Op-Ed: The Columbia River Crossing, the Gas Tax, and the Case for Expanding Regional Governance

Op-Ed: The Columbia River Crossing, the Gas Tax, and the Case for Expanding Regional Governance

By Sam Galvan

Of the approximately 2.5 million people living in the Portland Metropolitan Area as of the 2020 US Census, roughly half a million live in Clark County, Washington, an area that is connected to the rest of the region by only two bridges across the Columbia River. One of these bridges was first built over one hundred years ago and is sure to collapse in the Cascadia Subduction Zone Earthquake coming to the region sooner or later (Interstate Bridge Replacement Program). Despite the fact that the Interstate Bridge is a critical connection and a chokepoint both within the Portland region and at the scale of connecting the West Coast, efforts to replace it with a seismically sound bridge that can meet the region’s transportation needs into the future have failed spectacularly due to the inability of Oregon and Washington’s state governments to agree on funding (Theen). Although talks of resurrecting the project have resumed in the last few years, it’s not a reach to call the relationship between the two state governments around this issue dysfunctional as there remains a significant amount of distrust and necessary rebuilding of relationships before any work can actually be done. 

“Fueling Transportation Finance: A Primer on the Gas Tax” by Robert Puentes and Ryan Prince gives an overview of the current state of the gas tax, which is something of a dysfunctional system in its own right. Even though it is one of the primary sources of transportation funding at both the federal and state levels, the federal gas tax hasn’t been raised since the 90s. Adding to the gas tax’s woes are increased vehicular fuel efficiency and the proliferation of electric vehicles, making its utility as a funding source increasingly obsolete. With Oregon and Washington’s state governments struggling to come to terms on how to modernize a crucial piece of shared infrastructure, coupled with the failure of one of their chief transportation funding mechanisms, the situation begs the question: are state governments the appropriate entities to be handling these types of projects?

With the majority of the US population and an ever-increasing share of commercial, financial and industrial activity being located in suburban areas (Parker et al) it is increasingly valuable to look at metropolitan regions as whole entities rather than examining their core cities alone. Portland exemplifies this well as it is home to only 650,000 of the region’s 2.5 million or so residents and the metro area’s 2 largest employers are located in the suburbs (Greater Portland Inc.). In other regions, such as the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and the San Francisco Bay Area, population and commerce are even more dispersed. City governments no longer have broad enough jurisdictions to effectively fill this role and the significant number of unincorporated communities in US metro areas means that coalitions of city governments would still leave gaps. Metro areas represent, and have been for decades, a key scale of analysis for understanding social, economic, and demographic geography in the US and therefore should have their own governments for issues like coordinating growth, transportation, services, and infrastructure in a unified and cohesive way. To be fair, many such governments do exist in a variety of forms, but only Portland’s Metro actually has elected officials.

To be sure, Metro is effective at what it does and is a major asset for the Portland Region, however Metro is limited in that its jurisdiction only encompasses the urban parts of Multnomah, Clackamas, and Washington counties, leaving out the aforementioned half a million or so Clark County residents who are very much a part of the metropolitan area. Portland is far from the only metropolitan region spanning multiple states. The metro areas of Kansas City, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Louisville, Memphis, Philadelphia, Washington DC and New York City all cross state lines. Elected and publicly accountable governments, performing similar functions to Metro with somewhat standardized roles and the expanded authority to operate in multiple states, would be valuable to all of these places. A Metro that included Vancouver and Clark County would be well-positioned to take a leading role in projects such as the Interstate Bridge Replacement. The greatest benefit of establishing stronger regional governments could be in bridging the gap between different parts of multi-state metro areas and unifying them with a shared sense of place. In addition to things like consolidating public transportation and unifying regional growth strategies, officially defining regions in this way could have the potential to cultivate stronger regional identities, much in the same way people take pride in the cities and states they come from. 

Metro areas entirely contained within single states would benefit as well from increased coordination. The San Francisco Bay Area alone has over 24 different transit agencies (Clipper). Both operations and usage of these would be much more efficient if they were unified under a single authority. Furthermore, as the gas tax wanes as a useful funding mechanism metropolitan scale governments would have the opportunity to implement their own funding mechanisms for metropolitan scale needs. This could help resolve the mismatch created by relying on state funding for regional projects that currently results in many urban areas contributing more to state funds than they receive back (Puentes & Prince). 

Establishing stronger and more standardized metropolitan governments could help fill out a growing “missing middle” in US governance. This could be especially valuable in regions straddling multiple states but would be beneficial in metro areas across the country. Furthermore, if cities are to be the leaders in climate action that UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has called on them to be, doing so in coordination with the rest of their metropolitan regions might just be the most effective way.

References

Interstate Bridge Replacement Program. (2021, October 21). Earthquake vulnerability | Interstate Bridge [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVo8uUMeMLg&ab_channel=InterstateBridgeReplacementProgram 

Theen, A. (2018, December 12). Washington and Oregon lawmakers return to Interstate Bridge talks, with thanks and questions. The Oregonian/OregonLive. https://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/2018/12/washington-and-oregon-lawmakers-return-to-interstate-bridge-talks-with-apologies-and-questions.html

Puentes, R. & Prince, R. (2003). Fueling transportation finance: A primer on the Gas Tax. Brookings Institution.

Greater Portland Inc. (2019). Metro Portland’s major employers. Portland Relocation Guide. https://portlandreloguide.com/metro-portlands-major-employers/

Clipper. Where to use Clipper. https://www.clippercard.com/ClipperWeb/where-to-use.html

United Nations. (2021, November 3). Cities must lead climate action to keep 1.5o C global temperature rise goal within reach, Secretary-General says at launch of Council on Urban Initiatives. United Nations Media Coverage and Press Releases. https://www.un.org/press/en/2021/sgsm21002.doc.htm