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: Too deep to drive – flooded roads
Doug Dahl explains why even shallow water on roadways can be dangerous for drivers and outlines the risks of hydroplaning and driving through floodwaters. - C-TRAN takes no action on Board Composition Review Committee’s directive
After a long executive session, the C‑TRAN board took no action on a 4‑3‑2 board composition proposal that has divided Vancouver, Clark County and the small cities. - Opinion: Sound Transit – No cause for celebration
Charles Prestrud argues Sound Transit’s costly light rail expansions have failed to boost overall ridership or ease Puget Sound congestion. - Opinion: Simultaneous left turns
Doug Dahl explains how Washington law directs drivers to make simultaneous left turns by passing to the left of each other in an intersection. - Judge grants C-TRAN injunction against WSDOT
A judge ruled that WSDOT cannot withhold grants from C-TRAN while the agency’s board composition review process continues.
The Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for maintaining an open waterway along the length of the Columbia River. That means the navigation channels require periodic dredging. To do that, the Army Corps maintains two dredges on Swan Island, the Yaquina and the Essayons, while the Port of Portland operates Dredge Oregon.
None of these vessels will fit under a 116′ bridge. That would mean closing the majority of the Columbia River to commercial traffic, including the grain barges coming down from the Snake River system as well.
I see no chance whatsoever of convincing either the Coast Guard or the Army Corps of agreeing to this worn out, re-treaded proposal that failed with the Columbia Crossing Project.
I see even less of a chance that local Gubment will abandon this idea any time soon either.
A zealot is one who, having lost their cause, redoubles their efforts. That’s a good description of what we are dealing with here, again, in the second decade of this nonsense.
Who’s to say how much infrastructure has to be changed after each heightening change? I’m guessing a lot of work has to be done on both sides. Planning is everything, and how can anyone get it right when changes come daily?
Additional plain bridges and NO LIGHT RAIL. Why the continued push for light rail that the Washington tax payers have rejected multiple times??? Maybe someone is getting paid to keep that dead horse alive. If people would stop voting for the same party that destroys everything they touch we could actually see good things happen in this area.
Saying it again….spend the money on family-wage jobs in Clark County reducing bridge traffic by 90% and no income taxes to Oregon! Put that to vote!