill. Section 40 creates the ability for Multnomah and/or Clackamas counties to adopt registration feeds to help pay for the bridge. But there’s an interesting twist (in bold below):

  SECTION 40. ORS 801.041 is amended to read:
  801.041. The following apply to the authority granted to
counties by ORS 801.040 to establish registration fees for
vehicles:
  (1) An ordinance establishing registration fees under this
section must be enacted by the county imposing the registration
fee and filed with the Department of Transportation.
 { - Any - }  { + Notwithstanding ORS 203.055 or any provision of
a county charter, the governing body of a county with a
population of 350,000 or more may enact an + } ordinance
establishing registration fees   { - that is enacted by the
governing body of a county must be submitted to the electors of
the county for their approval. - }   { + for the purpose of
designing, replacing, acquiring necessary property for,
engineering and constructing a bridge and its approach that
crosses the Willamette River in the City of Portland. Except for
motor vehicles registered as government-owned vehicles under ORS
805.040, the bridge shall be restricted to motor vehicles with a
gross vehicle weight rating of 26,000 pounds or less. + } The
governing body of the county imposing the registration fee shall
enter into an intergovernmental agreement under ORS 190.010 with
the department by which the department shall collect the
registration fees, pay them over to the county and, if necessary,
allow the credit or credits described in ORS 803.445 (5). The
intergovernmental agreement must state the date on which the
department shall begin collecting registration fees for the
county.

Why is the Legislature interested in restricting weights on a County-owned bridge?

One speculation is that this is a swipe by AAA at the truckers, but I’m scratching my head…


21 responses to “What’s that About the Sellwood?”

  1. First of all, since bold in that font isn’t the easiest to read, that’s:

    gross vehicle weight rating of 26,000 pounds or less

    Also, does this apply only to the Sellwood? The limitation I see is Willamette River bridges in Portland (just curious). And would 25,000 be enough for buses and, in case someone decides to want them, rail-based vehicles?

  2. Also, forgot the other part: Aren’t bills (or at least pieces of bills) written by a single legislator? If so, it would help to find out who inserted that language.

  3. Certain legislation cannot be specific, i.e. stating the tax benefit will be for “Replacing the Sellwood Bridge in Portland”

    But they can include qualifiers on the bill that in practice narrow it down to exactly one thing. They are restricting the funds to replace a bridge over the Willamette with that weight limit, which just happens to be exactly one bridge: the sellwood.

  4. Jason McHuff Says: Also, does this apply only to the Sellwood? The limitation I see is Willamette River bridges in Portland (just curious). And would 25,000 be enough for buses and, in case someone decides to want them, rail-based vehicles?

    I admit to some difficulty with the language of 805.040 — definition of “government-owned” isn’t particularly clear — but it does look like buses would be exempt. There is even a reference to school buses (although not to transit).

    It sounds like large trucks are the only vehicles being excluded. Could this be pressure from the neighborhood?

  5. It’s a funding bill so my guess is that @Ten is right in that it is designed to be applicable to only one bridge. I would think design standards, such as weight limits, would be developed elsewhere unless you were concerned about those standards being changed and were thus using this as a way of ensuring that the designed standards aren’t later changed to allow large trucks on the bridge.

  6. Jeff F, I think, is on to it: the Sellwood community was quite well organized, and got major concessions to keep the bridge at two lanes. A desire to keep larger trucks out of the area makes a lot of sense, as Sellwood is not (and perhaps should not be) a reasonable freight corridor.

  7. Sounds to me like any county with a population > 350K can build a bridge over the Willamette in Portland. Maybe if we wait long enough, Lane County will step up.

  8. I guess I can speak for the Sellwood neighborhood since I live there and go irregularly to the SMILE meetings. We’ve been struggling to limit Tacoma St. to a local connector—hence reducing freight and commuter travel through the neighborhood. I admit this is quite a request to make, but it appears to be succeeding, mainly because residents keep working steadily towards that objective.

    I think our request for another Willamette bridge, somewhere between Portland and Oregon City, is reasonable. METRO put out “travel shed” maps for both the Sellwood and Ross Island Bridges, and for the Sellwood in particular there is a huge percentage, probably the majority of traffic, that is originating in either Clackamas or Washington counties. Where to put such a bridge, though has a wide range of opinion. My personal choice would be almost midway in that gap. Connecting Oak Grove Bv. on the e. side to Foothills Rd. on the west. This puts it right in the middle of a hub of highways that converge into an .8 mile stretch of Hwy 43. Westbound traffic could possibly go in a tunnel underneath the business district of Lake Oswego.

    I would have liked to have seen planning for a streetcar on the Sellwood bridge since it appears that some light rail will follow down either side of the Willamette—and connecting the two routes would be a short 1.6 mile connection.

  9. I’ve thought an interesting route would be:

    1) Extend JCB west from the Harney intersection, along the SpringWater trail, through the ravine. Get the alignment of the arterial off of the stretch immediately south, that passes through a residential neighborhood.

    2) Elevated crossing of the UPRR line and McLoughlin, parallel to the existing pedestrian bridge. At-grade intersection at 17th, probably an at-grade crossing of the SamTrak (or whatever the RR is called these days) railspur.

    3) New bridge across Willamette extending from Golf Junction, connecting with OR43.

    4) Tunnel west of there, heading northwest, with the other end in the Burlingame area, providing access to Multnomah Boulevard and OR10. (Might be difficult for rail, as this is about a 4% grade according to my rough calculations).

    I don’t think a roadway tunnel under downtown LO (I assume you mean connecting with Country Club road) will fly; though a cut-and-cover MAX extension might…

    3) Extend through Golf Junction

  10. I really don’t think there is much support on the west side for anything that will increase Hwy 43 traffic. There’s even less for turning LO into a highway corridor for Washington County to eastside traffic.

    A MAX extension makes sense. Too much, actually. It will make the LO streetcar extension look pretty shortsighted.

  11. In Oregon, a bicycle is considered a vehicle and qualifies as a vehicle of 25.000 pounds or less. Therefore, since motor vehicle capacity on the chosen design for a replacement Sellwood Bridge is being rationed with only about half of the deck space allocated for motorists, and since nothing in the above statement identifies “motor” vehicles only for a registration fee; motor vehicle fees and taxes need to be restricted to paying for no more than half of the local costs for of a replacement Sellwood Bridge. The other half needs to come by way of enacting bicycle registration fees and taxes. Sharing the bridge must also mean sharing the financial responsibility.

  12. Terry:

    Let’s not forget that pedestrians are also getting away with using the bridge without paying a fee. There’s no reason why we’d charge people on bikes but allow people to walk across the bridge for free. That just doesn’t make sense.

  13. RA Fontes says:
    “I really don’t think there is much support on the west side for anything that will increase Hwy 43 traffic. There’s even less for turning LO into a highway corridor for Washington County to eastside traffic.”

    That is a wildly inaccurate representation of what I meant.
    1. The traffic is already there. That is why I mentioned the travel shed maps. And, out of the traffic that originates in Clackamas County some of it is going to the area west of Lake Oswego. Vice Versa with traffic from Washington co. that also uses the Sellwood bridge. Putting a new bridge, doesn’t in itself increase the traffic.
    2. Much of the traffic (maybe most of it) would want to go westward from DT Lake Os. anyway, thus the tunnel. Some of that traffic from the east would go south on Hwy 43, some of it to McVey, some of it would go north on Hwy 43, and some of it to Terwiliger extension. Between Mcvey and Terwiliger is only .8 miles. so that is not very much at all of Hwy 43. The traffic is already there somewhere, although some of it may be skirting around DT Lake Os, but if you are there during rush hour it might not be that much increase. Hwy 43 is already quite busy in that stretch and the zoning accounts factors that in already. I doubt also that such a bridge would be much used by commuters, but it would get use throughout the day–and probably the night too which would be an issue on the East side, on Oak Grove BV.
    3. Excessive Vehicle Miles Traveled is the new Cardinal sin in Portland. Right now, people wanting to get from Oak Grove to Carman Drive. for example (or any of a thousand other points) must go way out of their way.
    4. Everyone else in the South Metropolitan area would like this, westside or eastside, but I know Lake Os people would find something to scream about no matter how much you mitigated the impact.
    5. A bridge would be an economic stimulus to each side. LO people could get to stores on 99E. Eastside people could get to doctors and lawyers in LO.
    6. A bridge right in this center point could be small because the distance across the river is shortest there. Being small it could also be highly asthetic at a reasonable cost and a romantic attraction arching the river. People could walk to parks on either side and it probably would spur some higher quality development (including parks) in the Oak Grove area.

  14. I have to stand by my statements. If it helps, they weren’t directed to any specific post, just the general idea of putting more traffic on Hwy 43 or LO arterials.

    Right now, there are about 10,000 vehicle trips daily across the Sellwood and into or through Lake Oswego. This is about 40%+ of all Hwy 43 traffic between LO and the bridge. Much of it does move west on Country Club and Boones Ferry. It already fully participates in LO’s congestion. It’s also one big reason I believe that a Milwaukie MAX extension into LO is such a much better deal than the LO streetcar extension.

    Streetcar basically just replaces the existing bus service. It may be better for some and will definitely be worse for others. A MAX extension would be an entirely new service that would not compete directly with a direct auto route. Therefore it would actually have a chance of holding down congestion.

  15. Note that HB2001 also restricts the county registration fee to vehicles under 26,000 lbs. One explanation I heard from someone who attended the hearing on HB2001, who was only passing along what he heard at the hearing, was that since heavier trucks would not pay the tax, then the Oregon Constitution’s requirement for fair cost-sharing forced the weight restriction.

    That tells me that truckers don’t have much interest in going across the Sellwood, otherwise they would have been willing to pay the tax.

    To my mind, this provision invalidates the whole decision-making process for replacing the Sellwood Bridge. The Citizens Task Force were repeatedly told by the County’s consultants that the project had to meet “AASHTO” standards, meaning it had to carry overweight trucks in the 120,000 lb. range, as well as super long trailers. This is why a rehab was not cost-effective.

    If the bridge is to be 2-lanes wide, and the maximum load is a 32,000 lb. bus (or whatever a fire truck weighs), then maybe we can get the cost down to the point where we can move forward, probably by keeping the existing truss portion, which is adequate for 80,000 lb. vehicles if a new deck were put on.

  16. I am not necessarily against mass transit solutions in the Sellwood Bridge/alternative, new Willamette crossing quandary. I’ve been saying that a streetcar line across the Sellwood bridge would make sense since we are already planning around ten times that length with existing proposals. Plus there is a rail line from LO going SW to Tualatin, I think,

    But this would never get the kind of usage that would justify a MAX line. In fact, I doubt that the Milwaukie line will get enough usage to justify little more than what a streetcar line would cost. The Westshore streetcar line, I think, should be less costly since they acquired the ROW for a song. I suggested over two years ago that they extend the proposed Eastside SC to Milwaukie, if it could be done at the usual costs.

    But, facing reality, these rail commuting options don’t appeal to the person who has several stops to make during a day. With the projected population increase in this area we need to develop these smart shortcuts—which would also help the bus travel.

  17. A line to Milwaukie and only Mikwaukie, maybe not. OTOH, if the line is extended–to CTC and the Green line (or further east into Happy Valley; I won’t mention Damascus until it’s actually developed, if that ever occurs), to Oregon City, or across the river to LO and points west–that does make sense.

    I used to live in OC, and I have quite a few memories of just how long that bus ride into town is. Plus, if we have MAX there, then they can get rid of that ridiculous AMTRAK stop. :)

  18. You must have some deep pockets, Engineer Scotty. Why not just extend it to Mt. Hood and the Oregon Coast while you are at it? An express bus from OC would have nearly the same schedule as MAX.

    Will you light rail fans be happier when 100% of midsize and up American cities have adopted light rail and the US treasury pays out 15 dollars for every two dollar ticket? Fortunately for us, most of them are not that stupid. I am not against commuter rail in principle but something needs to be done to rein in the costs. There has been discussion of diesel powered railbuses that can travel on standard guage track in here, before. Sorry you missed it.

  19. I think Sen. Bruce Starr explained this piece of the legislation in that it would confuse the weight-mile formulation. I wasn’t entirely listening during that exchange, but could imagine that having a new facility that trucks can use, funded by registration fees, would force a recalculation by ODOT.

    That’s what I vaguely recall. I’m sure his office could explain it if you call them.

  20. Plus, if we have MAX there, then they can get rid of that ridiculous AMTRAK stop

    Are you saying that people would ride MAX to Portland and then take the train? I think people would still like to get on in Oregon City and settle in there instead of transferring modes in Portland. Transferring can seem like a chore (even though with today’s setup, many people do have to transfer trains in Portland), and I’d think that MAX might take longer than Amtrak. In addition, I believe there is free parking available in Oregon City. Also, what about people wanting to take Amtrak south?

    That being said, I think there is some argument in train circles that the chosen location is not the best for the Amtrak station, but that Canby turned it down.

  21. I sent an e-mail to Deborah Kafoury, who represents Multnomah County on the Sellwood Project Advisory Group, asking about the weight limit.

    She called me on the phone and explained that because the local option vehicle registration fee does not cover heavier vehicles, the AAA and the truckers would not have supported the amendment to allow the registration fee without the weight limit. In other words, both groups agreed that if the heavy trucks weren’t paying, then they couldn’t use the bridge.

    I guess this meets the requirement in the Oregon Constitution that roadway costs must be equitably shared among the various weight classes of vehicle.

    The question now is whether this weight limit can allow for any reduction in project cost, which will hopefully speed up the project and return bus service sooner rather than later.

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