I grew up studying the architectural drawings on the back pages of The Register-Guard in Florence, Oregon. Later, I graduated from Southern Oregon University where I was in the first class to graduate with a bachelor's of science in environmental science with geography and economic honors. I've lived most of my life in various rural Oregon communities. I have a master's degree from Cornell University in planning. I studied geographic information systems and predicted the rise of Google Maps in my thesis.

Family has brought me to Portland, and during this time I have gotten to know the Rose Quarter Freeway Widening Project. My children are slated to attend Harriet Tubman when they reach middle school. I also was in a cargo bike crash at the Rose Quarter. When I see a problem I want to solve it. This area is a puzzle of rivers, street cars, bridges and people. As a former sub-contractor for Oregon Department of Transportation, I took it upon myself to figure out a solution, for the kids.

As you know, Portland's freeways are congested most parts of the day. There are no easy solutions. Building more roads leads to more congestion and Oregon's greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector keep rising with every additional freeway lane. This phenomenon is called "induced demand" and, in short, the more connections in a system the slower it goes. This is observed on the freeway network from downtown Portland to downtown Vancouver, there are too many interchanges too close together with outdated merging patterns and safety features.

At the Rose Quarter where I-84 and I-5 converge is where ODOT has been pushing an additional auxiliary lane to ease congestion and increase fluidity. Its project proposal was put out for an environmental assessment consultation in the spring of 2019. The analysis for greenhouse gas emissions used false data (predicted vs. surveyed). The National Environmental Protection Act process utilized auxiliary lane loopholes generally applied in rural areas and comes with a heavy price tag. Five hundred million dollars from House Bill 2017 has been earmarked for this project. Eighty-nine percent of Portland region comments rejected the freeway widening proposal.

We can't afford another freeway boondoggle like the Columbia River fiasco in 2014. This was the source data that was used for the Rose Quarter. It's wrong! The outsized interchanges of the Columbia River Crossing proposal had an additional $1 billion price on top of the actual CRC bridge proposal. Interchanges add to congestion, they don't solve it. Traffic models are notoriously bad for modeling human behavior in slow-merging patterns. That's why models never predict congestion. This is common knowledge in traffic modeling circles. It's common sense.

We need a mature network-based approach to managing the freeways for high-priority vehicles like freight and buses. State Sen. Lee Beyer's (D-Springfield) 100% environmental scorecard with the Oregon League of Conservation Voters belies the harm he has done to our urban transport network in Portland.

I urge you to contact Beyer and ask him to do a better job and respect the National Environmental Protection Act protection for vulnerable and minority populations. The Rose Quarter Freeway Widening deserves a full environmental impact statement, which would allow climate activists a chance to find high-capacity solutions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Please consider your vote for Beyer a vote for more increases in transport related greenhouse gas emissions.

For the last eight years, Beyer has been on, or chaired, the highest transportation committees in Oregon. In Portland alone, we have experienced more than 45 traffic fatalities in the last year. This is traffic violence on a regional scale for Portlanders, a situation that is unknown to most rural Oregon residents. Kids, elderly and the disabled are harmed the most. I've watched Beyer on these committees and he doesn't seem to care.

Maybe he's too busy with other committees to realize he is no longer fit to be offering transport planning advice to Portland commuters.

Roberta Robles was a GIS NEPA consultant for ODOT Bridge Replacement program 2003-05 and continued as freight and transport planner in New Zealand for four years. She is from the rocky Oregon Coast where the Siuslaw River meets the long white dunes.

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Guest View: Beyer must step up on transportation - The Register-Guard