FOR THE PAST several years, the Columbia River Crossing (CRC) might as well have arced darkly over Hayden Island.
Assumptions about the Interstate 5 bridge and highway project have played into plans for how the island builds out. They’ve figured into residents’ hopes for easier access to the rest of the city. And, crucially, they’ve anchored a proposal for a controversial new marine terminal the Port of Portland wants to build in a sensitive ecological area along the Columbia River.
But the CRC does not yet stretch over Hayden Island, and likely never will—it was declared dead by political leaders after an acrimonious Washington State Senate vote on June 29. Now, city planning officials and folks on both sides of the marine terminal are trying to parse out what the CRC’s demise might mean.
“Every assumption for the last two years has been: There will be a CRC,” André Baugh, chair of the Portland Planning and Sustainability Commission, told the Mercury on Monday, July 1. “Now it becomes a major focus as to whether the plan can move forward.”
The bridge’s death is a game changer for the commission, which has wrestled with logistics of a new terminal for years. It’s also, perhaps, well timed.
Baugh’s group is expected to issue its formal recommendation on annexing 800 undeveloped acres of West Hayden Island on Tuesday, July 9. That annexation, if Portland City Council approves it, would clear the way for a new 300-acre Port of Portland terminal. With plans for the CRC dashed before it votes, the planning commission can weigh a more realistic view of how the project will look without it.
The CRC’s new, efficient interchanges were expected to help connect Hayden Island residents besieged by traffic jams on the Interstate Bridge. New freeway ramps also would ease whatever truck traffic the new terminal would cause. In the past, planners had discussed building a bridge from West Hayden Island to Marine Drive to handle traffic—a project that would add millions to the Port’s construction costs. But studies found that was unnecessary so long as the CRC went up.
“The only reasonable conclusion that the city can now reach is that the studies underpinning this decision, as well as the final draft plan currently up for adoption on July 9, have been rendered fatally obsolete,” Bob Sallinger, conservation director at the Audubon Society of Portland and a long-time foe of the new terminal, wrote to the planning commission on Tuesday, July 2.
That’s not the Port of Portland’s take.
“It has little to no impact,” says Susie Lahsene, the Port of Portland’s transportation and land-use policy manager. The proposed terminal, she says, relies on trains and ships. “The amount of traffic associated with the West Hayden Island improvement is minuscule.”
City hall isn’t making any big statements yet. Mayor Charlie Hales, though, promised during his State of the City address in April that Hayden Island’s fate would be determined, in part, by the CRC.
“We think it’s dead dead, not zombie dead,” Dana Haynes, Hales’ spokesman, said of the bridge. “The mayor wants to convene the right people to figure out what the next steps are.”
If the various plans for Hayden Island proceed, those steps will have to involve something new over the Columbia River.
“There needs to be additional connectivity on the island for a lot of things to work,” says Chris Smith, planning commissioner and local transportation activist. “If [the CRC] is truly dead, then how quickly are we going to be having a conversation about what we should be doing with the crossing?”
Listen boys & girls, we don’t mind slanted reports when they are factual. Quote: “The CRC’s new ‘efficient interchanges’ were expected to help connect Hayden Island residents besieged by traffic jams on the Interstate Bridge,” is FALSE in too many ways. 1) The interchanges are NOT, I repeat, NOT EFFICIENT according to many if not most engineering perspectives that recommend
best construction and/or more practical options.
All 6 or 7 Hayden Island interchange ramps are “highly inefficient” in many ways.
Here is YOUR duuh moment, adolescents. Think about it. Picture downhill traffic at ‘T’ stops, backed up waiting while cross-traffic also stops at left entrance ramps. And pedestrian crossing? forgetabowtit. Bad engineering. Blame Wsdot because ODOT finished
Concept #1 in 2010, three years ago. What was Concept #1 you ask?
How might NO RAMPS to from or over at I-5 sound?
Landscape I-5 or build 7 overhead-concrete ramps, noise, fumes, traffic, accident?
The double-deck bridge DECISION too has Wsdot to blame, not Odot.
In Oregon, PoP dropped the ball on at least 4 big decisions, including these bigger but equally absurd mistakes in judgement.
Rail spurs onto Hayden “TIE-UP” this MAIN RR river crossing bridge. Holy cow!
BNSF is mismanaged. Other railroad companies use the crossing. They, no doubt, object. BNSF Nort Portland “stub-line” and vast parking lot could use the oval track rail, better drainage and water treatment, etc.
PoP Bill Wyatt. Whatever you’re smoking, we want no part of it.
Amazing but not surprising to once again see the Port of Portland blowing off the concerns of the community. They should go back and read the multiple studies that were produced for the West Hayden Island Process, all of which assume that the CRC will be built as per plans in 2011.
These studies include the PBOT Transportation Analysis in which the City concluded the following:
“Removal of or significant alterations to the current CRC project parameters would have a residual effect on all planning models undertaken by PBOT including modeling assumptions for WHI. Any significant changes to the CRC would require PBOT to reassess their models for WHI, and could result in different conclusions.”
It also includes the Cost/ Benefit Analysis which concluded the following:
“This results depends on the assumption that the Columbia River Crossing (CRC) and Hayden Island Plan will be implemented as currently envisioned. To the extent that the on island traffic improvements in the CRC and Hayden Island Plan do not happen as assumed in the City’s traffic analysis, it will increase the probability that port related traffic would generate negative traffic impacts. These impacts could include increased congestion on EHI roadways, increased delays and travel times, and increased traffic accidents. “
and…
“We assume that both the CRC and Hayden Island Plan will happen as currently described. To the extent that neither or both of these changes do not happen, the consequences wouldmostly affect the results of our analysis of Q of L effects of the proposed development on EHI. We describe these consequences in our description of the effects of the development on Q of L in EHI.”
It also included the Public Health Analysis which concluded the following:
“The biggest challenge to predicting the future traffic safety implications on Hayden Island is uncertainty about the Columbia River Crossing project.”
and…
“Traffic congestion relief from CRC project is the biggest factor in the difference between
the 2005 base and either 2035 scenario for both GHG and VMT.”
But hey, the Port has never shown for a second that it gives a damn about the community or the environment. It has always been about empire building so why should that change now?
Develop it.
The stark contrast between reasonable rational analytical informative dicussion and let’s say an inarticulate lazy ass curt dismissal of important concerns, frank’s “develop it” frankly sucks. Salinger, don’t leave out the rail operation falacy. Big Business boys don’t care about trailer park people nor nature. The two ‘sharp’ spurs and oval track operations will “restrict” BNSF crossing for all users, even BNSF. Citizens object degradation of Amtrak service. Business-related freight rail should object to restrictions and predictable delays on those operations. If it’s purely a business concern, the decision to annex is a loser for everyone, except Asian auto import, an early adopter of giant Panamax Class, may their ship sink, loaded.