Note, however, the parsing: the CRC isn't specifically mentioned. That doesn't mean that OTC won't fund it.

Don't you mean 'under attack?' And in what way? Let's put a little more effort into our blog posts, why don't we? Otherwise I might unsubscribe....

Typo flames are lame....

No, it is "under attach" -- it's stapled to the back of some document. :-)

....Calling out 'flames' is more lame. I thought of it more as a suggestion, because I dig this blog... flaming is much different.

You can't dig this blog all that much if you threaten unsubscribing over a typo.

A private email message to the blogmeister would have accomplished the same thing.

Looks like "Pro-highway" and the governor are hauling out the big guns:

But, but, but ... it'll make jobs!!!

Looks like "Pro-highway" and the governor are hauling out the big guns:

But, but, but ... it'll make jobs!!!

Not only will it make them, but it might preserve some as well. If travel times to/from facilities in Portland get bad enough, why not relocate to Seattle, Oakland, Long Beach, or San Diego?

You know Dave H, I would argue that building a 12-lane freeway to Vancouver would actually take jobs away from Portland and Oregon in the long run.

Suppose that 100,000 housing units were built in Clark County as a direct result of the CRC. That means $billions long-term in tax revenue north of the river.

Yet if we were to keep the existing I-5 bridge as a strategic throttle on the 'Couv, those 100,000 units would likely be built in Oregon instead - under better land-use laws, with many likely to be built in dense, walkable Portland neighborhoods.

In other words, money for Oregon's tax pool and local businesses, instead of Clark Co developers and oil companies.

Yet if we were to keep the existing I-5 bridge as a strategic throttle on the 'Couv, those 100,000 units would likely be built in Oregon instead...

Why Oregon instead of the Bay Area, SoCal or Seattle? If they invest in infrastructure and we refuse to it seems less likely that the jobs/houses would just stay in Oregon. If the cost of doing business in the region gets too high it's not a matter of Vancouver vs Portland, it's region vs region then.

The houses probably aren't going anywhere...

at any rate, the business climate of a city is based on many things--cost of doing business is one of them, but certainly not the only one. The Bay Area has a significantly higher cost of doing business (particularly the SF peninsula), yet it thrives. A lot of that has to do with the presence of Stanford University (and to a lesser extent, Berkeley), and the resulting corpus of rich and connected folk down there. (A Stanford education ain't a bad deal, either--though it seems the primary benefit of a Stanford degree is as much a PEDIgree as it is a top-flight education).

One of the big drawbacks that Portland faces, is a noted lack of really rich folk who engage in philanthropy. When your leading local "philanthropist" is Merritt Paulson... that hurts.

At the present moment, I'm not sure that traffic congestion is a deal-breaker for Portland commerce. The roads and trains are certainly less crowded in the recession; but even when the local economy was humming along; Portlanders were far better off than commuters in places like LA, Seattle/Tacoma, or the Bay Area. Much of this is simply because we're significantly smaller than these other metropoli.