After years of wrangling, the Oregon Transportation Commission has granted conditional approval for a plan to widen Interstate 5 through Portland’s Rose Quarter corridor. The original funding was approved by the Oregon Legislature in 2017. The newest plan includes “caps” over the freeway to enable some redevelopment of the former Albina district, the historically Black neighborhood that I-5 destroyed when the highway was initially constructed. There are still a lot of unanswered questions about how all this will work, and where the money will come from. We dig into the details with Oregon Transportation Commission Chair Bob Van Brocklin and OTC Vice Chair Alando Simpson.
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