A Tale of Two Bridges


An excellent op-ed that the Oregonian only posted online. A mega-bridge project was unpacked and only the key component moved forward.

Unfortunately, the transit component was lost in the process…


41 responses to “A Tale of Two Bridges”

  1. Worth noting – at least to the original author – is that Saint Louis already has a light rail crossing on another bridge. Unlike the CRC project’s rail component, that would be an unnecessary duplication.

  2. Good point Bill, and along those same lines, we could take that $600 million they spent on the other bridge and build a local access bridge with light rail that extends to Vancouver, carrying several lanes worth of congested freeway traffic on light rail. Close the interchanges at Hayden island and provide two more lanes of roadway for the people from Vancouver to clog for a few hours every day. No tolling, very little local money required.

    Or we can build another 6 lane bridge, as the anonymous author proposes (assuming they can do it for that much), and I-5 south will be exactly as congested as today, because the bottleneck will just shift further south.

  3. Clark County does not want light rail and the CRC is a sham.

    But this is a good lesson for the Sellwood bridge project.

    “The new Mississippi River Bridge (www.newriverbridge.org) being built costs $313 million. It’s a cable-stayed bridge. Sound familiar? It will be 1,500 feet long (the third longest cable-stayed span in the country), 400 feet tall, 86 feet wide and will rise 75 feet above the river. Six lanes of traffic can cross the bridge.

    Sounds perfect for the Sellwood bridge.

    But how do they build a bridge 1500 feet long, 6 lanes and 86 feet wide for the same price as our Sellwood Bridge replacement that will have only two lanes and be 62 feet wide?

  4. ^ 1/3 of the price tag for the Sellwood bridge is for the Hwy 43 interchange that ODOT mandated. It has twice the footprint of the existing interchange and is designed with freeway ramps. Note how the other side, the Sellwood side, will get a normal at grade interchange. The City and the County, from my understanding, both wanted a simple interchange that wouldn’t promote excessive speeding on Hwy 43.

    Sound familiar? It should since the CRC bridge is only 1/6 to 1/10 the estimated cost of the projects 5 miles of freeway widening and lightrail components (please note 1/3 to 1/5 the cost is the MAX extension! All the rest is highway).

  5. Unfortunately, the transit component was lost in the process…

    As I’ve pointed out many times, if we did this here — new freeway bridge with six lanes — we could have three freeway lanes each way with no bridge lifts, and use the existing bridge for local arterial traffic, bike crossing and light rail. We wouldn’t need to give up anything supported by any stakeholder. And then each state could pay for necessary interchange improvements on their side of the bridge.

  6. A quick look at the map shows that St. Louis and its Illinois suburbs have two arterial bridges and light rail with a total of six bridges in all. So the comparison is not so simple. What we lack is the arterial and HCT links; we already have 14 freeway lanes. Our DOTs have seriously overreached and are paying the price.

  7. Build a new arterial bridge (with LRT and paths) to connect the street grids in Vancouver, Hayden Island and by the Expo Center. Retrofit the I-5 bridges.

    Stop wasting money on un-needed mega bridges and reconfiguring interchanges.

  8. The “other bridge” with the light rail crossing is Eads Bridge. Built in 1870s for trains on the lower deck and “active transport” (no motor vehicles) on the upper. Not only pre-car, but pre-bike!

    The first great modern bridge, and still in use.

  9. Also, I’d like to see comparative cost/benefit analyses between ODOT’s $130 million for the west side motorist interchange of the Sellwood and TriMet’s $130 million for a COMPLETE rail, bus, cyclist, pedestrian bridge.

  10. The main reason I like a new freeway bridge instead of a new arterial bridge is this: it’s easy to pay for the project.

    Federal law won’t allow us to toll a bridge that’s already there. But if we build a new freeway bridge, it lets us fix everything that’s genuinely a problem with the current bridge (bridge lifts, narrow lanes, no shoulder) and pay for the whole thing, plus the necessary interchange improvements at the north end (all bridge approaches) with a relatively modest toll. If the toll isn’t all that steep, it will be less of an incentive for people to divert trips to I-205.

    Then the existing bridge can be transferred to a bi-state authority, which can toll that bridge at the same rate as the new freeway bridge. The tolls will pay for seismic improvements to the bridge, a cantilevered sidewalk on each side, and light rail tracks and overhead wire on the bridge itself.

    The tolls can also be designed with peak-hour pricing built into the toll structure, to help deal with congestion through the entire Metro area (including Clark County).

  11. ^ 1/3 of the price tag for the Sellwood bridge is for the Hwy 43 interchange that ODOT mandated. It has twice the footprint of the existing interchange and is designed with freeway ramps. Note how the other side, the Sellwood side, will get a normal at grade interchange. The City and the County, from my understanding, both wanted a simple interchange that wouldn’t promote excessive speeding on Hwy 43.

    That makes me wonder what the actual minimum requirements are on this project? I know that the western interchange on the Sellwood bridge seems a little goofy at first, but once you get used to it, most hours of the day it flows very smoothly. I’ve used it thousands of times and don’t give it a second thought. Were it not for the commuting-hour bottlenecks there, there would be no technical reason to change it; you just have to get used to its uniqueness and accept it.

    If there were some other commuting means which lessened SOV traffic this would mean that this bottle neck would go away or at least reduce. I’ve supported mass transit to suburban areas, which would include the travel shed of the Sellwood Bridge, and also believe in building shortcuts that would reduce VMT for all modes. I’ve turned against Portland LRT because of the mushrooming costs. But this begs the question: In a comprehensive policy within the METRO area, what really HAS to be done with the Sellwood bridge? What’s the minimum we could do—that when combined with other, reasonable improvements in other areas renders an equally effective result?

    What I said about shortcuts reducing VMT applies to the CRC project also. In light of west. Portland growth it’s time to get travelers weaned off the “I-5 Gut”, in comparable fashion to the function that I-205 served for the east side. Doesn’t have to be a clone of the 205—but some kind of route for the use and benefit of all modes is long overdue.

  12. In a comprehensive policy within the METRO area, what really HAS to be done with the Sellwood bridge?

    A lot less than they’re doing, I expect. I’m now wondering if the ultra-wide sidewalks are a stealth way of squeezing two extra lanes onto the bridge in the future (and I’ll bet I’m really late to the party on that one). The neighborhood was against a four-lane bridge, but that’s basically what they got: a pair of overly wide traffic lanes flanked by overly wide bike lanes/shoulders flanked by preposterously wide sidewalks. Trim the sidewalks to eight feet on each side in the future and, presto, four lane bridge.

    Maybe that’s the reason for ODOT’s insistence on a much larger west-side ramp … they want it to be able to feed more lanes of traffic down the line.

  13. Of course there are very good reasons to leave out a transit component from the CRC:
    1. It is NOT required by the Federal government
    2. Buses can run at very low cost in congestion free general purpose lanes.
    3. Cure congestion and you benefit all users. Spend large amounts of money on dedicated guideway transit and you cure only a small part of the problem at a cost that could cure the whole problem.

    Now you have a solution that benefits all people that cross the river at around 10% of the cost of the proposed project. This means that tolls will not be needed. (Astute observers may note that the project includes a number of intersections – but these can be rebuilt in the future as money becomes available, without tolls)

    Thanks
    JK

  14. Of course there are very good reasons to leave out a transit component from the CRC:

    1. It is NOT required by the Federal government

    Neither is the highway component. Were the region to propose a “green bridge” in this location, with no modifications to the freeway whatsoever, it would be eligible for Federal funding. What the Feds won’t allow is adding tolls to the existing bridge or a replacement facility without corresponding highway improvements. The insistence that we build a new freeway bridge comes from the state DsOT, not Uncle Sam.

    2. Buses can run at very low cost in congestion free general purpose lanes.

    I’m sure they can. Trouble is, in a metropolis the size of ours, there’s no such thing as “congestion free general purpose lanes”.

    3. Cure congestion and you benefit all users. Spend large amounts of money on dedicated guideway transit and you cure only a small part of the problem at a cost that could cure the whole problem.

    Except you cannot cure congestion in this way. The only way to “cure” congestion is to limit demand; because of the problem of induced demand, adding to supply seldom works.

    Now you have a solution that benefits all people that cross the river at around 10% of the cost of the proposed project. This means that tolls will not be needed. (Astute observers may note that the project includes a number of intersections – but these can be rebuilt in the future as money becomes available, without tolls)

    Here you are on the right track–much of the interchange rebuilding is not strictly necessary. But these design elements have NOTHING to do with transit.

  15. EngineerScotty Says: I’m sure they can. Trouble is, in a metropolis the size of ours, there’s no such thing as “congestion free general purpose lanes”.
    JK: That is because most cities refuse to add road capacity at the same rate as they add population. There a re a couple of cities that have added lots of capacity and have held congestion level.

    You don’t really have to be congestion free to have successful transit. Even today C-Tran buses take much less time from Vancouver to Portland than the current light rail from Expo center.

    EngineerScotty Says: 3. Cure congestion and you benefit all users. Spend large amounts of money on dedicated guideway transit and you cure only a small part of the problem at a cost that could cure the whole problem.

    Except you cannot cure congestion in this way. The only way to “cure” congestion is to limit demand;
    JK: How do you do that – tell people they can’t travel? Make travel impossible with high density so that the roads are gridlocked? (You do know that density is one cause of congestion, don’t you?)

    EngineerScotty Says: because of the problem of induced demand, adding to supply seldom works.
    JK: Where is all this alleged induced demand coming from? Are you seriously saying that people will travel to work twice each morning and twice each evening? Or are you just saying that as the region adds people, the new people use roads and the roads need to be expanded to meet the deamnd?

    EngineerScotty Says: Now you have a solution that benefits all people that cross the river at around 10% of the cost of the proposed project. This means that tolls will not be needed. (Astute observers may note that the project includes a number of intersections – but these can be rebuilt in the future as money becomes available, without tolls)

    Here you are on the right track–much of the interchange rebuilding is not strictly necessary. But these design elements have NOTHING to do with transit.
    JK: They have to keeping the cost down to the point that tolls won’t be needed.

    Thanks
    JK

  16. EngineerScotty:he only way to “cure” congestion is to limit demand;

    JK: How do you do that – tell people they can’t travel? Make travel impossible with high density so that the roads are gridlocked?

    Captain Obvious: Demand-responsive variable tolling on all bridges and freeways. Anybody with even rudimentary comprehension of basic economics understands this.

  17. Douglas K,: Captain Obvious: Demand-responsive variable tolling on all bridges and freeways. Anybody with even rudimentary comprehension of basic economics understands this
    JK: Are you saying we reduce the mobility of low income people? Make travel too expensive for some people?

    Thanks
    JK

  18. Are you saying we reduce the mobility of low income people? Make travel too expensive for some people?

    Of course not. They can ride bikes or take transit if they can’t afford to drive. And I’m glad that you agree we should spend tax money to make public transit more affordable to people.

    Unless you’re saying we should use tax money to subsidize the cost of purchasing a car, maintenance, insurance, fuel and other expenses to make it easier for some people to travel, and then spend even more tax money to expand the roads so wide nobody will ever get delayed in traffic again. In that case, I’ll have to disagree. I’m just not a fan of your particular brand of socialism.

  19. Douglas K,: Are you saying we reduce the mobility of low income people? Make travel too expensive for some people?

    Of course not. They can ride bikes or take transit if they can’t afford to drive.
    JK: But they can afford to drive now, so you are suggesting they switch to a more dangerous and/or slower travel to accommodate your proposal. I call that picking on the poor.

    Douglas K,: And I’m glad that you agree we should spend tax money to make public transit more affordable to people.
    JK: Quit mis representing my position. Tell us which would be cheaper and which would provide better service to the low income:
    1. Get them into low cost cars.
    2. Increase transit service.
    This will get you started: cars cost 25 cent per passenger-mile (including all but 1 cent of capital cost), light rail about 55 cents (no capital cost) and bus about 85 cents (no capital cost) (system averages, some bus lines cost less than light rail.)

    Douglas K,: Unless you’re saying we should use tax money to subsidize the cost of purchasing a car, maintenance, insurance, fuel and other expenses to make it easier for some people to travel,
    JK: Yes. It has proven to improve their life. I though all the progressives wanted to improve people’s lives and fiscal conservatives, like me, are being accused of the opposite. Here I am arguing for improving people’s lives and you appear to be against it.

    Douglas K,: and then spend even more tax money to expand the roads so wide nobody will ever get delayed in traffic again.
    JK: Why not just spend the road user fees on road expansion instead of mass transit, bike lanes, bubble curbs, and transit support, etc.

    Douglas K,: In that case, I’ll have to disagree. I’m just not a fan of your particular brand of socialism.
    JK: What socialism?

    Would you rather spend 68 cents (80% of 85) of tax money per passenger-mile for transit compared to having car users pay 10 cents per passenger mile with about a 1 cent tax subsidy. Please note that automobile user fees are NOT taxes as long as they are spent on roads – they are user fees, like tolls. Also the average subsidy to auto is about 1 cent per passenger-mile, while the subsidy for transit is above 50 cents per passenger-mile.

    Thanks
    JK

  20. I don’t understand the hullabaloo about the new bridge somehow “missing” transit component. If the flow of traffic improves and buses can get across it quicker, isn’t that improving the transit component? Am I missing something? I actually admire the governor for stepping up to the plate and making progress to create jobs. The out of state imports living in and around the Portland area who would rather quibble than make a bridge, just makes me laugh!

  21. Since JK has yet again posted the rather selective supposed costs of automobiles, figures which leave out all kinds of externalized costs and other funding sources, I refer readers (yet again) to two relevant studies which contradict JK’s assertions:

    1. VTPI: Transportation Cost and Benefit Analysis Techniques, Estimates and Implications [Second Edition] (PDF format), which concludes that “Total estimated costs range from about $0.94 per vehicle mile for rural driving to $1.64 for urban-peak driving.”

    2. Do Roads Pay For Themselves? Setting the Record Straight on Transportation Funding, which concludes (among other things) that “Gasoline taxes aren’t ‘user fees’ in any meaningful sense of the term – The amount of money a particular driver pays in gasoline taxes bears little relationship to his or her use of roads funded by gas taxes” and “Highways “pay for themselves” less today than ever. Currently, highway “user fees” pay only about half the cost of building and maintaining the nation’s network of highways, roads and streets.”

    We really should have a dedicated page somewhere to all of these assertions of supposedly low-cost autos and all of the counter-arguments and links to studies, as some commenters seem to reboot these assertions on a monthly basis while rarely acknowledging or incorporating those past counter-arguments, which have been going on for years now.

  22. I don’t understand the hullabaloo about the new bridge somehow “missing” transit component.

    Because a substantially wider bridge, in isolation, will dump more traffic into I-5 as it heads further south, worsening the existing bottleneck. That won’t improve conditions or trip times for transit operating on a freeway at all. There’s no place for buses to stop along the freeway either, so you’re only talking about “express” service which only serves a select few passengers, rather than corridor transit service.

    Express buses on freeways have a role, but they don’t serve the bulk of potential transit users.

    Personally, I’m for freeway bottleneck reduction in the central city (done wisely, with the usual caveats, yada yada), but this should be done first before massively expanding capacity at the edges of the system.

    The CRC, in many ways, is a project which is designed to force the issue of massive freeway expansion within the central city.

    The price tag of central city freeway loop upgrades will be enormous, possibly exceeding the cost of the CRC itself, which is why the DOTs are reluctant to talk about it.

  23. Would it be cheaper to entice all the businesses and people to relocate to Oregon so they don’t clog up this bridge? Why not widen I5 and build up the area south of Wilsonville to Salem and beyond? Just seems like a lot of missed opportunity to Oregon having it the way it is ….

  24. Would it be cheaper to entice all the businesses and people to relocate to Oregon so they don’t clog up this bridge?

    No. :-)

    But it would be cheaper to create local arterial connections between Portland and Vancouver.

    Imagine if Portland had none of the following bridges: Ross Island, Hawthorne, Morrison, Burnside, Steel, Broadway, St. Johns, and that all of the local trips had to be made only on the Marquam and Fremont bridges. They’d be highly congested and backed up most of the day, and the local streets around the feeder ramps would be highly congested as well.

    Well, that’s precisely the situation we have between Portland and Clark County… Everything is forced onto the I-5 and I-205 bridges, local and long-distance alike.

    Making the I-5 bridges wider does not solve the basic problem. Portland and Vancouver need better distribution via arterial connections for local trips.

  25. I forgot to mention that most Trimet riders (70-80%) have access to an car (“choice riders”), so we only need to help the other 20% get cars. Minus, of course, a few that cannot drive.

    The core area could remain served by the re-organized system, paid for by the downtown businesses.

    thanks
    JK
    (from my netbook)

  26. Big and obvious “YES” to ODOT’s driving a four-lane arterial right down Tacoma Street from 99 to 43 in the not-so-distant future.

    A couple of years ago I asked Gail Achterman, Chair of the Oregon Transportation Commission, what the advantage of a $320 million project crossing the Willamette at Sellwood would be. She replied that she had had her staff analyze just that issue, the result being that there would be no net benefit to the current transportation infrastructure of the state as a whole beyond spending $80 million for a basic bridge.

    It is abundantly clear that ODOT is promoting major expansions of personal motor traffic.

    Thought for the day: our capitalist individualist cars would be of little use without our collectivist socialist roads.

  27. Sellwood Bridge and therefore Hwy 43 traffic counts took a big hit with the weight restrictions in ’04.

    There are a bunch of reasons to argue that traffic there might not exceed previous levels for a long time after the new bridge opens: MAX offering a transit alternative to SOWA/Aerial Tram and PSU, continuing loss of jobs in Portland while suburban jobs grow (yes, there will be more jobs in SOWA and probably Johns Landing), substitution of communication for transportation, population aging in Milwaukie, Oak Grove, Lake Oswego, & West Linn, etc.

    One other factor is what is looking like an ever more likely transfer of responsibility for 43 to the three cities along its route. We can’t know how future Portland commissioners & mayors will view doubling lanes on Tacoma and the bridge but they certainly will be a lot closer to the people than ODOT.

  28. She replied that she had had her staff analyze just that issue, the result being that there would be no net benefit to the current transportation infrastructure of the state as a whole beyond spending $80 million for a basic bridge.

    Seriously? We could replace the Sellwood Bridge for $80 million?

  29. If what ODOT wants is a highway bridge, that would be easier to do a few blocks south, parallel with JCB and Golf Junction. While I’m sure ODOT would love a highway in that location, Sellwood residents have successfully resisted in the past highwayfication of Tacoma Street–indeed, the profile of the street has gone from a four-lane street (with part-time parking in the outer lanes) to a more neighborhood-like street, with various traffic calming features and only a single through lane in each direction.

    And of course, if ODOT wants a highway bridge, they, not the good citizens of Multnomah County (along with a 5% contribution from Clackamas) ought to be coughing up the dough.

  30. Bob R. Says: Since JK has yet again posted the rather selective supposed costs of automobiles, figures which leave out all kinds of externalized costs and other funding sources, I refer readers (yet again) to two relevant studies which contradict JK’s assertions:

    1. VTPI: Transportation Cost and Benefit Analysis Techniques, Estimates and Implications [Second Edition] (PDF format), which concludes that “Total estimated costs range from about $0.94 per vehicle mile for rural driving to $1.64 for urban-peak driving.”
    JK: Got a link to the whole document or do you expect me to download about 28 chapters in order to find his mistakes?

    Why don’t you simplify it for us and list the major cost items that add up the that $1.64/vehicle mile and be sure to show, for each item, a similar item cost for transit. (Buses burn ugly oil too!)

    Lets look at the at that $1.64. That is only $1.03 per passenger-mile, which is only 2 cents more than the cost of buses in the ten largest bus agencies (bus=$1.01), well withing any margin of error. See http://www.portlandfacts.com/top10bus.html

    I’ll bet he forgot to include the fact that cars are faster than transit. For instance, for the74 USA cities with population of 500,000 or more, transit commutes average 48.1 minutes compared to 25.2 for auto. (see portlandfacts.com/commutetime.html) Transit takes 33 min more each way per day or, at 15$/hr, about $15 more per day for transit. If the commute is 15 miles that is an added 50 cents/passenger-mile for transit, making transit bus cost about $1.51/passenger-mile compared to his car figure of $1.03/passenger-mile.

    Maybe he included this in his cost (I’m sure Bob will tell us.) And I’ll bet he did he not even bother to calculate the cost of transit using similar methods. I’ll check that when Bob posts a direct link to the whole study so I don’t have to download 28 separate files.

    AND: 4.96 trillion passenger miles (annual USA) x $1.64 = $8.13 trillion. Our total personal expenditures are about $10 trillion (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GDP_Categories_-_United_States.png) and $8 trillion is 80% of that – he is claiming that cars cost 80% of our total personal expenditures, so his claim does not pass the laugh test, even at a mixture of his 94 cents and $1.64. However at 25 cents/pasenger-mile, we get about $1.2 trillion, about 12% of personal expenditure. Add another 3 trillion for government expenditures and you still get the same conclusion – he is grossly wrong! Again.

    Bob R. Says: 2. Do Roads Pay For Themselves? Setting the Record Straight on Transportation Funding, which concludes (among other things) that “Gasoline taxes aren’t ‘user fees’ in any meaningful sense of the term – The amount of money a particular driver pays in gasoline taxes bears little relationship to his or her use of roads funded by gas taxes” and “Highways “pay for themselves” less today than ever.
    JK: Oh, Baloney! Most (or all) of the pot of money comes from road users and, except for the 18% taken for transit, all of it goes to roads. It is a user fee. That 18% part is a tax to support transit.

    Bob R. Says: Currently, highway “user fees” pay only about half the cost of building and maintaining the nation’s network of highways, roads and streets.”
    JK: Hogwash!
    1. Federal highway users OVERPAY for the roads, See U.S. Department of Transportation, : Federal Subsidies to Passenger Transportation. Summarized at: portlandfacts.com/roadsubsidy.htm

    2. Local roads are subsidized a little. O’Toole, using Pew Charitable Trust data, puts it at about 1 cent/passenger-mile which is tiny compared to the 60+ cents/passenger-mile for transit. see: ti.org/antiplanner/?p=2199

    Bob R. Says: We really should have a dedicated page somewhere to all of these assertions of supposedly low-cost autos and all of the counter-arguments and links to studies, as some commenters seem to reboot these assertions on a monthly basis while rarely acknowledging or incorporating those past counter-arguments, which have been going on for years now.
    JK: Did you ever give any counter arguments that weren’t easily debunked? I only remember a few:
    * CO2 emissions. But buses use more energy per passenger-mile than cars (national data), so emit more CO2 per passenger-mile.
    * Defending foreign oil. But buses use more energy per passenger-mile than cars (national data), so use more imported oil per passenger-mile.
    * The AAA says cars cost 93 cents per mile. But the actual AAA booklet shows 93 cents if for the most expensive of 9 cases they studied. Their middle case is 56 cents. Which is 35 cents per passenger-mile at the national average of 1.59 passengers/car. However the AAA data is for an average car age of 2 ½ years while the actual USA car averages a bit over 10 years old. See portlandfacts.com/aaa_cost.html Correcting for this age difference, one gets around 25 cents/passenger-mile.

    BTW, the AAA breaks down the cost into operating cost and ownership cost. Since the cost of transit is usually given as operating cost, it is appropriate to compare that cost with the operating cost of an auto, not the total cost. The AAA (201048935480.Driving Costs 2010.pdf) gives the operating cost for their middle case at about 17.3 cents/mile which is about 11 cents per passenger-mile. (Fun diversion: at what price of gas, does the cost of operating a car = operating cost of transit?)

    Thanks
    JK

  31. GregT Says: Would it be cheaper to entice all the businesses and people to relocate to Oregon so they don’t clog up this bridge?
    JK No, but , since Vancouver is adding jobs faster than the Oregon side, in a few years they might have more jobs and the bridge problem goes away. That is until they have many more jobs and Oregonians mass to Vancouver for the good jobs. Of course their population is a also growing faster.

    Thanks
    JK

  32. Bob R. Says: Because a substantially wider bridge, in isolation, will dump more traffic into I-5 as it heads further south, worsening the existing bottleneck. That won’t improve conditions or trip times for transit operating on a freeway at all.
    JK: No need to improve, just keep it the same – bus is already a lot faster than MAX.

    Bob R. Says: There’s no place for buses to stop along the freeway either, so you’re only talking about “express” service which only serves a select few passengers, rather than corridor transit service.
    JK: I presume express is what Vancouverites want. I find it hard to believe they want to stop at every stop along Interstate ave, like MAX does.

    Bob R. Says: Express buses on freeways have a role, but they don’t serve the bulk of potential transit users.
    JK: No, but they are the fastest way to get from Vancouver to downtown Portland where they can transfer to various other destinations.

    Bob R. Says: Personally, I’m for freeway bottleneck reduction in the central city (done wisely, with the usual caveats, yada yada), but this should be done first before massively expanding capacity at the edges of the system.
    JK: I disagree – fix problems as one is able to.

    Bob R. Says: The CRC, in many ways, is a project which is designed to force the issue of massive freeway expansion within the central city.
    JK: Oh, I always thought the freeway was just the price the planners figured they had to pay to get light rail to Vancouver (and beyond). Then the discovered the toll scam where if they build a really expensive project, the tolls can make the Feds pay for the local match dollars too.

    Bob R. Says:The price tag of central city freeway loop upgrades will be enormous, possibly exceeding the cost of the CRC itself, which is why the DOTs are reluctant to talk about it.
    JK: Still cheaper than light rail!

    Thanks
    JK

  33. Just scanning through http://www.planetizen.com/node/46570, it struck me that Todd’s $1.64 for urban-peak driving is actually a cost of high density.

    The solution to that high cost is to NOT encourage high density.

    One of his linked files contained this statement:
    Drivers – through gasoline taxes, car registration fees and sales taxes on vehicles – actually pay only 62% of the costs of roads. General taxpayers “subsidize” the rest, no matter how much or little they drive.
    Of course all of those “General taxpayers” also benefit from roads. Also he claims a 38% subsidy for roads, but is silent about a close to 80% subsidy to transit. Oh, and, government transit does NOT generally pay for roads!

    Enough of this.

    Thanks
    JK

  34. Douglas K:

    Seriously, $80 million, yes. That is about where the project started out. I have posted on this before, so I’ll not go into detail. A standard engineering method is to compare costs with recent similar bridges and make appropriate adjustments for differences. There is a vast database across the country to facilitate this. Engineers and contractors use the method to confirm and refine estimates made from their “ground-up” structural calculations of costs.

    Tri-Met’s design team did this repeatedly and drove down the cost of its bridge considerably. I did it for Sellwood, by myself, and even went much further, doing a technical study for an alternate design; my cost numbers came in even less, but I’ll go with a conservative $80 million.

    There is nothing wrong with the present design for the new bridge itself, which is by David Goodyear, a superb structural engineer. The problem is that ODOT has tacked on immense amounts of unnecessary rubbish. The same modus operandi as for CRC: the public cannot get the basic and fully functional bridge it needs without ODOT’s sandbagging lots of welfare for the construction industry.

    The real scandal at Sellwood is that Multnomah County knew about serious problems with the bridge for decades but did nothing about them. We should have had a new bridge fifteen years ago.

  35. Does Multnomah County need ODOT’s permission to build a bridge? Couldn’t the County just build an $80 million bridge on its own, assuming they could find enough local funding without looking to ODOT or the feds for money?

  36. Got a link to the whole document or do you expect me to download about 28 chapters in order to find his mistakes?

    You’ve had years to review this study, we’ve posted the links many times before. The fact that the chapters are in individual files shouldn’t be a major impediment (especially over several years) to reading them. Right-click, save as…

    Of course all of those “General taxpayers” also benefit from roads.

    Of course they do. That’s why I don’t mind subsidizing roads. But you can’t escape the fact that roads are indeed subsidized, not funded by users has you have claimed many times.

    General taxpayers also benefit from transit. That’s why I don’t mind subsidizing transit.

    But you should know this by now, this is a transit-supporting blog. Discussions are generally held within that context. See the rules. See also the part about needless repetition.

  37. Actually, I think in the case of I-5 express bus transit it could be both fast, efficient and “equitable.” They could have a stop at the EXPO center for those who want to get on MAX and its connecting bus routes. In fact, as I now understand it, the local connector bridge between mainland Portland and Hayden Island would do quite a lot to solve that area bottle neck and could provide a reasonable extension of the Yellow line to HAyden Island. And, given the plans in Vancouver, a few stops in the downtown area—comparable to the LPA for the proposed MAX—- would do as much as the MAX would.

    ODOT has a sensible proposal, now, for the bottle neck on I-5 in Portland at the Rose Quarter.

    Perhaps regular bus lines–with express buses during peak commuting hours—could also connect to these stops in DT Vancouver.

    There is a solution for a relative bargain—-instead of multiple, multiple billions for the CRC and future Clark Co. MAX proposals.

  38. I might also add that given the plans afoot for modernizing the riverfront area of Vancouver–and the additional high density residential and commercial development that that would spur, TOD proponents may achieve their vision—-even without the CRC project! Besides jobs in Oregon what are the other reasons Couvs come over here? Give them their own trendy district and they will probably stay there just as well. At least for a decade or so.

    Spare us the new “Pearson Field Landing Strip.”

  39. Annual travel on all public roads and streets in 2010 is estimated at just shy of 3 trillion VMT.

    See:
    http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/tvtw/10dectvt/index.cfm

    For JK’s figure of 4.96 trillion passenger-miles to be correct, it would require an average vehicle occupancy of 1.66, which is quite high. Actual statewide measurements from ODOT accident statistics, for example, reveals an occupancy of less than 1.3. JK further arrives at the $8+ trillion figure by confusing vehicle-miles (as stated by the report) with passenger miles. Those two factors alone reduce the JK’s “laugh test” to more of a chuckle.

  40. (JK’s rebuttal also conflates the concept of personal expenditures with externalized costs. That’s the point: Personal expenditures don’t cover the true cost of transportation.)

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