The Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program (RCPP) was established in President Biden’s Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act again in 2021, and Portlanders have had their eyes on it from the beginning. This program acknowledges the injury some transportation infrastructure — particularly freeway initiatives like I-5 in Portland — has created in communities attributable to displacement and different adverse impacts, and it units apart $1 billion in federal funds over 5 years to assist make issues proper.
One of many first beneficiaries of this program shall be Portland’s personal Albina Imaginative and prescient Belief (AVT), who had been lately awarded an $800,000 RCPP planning grant. AVT launched their mission (on a motorbike experience!) in 2017 and has since turn into a serious participant in conversations concerning the Rose Quarter. In June 2021 they inked their first of what’s prone to be many actual property growth offers.
AVT utilized for this grant final fall in partnership with the Portland Bureau of Transportation, and can use it to make preliminary plans for what the Rose Quarter and Decrease Albina areas will seem like when/if the Oregon Division of Transportation provides a freeway cowl to I-5 within the district. ODOT additionally tapped the RCPP for a really substantial grant of $100 million to assemble the I-5 freeway covers as a part of their Rose Quarter freeway mission. However ODOT’s utility was denied funding on this cycle.
Apart from the starkly completely different quantities of cash requested, AVT/PBOT and ODOT’s functions could appear related as a result of they each cope with capping I-5 on the Rose Quarter. However whereas ODOT’s proposal so as to add covers to I-5 is wrapped up of their highly-controversial freeway growth plan, the $800,000 in federal funds allotted to AVT and PBOT are not essentially contingent on a freeway growth.
Albina neighborhood advocates with AVT have signed onto ODOT’s Rose Quarter plan as a result of they know it could be their finest wager to barter capping the freeway to reconnect the neighborhood that was so negatively affected by the development of I-5 within the Nineteen Sixties. ODOT, in the meantime, is aware of that together with these costly freeway covers within the I-5 growth mission is the one approach they get any federal funding for the plan. However up to now, ODOT has been having a tough time securing that funding even with the Albina neighborhood restoration as a part of their pitch.
From the time the RCPP was first introduced, some transportation advocates have been involved that state DOTs would apply for RCPP cash underneath the guise of restorative justice for neighborhoods harmed by infrastructure initiatives after which use the funding for freeway expansions. A weblog submit from transportation nonprofit America Walks calls ODOT out for this particularly, saying the proposed cap over I-5 on the Rose Quarter “has the potential to be a optimistic funding for Portland’s traditionally Black Albina neighborhood” however the USDOT ought to deny their utility as a result of it “comes hooked up to an growth of the freeway that may enhance environmental and financial injury alongside the hall.”
“We’re calling on USDOT to reject proposals like these, as they fail to align with the targets of the Reconnecting Communities program. Proposals like these depart in place the buildings that trigger injury — and even worse, broaden them,” the submit continues. “For that cause, they tackle neither environmental justice nor equitable growth and lead to both a negligible enhance in neighborhood connectivity or a internet lower, within the case of proposals that bundle freeway expansions into the mission.”
Maybe the U.S. Division of Transportation heard these issues of their first spherical of RCPP funding — or possibly they simply didn’t wish to give ODOT greater than half of the $185 million they’ve allotted for this system in its first yr.
There’s nonetheless lots up within the air about this mission. It’s unclear how AVT and PBOT may have the ability to work independently of ODOT to make plans for a future Albina neighborhood that isn’t disconnected by I-5, and there shall be extra alternatives sooner or later for ODOT to use for RCPP funding. However for now, critics of the Rose Quarter growth mission are calling this a win.
Taylor has been BikePortland’s workers author since November 2021. She has additionally written for Avenue Roots and Eugene Weekly. Contact her at taylorgriggswriter@gmail.com
