Columbia River Crossing project staff have released an estimate range of $3.1B to $4.2B.
Meanwhile, Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters was quoted on OPB saying the Feds might pick up as much as 80% of the cost.
Madam Secretary, will you match 80% for the transit piece too?
Pinch me.
39 responses to “CRC Costs Come in Below $6B”
Gee, “only” $4.2 billion. And hey, a whole 80% funding match — Oregon would need to cough up only $420 million or to dump more congestion on Portland’s stretch of I-5.
Any estimate yet on what the arterial bridge option would cost?
What a steal! Oregon could pay $420 million to rebuild 5 miles of I-5 in Washington!
Geez, where’s my pocketbook ?!
Most of the work IS being done on the Washington side. What they really need to do is itemize the cost of the bridge (each state pays 10%), the Washington portion (Washington pays the 20%) and the Oregon portion (Oregon pays the 20%). In reality, the bridge is used mostly by Washington commuters to Oregon and true interstate travel (out-of-staters just passing through), but trying to quantify the exact split would be pointless. You know they’re just gonna end up splitting it 50/50 anyway.
You know they’re just gonna end up splitting it 50/50 anyway.
Shouldn’t at least the entire local match be paid for with tolls? The folks paying the toll would still be the only ones getting the benefit of the 80% subsidy from the Feds.
out-of-staters just passing through
Doesn’t most pass-through traffic use I-205? Given present signage on I-5 southbound approaching Vancouver and I-5 northbound after Wilsonville, through-traffic is directed towards I-205. I don’t see how this project is going to benefit that traffic in any way. Even if they change the signage it would be a mistake because of the bottleneck(s) on I-5 through Portland.
I still believe that we need to implement tolling on this bridge to recover some of the cost of our investment and for congestion mitigation (value pricing).
I suppose that if the feds pick up 80% and tolls make up the local 20% I could live with this. It still seems an absurd waste of money when the arterial bridge option and some other relatively inexpensive modifications can do nearly everything the superbridge does, for a fraction of the cost.
If the feds are willing to throw $3.3 billion at the region, there are long, LONG lists of road and transit projects on both sides of the river.
I suppose that if the feds pick up 80% and tolls make up the local 20% I could live with this.
At the very least this makes the funding package more consistent with the original Interstate Highway System project, where the feds picked up 92% of the tab. If they want to buy it for us because of it’s “national significance” (as a leg of the Mexico to Canada route) and users pay the local match then that allows us to devote our scarce resources to other priorities – such as the arterial bridge.
Is anybody in the know aware if anything been mentioned about making truck-only lanes out of some of the planned TWELVE traffic lanes? Freight mobility is the whole point of the federal interest in this project, is it not? How about plans for carpool lanes?
s anybody in the know aware if anything been mentioned about making truck-only lanes out of some of the planned TWELVE traffic lanes? Freight mobility is the whole point of the federal interest in this project, is it not? How about plans for carpool lanes?
I believe there has been some discussion of HOV lanes, but not any serious discussion of freight only. The reality is that this project will likely do more harm than good regardless of its costs. You simply can’t increase traffic into Portland byt 50-100% and not have more congestion elsewhere. That congestion and the traffic spill over into neighborhoods along I5 is going to cost the region far more than the bridge.
Well, then all you gotta do is bulldoze a few hundred homes along I-5 to make it four or five lanes each way, and then add another freeway bridge over the Willamette somewhere around downtown, and then widen I-5 south of downtown and I-405 and the Banfield and 26 by a lane each way, and then rebuild a bunch of interchanges ….
djk –
That’s a good list :-) … don’t forget widening the Vista Ridge tunnels while you’re at it.
We already have 14 freeway lanes over the Columbia but no arterial/local connector lanes, and no dedicated transit or freight.
Some people gasp at the notion that transit would be included as part of this CRC project, but if it goes forward, we’ll still have a freeway-dominated crossing: 18 to 20 freeway lanes over the river, two transit lanes (or tracks), and two shared bikeway/pedestrian lanes (one along I-5, one along I-205), and still zero arterial bridges.
– Bob R.
“I suppose that if the feds pick up 80% and tolls make up the local 20% I could live with this.”
The local match would be $840M, and if we borrowed the money at 6% for 30 years, the payments would be $60M/year, or $1.2M a week, and at 130,000 cars/weekday, and some overhead for the toll collection, that works out to about $1.50-$2/car.
The problem? Only 36% of people are willing to pay that: http://www.portlandtransport.com/documents/crc_polling.pdf
(See Q19, page 12.)
Wow, I’m glad we’re agreeing on something!! This CRC project is a disaster waiting to happen. I wonder how Secretary Peters came up with her evaluation. Was she ganged up on by ODOT and WashDOT?
The more they enlarge one section of the I-5 the more cars are going to end up using it and producing congestion elsewhere in the system. While I am no longer much of a fan of MAX it should at least get over to Vancouver, but I think a new bridge in the BNSF corridor could carry the MAX. Vancouver is going to expand in that direction anyway.
Ross,
Can you tell me the difference (or is there any) in justifying the CRC (using your logic about congestion) and improving Dundee to four travel lanes? You carefully explained previously, that making a roadway more efficient was not an answer for improving congestion.
Even a dedicated lane northbound from Marine Dr on I-5 to WA SR-14 and Mill Plain/SR-501 would help, especially with I-5 southbound to Delta Park and improvements to the Marine, Interstate and Columbia exits.
Add in some Max to the downtown Couv, move some bus routes in the Couv to more efficient solutions, and plan for a N Portland Rd to Mill Plain bridge, and we’ve got a transportation system that will really work.
Marine Dr has the capacity, especially from west of the existing Interstate Bridge, to add some parking garages and add a lot more jobs. With a few relatevialy cheap improvments, the PDX area can connect to the Couv quite effectively.
Wow, that’s some bad typos. I forgot to proofread, but look for my point, not the misspellings.
Ross,
Can you tell me the difference (or is there any) in justifying the CRC (using your logic about congestion) and improving Dundee to four travel lanes? You carefully explained previously, that making a roadway more efficient was not an answer for improving congestion.
I’m pleased to see the CRC move ahead in a timely manner. While people having been posting here about a new bridge suddenly dumping cars into Portland (I’m not sure that this will be the case because the population of Clark County isn’t going to shoot to the moon overnight), one other thing to think about it that a new bridge will also help to more quickly remove cars from Portland at the end of the day.
As a daily I-5 commuter, I can tell you that when driving back to Clark County, once I get on the current bridge, traffic speed picks up a little and I get into WA, traffic always moves at freeway speed. By replacing the current bridge, which in its design slows traffic with the big hump in the middle of the bridge and the very narrow lanes with no shoulders, traffic will exit Portland more quickly at the end of the day, thus improving the I-5 north commute and also reducing the number of idling cars.
As far as putting Light Rail on the CRC, I probably won’t ride it, but not for the oft-discussed safety issues here on the board. LRT is just too slow. It already takes 30 minutes to get from Expo Center to Pioneer Square and it would take longer than that to get from downtown Vancouver to Pioneer Square. Plus, there is no daily free parking in downtown Vancouver and I’m not going to take the time to get off the freeway, pay to park my car, wait for MAX and then ride MAX. It just takes too long.
Some posters have claimed that surveys show that there will be a lot of MAX riders from Clark County. I don’t know where these estimates are, and I’m just one suburban commuter, but I figure that I’m a pretty typical commuter. However I am somewhat different than other commuters because I drive to downtown Portland, when most Clark County riders don’t go downtown. They would need a transfer if they were to ride MAX into Oregon, which makes the commute that much longer.
Can you tell me the difference (or is there any) in justifying the CRC (using your logic about congestion) and improving Dundee to four travel lanes?
Neither one makes the “roadway more efficient” , they just add more traffic and more congestion somewhere else in the system. The difference with 99W is there is a more obvious direct impact on the livability of the communities along the route.
The other difference is providing alternatives is a lot harder – as the discussion here of commuter rail in the 99W corridor made clear. In the case of Clark County, there are a lot more ways to create attractive transportation options for people. The more attractive the options, the less congestion people are willing to create and tolerate.
(I’m not sure that this will be the case because the population of Clark County isn’t going to shoot to the moon overnight)
When you double the capacity across the river you double the amount of traffic that will arrive in Portland at the same time. Congestion is caused by too many people trying to use the same road at the same time. You are right, the number of people living in Clark County and commuting to Portland will grow more slowly, but it will continue to grow. The result for people and businesses in Portland will be more traffic and congestion and a less desirable place to live, work and do business.
figure that I’m a pretty typical commuter.
Even in Portland, transit users are atypical. The question is how many atypical people are there in Clark County who will use MAX – creating space and reducing congestion pressure for the “typical commuter” who continues to drive.
I don’t think anyone has projected that MAX is going to get anywhere close to 50% of the trips – which is what you would look for if you expected to attract the “typical commuter”.
An one last thought to that.
The whole purpose of MAX and other transit is to allow the number of commuters from Clark County to Portland to grow without damaging the community those people travel to or through.
Portland’s livability drives its local economy. Damage to that livability harms everyone, including the folks commuting in their private cars from Clark County. Transit gives Clark County businesses and residents opportunities while preserving that livability.
By replacing the current bridge, which in its design slows traffic with the big hump in the middle of the bridge and the very narrow lanes with no shoulders, traffic will exit Portland more quickly at the end of the day, thus improving the I-5 north commute and also reducing the number of idling cars.
Problem is, if you have more cars pouring into Portland in the morning, you have more cars leaving at the end of the day. That means more cars trying to get to the Interstate Bridge from various places in the Portland area, and I-5 still won’t have any more lanes. Same result: too many cars, too little street. Especially since all the cars are being funnelled onto one corridor.
We probably could alleviate a lot of the problem with congestion pricing to discourage peak-hour trips. But we could do that with the existing bridges and save ourselves a few billion dollars.
Better to rehabilitate the existing bridges, add an arterial/transit bridge to downtown Vancouver, and — if necessary — look into adding other arterial bridges elsewhere across the Columbia.
“As a daily I-5 commuter, I can tell you that when driving back to Clark County, once I get on the current bridge, traffic speed picks up a little and I get into WA, traffic always moves at freeway speed.”
Of course it moves at freeway speeds after the bridge, a lot of people get off on SR-14 which is right at the end of the bridge. (And almost nobody gets on at the same time, people that want to go north from Vancouver at rush hour drive up the arteries until after SR-500 and get on there…) This is why light rail or an artery will help: a lot of the traffic is local.
What is also currently happening is that a lot of trips are NOT being taken over I-5 during peak hours, simply because of the time it takes. Once a new bridge is in place and the corridor is improved, people will now make trips during peak hours that they would not have in the past.
So designing for the current number of autos using the corridor is folly, because there is an unknown amount of latent demand, which is why adding capacity doesn’t reduce congestion for any appreciable length of time. The I-5 corridor will still be congested, there will just be more cars congesting it, and all of the other streets leading to I-5. Having steep and variable tolling on the bridge will mitigate this somewhat.
Does anyone else think that tearing down the old interstate bridges is a really bad idea? Talk about a waste of perfectly good infrastructure. They could easily be used as an alternate (local) access to Hayden Island from both sides of the river, and even carry the lightrail and pedestrian/bikeway as well. Then the new bridge wouldn’t have to be 12 lanes wide, 8 would be more than enough because a lot of the local traffic would no longer have to get on the freeway.
It seems like they’re just tearing the old bridge down to justify a much bigger new bridge.
I suspect almost everyone here believes tearing down the old bridges is a bad idea, given that there are much less expensive ways to accomplish nearly everything the new bridge is supposed to do.
Of course, I could be wrong. Does anybody here LIKE the new bridge concept?
Hey a few billion here and there, big deal.
The governor just gave 30% raises to all the top staff.
HELL YEA, TEAR DOWN THE OLD AND PUT UP THE NEW!
(its the cost of one day in Iraq)
Well… Sometimes when I’m visiting my sister’s house, (she lives right next to I-5,) I think that tearing down the old bridges would be nice. Not that I’m suggesting that they replace it with anything, just tear them down. I’m fairly sure that some private company would run a couple of ferry boats, and that is fine, (user pays and all that,) so the really important traffic could still cross, but for the most part, Clark County would actually have deal with it’s problems… And think of the other benefits: unemployment on the Oregon side of the river would go to near zero, traffic congestion, not just on I-5, but on most of the roads (besides 205, if we left that standing,) would become a thing of the past, and the air would be cleaner as a result…
So, yeah, I guess you can put me in the “tearing down the old bridges is a good idea” camp…
“LRT is just too slow. It already takes 30 minutes to get from Expo Center to Pioneer Square and it would take longer than that to get from downtown Vancouver to Pioneer Square.”
>>>> RIGHT. And with a travel time ca. 40 minutes to Pioneer Square (about only 7 miles!),
MAX is just not an attractive alternative to going downtown. What is needed is also BRT on the new bridge transit lane, so that buses can continue on to downtown on the I-5 HOV lanes.
Does anybody here LIKE the new bridge concept?
I would only support that many lanes on a new structure if three of the six lanes in each direction are dedicated in some combination to full-time freight-only and HOV lanes that are barrier-divided from the general purpose lanes. There’s no need for six general purpose lanes in each direction when it feeds into/from a highway that will – at most – consist of three lanes each direction through most of Portland. Variable tolls should be a component of any new river crossing in this region – for all lanes – and would assist with metering the traffic into the system on this side of the river. Of course, that would also hurt the ability to move traffic out of Portland and back into Clark County in the evening, but that would raise the “cost” of the commute (time plus money) and would push many to find an alternative.
I only feel this project is of such a high priority because of the freight mobility problem in the corridor and I believe that improving freight movement should be the primary objective, with the secondary objective being to improve HOV and mass-transit connectivity between Portland and Clark County.
If we could preserve one or both of the existing spans for arterial connections then I would support that, but we should have a freight and HOV connection to the north that is not subjected to bridge lifts. Also, unfortunately, the existing spans present maneuverability challenges to barge traffic that could be rectified by replacing them.
we should have a freight and HOV connection to the north that is not subjected to bridge lifts. Also, unfortunately, the existing spans present maneuverability challenges to barge traffic that could be rectified by replacing them.
Really not a problem if they put a lift span on the railroad bridge to line up with the bridge humps. That, plus controls on when taller ships can use that segment of the river, could limit the bridge lifts to a few night-time lifts per month.
At some point in the future the bridge will need to be replaced. But what takes its place? If high speed rail becomes a reality then the bridge would need to accomodate that, if commuter rail it might accomodate that. If there is “smart road” technology, the bridge might be designed with much narrower lanes etc.
The longer the replacement is delayed, the more likely the new bridge is to have the features that will meet future needs. In addition, engineering practices will likely get better. The bridge in Minnesota was built to the engineering standards of its day. But it fell down long before it was supposed to, at least in part, because they didn’t understand the impact of repeated stress on the steel components of the bridge. You can assume over the next 20 years seismic standards will be improved as the stress tremors create is better understood. And none of those questions even consider the changes in needs that will occur as a result of growth patterns, industrial development etc.
In short, the longer you delay a new bridge, the better. The question should be how long can it wait, not how soon can it get done.
I totally agree with Matthew. Portland doesn’t have a responsibility to provide jobs to people in Clark County anyways.
If a new bridge is built, it should be tolled with the exception of transit and freight.
In short, the longer you delay a new bridge, the better. The question should be how long can it wait, not how soon can it get done.
Gee, let’s just wait until we can simply use teleportation. Forget high speed rail when we could have instant transportation and all we would have to build is a proton accelerator tunnel.
But we’d have to wait to develop a massive source of energy to power it, and given that we will only build wind power that won’t nearly generate sufficient energy (or at least reliably) we’ll have to wait for fusion power, which is…a LONG ways away.
Let’s do nothing. That also goes for public transportation improvements, bikeway and walkway improvements as well in Portland. Let’s just do nothing, because in ten years there might be a better way. Ten years from then will be a better way, and so will there be ten years after then. We blew over $50 milllion on the tram when we could have built a maglev tunnel connecting Milwaukie to OHSU to Beaverton, using a track that would function as an elevator as well as a linear, horizontal track while keeping passengers perfectly level throughout the route (and thus eliminating that “Tram Swing”.)
We could have built the Streetcar much better, eliminating that Montgomery Spur, the single-track, the crossover north of PSU, the 5 MPH S-Curve underneath the Marquam…
And we could have built MAX better by making it a subway through Portland.
We could have improved the Red Line by eliminating that horseshoe curve at Gateway TC. Widened the curve onto Burnside so trains can go faster than 10 MPH. Re-routed the tracks to eliminate the horseshoe curve at Sunset TC, and straightened the track between Beaverton TC and Beaverton Central.
Portland’s track record is not to “do nothing”; so why is it acceptable to “do nothing” to fix a major transportation problem in North Portland? If we are to wait for “something better”, why have we settled on numerous design flaws in our LRT and Streetcar system? Or is this just another example of the bias towards rail projects at the expense of everything else?
so why is it acceptable to “do nothing”
The question was not whether to do nothing, it was whether to replace the current bridge.
” If we are to wait for “something better”, why have we settled on numerous design flaws in our LRT and Streetcar system? Or is this just another example of the bias towards rail projects at the expense of everything else?”
>>>>> SOMETHING BETTER for Portland would have a system of busways (like Pittsburgh) instead of the ‘snail rail’ we got stuck with. In fact. the orginal plan for the Banfield was to have a non-stop busway to Gateway. Think of how far ahead in the game we would have been now.
“SOMETHING BETTER for Portland would have a system of busways (like Pittsburgh) instead of the ‘snail rail’ we got stuck with.”
I happen to agree with that statement. However, buses do not stimulate economic growth, where as rail does.
All this rail installation actually has very little to do with transit and everything to do with economic development.
You think the planners give a hoot about the people riding transit?
It’s like Bush saying “We have to protect the children of America” then vetoing the children’s health care bill.
Planners hand us a load of garbage like “we are improving transit for riders”, while all the while they are making transit worse and worse for all of us.
What they are really doing is doubling land values for owners of property along rail lines and attempting to lure developers here thus increasing tax base. Transit is the last thing on their minds.
Pittsburgh’s recent experience with Busway construction and operation hasn’t been a total success.
The West Busway, completed in 2000, is similar in scope to Interstate MAX, about 5 miles long. But it was supposed to be longer… only the outer suburban portion was built (rather than an 8-mile route) due to massive initial bids way above projections. The final project cost $320 million (in year 2000 dollars), which when adjusted for inflation means the busway cost more than Interstate MAX, and by 2005 had attracted about 9,500 daily boardings.
Interstate MAX, by comparison, carries over 40% more riders at a lower capital cost.
Closer in to town, where the busway was not constructed, buses must run in mixed stop & go traffic.
I’ve said it before: If you construct a true busway to provide the equivalent level of service of light rail in a corridor, the busway isn’t going to wind up being significantly cheaper. In Pittsburgh’s case, it is actually more expensive than rail.
– Bob R.
“If you construct a true busway to provide the equivalent level of service of light rail in a corridor, the busway isn’t going to wind up being significantly cheaper.”
Yea Bob R but what about the fact that the LIGHT RAIL has a tendency to GO DOWN OUT OF SERVICE whenever it is needed the most? And what about the fact that the whole line goes 10-7 when there is a problem somewhere else on the tracks?
As far as I am concerned this is the biggest negative to the light rail system, I don’t think its reliable, being right on the surface, going right through traffic, its vulnerable to all sorts of things.
As far as I am concerned this is the biggest negative to the light rail system,
I agree. But that negative doesn’t even approach making up for much higher ridership at lower costs. Light rail does not, in fact, go out of service very often. And when it does, they use buses to get people to their destinations.