Clark County Today Editor Ken Vance reads between the lines of Greg Johnson’s departure from the Interstate Bridge Replacement Program

Ken Vance, editor
Clark County Today

The biggest news often breaks on a Friday afternoon. It’s called the “Friday News Dump.’’

This week, the breaking Friday afternoon news is that Interstate Bridge Replacement Program (IBR) Administrator Greg Johnson is stepping down from his position as the lead person in charge of the proposed Interstate Bridge replacement project. 

A Bike Portland news reporter first shared the news Friday on social media. Johnson will reportedly remain in his position until Dec. 31 and will then be replaced by Carley Francis, the Southwest Washington region administrator for the Washington State Department of Transportation.

It will be extremely hard for anyone to convince me that Johnson isn’t jumping off a sinking ship, considering the consistent flow of bad news he and proponents of the I-5 Bridge replacement project have endured lately. Only time will tell if my suspicions are correct, but an overwhelming abundance of recent news sheds more than just a little light on the fact that the project is in serious jeopardy of following its predecessor, the Columbia River Crossing, right to the bottom of that big, wide river it’s designed to cross.

Just last week, Johnson delivered a surprising announcement to the C-TRAN Board of Directors. He, his staff and other proponents have never shown weakness in the past. But they did just that. Clark County Today reporter Paul Valencia wrote about it this week: 

“A new estimate for the operations and maintenance costs for Oregon’s light rail extension into downtown Vancouver is about half of the previous estimate but there is a significant reason for the new numbers:

“Administrators with the Interstate Bridge Replacement Program now estimate that train and bus service to Vancouver will be cut in half.

“The old estimate was based on the O&M costs for nine light rail trains per hour and express bus service every three minutes during peak times.

“IBR officials advised the C-TRAN Board of Directors on Tuesday that the new estimate is based on four trains per hour (one every 15 minutes) and express bus service every 7.5 minutes during peak times.

“Surely, politicians who are already uneasy with the potential of forcing C-TRAN to pay for O&M costs have to be wondering if light rail is even necessary if IBR administrators now believe that ridership demand is half of what they expected just a few years ago.’’

Thanks in large part to the reporting offered in recent years by Clark County Today, and spearheaded in great detail by Rep. John Ley, we’ve known for quite some time that the IBR’s projections were inflated and unrealistic. Despite that, it was shocking, at least to me, to hear Johnson admit it this week.

Also, consider the following: 

• The IBR has been promising for nearly two years to provide an updated cost estimate for the project. The program’s last estimate is in the $6-7.5 billion range. Most experts agree that when we finally get new projections, the total cost will exceed $10 billion.
• The project still doesn’t have the approval of the US Coast Guard because its projected height of 116 feet is more than 50 feet lower than the Coast Guard’s required height of 178 feet.
• There is no final design for the project.
• The $2 billion in targeted federal funding has still not been delivered and is tenuous at best considering the fact that the Trump Administration has recently killed funding to other ridiculously overpriced transportation projects around the country.

Those are just a few of the reasons to find it very believable that this project is on the verge of failure and that Johnson may see that writing on the wall and is getting out with an ounce of dignity while he still can.

Some of my fellow opponents may disagree with me on this element of Johnson’s tenure with the IBR. I’ve never blamed him for the many fatal flaws in this boondoggle. He was hired by the governors of Washington and Oregon to build a replacement I-5 Bridge. He wasn’t hired to research the much-needed third and fourth crossings over the Columbia River or to fix the transportation congestion issues that trouble our region. And, I was told long ago, he was never in charge of the project. It’s not surprising to me that he is being replaced by a representative of WSDOT. The state DOTs from Washington and Oregon have been in charge of this project all along.

And light rail was always a non-negotiable element of this project. It was impossible to get the state of Oregon to participate in this project without the extension of TriMet’s Yellow Line into Vancouver. It was indeed “a light rail project in search of a bridge.” Just as the CRC was doomed to fail, so was this extremely similar project. And I believe it certainly will. You can blame Johnson all you want, and I’m not absolving him of all responsibility for its pending failure, but he was dealt a bad hand from the very beginning. 

Citizens on both sides of the river want to reduce traffic congestion and save travel time. That’s the very thing the project failed to do. Residents of the region also do not want tolls, yet the IBR delivered another way to pick the people’s pockets by creating such a costly project that tolls are inevitable, if not necessary.

It’s a bad project for the people of Southwest Washington and its pending doom was predictable and will be applauded enthusiastically by many, including me.