It’s starting: Vancouver event seeks “alternative” Columbia River crossing ideas

Congestion pricing

They had me until they mentioned removing the HOV lane. Typical suburbanite Vancouver residents…

I sent this notice onto Jonathan, for that very purpose of spreading the word AND getting ALL voices to the table early on vs. just the highway driving centric types who want to remove the HOV lane, etc vs. add a southbound one, etc.

So bicyclists, peds and transit wonks … come on up to Vancouver!

The meeting location is very very convenient: it is across from the new downtown library, the CTRAN 105 Express bus (20 minute ride from Downtown Portland) stops 1 block from it and the site is a 15 minute bike ride from the Expo MAX station.

(Though secure bike parking at the Academy is not very good (my memory) so park your bikes at the library racks.)

CSA! CSA! http://vimeo.com/22915646

The website ThirdBridgeNow.com was registered by Jim Karlock, a busy citizen activist against light rail, pedestrian, and (presumably) bicycle infrastructure. Registrar info

“8. Place gutter on current bridge to catch road run off and dispose correctly”

…this leads to congestion relief how exactly?

In a recent discussion here someone pointed out a federal law that prevents tolling existing interstates. That, to me, would seem to be one of the first and most pressing places to start if reducing congestion at this location is a priority. I don’t know the history of that law or what it might take to undo it, but it seems pretty obvious that it needs to go.

Is adding a deck a feasible thing for better pedestrian and bike access?

I disagree with adding anything to Lombard, I would actually call a lack of North bound onramp a ‘feature’. That area is congested enough with Fred Meyers and Gas stations, I don’t need extra North bound I5 traffic jamming through the area in a big hurry. It wouldn’t solve much anyways.

Surprised they are not pushing for tolling. Tolling now to fund these improvements was shown to eliminate congestion in the corridor. And I am disappointed the right-wing libertarian types are not all gung-ho about making people pay their own way. Suppose theirs is an ideology of convenience.

Third Bridge? That site shows three new bridges, a tunnel, three viaducts, and a freeway over Smith and Bybee including, what should be part of the North Portland Greenway.

Basically, this plan is a non-starter. I’m not sure how an open discussion is going to help when there plan is this messed up from the start.

I guess I saw this event more as an open invitation to come and share ideas and meet other people who didn’t like the old CRC and who had ideas for a different approach. I could be wrong, but I don’t think these folks are looking to inculcate impressionable activists with their sinister plan. I write this comment because it seems folks are getting hung up on the group and their ideas, instead of just seeing this as an event announcement and an opportunity to do some networking.

Zip lines.

This whole CRC thing makes me so very ashamed of my state and local government on the topic. I’m so, so glad the politicians and citizens of Washington are thinking clearly on this issue.

A big “Thank you” to all you ‘Couver-ites’ from one lonely, outcast, anti-CRC voice in Portland. Please keep up the good fight!

Wait … I could be wrong about this, but isn’t our quaint little 3-hours-a-day HOV lane already the only freeway HOV lane in the entire state of Oregon? The answer isn’t fewer HOV lanes, it’s more of them. The Banfield and the inbound Sunset sure could use them. And with more rational timing, if the existing lane is still not to be full time: the 3-6pm schedule should at least be adjusted for when the roadway is actually congested. How many Fridays see the congestion magically end at 6pm?

I support some of the other ideas (reader board for expected bridge lifts would be good, and is a bike/ped deck hung off the side of one of the existing bridges actually feasible?) but some of the CSA ideas seem a little better baked. A new bridge for local traffic on/off Hayden Island should be top of the list, followed by fixing the railroad crossing so ships don’t have to S-navigate.

Has anyone ever thought of designating a 24/7 HOV lane on the whole stretch of I-5 that I-205 parallels? It would be a worthwhile experiment to see if it drove enough through traffic (like, non-PDX bound traffic) off of I-5 to improve flow.

And another thing–HIghway 30 is a TERRIBLE motoring road. Bad lines of sight, many unsignalled and barely visible intersections, high speeds, bad surface. Not bad on a bike but really sucks in a car. There could not be a worse choice to dump a bunch of Vantucky-originated traffic onto.

No mention of tolling or transit? There go 2 major sources of funding (considering that transit was necessary to get the Federal funding in the first place).

Or how about we use the Northbound HOV lane for light rail?

Glad to hear the 3rd bridge folks supporting a new bike/ped deck.

Also glad to hear them championing something fairly reasonable and modest — the 3rd bridge never got much air time in the overall debate, but they’ve been persistent for a long time.

I’d also like to see a bike/ped bridge from Safeway over to the main bridge on Hayden Island. Crossing the freeway on/off ramps. There used to be a crosswalk here eons ago, it would cut off a minute or two of very gnarly sidewalk riding/crosswalking on Hayden Island.

Here. https://maps.google.com/?ll=45.61097,-122.678187&spn=0.000776,0.001464&t=k&z=20

Ted Buehler

It’s sort of amusing to read the comments here and reflect on the failure of the design of the CRC to please anyone. Even within the relatively narrow demographic of Bikeportland readers, there are strong and wildly different
opinions on what should be done.

Now take two adjoining cities, in different states and each with residents with vastly different lifestyles, values, and commuting patterns, and attempt to get them to agree on a bridge.

The problem with design-by-committee is that it bogs down with many different individuals loudly and steadfastly insisting that their vision is the only correct one. Take the N. Williams bike/pedestrian project, for example.

Democracy is hard.

davemess – people who think like you are the core problem. Clark County Washington is the third highest tax paying county for Oregon. We do not view going to Portland as ‘wanting to come down to you’. To the contrary we are an interconnected city and region. The issue is folks like you in Oregon who think we are all plantation workers over here in Vantucky – term used above. You in the south are plantation owners who think you can rule us and if we don’t agree we are called names and looked down upon as somehow inferior.

I’ve seen in national publications that Portland has been termed the ‘City where the young come to retire’.

Sad to say I don’t know anyone in the north who came here to retire.

Seems some of you in the south believe we are all here to help support your retirement.

Sorry I have my own retirement to think about and can’t agree with all your grand ideas.
Chris

“Maybe if they’re lucky they can find a lower middle class neighborhood the Intelligentsia has not Gentrified yet. Just asking – where are those neighborhoods?” -Chris Hickey

Oh, let’s see … how about all over town? As in, MOST of the city beyond downtown and the inner eastisde core? If you think there are more Whole Foods and New Seasons than mainstream grocery stores in the city limits of Portland, or if you think we lack lower middle class neighborhoods, you clearly have been paying more attention to Portlandia than Portland. Or are suffering from severe availability bias.

“When has anyone in Clark County asked Portland or any of it’s other bedroom communities to foot a bill?” Hmm. That would be when the CRC proponents asked (and got) the people of Oregon to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to help fund the project. I’d sure rather our money (as well as federal dollars flowing into the region) go to more beneficial projects than subsidizing your commute to another state. The fact that you pay Oregon income taxes (and by the way, I pay 9% too!) doesn’t give you any special privileges; it’s the cost of participating in our economy, and your daily presence here as workers and drivers disproportionately clogging up our roads incurs plenty of cost to Oregon even without reconstructing I-5.

And CRC won’t eliminate the I-5 bottleneck; it will just push it further down into central Portland. That will just jam up the local roads WE use to get around on our shorter, more sustainable trips with a bunch more aggressive Washington drivers who don’t know how to get along with bikes and pedestrians. And you call us “plantation owners” (rolling eyes now) for not wanting to help pay for it?