Members of the Oregon State Legislature’s Joint Transportation Committee spent the day in Tillamook on June 18, as part of a series of tours around the state to gather community feedback on Oregonians’ transportation needs. The Oregon Department of Transportation is hosting the tours, with the Tillamook visit marking the second stop with ten more scheduled before the end of September.
During the day, committee members took a bus tour of various project sites around the central part of the county that demonstrated transportation infrastructure challenges on the north coast. They then participated in a roundtable discussion with local leaders before hosting a public meeting in the evening to gather citizen input.
The committee’s tour began at the red barn at the Tillamook Creamery and Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) Director Kris Strickler welcomed committee members and local leaders as the bus departed.
Strickler said that the purpose of the tours was to give ODOT officials and the committee members the opportunity to hear about the local needs across the state. While there would be some variation in the needs expressed in different areas, Strickler said that he expected a consistent theme across the state would be negative impacts caused by resource shortages at the department.
Strickler thanked the legislators for the infusion of $19 million into ODOT’s coffers late last year, which he said had been critical to allowing them to deliver the level of service Oregonians expect during the winter months.
Savannah Crawford, director of ODOT’s region two that includes Tillamook, then took over as the bus continued on its way towards milepost 10 of the Wilson River Highway.
Crawford discussed how the culvert routing Zig Zag creek under the highway at that point was failing and noted that it would need to be replaced by a bridge that will cost $14-16 million. The culvert is almost a century old, like many others along Highway 6, and maintaining them is an ongoing challenge for the department.
On the way back towards Tillamook, Crawford talked about safety issues on the highway and the study that was commissioned by State Senator Suzanne Weber to delineate them. Crawford said that the highway had seen 428 vehicle crashes between 2016 and 2020, which led Weber to sponsor a bill funding the study in 2022.
That study, conducted in 2023, detailed a range of options for upgrading safety on the highway from initiatives like restriping the highway for extra visibility all the way up to adding passing lanes. Crawford said that restriping would cost an estimated $7 to $9 million, while adding passing lanes would cost between $45 and $133 million and stabilizing a selection of high priority slopes at risk of slides between mileposts 28 and 37 would run $50 million.
The tour then made a brief stop at the weigh station outside Tillamook where Strickler discussed the work of ODOT’s commerce and compliance division, which is responsible for running weigh stations and checking for chain compliance in winter months.
The bus then headed north to Garibaldi, where the committee members exited the bus for a short presentation on the soon-to-begin project there.
Bill Jablonski, director of ODOT’s area one, said that the $10 million project would see a complete overhaul of Highway 101 between First and 12th streets in the city. In addition to repaving the roadway, new sidewalks featuring ADA-accessible crossings, street lighting and six new transit stops will be added during the project, which is scheduled to start later this summer.
The committee then returned to the red barn for a roundtable with local officials, after which the committee reconvened at the Port of Tillamook Bay in the evening to hear public comment about transportation needs on the north coast.
Several dozen commenters addressed the committee over the course of one and a half hours and several major themes arose across comments.
Representatives of the trucking industry requested that the committee fund promised projects in Portland’s Rose Quarter and on Oregon 217 and interstate 205, telling the committee members that those projects were critical to their industry.
A Columbia County Commissioner, the Lincoln County Public Works director and several commenters rose to speak in favor of the current funding model that sees 50% of road funding directed to ODOT, 30% to counties and 20% to cities.
As the department faces funding challenges from decreasing revenues, there have been discussions about directing a larger proportion towards ODOT. But the commenters all emphasized the importance of the funding to rural counties tasked with maintaining extensive road networks without a large property tax base.
A handful of Tillamook locals addressed the committee and voiced their support for the Salmonberry Trail, the proposed 82-mile, rails-to-trails path that would connect Tillamook to Banks. Commenters asked the committee to continue funding grants, like the community pathways grant, that could be used to support construction of portions of the trail.
Tillamook County Transportation District General Manager Brian Vitulli and Board of Directors Chair Mary Johnson asked that the committee continue funding the statewide transportation improvement fund at the same levels, noting that it supported the district’s operations.
Other floated a mixed-use path connecting Tillamook, Netarts and Oceanside, extolled the virtues of the state’s rest areas and asked that their funding be maintained, asked for alternate means for counties to raise revenues for public works and pushed for transportation funding to be more distributed based on where people reside, rather than work.
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