A little bit ago, I referenced that testimony had been presented to the Independent Review Panel for the Columbia River Crossing by a consultant hired by the City of Portland to review the project data.
A few PowerPoint slides (PDF) from the URS (the consultant hired by the City) presentation are now on the the review panel web site.
The slides hint at two important ideas:
- It would appear that I-5 South will congest (V/C or Volume/Capacity ratio approaches 1.0) by 2030 at about the Alberta exit
- URS is suggesting looking at combining the Hayden Island and Marine Drive interchanges as a way to reduce the number of overall lanes
I don’t quite grasp how that combined interchange would work, but I’ll look forward to seeing concepts. URS is also charged to develop ideas for reducing additional auxiliary lanes in both directions and I’ll look forward to concepts as well.
5 responses to “A Brief Glimpse of the URS CRC Report”
I think what has concerned me lately regarding all the talk I have seen about the CRC is sizing. Its starting to sound less like a bunch of planners trying to find the “right” solution for the region and more like a bunch of marketing shills trying to figure out what the smallest change they can make to placate people enough to drop the “mega” from “mega-bridge”. Kind of like the idea of going from 12 lanes to 10. We reduce axillary lanes by one or two and everyone is happy?
Also it seems to me that adding lanes will never address any of the problems in the third slide titled “Questions”. The only way to address any of that is to make driving a car alone to work everyday from Clark/Vancouver (my home) to Portland (my job) the least desirable option or unnecessary.
Hopefully that combined Marine Dr/Hayden interchange would be: exit Marine Dr west, go a small distance and take the local access bridge over to the island. :-)
From early on in the I5 TF work in 2000 it was clear that there was a strong concensus on keeping the freeway system thru Portland at “3 thru lanes” (though some of us would like to reduce some of those to ZERO). That extended across the River as well with a clear understanding that at least one auxilary lane is necessary. So the debate almost from the beginning about the number of lanes over the Columbia is between auxilary lanes and arterial lanes, or how many of each. Data suggesting that about 1/3 of I-5 brige trips are local or of rather short length suggest that there needs to be some kind of facility for those trips separate from the interstate freeway. Because the big DOTs do not build arterial bridges and control the CRC process, they have been opposed to trying to accommodate local trips via an arterial bridge.
Lenny –
I think that “local” terminology was a bit misleading. Someone from Battleground who uses SR500 to access I5 was being counted as “local” even if their destination was Wilsonville.
In short, it appears that any trip that entered I5 or exited I5 on SR500 or SR14 was being called local because they got on or off I5 within the bridge influence area.
An arterial doesn’t really serve many of those trips. I think the arterial still makes sense, but there need to be some real numbers attached of how many auto or freight trips it would serve.
I really can’t believe that this conversation just keeps going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going,
and going, and going, and going, and going,
and going, and going, and going, and going,
and going, and going, and going, and going,
and going, and going, and going, and going,
and going, and going, and going, and going,
and and going, and going, and going,
and going,going, and going, and going………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Well, Al M,
When they have their hands on the taxpayers purse and can spend $80 million pushing an idea what else can you expect?