Access (Denied) to the Region’s Core

Access to the region’s core (ARC) is now inaccessible. The ARC Tunnel is being brought to a complete stop.  In a press release yesterday, the state has ordered to “…. begin an expeditious and orderly shutdown of the project.”  For more details, visit GMTMA’s website.

Let me try and reproduce some figures here.

The estimated cost of ARC Tunnel was $8.7 billion. Federal commitment is capped at $3 billion. It is believed that in the current scenario, cost estimates might increase and would be to the north of $14 billion.  The state believes that investing into a project which may run beyond its budgetary constraints would be unjustified use of taxpayers’ money.

On the flipside.

If implemented, ARC Tunnel would have added 6000 temporary construction jobs to our economy, and about 44,000 permanent new jobs to fuel our economy. This extrapolates to $4 billion in new personal income and $10 billion in gross regional product. It is projected that it would have eliminated 22,000 pollution spewing vehicles from our roads. This extrapolates to reducing our climate footprint by 66,000 tons of greenhouse gases.

On one side, tax payers will not have to pay for the ARC tunnel and save money for them and for the state. This will save the state from incurring more debt and financial burdens. On the other side, problems with traffic congestion, air quality deterioration and climate footprints will keep growing. These problems may not seem quantifiable, but the externalities come in the form of lost man-hours, deteriorating health and imbalanced ecosystems.  Oregon Environmental Council estimates the cost of Adult and Childhood Asthma to be $30.million each year. Now, we’re losing an opportunity to remove 22,000 vehicles from our roads that spew pollutants and inherently have the tendency to cause respiratory diseases. If I were to write about economic damage from pollution and traffic congestion, it would perhaps take an entire day or more and many pages worth content. I leave it up to you to try and think the cost of ‘business as usual’.

I am not being judgmental here. I just want to try and present two sides of the same coin. Please help take this conversation forward. Leave your responses and let your views be known.

Jay Thakkar

jthakkar@gmtma.org

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