The intermodal transfer sites approved last decade through the Connect Oregon funding process are in the news this week.
The best story is the latest one at Capital Chronicle, "Behind schedule, over budget, state-backed rail projects costing $70 million sit idle." It benefits from a statewide perspective with important reporting from eastern Oregon that elevates it from merely a local matter, though it is also that.
One small detail in their story that was good to see was that they mentioned opportunity cost:
the Legislature approved $25 million for a Willamette Valley rail center and $26 million for one in eastern Oregon through House Bill 2017, a $5.3 billion package of taxes and fees to fund transportation over the next decade. The bill allocated the money through a grant program called Connect Oregon, overseen by the state transportation department. To receive a Connect Oregon grant, applicants must show that their project can reduce transportation costs for Oregon businesses and connect elements of the state’s transportation system to boost efficiency. In comparison, with $51 million, the state could have invested in more than 120 electric buses or 1,200 rapid charging stations for electric vehicles....
There are several kinds of things to which the funding would have
been better directed, and the focus on climate action is clarifying.
One of the key critiques of the proposals before they were funded was a balancing problem:
Experts told the transportation commission that Millersburg wasn’t far enough from Washington seaports to make rail cost-effective and that it would need the cooperation of two major railroad companies to ensure deliveries and a steady supply of empty containers to transport agricultural goods.
This is
like public rental bikes and rebalancing them so every station has enough! The
bikes, and containers, need to be circulating and can't pile up at the
end of one-way trips. Sometimes people have to drive around in trucks to pick up bikes and deliver them to empty hubs. That's an actual cost of the business that has to be budgeted in.
Apparently
boosters for the intermodal centers just assumed the balancing would
happen like magic, and did not make sufficient provision for active
balancing in their logistics analysis and budgets.
As a new publication Capital Chronicle has not reported much on Connect Oregon and the history of the project. Their entry appears to be via the Malheur Enterprise and its ongoing investigations.
 |
| Aug. 2018 |
But the paper here has had previous stories. They reported on the competition between Brooks and Millersburg for one of the sites, and then on Millersburg as the winner. The focus went from cheering to skepticism.
 |
| November 2022 |
While the paper rightly focuses on ways ODOT and others looked past
skepticism and critique, the paper does not look at all retrospectively
on their own coverage and they way they participated in shaping
overoptimistic expectations.
 |
| Earlier this week |
They might also have related problems with these intermodal hubs to problems at ODOT on the CRC, SRC, Highway 20 from Pioneer Mountain to Eddyville, and now IBR and I-5 Rose Quarter projects. There's a real pattern here, a systemic problem with analysis and misrepresentation at ODOT on large and extra-large projects.
- See most recently at City Observatory, "It looks like the Interstate Bridge Replacement could cost $9 billion."
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