“It’s going to be a model for multimodal transportation,” he said. “It’s bistate, bipartisan … anyway you can describe it, it’s a great project.”

I feel like I'm in bizzaro world reading this. The CRC is bipartisan alright--the only thing I agree with anti-transit suburbanites about is that this bridge is a disaster. I'm afraid it can't be stopped, short of some Mt. Hood Freeway-like organized public opposition.

The BIGDADDY of boondoggles.

This project is going to be a case study in a textbook some day.

I really don't want to go thru my piles of CRC data, but if I remember right, the discussion was that they could build a drawbridge which - in combination with changing the railroad bridge - would result in a few bridge lifts a year in the wee hours of the morning. Am I remembering this correctly?

IIRC, by simply adding a lift span on the railroad bridge, it would allow most river barge traffic to travel under the hump of the current interstate bridge. That would eliminate around 90% of bridge lifts. Had they started off doing that, it could have been finished by now and would have cost about half of what taxpayers have been charged for the CRC PR campaign to date.

Lahood is just a cheerleader for handing out federal money don't ya know by now?

U.S. transportation head visits N.J. in support of bill increasing federal transit funding | NJ.com