Lars Larson comments on this week’s news that the Oregon and Washington transportation officials have agreed to pay upriver users $140 million to mitigate ‘a bridge too low’
Lars Larson
The Northwest Nonsense
Ready for the latest insane waste of your tax dollars?
Plans for the latest and soon to fail Interstate Bridge replacement propose to build a span more than 60 feet too low … and, just announced this week, it plans to bribe Northwest businesses.
The bribe? It’s $140 million to compensate for the business they’ll lose when the brand-new, same-size-as-the-old-one, boondoggle bridge blocks the river.
Federal funding has disappeared.
Oregon and Washington must pay for most of it and they’re just about flat broke.
The Coast Guard has still not given approval and that’s absolutely required.
Public opposition grows. The light rail line, all two miles of it, now ranks as the single most expensive on earth at more than $1 billion a mile.
Initial daily ridership projections, a lie from the start, keep edging down from tens of thousands of daily riders, to just a few.
Does anyone in Northwest leadership have the spine to pull the plug on this $10 billion joke … or do we just tolerate ODOT’s “contractor from hell” model of lowballing the front end estimate and then doubling or tripling the price when it’s too late to pull out?
Also read:
- Opinion: ‘The IBR team has been lying to us and thanks to a veteran Oregon journalist, we have the smoking gun’
Ken Vance argues newly obtained documents show Interstate Bridge Replacement staff withheld updated cost estimates from lawmakers and the public. - Oregon Gov. Kotek calls for repeal of transportation funding package she championed
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek is urging lawmakers to repeal a transportation funding package she previously supported after a referendum effort halted key tax increases. - Letter: Has $450 million been wasted on a bridge that’s too low for the Coast Guard with a foundation too costly to build?
A Seattle engineer questions whether hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on a bridge design he argues is unnecessarily risky and costly compared to an immersed tunnel alternative. - Opinion: Transit agencies need accountability not increased state subsidy
Charles Prestrud argues that Washington transit agencies face rising costs and declining ridership due to governance structures that lack public accountability. - Opinion: Does tailgating cause speeding?
Target Zero Manager Doug Dahl examines whether tailgating contributes to speeding and explains why following too closely increases crash risk with little benefit.
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