Bridge to Disaster

A man driving a gray Toyota pickup truck seems frantic; veering in
and out of lanes trying to pass other traffic on the Interstate Bridge.
His furtive moves don’t do him much good—moments later, as we
crest the green steel bridge headed south into Portland, we’re greeted
with flickering brake lights. Traffic slows to a plodding 20 miles an
hour. We’ve stumbled into the morning congestion, a daily feature of
the Vancouver-to-Portland commute.

Fortunately, it’s a commute I never have to make. I drove to
Vancouver on a recent morning to guide my Oregon-plated car into the
current of vehicles bearing Washington plates purely as an experiment.
I spent twice as much time in the southbound lanes trying to return to
Portland as I had in the northbound lanes venturing into Vancouver. My
blood pressure rose. I cursed OPB’s April Baer for reminding me about
the traffic I was clearly stuck in.

Like me that day, the vast majority of people driving across the
bridge each morning—and back across each evening—are coming
from Vancouver. According to 2005 numbers, 64 percent of people
crossing the bridge southbound hopped onto I-5 via one of Vancouver’s
on ramps. Northbound, 60 percent of vehicles jump off the freeway into
Vancouver. Unsurprisingly, Vancouver—with its cheaper real
estate—is functioning as a bedroom community to Portland. And
unsurprisingly, those commuters would like an easier commute into
Portland.

One answer may be on the way, in the form of a $4.2 billion, 12-lane
replacement bridge, coupled with light rail or bus rapid transit, and
smoother on and off ramps in the five miles surrounding the bridge.
Traffic engineers say the new bridge across the Columbia
River—AKA the Columbia River Crossing—will make travel
between the two states easier, safer, and faster.

It’s the biggest public works project in our region’s history, it’s
been years in the making, and local government bodies are poised to
make final decisions on the project in the next few months. The problem
is, even if we build one of the proposed new bridges, traffic is still
going to increase from today’s levels. And in an era of climate
change—when a state task force has recommended drastically
cutting greenhouse gas emissions to 75 percent below 1990
levels—increasing lanes and thereby increasing commuter traffic
is simply unacceptable.

A Recipe for Disaster

Nearly everyone agrees that the bridge and the five miles of freeway
surrounding it are trouble spots. Columbia River Crossing graphs show
that current collision rates are proportional to traffic volumes, but
“appear to increase two-fold” during peak congestion. Short entrance
and exit lanes give drivers little room to maneuver into a through
lane. The bridge lifts about once a day to allow river traffic to pass
underneath, and “three to four times more collisions occur” on the
bridge during a lift, when traffic is stopped. (The bridge has the only
red light on I-5 between Mexico and Canada, too.) Transit options are
limited, carrying an average of only 3,475 people across the bridge
each day. Clearly, the crossing could be improved.

In 2001, Oregon and Washington agreed. The “Transportation and
Trade” partnership recommended coming up with solutions to congestion
in three spots, including the bridge over the Columbia.

In 2005, the Columbia River Crossing project was born. By last
spring, the 39-member Columbia River Crossing (CRC) task force narrowed
down the possible solutions to five that address the area’s problems:
“congestion, dangerous travel conditions, and travel demand that
exceeds capacity,” according to a CRC summary. The options include both
a 10-to 12-lane replacement bridge and a four-to five-lane supplemental
bridge that would augment the existing span, which would be downsized
to four lanes. Both of those options are being studied twice: once with
light rail, and once with bus rapid transit. The fifth option is a “no
build” option that compares the alternatives to doing nothing.

A Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) analyzing those five
options will be released sometime this month. From there, the public
can weigh in for 60 days, and the local jurisdictions—including
the City of Portland and Metro—will vote on the “locally
preferred alternative” chosen by the CRC task force. Once the agencies
agree on an alternative, the project will be submitted for federal
funding, with the goal of starting construction in 2010.

The DEIS isn’t out yet, but there’s already data on the five
alternatives—and the numbers don’t look too good.

Right now, 134,000 vehicles cross the bridge in a given day.

If we do nothing—absolutely nothing—that traffic is
going to increase thanks to growth in the region, causing many more
hours of congestion. By 2030, CRC staff estimate, 184,000 vehicles will
use the I-5 bridges daily, a 34 percent increase from today’s levels,
and they’ll be stuck in eight hours of northbound congestion, and seven
hours of southbound congestion. In other words, that section of freeway
will be clogged up just about all day.

But if a replacement bridge is built, paired with high-capacity
transit like light rail, and tolled, traffic in 2030 will be only
178,000 vehicles a day. That’s a decrease, project staffers argue, if
you compare it to 2030 traffic without a new bridge, transit, and
tolls. Indeed, according to their math, the $4.2 billion project gives
us a three percent reduction in traffic—compared with sitting
around and doing nothing.

But according to the project staff’s own numbers, it’s light rail
and tolls that has the biggest impact on the traffic in 2030, reducing
it by a whopping 20 percent. CRC staff compared a new bridge with
transit and tolls to a new bridge without transit and tolls. Without
the alternatives and fees, roughly 225,000 vehicles would use the
bridges in 2030. With them, 2030 traffic is cut by one-fifth—to
the 178,000 figure.

The problem is, no one has bothered to study what happens if we do
the things that deter people from crossing the bridge in the first
place. Ideas that would give commuters an alternative, but don’t make
driving an easier choice. In other words, could we reduce traffic by 20
percent today by building light rail to Vancouver, and tolling the
bridge now, without spending billions of dollars on a new, bigger
bridge? Instead of giving Vancouver drivers a continued excuse to drive
their single-occupancy vehicle into Oregon every day, why not give them
reasons to leave the car at home?

But that option’s not on the table. What the hell are we
thinking?

Climate Change Is Coming

According to the final report of Governor Ted Kulongoski’s Climate
Change Integration Group (CCIG), released in January, Oregon needs to
“act now” to address the threat of global warming.

If we don’t, the prognosis is grim.

“A broad scientific consensus tells us that climate change is
accelerating, and that it is happening at a speed that was
unanticipated even recently,” the CCIG report says. “It is urgent that
we act now, both to reduce the cause of this earth-transforming crisis
by rapidly driving toward a low-carbon economy, and to begin to prepare
for and adapt to the changes that mitigation cannot prevent.”

The CCIG report doesn’t mince words in describing Oregon’s future,
if we don’t make drastic changes. “Sea-level rise is likely to erode
beaches, flood low-lying areas, and increase the damage during storm
surges. Changes in average growing season temperature will change the
types of wine varietals that may be grown in Oregon, making some areas
suitable for wine growing that presently only support less valuable
crops, while making some high value wine grapes such as pinot noir more
difficult to grow. Changes in climate will affect public health, as
patterns of communicable diseases and disease vectors in Oregon change;
chronic disease risk factors like ambient pollen concentrations, the
prevalence of smoke from forest fires and physical activity patterns
are altered; and economic changes threaten communities and put some
Oregonians at risk for family violence and suicide.” In other words,
we’re all going to die (and drink bad wine in the process).

Thankfully, the CCIG came up with a plan. It’s not an easy one,
however. According to the group’s calculations, “we must reduce
emissions by 42 percent from forecasted business-as-usual levels.”

The “Oregon Strategy”—a 2004 report recommending greenhouse
gas reductions, which the state legislature adopted last
year—dictated a similarly tough goal: Emissions need to drop
significantly, to at least 75 percent below 1990 levels, by 2050.
Considering that we’re currently pumping out emissions at a level
that’s 22 percent higher than 1990 levels—and we’re expecting
considerable population growth in the near future—we’ve got a lot
of work to do.

According to the Oregon Department of Energy, transportation is the
single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Oregon, accounting
for 34 percent of emissions.

Smartly, the CCIG report devotes an entire chapter to transportation
and land-use recommendations, urging the state to reduce “vehicle miles
traveled.” According to the report, “it is the area in which the state
can have the most influence.” Moreover, “reducing [vehicle miles
traveled] is simply the single most effective way to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions.”

Though the report doesn’t specifically address the CRC project, the
general recommendations caution against expanding
infrastructure—which is exactly what the CRC project, which began
before either report was issued, is poised to do.

“Traditionally, improvements in transportation systems have focused
on supply, increasing capacity to meet travelers’ needs. However, new
infrastructure is expensive and may induce demand, locking governments
into a spending cycle of adding increasingly more capacity as more
drivers take advantage of new facilities.”

Opposition Mounts

Last October, Sightline, an environmental think-tank based in
Seattle and focused on the Northwest, released a study addressing
highway expansions’ impact on emissions. Not surprisingly, Sightline
found that building more roads increases greenhouse gas emissions, even
when improved fuel efficiency of future vehicles is taken into account,
and even if the highway expansion project initially relieves congestion
(cars that aren’t idling in stop-and-go traffic pollute less).

“Sightline assumes that rush-hour traffic will flow more freely
after new lanes are opened, and that congestion relief will raise the
effective fuel efficiency of vehicles on the roadway,” wrote
Sightline’s Clark Williams-Derry. “However, consistent with academic
findings and real-world experience, we also assume that new highway
capacity in a metropolitan area will gradually be filled by new trips,
and that congestion and stop-and-go driving will gradually increase to
approximately the same level experienced prior to the highway
expansion.”

Applying that logic to the CRC project—which, project staffers
say, is bigger than the current bridge thanks to auxiliary lanes that
allow for smoother entrances and exits—Williams-Derry points out
the potential long-term effects of a bigger bridge. “You’re increasing
the capacity of the corridor. The end result is that there’s going to
be more space in the corridor and in that facility for more cars. Over
the long haul, any cars that get diverted from the main freeway lanes
into the auxiliary lanes, that’s going to free up more space for
long-distance traffic on the Columbia River Crossing.”

And according to Sightline, “Adding one mile of new highway lane
will increase CO2 emissions by more than 100,000 tons over 50 years.”
To put that in context, the average US citizen is currently responsible
for 20 tons of CO emissions each year.

Groups like Sightline aren’t the only ones raising alarm bells about
building more roads. Locally, critics of the big bridge are emerging as
the CRC project nears a decision-making point.

Joe Cortright, an economist with Impresa Consulting in Portland,
released an economic analysis of the CRC project on February 13. In it,
he compared the cost of the bridge project to “80 OHSU aerial trams,”
which “works out to nearly $2,000 per capita from each of the region’s
two million residents.”

He picks apart the CRC’s own numbers, and concludes that the bridge
isn’t going to solve any traffic problems. Instead, it will exacerbate
congestion: “Growth in trips across the Columbia will be 70 percent
greater with the bridge than if we don’t build the bridge… The
presence of larger transportation facilities encourages people to take
trips they would otherwise avoid, or re-route.”

And that traffic will spill over into the rest of the transportation
system, Cortright argues. (Watch out, North and Northeast Portland.)
“Presumably, with four or five travel lanes in each direction, there
will be no congestion on the bridge. But what about the rest of the
traffic system? How do they manage this volume without congestion on
the rest of I-5? How do I-5 and North Portland road networks handle the
additional 13,900 peak hour trips that will be generated by the new
bridge?” Cortright asks.

The CRC’s Transportation Planning/Traffic Engineering Team, along
with project finance specialists, issued a March 3 memo reviewing
Cortright’s analysis. The CRC staffers called Cortright’s analysis
“incorrect,” because, for example, he uses numbers from a preliminary
2002 study.

Cortright responds: “I used the newest data I could find on their
website when I put it together. They’ve come up with some other
numbers. It doesn’t lead me to believe that what I wrote was wrong,” he
says. “What we know is—and what their data shows—that
bridges cause more traffic, and tolls reduce it. It you want to reduce
traffic, tolls and transit are the way to do it.”

The Coalition for a Livable Future (CLF)—a group of over 90
organizations working for “healthy and sustainable communities” in our
region—is pushing for a “climate smart” Columbia River Crossing.
The current proposals, according to the CLF, represent an “outdated
freeway expansion project that will increase global warming pollution,
harm people’s health, and undermine our region’s vision of a
sustainable economy.”

Instead, the CLF wants to see a project that “reduces the growth in
driving,” according to Co-Director Jill Fuglister, who’s also a member
of the CRC task force. They recently adopted a “Climate Smart”
resolution that says “we only support a Columbia River Crossing Project
that will reduce the growth of driving in the future.”

More Lanes, More Problems

Fortunately, the six local agencies involved in the project on both
sides of the river—on this side, that’s the City of Portland,
Metro, and TriMet—have veto power over the project (Metro votes
in April, and Portland’s city council votes in May on the preferred
alternative). CLF members are hoping to convince one agency to put a
stop to the big bridge plan.

As that battle shapes up, local political leaders are gathering
information, and beginning to take sides. At the City of Portland,
Transportation Commissioner Sam Adams “really wants to hear what the
community has to say on it,” says his chief of staff. Mayor Tom Potter,
according to a spokesperson, “has serious questions about how it’s got
to this point,” but doesn’t believe it would be a good idea “to pull
back” at this time. Commissioner Dan Saltzman hasn’t taken a position
yet, and Commissioner Erik Sten will likely have left office by the
time the issue hits the city council.

Commissioner Randy Leonard says his position has been consistent: “I
would be generally supportive of the project on the condition that it
has light rail, pedestrian and bike lanes.”

At Metro, Councilor Robert Liberty has “very serious reservations
about the project. It shows weaknesses in how we make decisions about
transportation. It’s a failure in creativity in how to define and
address the problem.”

He’d prefer to start by tolling, and then build the bike and
pedestrian plus transit connection as a second phase.

So far, Liberty is the most outspoken of local leaders, but he says
several of his colleagues on the Metro council— which will
also consider the project—are “raising concerns.”

It’s unclear, however, if Liberty’s strong views will trickle over
to the City of Portland. “There’s something basically wrong with the
idea that the approach to Portland, which is trying to brand itself as
a leader in sustainability, is a 12-lane bridge. How we spend our money
says a lot about what kind of place we are, and I think we can do a lot
better than this.”