Oregon Highway Plan Update

ODOT has begun a comprehensive update to the Oregon Highway Plan. The new plan will not just be about highways, but rather about all that happens on roads, how the modes interact, and how to prioritize investments and make decisions about the full system.

The new plan will help implement the goals and strategies of the 2023 Oregon Transportation Plan as they apply to the road system. Expect a user-focused plan with an emphasis on climate, equity and safety, and an effort to meet requests to link road performance expectations with their function, land use context and primary users.

There will be a variety of opportunities to participate and help make sure the new Oregon Highway Plan reflects your community's priorities, too. The update project is just beginning. To follow the project, you can sign up for email updates and project announcements at the link on the right.

The Oregon Highway Plan has been amended many times, but we have not updated it since it was adopted in 1999. The Oregon Highway Plan is now the oldest of the statewide transportation plans. It has good ideas and was ahead of its time. It helped set the state on the path to a multimodal system considering sustainability, fairness, and relationships to land use. However, the current plan does not reflect new priorities that have emerged over the last 25 years. For example, the plan does not mention climate change, equity is not a clear focus, and its mobility policy is too narrow. The new Oregon Highway Plan will seek to address these issues.

The Oregon Highway Plan lays out priorities and frameworks for decisions about what to invest in and where to improve our roads for all modes of travel. ODOT uses it as a guide for investing and managing the highway system. Cities and counties look at the plan's goals and policies when they update their local transportation plans and make their decisions about investments. Engineers and planners use it when they are figuring out how its guidance and targets apply to their local projects and priorities.

All of this means the plan will help shape how your community continues to develop its transportation system.

Public participation throughout the project will be important to help make sure the new Oregon Highway Plan reflects people in Oregon's needs and community priorities across our state. Watch these stories we collected for the 2023 Oregon Transportation Plan update to see how different people are affected by our transportation system.

We started by looking at recent plans and policies, developing data, and developing memos that will inform some basic parts of the plan, such as existing conditions and opportunities and challenges. We will talk to many people to develop the updated plan; the result must serve the whole state for up to 25 years.

The Oregon Highway Plan is a technical reference for transportation professionals, so expect there to be knowledgeable topic work groups to flesh out some aspects of the plan.

Public involvement began with ODOT staff conducting selected interviews and talking to certain groups to hear about what they need from the new plan. As we draft ideas for the plan, expect more opportunities to weigh in and provide input.

We'll post updates to this webpage and share them via email updates.

Below is the anticipated general timeline for developing the new Oregon Highway Plan. However, tasks may speed up, slow down, or pause to meet other agency needs.