The Interstate 5 bridge across the Columbia River is actually two drawbridges — the only drawbridges on I-5 between Canada and Mexico. One is 95 years old, and while there is no known safety problem, the two bridges together are a bottleneck both for river traffic and for auto and truck traffic between Portland and Vancouver, Washington. So eight transportation agencies, including the Oregon and Washington departments of transportation and, for some reason, the Portland and Vancouver transit agencies (TriMet and C-TRAN), formed a Columbia River Crossing Project that is planning either replacement or supplemental bridges across the river.
The Columbia River Bridge. Click any photo for a larger view.
Wikipedia photo.
The Clark County (that’s Vancouver) Building Industry Association asked the Antiplanner to look at the project’s draft environmental impact statement that came out in May. The entire DEIS and supplemental documents total some 5,000 pages. Because the Project did not post all of the supplemental documents on line, and what it did post is in numerous separate files, the Antiplanner’s faithful ally, Jim Karlock, posted the entire DEIS and technical reports in two documents.
The first thing the Clark BIA asked me was, “Why is this expected to cost $4 billion? The Washington Department of Transportation recently built a new Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which is longer than the Columbia crossing, and it cost less than $1 billion.”
