MAJOR MEDIA OUTLETS captured the main agreement from August 9’s landmark meeting of Columbia River Crossing’s (CRC) leaders: Yes, the new $3.6 billion I-5 bridge to Vancouver will now be 10 lanes wide, not 12.
But Monday’s upbeat discussion on the downsized bridge merely touched on the major problems that have recently emerged concerning the bridge’s design and decision-making process.
Tom Warne, the head of an expert panel that Oregon and Washington’s governors pulled together to review the controversial bridge, phoned into the meeting to deliver a stern report.
Though critics feared Warne’s committee would just rubberstamp the governor-backed bridge project, the review pointed out that the double-decker, open-web design for the CRC is untested anywhere else in the world. The experimental nature of the design will require three years of additional engineering to the estimated tune of $600,000.
“That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be built, we’re just saying it’s unique,” said Warne. “The bottom line is there’s more work that needs to be done in order to advance the design.”
Mayor Sam Adams followed up Warne’s comment with his own critique: The bridge design is ugly and not worth the $3.6 billion price tag.
Mayor Adams has the right to a little swagger. The downsize from 12 lanes to 10 was agreed upon only thanks to a $100,000 study his office commissioned this summer [“The Eight-Lane Option,” News, July 1] to figure out the impact of cutting two lanes, a question that $40.3 million in CRC planning and design work had never resolved.
That’s another one of the problems noted in the expert review report: “Decision-making appears cumbersome.”
Local groups critical of the current bridge plan are hardly applauding a reduction from 12 lanes to 10.
Feisty “Stop the CRC” activists outside the meeting chastised Adams for signing on to any plan that moves the bridge forward. Meanwhile, the coalition of big green groups aligned against the bridge plan issued a harsh letter calling for more study of alternative designs. The letter, from Environment Oregon, the Bicycle Transportation Alliance (BTA), and Coalition for a Livable Future, among others, said the bridge’s big budget would “lock up the state, federal, and other transportation funding sources for the next decade” and eventually increase greenhouse gas emissions.
“We clearly shouldn’t all just be singing ‘Kumbaya’ around a 10-lane bridge,” says BTA advocate Gerik Kransky.
did you think for once about our apples and grain that stopped by the drawbridge and the millions of dollars losses because of that quint antique built by our great grand fathers 100 years ago, for horse and carriage. Your refusal in the city of Portland to understand this is about the very life’s blood of our five point port system that can make us here competitive for all our trade base jobs. So city slickers before you get all high and mighty on you wheat germ fueled bicycle, know this, It will cost millions of dollars more, to everyone, to continue with the freeway failure that exists in the I-5 system as it passes through the city of Portland. Face the facts of the Portland “freeway failure”, or the farmer’s truck driver is gonna slap the metaphorical hippy out of you.
the bridge is only congested going south between 7 and 9am and heading north from 3 to 6pm.
so as long as farmers dont have to deliver them apples at that precise time…
you misspelled intelligence but since this is blogtown im gonna assume you did it intentionally.
congrats! have a video: http://vimeo.com/5419575
I have waited for Bridge Maintenance and/or Bridge Lifts twice in the past month, and neither one of them was between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. or 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Drawbridges date back at least 4000 years: their usage has declined over time because they have moving parts that wear out and require a great deal more engineering and maintenance. It’s time to move on with a new bridge that has the additional capacity that will be required over the next 100 years. Failing that, please begin thinking where you would like to locate the third interstate bridge in the Metro Portland/Vancouver area: it will be required in the next 15-20 years.