Parkway Committee gives ODOT an earful

Members of the county Parkway Committee got straightforward over a roundabout.

The committee gave an earful to attending officials from Oregon Department of Transportation on Thursday. The committee was created to focus on the Newberg-Dundee bypass, hire lobbyists, meet via Zoom with transportation officials and otherwise advocate for the project.

They complained that ODOT is not aggressively pursuing funding to install a roundabout at McDougall Corner, and is thereby dragging out the project.

ODOT officials said it’s not as simple as the committee seems to think. Trevor Sleeman, Senior Federal Affairs Advisor, said that before the agency can ask for money from the federal government to build the roundabout, it must first design the roundabout, so that it knows how much money it will need.

Further, he argued, when the federal government provides a grant, it wants to know when construction will start, and when it will be finished — also information the agency doesn’t have before the design is finished.

“They’re not going to stake you money and let you go look for other funding,” he said.

Transportation Project Manager Andrew Walker noted that the agency has obtained funding for the design and for purchasing any land it will need to acquire but that both those processes will take about a year.

“There’s no one on this line that hates bureaucracy more than me but two things you really don’t want to rush; design and right of way” acquisitions, Walker said, emphasizing that it’s important to give people being forced to sell their land plenty of time and to make sure they are fairly compensated.

Parkway Committee members, said they were impatient with those explanations.

Chairman Dave Haugeberg complained that “every time we come to ODOT we’re told” that projects have to wait on acquiring funding, a process that can take a year or more.

“That’s the problem; that’s why we’re so unhappy and so concerned,” Haugeberg said.

He argued that ODOT should be pursuing the funding at the same time it is working on design and right of way acquisitions.

“You often hear that time is money. That is not the case here. Time is lives and injuries and economic impact, so that’s why we feel so strongly,” Haugeberg said.

Dundee City Councilor David Ford said the city is also concerned.

“That corner is a huge problem; it backs all the way up into Dundee. … the citizens are very concerned about this from a safety perspective, and so it’s just frustrating,” Ford said.

The roundabout has been under discussion since a group of area residents met with ODOT officials in the fall of 2018 to complain that the bypass had simply shifted traffic congestion out of Dundee and Newberg to the stretch of Highway 99W between Dundee and McDougall Corner and suggest solutions. In November of that year, ODOT representative Lisa Nell said the agency had considered the suggestions and narrowed them down to installing a roundabout at the intersection, installing a queue warning system, and restriping the Zipper Merge lanes.

The roundabout and queue warning system, Nell said, would need to undergo further study to determine whether the agency would pursue them.

Parkway Committee members complained on Thursday that ODOT is moving too slowly.

Denise Harvey, representative on the committee for the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, said she has been on the committee for nearly 11 years, and while the tribe is happy that Phase One of the bypass has been completed, the roundabout needs to be built for the safety of employees and tourists.

“This has been a dangerous intersection going at least back to 1992. This is about lives, this is about safety. This should have been addressed a long time ago,” McMinnville City Councilor Chris Chenoweth said.

ODOT spokesman David House told the News-Register that ODOT agrees with the committee that a roundabout is the probably the best solution, but that installing one is more complex than simply building it.

“To get started, we are preparing to study the traffic patterns and number of vehicles not just at the intersection with 18 and the McDougall corner, but at the entire corridor including, from southwest to northeast,” House said. That will include the intersections of McDougall Road and Stoller Road with Highway 99W, House said. “We need to know what affect the change will have to nearby intersections and traffic patterns. We typically prepare for those effects before making such a major change.”

He noted that the agency has obtained $7.5 million toward the project, but said that money “must be obligated within 12 months of each award.”

House said the agency is starting work now.

“We’re studying the area and don’t have details on what exactly we’ll do at each intersection, but options include adding left-turn lanes, realigning intersections, etc.,” House said. “We estimate construction will start in 2026 on these improvements. We also will start design and right-of-way acquisition for a roundabout at the 99W-18 intersection, but we need a design and cost estimate before we can seek funding,” he told the News-Register.

There’s no way to say exactly when construction on the roundabout might start, House said. “It’s impossible to estimate because there are too many unknowns — mostly depending on funding, and the work on the ground could take more than one construction season. The best guess is construction could start after the 2027 season.”