history Early freeway opposition Following the recommendation of New York's "master builder", Robert Moses, who envisioned a network of freeways for the Portland metropolitan area, the Oregon State Highway Department presented a freeway development plan in 1955 that proposed, among many others, the Stadium, Mount Hood, and Industrial freeways. The Stadium Freeway was added to the Interstate Highway System as Interstate 405 (I-405) and started construction in 1963; it necessitated condemnations that fostered one of the first grassroots opposition to freeways, which grew considerably as planning continued for the others. In 1971, the Portland–Vancouver Metropolitan Transportation Study (PVMTS), an agency charged with highway planning, published a "1990 Transportation Plan" for 54 new road and highway projects, which the Columbia Region Association of Governments (CRAG) adopted as its first regional transportation plan. That same year, an anti-freeway group called Sensible Transportation Options for People (STOP) was formed, while Neil Goldschmidt, a legal aid lawyer, ran a successful election campaign on freeway opposition to become a member of the Portland City Council and eventually, mayor. By 1972, local groups had filed lawsuits against the Oregon Transportation Commission to halt the Mount Hood and Industrial (by then called I-505) freeways. For I-505, a U.S. district court forced the Highway Department to conduct an appropriate environmental impact statement (EIS) after Northwest Portland residents alleged that National Environmental Policy Act guidelines were ignored. In 1973, a separate EIS prepared by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill determined that if built, the Mount Hood Freeway would only add more traffic to downtown Portland than the surface streets could handle. Then, on February 4, 1974, U.S. District Judge James M. Burns rejected the freeway plan after finding that the corridor selection process failed to follow the appropriate procedures. Multnomah County and the City of Portland withdrew their support for the Mount Hood Freeway later that year, and in 1978, the City of Portland did the same for I-505. Transitway planning and construction With highway revolts similarly occurring in cities across the country, the U.S. Congress passed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1973 containing a provision that allowed state governments for the first time to transfer federal funds from withdrawn interstate projects to other transportation options, including mass transit. The Mount Hood Freeway and I-505 were officially removed from the Interstate Highway System in 1976 and 1979, respectively, but planning for the use of around $200 million from the Mount