PBOT outlines 2045 Transportation System Plan update, funding and equity priorities

Portland Bureau of Transportation staff provided the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee an overview of the 2045 Transportation System Plan (TSP) update, describing the plan’s role as a state-required 20-year blueprint for transportation policy, projects and investments and outlining how the update will address equity, safety, climate and financial constraints.

Rhea Danapal, deputy city administrator (public works), said the TSP is a component of the city’s comprehensive plan and “is required by state law to guide the city's transportation policies and investments over a 20 year period.” Art Pierce, PBOT deputy director for planning, programs and projects, and other PBOT staff described the plan’s purpose, the program areas it will cover, the financial forecasting approach and public-engagement schedule.

Key points from PBOT’s presentation included:

- TSP scope and legal context: PBOT staff said the TSP is meant to align with the regional transportation plan (maintained by Metro) and federal and state regulatory requirements. Staff noted recent state requirements that TSP updates demonstrate no per-capita increase in vehicle miles traveled and include performance measures around safety, equity and climate.

- Planning horizon and prioritization: The TSP is a 20-year plan that produces a financially constrained project list and a separate unconstrained queue. Staff said the constrained list matches projects to anticipated revenue and that the list is updated each TSP cycle, allowing the bureau to remove completed projects and add new priorities.

- Program categories and estimated need: PBOT described 10 program categories (for example, pedestrian network completion, bikeway network completion, high-crash corridors, safe routes to school, transit and freight priority, parking and demand management, and alternative street design). Staff cited an earlier estimate of roughly $316,000,000 of investment need for those program categories over the 20-year period; they also emphasized that much of that need is currently unfunded.

- Funding and revenue: Staff said the bureau’s capital improvement program relies heavily on grants and external funds. Director Millicent Williams noted the bureau’s planning team has won major grants and that PBOT has leveraged roughly $600 million in external funds over five years and typically works with a high leverage ratio for local match. PBOT identified likely funding sources and tools discussed during the meeting: system development charges (SDCs), tax-increment financing (TIF), state gas tax and related state funding, federal competitive grants (FTA Small Starts, Reconnecting Communities, Safe Streets for All), Fixing Our Streets and local mechanisms such as a heavy-vehicle-use tax and the Clean Energy Fund.

- Short-term funding concern: Councilors asked about a recent decision to waive some SDCs for certain housing, which one councilor described as roughly $63 million in forgone SDC revenue over three years (with quoted allocations of $27 million parks, $22 million sewer and stormwater, $10 million transportation and $4 million water). PBOT staff said SDCs remain a key resource across the TSP’s 20-year horizon but acknowledged a short-term funding challenge and said the bureau would pursue other matching funds and TIF opportunities as needed.

- Equity, outreach and committees: PBOT staff said the TSP update will include an equity analysis and additional state-required engagement steps. The bureau formed a 31-member community advisory committee selected from roughly 160 applicants; staff said the committee’s first meeting was scheduled in late June. PBOT indicated it will convene a technical advisory committee, a community advisory committee and a project management team, and will brief the council at multiple milestones (vision and goals, development and refinement stages).

- Operational and program priorities: Staff emphasized that the TSP contains both capital-project lists and programmatic categories that allow quicker, smaller investments. The plan will also address demand-management tools such as parking policy and other strategies to shape travel behavior.

Questions from councilors covered how the TSP intersects with tax-increment financing districts, neighborhood-scale priorities (including sidewalk and plaza investments), timelines for project delivery, and how PBOT ranks and schedules projects. Several councilors and PBOT staff discussed the importance of pairing sidewalk investments with transit and housing strategies to support equitable access, particularly in East Portland (District 1). Councilor Smith and others highlighted that many household trips — including trips to childcare — remain difficult to shift from cars in outer neighborhoods without complementary local services and sidewalks.

PBOT staff said the bureau will produce interactive project maps and document appendices online and will return to the committee at key milestones, including more in-depth briefings on plaza programs and asset-management priorities. PBOT described the TSP update as both a technical exercise and a funding negotiation: the plan must show financial constraint while retaining an unconstrained list of priorities the bureau will pursue as funding becomes available.