Planetizen Newswire
Keep up with essential planning news and commentary, delivered to your inbox every Monday and Thursday.
Oregon Department of Transportation
In Portland, Oregon, transportation advocates are questioning the justifications for crosswalk closures in the city.
BikePortland
An initial environmental assessment for a project to widen I-5 in Portland claimed the project would improve air quality, congestion, and traffic safety. Critics of the project weren't convinced.
Willamette Week
Over the objections of the oil and trucking industries, an interim committee voted to allow the Wyoming legislature to determine whether to toll all lanes on Interstate 80 due to a shortfall in the state transportation budget.
Buffalo Bulletin
Having completed a pilot program last year, the Washington State Transportation Commission will hear a report in October and vote in December on phasing out its 49.4 cents per gallon gas tax, fourth highest in the nation but not indexed to inflation.
Tacoma News Tribune
The Oregon Department of Transportation anticipates spending about a million dollars to bring boulders to road embankments so that they are less hospitable to the homeless.
KGW
The environmental assessment for the I-5 Rose Quarter Improvement Project, released on February 15, 2019, promises to be controversial.
The Oregonian
The Oregon Department of Transportation announced the first round of funding for the Safe Routes to School Competitive Grant Program.
Bike Portland
The state that implemented the first gas tax and the first bike tax took a huge step on Thursday toward becoming the first, since 1956, to toll all lanes on an interstate highway by approving an application to the Federal Highway Administration.
The Columbian
It might be the nation's most significant but least known congestion pricing plan. The plan originally recommended tolling all lanes on segments of two interstates. Four more roads were just added to broaden the plan.
KOIN6
Should plans to toll Interstates 5 and 205 in Portland get the go-ahead from the Oregon Transportation Commission and the Federal Highway Administration, they would still be subject to a state referendum.
Portland Tribune
A Portland regional value pricing committee recommended that the state transportation department operate two pilot programs to toll all the lanes on two interstate highways in the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area.
KGW
The Pacific Northwest's Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area is studying options to add congestion pricing to one or two interstates.
The Oregonian
Widening highways won't reduce congestion—that's the conclusion of a report paid for by the state agency proposing several highway widening projects in Oregon.
The Portland Mercury
Excessive speed is thought to be the cause of the deadly derailment on Dec. 18. Positive train control, which likely would have slowed down the train, was installed on the tracks and locomotive but was not yet operational.
RailwayAge
Oregon's recently approved gas tax legislation also calls for tolling of I-205 and I-5 in the Portland metro area, with the application of value or congestion pricing so peak period tolls would be higher, which have raised equity concerns.
City Observatory
Faced with an uptick in roadway fatalities, Oregon is looking at how to increase safety. But it's concentrating on highways while arterials actually account for the region's most severe crashes.
City Observatory
The state of Oregon is looking to use a gas tax increase to, among other things, fund a billion-dollars worth of highway-widening projects.
City Observatory
The first season of a two-year pilot project for the Columbia Gorge Express has been a huge hit.
Bike Portland
You might have guessed it from that scintillating headline, but a state department of transportation has introduced a Pokémon Go-themed back-to-school safety campaign.
The Oregonian
The U.S. Department of Transportation is funding ways to transition from the gas tax to other user-based revenue mechanisms to fund transportation infrastructure. The federal gas tax hasn't keep pace with transportation expenditures since 2008.
U.S. D.O.T. Press Release
