IT’S NO SECRET that Mayor Sam Adams is upset about the Columbia River Crossing (CRC) project. Since September 2009, Adams has been a vocal critic of the plan to replace the six-lane I-5 bridge to Vancouver with a 10- or 12-lane $3.6 billion bridge. Adams, among other critics, wants a smaller, “smarter” bridge that will lead to less traffic and car travel—not more.
But Adams’ office claims they were stonewalled by CRC staff, who are rolling forward with the big bridge plan at the direction of Oregon and Washington’s governors. So with city money, Adams sidestepped the CRC staff over the past three months, hiring his own freeway experts to look into the effect of slicing lanes from the bridge.
The three-month study cost the city $100,000. But Adams’ office says the study is worth the cost because the independent analysis was able to answer questions critics have been asking for years.
The consultants’ big finding: A 10-lane bridge will meet the region’s needs almost just as well as a 12-lane bridge, but cost $50 million less.
The number of lanes on the CRC has been a central controversy surrounding the bridge. The joint Oregon and Washington project has so far spent $40.3 million in public funds on consultants and PR staff [“Riding the Gravy Train,” News, March 11] to design and pitch the current plan to replace the six-lane span with a 12-lane bridge initially striped for 10 lanes. Environmental advocates want the states to build the smallest bridge possible, pushing for either six lanes or eight lanes.
“We kept asking questions about the size of the bridge and just kept getting the answer back, ‘No, that won’t work,'” says Mayor Adams’ transportation policy director, Catherine Ciarlo. “Now we can wrestle with what the answers actually look like.”
CRC spokeswoman Carley Francis welcomed the study, saying she was surprised Adams felt stonewalled and that the CRC welcomes reviews of its work.
A representative of consultant group URS presented the city study at a meeting of the bigwig Project Sponsors Council (of which Mayor Adams is a member) on Friday, June 25.
The only difference between a 10-lane bridge and 12-lane bridge, the study showed, was $50 million in savings and an additional half hour of traffic congestion.
But building an eight-lane span would be a different story, requiring a significant reduction in the number of daily car commuters. Only three percent of current bridge crossers use transit or carpool, and to reach the CRC’s traffic goals with an eight-lane bridge, the study revealed, 37 percent of commuters would have to use transit, carpool, or telecommute. Increasing rush-hour tolls on the bridge from $2 to $3 could cut 15 percent of that traffic.
The response from the local leaders on the Project Sponsors Council was mostly skeptical.
“Charging more for less isn’t creating better cost benefit for the people who are paying it,” summed up Clark County Commissioner Steve Stuart.
The mayor kept quiet during the presentation of the eight-lane option, but leapt on Washington State Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond when she described tolling and transit incentives as “artificial constraints” on commuters.
“I’m trying to move my city further in the direction of sustainability and it’s not helpful to have you explain to people across the river that tools other than building freeway lanes is artificially constraining,” said Adams.
Hammond hit back that expecting 37 percent of the 134,000 vehicles crossing the bridge daily to switch to transit or carpooling is unrealistic. “I can’t see that future because I don’t see one existing today,” said Hammond.
Another Project Sponsors Council member, David Bragdon, who has also been critical of the bridge plan, said the eight-lane plan seemed “really ambitious.” But the study itself, he said, was a breath of fresh air.
“We’re finally getting some answers, after three years of asking.”
I don’t understand how the governors of these two states can even propose spending $3.6 billion on something we don’t need when the education budget is suffering so horribly. The bridge works now even though it costs people time in daily congestion. I suspect the vast majority of those cars are single passenger, so maybe a toll would incentivize car pooling like happened in the Bay Area when they upped the Bay Bridge toll. There are solutions here outside of the government just spending money (such as carpooling) which makes them hard to enact. There’s a big train bridge a stones throw from the CRC that is empty the majority of the day that could carry a whole lot of commuter train traffic, but we’re not hearing about that.
AAAHHH. A voice of reason crying out in the wilderness that is the CRC. The feds don’t require light rail specifically, they just require rapid transit. Also, I understand that the RR bridge is due to be re-built, a perfect time to incorporate commuter rail.
congestion is pollution. if we build a smaller bridge now we will need to tear it down and build a larger bridge in the near future. how is that “environmental” or “sustainable”. just build the damn bridge. rapid transit would be nice too.
“Hammond hit back that expecting 37 percent of the 134,000 vehicles crossing the bridge daily to switch to transit or carpooling is unrealistic. “I can’t see that future because I don’t see one existing today,” said Hammond.”
I see something existing today: look at commute times in L.A. versus NYC. The latter has something called public transportation, which the Portland region also has! We need to integrate the smartest principles possible, or else we’ll turn into a sprawled otherworld like southern California.
The congestion is largely caused by bridge lifts. 90% of the need for bridge lifts could have been eliminated while also fixing the seismic problems on the rail bridge (which incidently are far more serious than those on the I-5 bridge) all for less than the amount of money we have wasted planning a 12 lane CRC that we can not afford to build and do not need. Fix the freight side of this by fixing the rail bridge and moving the part that boats go under so that it is at the same end of the bridge as the current I5 bridge, the rest of the problem can be solved with better mass transit links between washington and oregon and congestion tolling.
saving $50mil on a $3.6BIL. project=a burger costing $7.50 instead of $7.60…..
37% of 134k(lets assume for the sake of argument that 100k of them are single passenger commuters)? can light rail and bus even handle an EXTRA 35-40k riders per day?
so we have a bottle neck issue with freight and transportion, and two ailing and failing bridges? wouldn’t the prudent thing be to build ONE bridge to accommodate all needs, with room to grow volume wise? seriously, I am all for mass transit for who it works for, and bicycling when that works, but in the interest of intellectual honesty we need to face the fact that cars are not going away….EVER! they may be all electric in our lifetime but they will exist none the less.
I am so impressed that Sam has figured out how to save $50 million. I would look at the situation from a slightly different view – for a mere 1.38% of the total cost of the CRC, we can add two more lanes! Opponents of the 12-lane design like to compare it to the existing 6-lane bridge, claiming overkill, when in fact of the 12 planned lanes, 6 are merging off or on-ramps. The current bridge is actually composed of 6 thru lanes and 2 merge off – on ramps, so the comparison should be the existing 8-lane bridge versus paying $3.55 billion for a new 8-lane bridge (after the $50 million Sammy boy would save us). Great idea mayor!
Today, more and more citizens are wishing they had signed the recall.
Part of being a civic leader is building infrastructure for the future. Pretending that twenty years from now a million people are going to use bikes to meet their daily needs isn’t leadership. It’s hallucinatory.
Neglecting things your city actually needs in order to feed the fantasies of a delusional elite of wanna-be urban planners is not leadership. We need officials at the city and Metro to deal with reality, not Sim City.
“I can’t see that future because I don’t see one existing today,”
That’s why it’s called the future.
@Blabby
Your idea of transportation planning is hallucinatory. If everyone took your advice this place would be nothing but a mess of freeways.
This sounds like a piss fest where the top dog wins and dominates all the other dogs in the neighborhood. Get back in your crate and play with your chew toy, Sam. You’re going to hurt someone with that nasty growl.
I cannot believe in 2010 we are proposing building another spaghetti Hwy. Anyone for this project go look at the drawings. Its a massive abomination of concrete sprawl that does nothing but move the traffic to the Rose Garden area while enabling cheaper long commuters.