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LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO
The Portland City Council considered new street paving strategies in a work session in August, and quickly found that not only does one size not fit all, one strategy does not suit the whole city.
The project, originally called Street by Street, later renamed Out of the Mud by Mayor Sam Adams, is looking at more flexible ways to provide some degree of paving for the city's 60 miles of unpaved streets, and especially the 45 miles of small residential streets. These streets tend to be concentrated in Mid-Multnomah County and the southwest hills, with smaller concentrations in northeast's Cully and southeast's Brentwood-Darlington and Woodstock neighborhoods, Christine Leon of the Portland Bureau of Transportation told Council.
“We have done tests with streets paved with gravel, and they needed maintenance work a year later,” Leon said. “There are complaints about dust from unpaved streets. They don't meet access standards for use by the disabled.”
However, Leon said, the City currently assumes maintenance only for “standard” streets. These are 26 to 28 feet wide and include two travel lanes, two parking lanes seven to eight feet wide, a curb, a planting strip, and a sidewalk at least six feet wide. These cost an average of $1,300 to $1,500 per lineal foot, with a cost to the average property owner of $70,000 and, under financing currently available, a bill of $300 per month; the total cost to pave all unimproved streets in this way would be $1.5 billion, Leon said.
The Bureau of Transportation has been working since 2007 with neighbors and developers “frustrated by the lack of options,” Leon said. “There is consensus that doing something is better than doing nothing.”
The “something” under consideration includes more flexible standards for streets. For local streets that handle less than 500 vehicle trips per day, this could include streets with pavements only 16 feet wide, no curbs, and gravel shoulders. “People don't park on the street 24/7, and there are other things we can do with the space,” Leon said. One is to plant trees in lieu of parking spaces, narrowing the roadway and causing motorists to drive slower. The cost to property owners could be lowered to as little as $7,500 apiece, with monthly payments of as little as $60, she said.
Another issue is the way the City deals with developers. They are usually called upon to create standard streets along their frontage. “This results in an orphaned developed street segment that will be orphaned for a very long time.”
Alternatively, developers can pay a fee toward future street paving. The funds can be used to pave this street or one where paving is considered a higher priority. The average cost is $47,000 for a 50-foot frontage, Leon said. “What we've heard is that given the options, they'd rather build it.”
Adams said the city should create incentives to get developers to pay. Commissioner Dan Saltzman disagreed, saying, “Paving would incent other neighbors to follow their example.”
Commissioner Nick Fish countered, “If the paving happened piecemeal, it could be very disruptive, and create an enormous amount of hardship.”
Justin Wood of Fish Construction tended to agree with Adams. “For us, we'd much rather develop the block as a whole, and pay our share of it,” he said. “To build streets parcel by parcel costs ten times as much and it's hard to sell a house with mud in front of it.” On the other hand, Wood said, “It's not always easy to get the neighbors to agree. It's better to develop to a lower standard.”
This brought up another issue: how new streets are paid for. Normally, owners representing a majority of the street frontage ownership must agree to a street's development through a Local Improvement District. However, in the past, people were allowed by the city to build on unimproved streets by signing a waiver stating that when someone proposed to build a street, at any time in the future, they would “waive” their right to oppose it. Second, third and fourth generations of property owners have found, to their dismay, these waivers buried in their property deeds. Leon said there were 12,000 such outstanding waivers in the city.
Leon said that the lowest cost paving options, done citywide, would run $91 to $96 million. PBOT has looked at a variety of options to pay for this. One, PBOT's Jennifer Cooperman said, was to spread the cost of street improvements over a wider area.
Cooperman said PBOT has looked at several formulas to help pay for paving. One, a new gas tax, is deficient for the same reason the statewide tax is: as more people do less driving in more fuel-efficient vehicles, the amount of revenue steadily decreases. A sales tax, in addition to encountering Oregon's traditional hostility to this approach, would not generate enough money, Cooperman said. Other options are some sort of user fee and general obligation bond.
Council praised PBOT's efforts to look at new paving options. Commissioner Amanda Fritz said, “I'm really pleased to see this coming forward, and the new design options. We need to look at who pays, who benefits, and is it fair.”
Fish said he appreciated that Leon had presented a menu of options rather than advocating for one approach. “I find this range of options incredibly helpful,” he said.
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