At both last week’s Transportation Cabinet meeting and during a panel discussion on KBOO, I’ve heard Sam express some ideas that I find encouraging as ways to focus the Columbia River Crossing project:
- The CRC acts as a freeway, an arterial and a local street at the same time. The design should comprehend these different uses.
- The key economic benefit is increased freight capacity, but the current design delivers general-purpose capacity.
I suspect that a design that truly incorporated these two ideas would be a lot more appealing that what we’re looking at now.
25 responses to “Sam Looking for Some CRC Nuance?”
I’m all for added freight capacity, just not any other capacity
How come every time I come over here this is still the topic?
This silliness is never going to end, sheesh.
Allan Says: I’m all for added freight capacity, just not any other capacity
JK: Why do you have a problem with people being free to travel in the most economical, fuel efficient manner? (small cars)
Thanks
JK
Interesting thoughts from Mayor Adams. What percentage of traffic on I-5 is freeway? What percentage is arterial and what percentage is local street? The new bridge be built with these percentages in mind. If only 4% of trips (a number I pulled from thin air) are “local street” then the focus of the design should not be based on “local street” traffic.
Also – In response to Allan: Based on economic theory, the state of Oregon should be delighted to turn the I-5 bridge into a huge commuter delight to drive. I know that I’m beating a dead horse, but Washingtonians that work in Oregon are a net benefit to the state of Oregon’s finances. We pay far more in taxes than we cost in services. I don’t know the economic term, but it’s great for Oregon if I pay $4,000 a year in state income taxes, but Oregon’s cost to educate my daughter is $0.
Under economic theory, the state of Oregon should encourage people to live in Washington, but work in Oregon. Lots of revenue with very little cost. A nice big fast I-5 freeway and bridge would provide a lot of encouragement.
Under economic theory, the state of Oregon should encourage people to live in Washington, but work in Oregon. Lots of revenue with very little cost.
What about lost property tax revenue from decreased housing values? You think that more people working here doesn’t require more road maintenance (Washingtonians would be more likely to buy gas in WA, there’s not much cost difference), police protection, accidents that our response crews deal with? How about the increased demand on the surface streets connecting to the freeways, added pollution from more cars on those, increased risk of accidents due to increased road usage, etc?
You get to shop here tax free (if you’re into skirting the law) and take the stuff back to Washington. I think Oregon can ask for some money back in exchange for all of the above benefits. I bet if Washington offered to cover a new bridge Oregonians would be a lot less likely to try to block it though.
I’m actually in favor of improving the current situation, I just don’t like the price tag of the current proposal. We should separate local Downtown Vancouver to North Portland traffic from freeway traffic, but that option has apparently gone off the table.
The reduction of vehicles getting on I-5 at the Downtown Vancouver onramp in the morning would help clear up the Interstate Bridge southbound quite a bit I’d guess, since that’s the first part to back up usually due to SR-14 needing to share the ramp with a short merge distance. The Delta Park bottleneck is already being addressed, so an arterial bridge would probably smooth things over for quite a while.
Why do Vancouver residents commute to Oregon in droves? Because that is where the jobs are. I-5 crossing is going to remain congested with commuter traffic- to the detriment of freight traffic- as long as there is such a extreme job and housing in balance between the states. The massive, expensive freeway bridged proposed by state transportation planners is not going to solve this problem; it will exacerbate it. A leaner bridge focused on freight movement should support job growth in Vancouver.
Portland Tribune published realistic computer renderings of two CRC I-5 bridge proposals some months ago. Both were aerial views looking south from above Vancouver. One was of the proposed 12-laner. The other was where the old lift bridges are left in place and a new bridge with light rail built on the downriver, the impact on Hayden Island minimal.
This 3rd bridge with light rail could be a good start. When the old bridges must be decomissioned pronto, they can do so one at a time. It looks like it could divide freight from general traffic. I’ve always said “If you can only do one thing, build the light rail line. This may be a good compromise and I don’t want to hear any lame excuses like “It won’t wurk, dummy.”
This 3rd bridge with light rail could be a good start. When the old bridges must be decomissioned pronto, they can do so one at a time. It looks like it could divide freight from general traffic. I’ve always said “If you can only do one thing, build the light rail line. This may be a good compromise and I don’t want to hear any lame excuses like “It won’t wurk, dummy.”
Just how much good will ONE MILE of light rail into Vancouver do? I figured $200 million per mile for new light rail, such as the Milwaukie MAX, was bad enough. But you would have us spend one billion to extend the Interstate MAX on to Hayden Island and then one mile into Vancouver? We’ve always seen congestion return to highways alongside which light rail lines have been built—and that is where the LRT lines have been over ten miles in length. This is because of the stimulus to infill housing. How long before congestion returns along one mile of light rail?
A third route crossing the Columbia is the only solution. This will provide easier access for Vancouver workers to new Oregon jobs, most of which will be on the west side. Because it will reduce VMT as well, it should be a stimulus to alternative means of transport, too.
[Moderator: Repetitive, derisive comment removed. JK, you’ve already been warned today. – Bob R.]
MAX to Vancouver would create thousands of permanent jobs there, reducing the commute to Portland. It would offer tens of thousands another way to commute unhindered into Portland and throughout the metro area. Whoever can’t see that ain’t interested in the truth.
I’m not a fan of the 12-lane/10-lane bridge. The impact both have on Jantzen Beach is horrible. The State of Washington have two more highway mega-projects in Seattle totalling $10 Billion. They are more important than the CRC and their design proposals are equally overbuilt.
I think this 3rd bridge idea should be reconsidered, or at least its complications and drawbacks explained. It was discarded a little too casually, in my opinion.
Dave H,
[Moderator: Personally-directed comment removed, larger point was disputing Dave’s assertions about loss in property value in Oregon due to development/settlement in Clark County. – Bob R.]
Yeah, right. While paying 9% Oregon taxes for zip, nada, zilch except for the ODOT breakdown vehicles.
Those of us, that reside in Vancouver Proper, need to be careful what we wish for. a 12 lane bridge would create suburban sprawl all the way out into Yacolt, Venersburg, Hockinson and Woodland. You would have all that additional traffic passing in front of your homes everyday. Can you imagine 20,000 more ugly little houses?
Anandakos: Don’t forget the sales tax free shopping, dining and entertainment options. Of course, there’s also the option of working in Vancouver. I used to have a job there so I know they exist.
But you would have us spend one billion to extend the Interstate MAX on to Hayden Island and then one mile into Vancouver?
What if the light rail is built into a replacement rail lift bridge (which causes most I-5 lifts), with vehicle lanes to connect N Portland and Downtown Vancouver and bike/pedestrian facilities? Not a freeway, just a surface street bridge over (or under) a rail level.
We could probably get federal funds to help with it for the freight improvement, the light rail aspect, and future high speed rail capability. I can’t imagine that light rail would make a huge price difference if a multipurpose bridge is already being built.
It would also help the crunch at the north end of the Interstate Bridge. If you take I-5 southbound anytime you can fairly easily on every trip pick out a few people who are only using the bridge to go from Downtown Vancouver to Jantzen Beach or Marine Drive.
If we can better link those areas without making it too attractive to exit I-5 to take the new bridge (and thus just shifting where the gridlock occurs in Downtown Vancouver) it would probably keep I-5 moving a lot smoother.
Dave,
They don’t exist in my profession: Oracle database engineer. My understanding is that we have two locally supported Oracle installations in Clark County: the City of Vancouver and Clark County itself.
HP uses Oracle of course, but they don’t have any programming staff here. It’s all in California and overseas.
Wells,
The existing bridges were built over thirty years apart. They won’t need to be decommissioned at the same time.
If a new southbound bridge is built it should be configured to allow the northbound half to be built between the new southbound half and the existing 1958 southbound span in the same footprint that the northbound portion of the currently planned bridge is designed to occupy.
Any northbound lanes are going to tresspass on the existing bridge access both north and south of the crossing, otherwise there can be no connection with the northbound I-5 lanes. The southbound lanes will be built so that the connection to the southbound bridge can be severed, then both bridges will be northbound for a year or two while the elevation changes at each end are configured.
So the right way to complete this project given the funding limitations is do the same thing but over twenty years, the southbound lanes now and IF traffic continues to grow because electric cars become radically cheaper, the northbound half in a decade and a half. You’d probably want to put the entire set of supports in to avoid having to disturb the river again in fifteen years, but no decking and leave the northbound access to the north and south of the crossing as it is. With the possible exception of replacing the first section of the 1918 bridge just north of Jantzen Beach to provide a decent acceleration lane.
That way tolls can pay for the whole thing, and we don’t have to worry about begging for Federal participation greater than the normal fuel tax allocation for Washington and Oregon.
It’s like the way Sound Transit is building its system on a “pay as you go” basis.
You could branch off and become a MySQL admin. I’m sure there are plenty of those gigs in Vancouver. :)
Any tolling should also be based on added capacity. Adding Max and transit capacity equals higher transit fares to cross the river. Adding cycling capacity would be paid for with new bicycle tolls, freight capacity with freight tolling thereby leaving only the general non- freight highway capacity improvements to be paid for by highway commuter and general motorist tolls.
MySQL: dBase on (home cooked) steriods. They don’t even have stored objects. What a joke!
Dave,
So you define 9% of everything over $9,000 (after the spectacularly generous $3600 married exemption) as “some money back”, huh? Well, I guess that’s one perspective.
Anandakos: I thought so.
(I have a friend who is a SQL Server admin, and he responds to the same “suggestion” in much the same way…)
:)
Please stay on topic everyone, or I’ll lecture you about just how attractive that $3,600 looks to a couple whose marriage is officially unrecognized by Federal statute and state Constitutional amendment.
(And there’s millions of installations of MySQL out there, and therefore a large number of customers who need help administering it, so even though it’s not the latest most fully-abstracted tech out there, people do make a living maintaining it…)
Tolls should be based on the problem…in this case too many SOVs in the peaks. I-5 is fine 90% of the time. With fewer SOVs in the peak hours the two historic bridges would be fine in the peaks.
Drive alone? OK, but pay a toll. Share the ride? its free. Some of those tolls should be used to pay transit riders, bicyclists, and vanpools as these are the solutions to the problem. Toll the problem, pay the solution.
Bob,
I said I was an Oracle “engineer”, trying not to be too boringly specific. I’m a PL/SQL and Java programmer, not a pager-bot.
And before you go singing the praises of Java opportunities in Vancouver, I write Java stored procedures, NOT the GUI’s. Everybody wants the GUI, Beans, and Spring. While I can provide database support for Beans and Spring I haven’t mastered either and certainly haven’t done them for pay.
Ergo, no contract for me.
The data has been there all along that at least 1/3 of the trips on the I-5 freeway over the Columbia are local. ODOT’s response? “we don’t build arterial bridges.”
Freight has been cited from the start…hence the Governors’ I-5 TRADE Partnership, but that group was presented with NO data on freight movement or economic trends. And the first project in the area, widening I-5 southbound, actually takes away the “freight add lane” off Columbia Blvd for the benefit of commuters in SOVs and may restrict future access to I-5 from Swan Island.
There is nothing in the current proposal that helps freight movement.
And the first project in the area, widening I-5 southbound, actually takes away the “freight add lane” off Columbia Blvd for the benefit of commuters in SOVs and may restrict future access to I-5 from Swan Island.
The plans I’ve seen show there’s going to be a very long merge lane in that area, and the interchange is planned to be redesigned soon anyway to allow a northbound onramp and southbound offramp. The point is to allow better traffic flow. The add lane from Columbia is underutilized and just restricts southbound through freight traffic in that area, along with the SOV’s.