If Clackamas residents are so opposed to helping pay their fair share of these connections to the outside world, can we just put up barricades on 99E at the Milwaukie border and keep them out of Portland? Of course not! WE are a region and we freely move across county and city borders using streets and bridges way beyond our borders. You can’t move outside a city to the suburbs or the country, drive back into the city ever day for jobs and resources, and not expect to participate in making the region function as a whole.

The real question is how much more regional and Federal money do we need to continually pour into highway expansions for auto driver and ever larger trucks at the expense of our communities living alongside these highways. Let’s fund more rail. more bridges, more connections, and less highway expansion.

There used to be a Trolley from Portland to Oregon City back when Oak Grove and Jennings Lodge were nice farm villages. A new light rail won’t bring back the farms, but it can bring back nicer walkable communities, compared to what the 99E highway strip has spawned in the past half century.

The design offers virtually no return on investment to the citizens of the
County, and is primarily for locating the end of the line and an unwanted
parking facility outside of Milwaukie.

Search online for Minimum Operating Segment and see for yourself.