The trucking business desires extra room on Oregon roads they usually’ve taken an unprecedented step to get it. As an alternative of working by conventional undertaking improvement channels the place engineers, planners and advocates work collectively to resolve design points based mostly on compromise and context on a project-by-project foundation, trucking advocates are pushing a compulsory 12-foot minimal lane width on freight routes statewide.
On the final web page of the 102-page Home Invoice 2025 (the transportation invoice) being debated in Salem this week are three strains that might have main implications on initiatives throughout the state. Part 160 of the invoice states: “the fee might not cut back the width of an current motorized vehicle journey lane on an recognized freight path to lower than 12 ft.” (The “fee” refers back to the Oregon Transportation Fee, a governor-appointed physique that oversees the Oregon Division of Transportation.)
Trucking advocates are making a uncommon and daring try to bypass course of and enshrine what ought to be a transportation engineering choice into state regulation. Past that, the obscure language of “recognized freight route” may go away the query of which roads this is applicable to open to discretion. For these causes and others, the trucking business’s newest gambit to make headway on this difficulty faces robust opposition from street security advocates. It’s additionally not supported by state and nationwide design tips or finest practices, and even Oregon’s chief visitors engineer appears to desire a special strategy.
The availability is backed by trucking advocates like Jana Jarvis, president of the Oregon Trucking Affiliation (OTA). In testimony on the public listening to on HB 2025 Tuesday, Jarvis stated the lane width language is an, “essential piece of the laws.” “Freight routes should be constructed and maintained to assist giant vehicles by requiring 12-foot lanes to soundly accommodate these autos,” she testified.
Pushing for wider lanes has been a significant focus of trucking advocates for years. In 2022 BikePortland detailed rising tensions between trucking corporations and ODOT employees over lane widths. The difficulty turned such a standard debate amongst trucking representatives and ODOT undertaking employees at freight undertaking advisory committee conferences that the company shaped the Journey Lane Widths Work Group in March 2023.
In January 2024, OTA Authorities Relations Coverage Advisor Mark Gibson stated truck drivers want a minimal of 12 ft as a result of “there’s an excessive amount of stress being a truck driver in an city setting.” In a presentation to the ODOT Mobility Advisory Committee (the MAC, the place choices about freight route lane widths are made) Gibson stated, “We’re all affected by the street weight loss plan period.”
Distinction that perspective of a truck driver with the folks outdoors the truck. Walkers, bicycle riders, bike customers — even smaller automotive drivers who use roads alongside truckers really feel the impacts of wider lanes. Wider lanes result in larger speeds, longer crossing distances, and extra threat for street customers general. And street widths are finite: While you add a foot to at least one lane, it means one other lane should turn out to be narrower. When that lane is a motorbike lane or shoulder, different street customers suffers.
That’s one motive the 12-foot lane provision has drawn opposition from transportation advocates like David Binnig with BikeLoud PDX. In a letter submitted to the Joint Committee on Transportation Reinvestment, Binnig requested that the language be faraway from the invoice. He wrote, “Whereas 12-foot lanes could also be acceptable on high-speed freeways, they aren’t appropriate on streets the place folks stay and work.”
Binning identified that the availability works in opposition to the legislature’s intention to spice up funding in HB 2025 for ODOT’s Nice Streets program — a program that seeks to replace city highways and remodel them from visitors and freight thoroughfares into extra humane and livable streets the place commerce and group can thrive.
If the lane width provision stays within the invoice, Binnig wrote, “Oregon can be dedicating funding to safer streets whereas on the similar time outlawing the adjustments on the bottom which are wanted to make these streets protected.”
Trucking advocates level to the truth that a typical freight truck is 10 and-a-half ft broad (together with side-mirrors) and 12-foot lanes are crucial so drivers don’t must encroach into adjoining lanes (or bike lane buffers). However finest practices within the planning and engineering discipline say 11-foot lanes are preferable as a result of 12-foot lanes usually are not well worth the security tradeoffs.
ODOT’s personal Freeway Design Guide extols the security virtues of slim lane widths and clearly states that 11-foot lanes are most well-liked. In truth, ODOT Chief Engineer Mike Kimlinger doesn’t even seem to assist such a inflexible adherence to 12-foot lanes for freight.
In a December 2024 assembly of the Mobility Advisory Committee, ODOT employees offered on a undertaking on Freeway 26 by downtown Madras the place they wished to extend the width of the bike lane. Trucking advocates aired considerations and a spirited debate ensued.
Gibson from the OTA and one other MAC committee member, Freeway Heavy Hauling President Kristine Kennedy, wished to slim the bike lane to be able to give truck drivers extra room.
However ODOT’s Kimlinger pushed again. In response to MAC assembly minutes, he opposed the OTA’s insistence on 12-foot lanes. “The will in narrowing the lanes is actually to focus all people, sluggish all of them down, and make them be very attentive,” reads a paraphrased model of Kimlinger’s response captured by the committee secretary. Kimlinger then went on to level out how five-foot bike lanes can be too slim and wouldn’t be used as a result of riders wouldn’t really feel snug in them. Right here’s one other excerpt from the minutes:
“[Kimlinger] ended by saying, sure, 11 [feet] is slim and goes to be a bit uncomfortable for the 12-foot a great deal of tools that come by, however once we are the principle avenue of a group like this, we’re put ready to assist steadiness that in a method we now have by no means achieved earlier than in our previous.”
With detrimental security implications, a divergence from finest practices, opposition from transportation security advocates, and a scarcity of assist from ODOT’s personal chief engineer, the possibilities of Part 160 staying within the invoice look like getting narrower by the day.
