Portland State University Center for Transportation Studies Spring 2006 Transportation Seminar Series Topic: Columbia River Crossing Environmental Impact Statement Speakers: Doug Ficco, CRC Project Co-Director, Washington State Department of Transportation and Jay Lyman, Consultant Team PM, David Evans and Associates, Inc. When: Friday, May 19, 2006, 12:00-1:30 pm Where: 204 Urban Center (www.pdx.edu/map.html) * Most…

It was a busy meeting for the Columbia River Task Force last night. Their task was to vote on the crossing and transit components to move forward to the next round of analysis. They didn’t get very far. Concerns were raised about the level of outreach in the public comment process (indeed, Portland Transport’s comments,…

I’m about to close comments on the Columbia River Crossing Week posts, so I can bundle them up and submit them for the record. If you’d like to keep discussing the items, do so here.

Pages 4-7 to 4-10, 4-13 and 4-14 (PDF, 382K) of the screening report (PDF 3.3M) describe some of the more exotic ways of getting people across the river: Ferries Monorails Maglev Trains Personal Rapid Transit People Movers Staff reject them. I’m actually sorry to see Ferries crossed off the list, but I appreciate the argument…

Described on pages 5-14 to 5-23 (PDF, 482K) of the report (PDF 3.3M) these are all some variation on putting the additional traffic somewhere else. In most cases (except for the I-205 improvements scenario), in a new corridor. A new corridor would open up new land for development and quite likely encourage sprawl and more…