Case Study:

Portland, Oregon

Context

Study Background

The I-5 corridor freight study was jointly funded by the Oregon and Washington State Departments of Transportation, with additional participation by the Port of Portland, Port of Vancouver, and the Portland and Vancouver MPOs. The study was conducted by Parsons Brinckerhoff and Cambridge Systematics, Inc. It was intended in part to determine eligibility for federal funding from the FHWA Borders and Corridors program in the Transportation Efficiency Act for the 21^st Century (TEA-21).

Phase 1 of the study, described here, examines how increasing congestion in the I-5 corridor may affect freight movement, business productivity, and the health of the region's economy. Phase 2, to be completed, will expand the scope of the analysis to include other benefits and costs relevant to the proposed projects. These will include, for example, potential land use responses to growing congestion and to proposed transportation improvements.

Benefit-cost analysis was selected as the primary evaluation measure for the proposed I-5 corridor improvements. FHWA requests a benefit-cost analysis for any application for TEA-21 funding for borders and corridors projects and recommends benefit-cost measures and the specific values of critical parameters (e.g., value of travel time or cost per accident). Project sponsors also felt that the complexity and significance of evaluating multi-billion dollar improvements to the I-5 corridor required the systematic enumeration of benefits and costs.

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