Passing Measure 120 would minimize transportation, transit cuts across Oregon
By Senator Khanh Pham
Today, I am writing to urge Portland for All’s members to vote YES on Measure 120 to approve the stop-gap band-aid budget bill to cover gaping holes in the budgets of Oregon’s entire transportation system.
As a member of the legislature’s Transportation Committee since 2022, I’m entering my fourth year of sitting through committee meetings filled with testimony from policymakers and local leaders sounding the alarm about our crumbling transportation system.
The challenges facing our transportation system are truly daunting. Decades of disinvestment in the basic maintenance and preservation of our state’s roads, bridges, and transit systems have led us to a crisis. We’ve all seen the footage of the coastal highways wiped out by storms this winter. Urban and rural transit agencies face existential service cuts–impacting everyone from veterans to seniors to workers. Oregon has the fourth-highest rate of traffic fatalities on rural roads, over twice the national average.
Voting yes on Measure 120 is Oregon’s opportunity to invest responsibly in maintaining and protecting the infrastructure our communities need so that our roads and bridges can continue to help Oregon get where they need to go. We all take for granted that the mountain passes will be plowed after a snowstorm, the coastal highway cleared after the landslide, and the bus taking our neighbor to the medical appointment will continue to show up. Without providing adequate funding, it will be less certain that ODOT will have the crews and capacity necessary to keep our state moving.
Measure 120 doesn’t just invest in our state roads - it also provides critical funding urgently needed to maintain and improve our county roads and city streets as well. A yes vote would provide millions of dollars to the City of Portland to shore up PBOT’s ability to maintain existing streets, pave potholes, build sidewalks, and make our communities safer.
And perhaps most important to me, a Yes vote on Measure 120 would also provide immediate funding that could help prevent the worst of TriMet’s proposed service cuts. For so many Portlanders, our bus and light rail system is a lifeline, providing critical, affordable, and reliable access to education, jobs, and health care. We simply cannot afford to continue slashing transit service, and Measure 120 would help minimize cuts to both TriMet and the other transit agencies across the state.
To be clear, whatever happens with this ballot measure, there will be more work to do to provide Oregon with a multimodal transportation system that meets the needs of the 21st century. My colleagues and I must return to Salem next year prepared to have difficult conversations about how to reform ODOT to make the agency more accountable and transparent, and how to find the necessary sustainable funding solution to tackle our aging roads and bridges. I’m eager to work with colleagues across the state to fully restore and expand Safe Routes to School programs and transit access, to build out statewide passenger rail, and to help reform ODOT to be more climate-friendly and fiscally responsible. But in the meantime, our agencies are struggling, and we desperately need to approve this funding to ensure our roads and bridges can withstand the upcoming wildfire season and next winter’s storms before we adjourn in 2027 for the following long session.
I always like to say that our transportation system is what connects Oregonians to each other - and in that vein, it is irresponsible and financially reckless to let our roads and bridges and transit systems continue to atrophy, leading to further disconnection and isolation.
Please join me in voting YES on Measure 120.
Senator Khanh Pham represents District 23, in outer Southeast and North Portland, and is the Chair of the Oregon Legislature's Joint Committee on Transportation Oversight.
