The Columbia River Crossing, which was dead, then was alive, now is once more dead. This $3 billion to $4 billion project was going to replace the Interstate 5 bridge across the Columbia between Oregon and Washington, extend light rail into Vancouver, Washington, and rebuild several of the freeway interchanges north and south of the river.
Bridge supporters said it would relieve congestion, but it wasn’t clear how replacing a six-lane bridge with a twelve-lane bridge would relieve congestion when there were only six lanes approaching the bridge from the north and south. Instead, the real goal was to create lots of contracts for bridge builders, rail builders, highway contractors, and various other engineering and construction firms.
How do sports injuries occur? Sports cialis 40 mg Check Prices and exercise are great for scientific research. But there is viagra without prescription uk a slight problem! They have no reason to doubt his service as Chiropractor because as a professional, Edward M. If left cialis 100mg canada unconsidered, it is found to be as a major cause of osteoarthritis trouble. Cenforce cost viagra 100mg changes your lifestyle and your thought process to live life with your partner. It is a sad truth that opponents of megaprojects can never win; they can only delay losing. By definition, megaprojects earn enormous profits for someone, and they will keep coming back again and again until they finally wear down the opposition. In this case, for example, one of the biggest proponents concedes only that the project is “dead–for this year, anyway.”
Yet there is good reason to think that the project won’t simply be revived in the next state legislature. One of the most important lobbyists for the project was, in effect, paid by taxpayers–her pay came from an engineering firm that received more than $100 million in contracts to plan the bridge. That flow of money will stop when the Columbia River Crossing office closes on May 31, so that lobbyist, at least, will be out of the picture. That office spent nearly $190 million, roughly half of which went to the consulting firm that hired the pro-CRC lobbyist, and never accomplished a thing except to waste people’s time.
Many people worked hard to kill this project, including Chris Girard, the CEO of the Plaid Pantry chain of Northwest convenience stores. But a special kudos should be given to Tiffany Couch for uncovering a lot of the dirt on the project. Let’s hope that the dirt now covers the project’s coffin permanently.
Next rail issue to watch is the Southwest corridor light rail, part of which is on the ballot this Tuesday in Tigard Oregon. The issue is an initiative that, essentially, requires a vote of the people before Tigard can build light rail or “HCT”. The local paper supports rail and advocates a NO vote, but actually published the latest mailer from the YES (to require a vote) side:
http://www.oregonlive.com/tigard/index.ssf/2014/03/tigard_ballot_measure_supporte_1.html
thanks
JK
The issue as to how we define magaprojects. I don’t think a 3 billion dollar bridge is a megaproject. The Hoover Dam, that was a megaproject………in 1935. But it’s small potatoes compared to the last 10 large dams built in the last 30 years. No way in hell, such a project in the US would take place, one we don’t have a river big enough or any left, we’ve dammed every major river in the US. Our greatest rivers, the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Colorado, the Potomac, the Susquehanna. And environmental review and certification, you couldn’t even build a dam like Hoover again. We’re now in the business of removing dams, not building them. The Golden Gate Bridge……was a megaproject….but today, suppose it didn’t exist, it would cost a fortune to build and given the propensity for architects and their love affair with complexity and computer design, would be a boondoggle just like Calatrava’s bridges.
And 12 lanes of road, for connecting a 6 lane highway at both ends, that’s like building a 50,000 seat stadium and 5 foot wide hallways.
“Bridge supporters said it would relieve congestion, but it wasn’t clear how replacing a six-lane bridge with a twelve-lane bridge would relieve congestion when there were only six lanes approaching the bridge from the north and south.”
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“And 12 lanes of road, for connecting a 6 lane highway at both ends, that’s like building a 50,000 seat stadium and 5 foot wide hallways.”
I’m trying to understand how this isn’t the case for almost every highway capacity increase project. Unless the capacity increase extends well beyond the major origins and destinations in a city, isn’t this always the case? Adding lanes to a highway in a urban area is just offsetting the bottleneck a little bit.
I’d disagree with Randal on one point, that the additional lanes aren’t needed because the freeway north and south of the bridges have the same number of lanes (6) as the bridges. The additional capacity is needed because there are large volumes of traffic entering and exiting the freeway immediately north and south of the bridges. ODOT data shows (for 2011 IIRC) I-5 carries 43k vehicles daily northbound at Delta Park, just south of the bridge, rising to 62k on the bridge. I don’t have WA data for southbound, but from my experience I’d say it’s similar, mainly due to merging traffic from freeway SR-14 entering immediately north of the bridge. I drive this bridge several times a week during off-peak hours (avoiding peak hours at all costs) and still regularly encounter jammed-up traffic at the bridge after experiencing no congestion at all on the approaches. Further adding to slowdowns are the bridge’s narrow lanes, poor sightlines, and lack of shoulders. These deficiencies contribute to a higher crash rate than should be expected, and of course the crashes make a bad situation vastly worse (no place to move disabled vehicles).
For the record, the plan was for 10 not 12 lanes. The project claimed these additional lanes were “auxiliary lanes” though they didn’t really meet the definition of aux lanes (they extended beyond multiple exits), no doubt to placate the “no new capacity, at any place, at any time, no matter what” crowd.
Oregon has tried to portray the project as giving WA what it wants (expanded highway) if OR gets what it wants (light rail). OR Governor Kitzhaber famously stated “no light rail, no bridge, no kidding,” but I think his bluff is about to be called. The fact is that OR wants the highway capacity just as much as WA as they see the current bridge negatively impacting OR freight businesses. OR business and political leaders make this point continually (funny, no one ever has said the same thing about light rail). Many of our local WA politicians are pushing to restart the bridge replacement project but with buses instead of LRT. For a good example, see the column by State Rep. Liz Pike in the Feb. 20 issue of the Portland Tribune.
kens makes good points about lanes, and certainly that interchange is a terrible mess.
The last time this story came up, I asked where the $190 million went, and thanks to a link in one of the links in the AP’s article, the picture is more clear:
All this money just for planners? Can you spell BOONDOGGLE?
“… that’s like building a 50,000 seat stadium and 5 foot wide hallways.”
Great idea. You keep the cost of the stadium artificially low so it gets approved. And then after people get trampled in the small hallways, you get a new multi-million contract to widen the hallways to where they should have been in the first place.
And since renovation is much more expensive than initial construction, you make a lot of extra $ And the actual cost of the stadium is only discovered after it’s too late.
Actually, not a new idea. Almost all government-financed projects seem to be designed and built this way.
The Antiplanner wrote:
Bridge supporters said it would relieve congestion, but it wasn’t clear how replacing a six-lane bridge with a twelve-lane bridge would relieve congestion when there were only six lanes approaching the bridge from the north and south. Instead, the real goal was to create lots of contracts for bridge builders, rail builders, highway contractors, and various other engineering and construction firms.
I must respectfully disagree with The Antiplanner in part, and express my agreement with Kens above.
A wider bridge, with wider approaches, would get rid of a lot of weaving and reduce problems (including crashes) associated with same. The reconstructed Woodrow Wilson Bridge (I-95 across the Potomac River between Alexandria, Virginia and Oxon Hill, Maryland) is a ten lane crossing that replaced a very inadequate six lane structure that was built in the early 1960’s. There is one lane in each direction that is currently not used, but is planned for a future transit use (HOV or rail), and most of the recurring congestion associated with this crossing is was eliminated. when the entire thing was opened to traffic, even though both ends connect to 8-lane sections of freeway.
What would the proposed MAX light rail across the Columbia River do in providing traffic congestion relief? About as much as rail across the Wilson Bridge is currently providing.
CPZ – I agree with you. Even if the larger bridge is not the bottleneck right now, they can improve the approaches in the future. Plus bridges tend to have lots of on and off ramps right at the abutments, and that is lots of lane changes. Plus it is much cheaper and less disruptive to build a wider bridge than to do any modifications later.
The Wilson Bridge was a huge improvement. But the billions spent on miles of new highways after the bridge (especially on the Virginia side) made it work.
If the bridgework was done and only minor changes were made on either end, it would still be a bottleneck.