I've read up on the federal regulations that apply to our rivers and bridges, as well as the Multnomah county guidelines for drawbridges. I understand that bridge lifts are by-an-large restricted to non-rush hour times during the 5-day work week. That said, I cannot find where boaters are required to pay fees or tolls to permit bridge lifts.

I find it absurd that some random guy on a sailboat gets free reign of the river on a Sunday afternoon, requiring multiple bridge lifts, each one of them impeding vehicle and/or pedestrian traffic for nearly 20 minutes. I can't even park in the city for free anymore, and this jackass on his sailboat gets to roll on without a toll or anything.

Any input on this? Am I wrong and they do have to pay? My aim isn't necessarily to penalize a person - but tbh maybe I'm a bit salty about the fact that the city does everything it can to monetize every damn service it offers, nothing comes for free anymore, and yeah....it pisses me off that someone with a boat is allowed to fuck up traffic for 20 minutes like it aint no thing. Seems like people have been debating about this for a while in Seattle as well...