CRC at City Club on Friday


From City Club:

The I-5 bridge across the Columbia River is a major congestion point on the I-5 corridor. Anticipated population growth and commercial development, along with traffic safety issues and earthquake preparedness, are driving a public conversation around how to address these challenges.The Columbia River Crossing Project, a joint project of the Oregon Department of Transportation and the Washington State Department of Transportation, is recommending that $4.2 billion be spent to replace the bridge with additional lanes for automobiles, pedestrians and bicycles.

On June 27, join Metro Councilor Rex Burkholder and economist Joe Cortright, as they examine the viability of this proposal. Where will the money come from? What will be the size of the carbon footprint created by the new bridge and how will it impact the environment? Ultimately, how do we balance the practical demands of a growing region with environmental concerns?

Rex Burkholder was elected in 2004 for a second term to represent District 5 in Multnomah County. Burkholder helped found the Bicycle Transportation Alliance,chairs the Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation and serves on other transportation committees. Joe Cortright is an economist with Impresa, a Portland consulting firm specializing in regional economic analysis, innovation and industry clusters. Cortright is also the chief economic analyst for the Oregon Business Plan, a private-sector effort to develop the state economy.

Reserve online here.


14 responses to “CRC at City Club on Friday”

  1. the current bridges are adequate for the existing interstate traffic, the new proposed bridge will only exacerbate the problem…I have no problem crossing into Washington, I do avoid rush hours.

  2. One estimate has the cost of an I-5 Columbia River Crossing for Max at $9.00 per rider. The cost per bicyclist using newly constructed bicycle infrastructure on the same crossing would be undoubtedly higher. As it now stands, the price tag to provide this bicycle infrastructure along with any authentic numbers of projected bicycle crossings using the bridge has been concealed from the taxpaying public. This is undoubtedly a politically motivated cover up that is catering to the special interest bicycle agenda because it is highly probable that any bicycle infrastructure constructed will not pencil out as actually being cost effective.

    From Metro Councilor Rex Burkholder’s comments at the City Club, in a reply to an audience question he stated: “Raising money for construction through tolls would be highly effective and would provide a way for the bridge to help pay for itself and not take money from other transportation projects.”

    If motorists are expected to pay tolls as Burkholder put it, then too must transit fares be adjusted considerably higher as a highly effective way pay for transit infrastructure and the proportionate share of transit infrastructure on the crossing. Bicyclists too MUST also be tolled as a highly effective way to pay for bicycle infrastructure and the proportionate share of bicycle infrastructure on the crossing. Anything less is a double standard and therefore discriminatory.

    Moreover, any posh ultra expensive so-called world-class bicycle facility Sam Adams and the gang of roadway fund rustlers on the Portland City Council may want must not be subsidized at all and pay its own way by the bicyclist users themselves. Therefore, such a luxury must only come with a mandated and pricey first-class ultra expensive toll assessed only to the pedal pushing bicyclists.

    Furthermore, at the City Club Mr. Burkholder stated: “We have a captive audience; people have to get across the river – to be honest, we’ll probably talk about tolling the 205 bridge as well, to be able to make this thing possible,” Burkholder’s “captive audience” comments simply demonstrates his willingness to poach money from motorists for any of his misaligned priorities. For Burkholder to be truly “honest”, motorists are already paying gas taxes that are paying for the 205 bridge and must not be extorted to also provide funding for the alternative forms of transport. Therefore, on that bridge too the freeloaders on bicycles and people using transit must also pay a toll or a surcharge on transit fares to cross the river.

    Transit advocates and bicyclists like Burkholder can not simply expect to harm the regional economy and interstate commerce, especially as it relates to small businesses that do business on both sides of the river, by assessing tolls on motorists only, and then expect more transit and bicycle infrastructure be constructed as long as somebody else other than the transit riders and the bicyclists are paying the price tag. Burkholder is apparently blind in one eye.

  3. I rarely agree with his views, but O’Toole has an interesting analysis of the CRC over on his antiplanner blog: http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=454

    I haven’t gone through the documents, but is almost $2 billion of the cost of the CRC really going for highway interchange improvements? That’s nuts. Surely those can be stripped from the project and dealt with at a later time?

    A new bridge funded by tolling with great LRT and bike facilities for only $2 billion is still very expensive, but sounds a lot better…

  4. Anthony –

    Or we could skip the entire new bridge all together, only do necessary repairs, and save $4 billion. But I was trying to be realistic.

    I’m a pretty firm believer that we have to give people transportation options. A cheaper way to get from Vancouver to Portland that isn’t as hit by rising gas prices is necessary – I think polls have shown a majority on both sides of the river believe that.

    So I think additional lanes and mass transit is a given – the question’s just what is the best way to do that. Getting rid of all the interchange improvements seems like a sensible way to reduce the project’s cost.

  5. I thought that the CRC was, among other things, a safety project as well – hence the interchange improvements.

    Unlike what its critics like to claim, the CRC is more than about replacing a bridge, it is a very significant infrastructure project that covers over three and a half miles of one of the Metro area’s busiest highways, a route that carries more vehicles in one day than MAX carries passengers on its entire system.

    Yes, we could save the money and do nothing. And we could save the money and stop all of the B.S. about expanding MAX and Streetcar. Let’s eliminate all further discussion of the Streetcar Loop, the Lake Oswego Streetcar and Milwaukie MAX. (We could eliminate a good chunk of Metro just by doing that.)

    Let’s take it a step further and privatize all transportation. Which means if you live along the current Streetcar route you are REQUIRED to purchase stock in “Portland Streetcar Corporation” or you will be required to move (or face foreclosure of your property by the Corporation.) Eliminate TriMet’s bus system and replace it with jitneys and private bus companies. MAX will be sold to a private company and operated for profit (welcome $5 one-way fares!) Freeways and highways will also be taxed.

    Neighborhood streets will be turned over to neighborhood associations to which you will pay a monthly tax to for upkeep and maintenance. You won’t be allowed to travel into other neighborhoods unless you pay a tax to them, or if your employer pays your tax for you.

    We could save a lot of money doing that, because the gas tax would be eliminated, vehicle registration and drivers licensing would be eliminated (and so would the DMV), a large portion of police departments would be eliminated, TriMet would be eliminated and so would much of Metro.

    Of course, so would much of Portland, because the only “free” mode of transport would be by air and by riverboat. That is, unless the airspace and water rights are also sold, too.

  6. Neighborhood streets will be turned over to neighborhood associations to which you will pay a monthly tax to for upkeep and maintenance. You won’t be allowed to travel into other neighborhoods unless you pay a tax to them, or if your employer pays your tax for you.

    Leave out the stupidity about charging people to travel in other neighborhoods, and that might actually be a viable maintenance policy. Charge a “street fee” collected by the City with the money available for maintenance in the neighborhood in which it is collected. Let the neighborhood associations set maintenance and improvement priorities, and give them the power to bid out the work to properly bonded private contractors if someone can make a better offer than the City.

    Add electronic “freight-only” tolling to highways and arterial streets (which carry the bulk of freight traffic, and heavy trucks to most of the damage to the streets), and require every truck passing through the area carry a transponder to bill it for use of the roads.

    We could take care of all of our maintenance needs as well as small improvements (such as installing sidewalks) with no need to rely on gas taxes or general fund money at all.

    So I think additional lanes and mass transit is a given – the question’s just what is the best way to do that. Getting rid of all the interchange improvements seems like a sensible way to reduce the project’s cost.

    We ought to do some of the interchange improvements first, as separate projects. Since part of the rationale for this project is safety, better interchanges can do that with or without the twelve-lane bridge.

    Splitting off transit into a separate project — an arterial bridge with light rail/bus lanes and wide sidewalks — also brings down the price tag, and arterial lanes from Vancouver to North Portland can get rid of a lot of safety issues caused by existing ramps. If the arterial bridge looks very much like the two existing bridges (a little bit wider and with wider sidewalks on the outside), it probably would cost something less than a billion dollars. (The 1958 bridge cost $14.5 million, per Wikipedia. While the prices of steel, concrete and fuel have risen dramatically since then, it hasn’t been a sixty-fold increase. The first bridge was build in 1917 for 1.75 million; the second bridge, built forty years later, cost eight times as much. If a third more-or-less identical bridge, built 60 years after the second, cost 20 times as much, it still would be less than $300 million. A fifty-fold increase is $725 million.)

  7. By the way, did anybody go to the CRC debate on Friday? Joe Cortright rather memorably compared the proposed CRC project to the WPPSS debacle — a massive multi-billion dollar public works project that all the experts approved, that was based in yesterday’s expectations without taking reasonable future projections into account, and that ultimately lead to the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history.

    He also compared the EIS to Proust — staggeringly long, rooted in the past, written in a foreign language, and mostly fiction.

  8. Let’s eliminate all further discussion

    Which means if you live along the current Streetcar route you are REQUIRED to purchase stock in “Portland Streetcar Corporation” or you will be required to move (or face foreclosure of your property by the Corporation.)

    You won’t be allowed to travel into other neighborhoods unless you pay a tax to them

    Are you seriously advocating censorship and forced relocation, and the elimination of freedom to travel on public roads, or are you just playing devil’s-advocate here?

  9. Erik –

    I think you missed my point. I wasn’t advocating never doing the projects – certainty they might be very valuable from a safety point of view. I was advocating separating them from the CRC project.

    We can evaluate the intersections later, and decide if Oregonians want to chip in to pay for $2 billion worth of freeway construction that barely adds capacity. They are a completely different issue from the bridge itself, but in order to get Oregonians to pay for Washington State infrastructure, the projects are being combined. It’s an extra $2 billion in spending that does not follow from most of the justifications for building the bridge (such as that the bridge is structurally deficient).

    Let’s build the bridge together, if it’s determined to be needed, and then Clark County can take care of its freeways while Portland handles ours.

  10. I think we need to bring back the concept of:

    ECOTOPIA!

    There was a movement in the early 80’s to combine:

    OREGON,WASHINGTON,and BRITISH COLUMBIA,

    into a new country called Ecotopia.

    Too bad it could never happen.

  11. Ecotopia is now Cascadia

    You don’t need a separate country for a region to share values and goals.

  12. D.J. wrote: I think you missed my point. I wasn’t advocating never doing the projects – certainty they might be very valuable from a safety point of view. I was advocating separating them from the CRC project.

    OK, you have an excellent point.

    The CRC should be divided into separate components, each of which stands on its own merits (and can be approved and built, without approval of the other components).

    Which means if the public approves a new bridge but doesn’t approve the pedestrian improvements, the interchange improvements, the light rail improvements – the bridge still gets built, and nothing else. (And all of the “no light rail, no bridge” rhetoric needs to stop. A public vote very well could say build light rail and no bridge – I doubt it, but it could. Do we say “no bridge, no light rail”?)

    I also agree with you – Washington can maintain their own roads, Oregon their own. Same should be true for light rail – one of the reasons I don’t support a light rail expansion. I do not want my TriMet dollars going to Vancouver which is in C-Tran’s district. TriMet needs to spend TriMet dollars to improve TriMet service.

  13. Oregon shouldn’t pay one cent for a new bridge. By moving the bottleneck into Portland we will have to spend BILLIONS more expanding the entire north/central Portland freeway/road network to accommodate 12-lane traffic from Washington. However, it will only decrease our property tax revenue as development sprawls out into cheaper clark/camas counties.

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