Chris,

There is an "unbridgeable gap" between opinion in Portland and that in Vancouver. The vast majority of people in Vancouver think that Max is "Loot Rail" and believe that it will be used by criminals to invade their homes. They're lunatics, but they vote.

On the other hand, the sentiment in Portland is "no bridge unless it has Light Rail".

But there serious technical objections to bringing light rail to Vancouver as currently planned. There is insufficient capacity on the Steel Bridge for the number of trains necessary to haul the number of people required to justify a 3/4 billion dollar investment, and the MOuSe goes just one mile and ends two blocks short of Clark College.

There is insufficient money to build even the ten lane bridge to which I gather you object without tolling, and Vancouver just elected a "no tolls" mayor, so you can see the sentiment.

Personally, I think that the elected leaders who serve on the Columbia River Crossing Council are whistling past the graveyard. There will be no agreement on funding and Senator Murray will not be able to plug the gap.

If we could all agree on "half a loaf" by just adding a four lane supplemental bridge for southbound traffic and restriping the existing bridges to two lanes and a small breakdown lane each northbound, forget the interchange rationalizations, and say the added lane must go only between SR14/downtown Vancouver and Marine Drive, we would have something that we can afford and matches the capacity of the freeways to the north and south of it. One lane each way would be HOV in the peak direction at the peak hour.

If car fever seizes Oregon sometime in the future and ODOT widens I-5 on the Oregon side, the old bridges can be replaced with a new bridge having six lanes including a separated HOV section and the periodic HOV lanes would become general traffic all the time.

IMO, the problem with the project is it's been a good 4 years (at least), and the overall region still disagrees. The whole thing has been studied and re-studied to death, while every other alternative (third bridge at a different location, increase in sustainable career-paying jobs in Clark Co., social re-engineering that people should work close to where they live and do a majority of their shopping within their local communities, etc.) is summarily dismissed as not meeting the project parameters.

Anyone can use language and wording to say something is safe vs. unsafe (current Interstate Bridges vs. current Sellwood Bridge, for example).

If it were up to me, I'd say 'the public has spoken: stop wasting money and shut down the continual studying now.'

FYI: As I type this, there's a problem with a tag on this post causing the rest of the posts in the main center column of the homepage scrunch together.

Jason,

The problem with all the "third bridge" proposals is that they don't connect to north/south highways; they lead into urban arterials. That won't wash with the communities affected on either side of the river.

I think Clark County has really tried to increase employment here, but as we see, it has been only temporarily successful. Kyocera is gone, HP is a skeleton of its former self, SEH is severely shrunken. Maybe the Port expansion will help, but so far it hasn't been the source of much optimism.

You can forget the social engineering idea in "Washington's Orange County"®. A polity that elects Helicopter Don over and over is not going to go for anything that has the root word of "Socialism" in it.

Why are they having testimony at 10:00 am on a workday? Most of the people that cross the I-5 bridge from Vancouver (like me) are at work then. I get paid by the hour, have bills to pay and can't take off time from work to go testify at a hearing.

I hope that the council doesn't get the impression that if all the people that show up are against the bridge, then everyone is against the bridge. The people that use the bridge on a daily basis are at work during the hearing.

To chime in on the third bridge: I still don't know why people think this is an option. The whole north side of Portland near the Columbia is a "wasteland" west of I-205, meaning, there aren't any destinations. There's nothing on Marine Drive and Jantzen Beach is the only place that has shopping or employment. We need to keep moving people and freight on the Interstate because there is nowhere to go on arterial roads.

only 10,000 jobs in Rivergate and more still in the Columbia Corridor, and that is where lots of Clark county commuters are headed alone in the cars in the peak.
Connecting MLK with the extra wide streets of downtown Vancouver via Hayden Island is a no brainer for people traveling only a few miles.
Why does Portland have eight arterial bridges? so we aren't all trying to cross on the freeway bridges on short trips. Same should apply across the Columbia; one should not have to get on a "vital interstate freeway" to get a drink at Shenanigans.

Lenny,

Which part of Portland is Rivergate? I'm not familiar with it (shameful, I grew up here). Another aspect is that if Rivergate has 10,000 jobs, what percent are Clark County residents? Even if 50% of the people that work there live in Clark County, that's only 10,000 round trips a day, while the I-5 bridge gets more than 100,000 trips a day.

The problem is that not many people live in downtown Vancouver. The county's population is spread throughout the county and most people are going to get on the freeway (inc. SR 500) to get somewhere. I know that I do. I'm not going to drive a few miles down Hazel Dell when I-5 is right next to it.

The reason why Portland has 8 arterial bridges is that they were built before the freeway bridges. To say that they are there so that Portlanders don't use the freeway bridges isn't accurate, because the freeway bridges were built after the arterial bridges.

I just don't see a lot of demand by the few people living in downtown Vancouver to get to North Portland. Building a bridge over a mile wide river for less than 100,000 trips a day doesn't seem to be worth it.