@sarahforpdx Tammy Baney and Alondo Simpson in their @oregonian op-ed about the I-5 freeway expansion tout the 2.5 million hours of time saved by commuters, time they can then spend with “friends and family”. Let’s break it down and see what those time savings really are. 1/

@sarahforpdx @Oregonian Let’s say there’s about 120,000 cars per day on this stretch of I-5 (oregon.gov/ODOT/Data/Docu…). 2.5 million annual hours saved works out to about 3.4 minutes per vehicle per day. Enjoy that family time! 2/

@sarahforpdx @Oregonian Or, maybe we should only look at the 200 working days and assume that Average Auto Daily Traffic (AADT) is on those days only. That results in a per vehicle time savings of 6.25 minutes per vehicle per day. Enjoy that family time! 3/

@sarahforpdx @Oregonian Let’s consider just the peak hours. Google Maps shows congestion southbound between 7am-1pm and 2pm-6pm and northbound 1pm-7pm. That represents about 80,000 daily autos. rtc.wa.gov/data/traffic/b… They would each experience a daily savings of 9 minutes. Enjoy that family time! 4/

@sarahforpdx @Oregonian In short, we are trading off $500 million of our treasure to save about 80,000 people up to 10 minutes of time. The trade-off: no advancing on climate change. No advances on air quality. No advances on congestion. 5/

@sarahforpdx @Oregonian Why no advances on congestion? Because freeway capacity will simply plug up again in a few years because of induced demand. We cannot build our way out of congestion. We will be worse off in so many ways: pollution, opportunity cost, health, greenhouse gas emissions. 6/

@sarahforpdx @Oregonian It’s a specious argument Ms. Baney and Mr. Simpson. I imagine you got your figures from @OregonDOT. The 2.5 million hours in time savings—which will evaporate all too soon—will not help us accomplish any of our goals. 7/7