Portland needs to install some toll ways to pay for this stuff. It's really not that hard. The amount of people are certainly different. but here in Houston the city makes 1 million dollars a day from tolls.
Do it for both, or do it on bridges going into downtown? Have the toll bill written so the tolls went away after the project was paid for.
The tolls are not going to cover the bond payments. The states are using traffic projects from over 10 years ago. Many experts have publicly said this including a study done by PSU. There is no approved design for this bridge. No final cost. The design that they have now is too low. They didn't take into account the businesses upriver that build very large things and ship them down river including windmills and oil drilling rigs for Alaska. One of the businesses is bidding for a $500 million contract to build giant ocean wave electricity generators. The Coast Guard has rejected the plans for the bridge as not being tall enough, no lift span and considers it a hazard to navigation. Neither state nor the feds will cover cost overruns but there is no tally on what these costs will end up being.
Although it has been proven (in theory) to be untrue, one of the main reasons for this project was to lessen gridlock. Can you imagine the gridlock on any bridge where a toll has to be taken? I mean, I realize the thought behind paying for the thing but to indice maybe the single worst gridlock in the nation for a toll for a generally worthless project seems idiotic.
The current I-5 bridge offers just 40 feet of clearance at normal water levels. But raising the drawbridge increases the vertical clearance to 178 feet. That puts the existing bridge in the same league with the Astoria-Megler Bridge (193 feet) the Longview, Wash. span (187 feet) and Interstate 205 bridge (144 feet). The proposed I-5 bridge height - 95ft. The Army Corps of Engineers' dredge is 116 feet high, too tall to clear the CRC's bridge. A barge carrying an enormous oil drilling rig bound for the North Slope of Alaska inches under the I-5 bridge, which had to be raised to its maximum height -- 178 feet -- in order for the cargo to clear. Thompson Metal Fab and Greenberry, companies that jointly built the oil rig, claim the Columbia River Crossing's planned replacement I-5 bridge -- 95-feet with no lift span -- will devastate their businesses. The U.S. Coast Guard has said it will reject the CRC's 95-foot bridge as an unacceptable hazard to navigation.
I think the Oregon policitians mantra is "build it now, skim off over costs, worry about its functionaility and paying for it later and blame others".
Not toll booths. Here in Houston we buy stickers they go on the car and a camera flashes as we go underneath it. It then deducts the .25 cents and no traffic issues occur. If you have no sticker or no money on the sticker you get a ticket
Yeah, there are a few different systems for those who routinely use the bridge. But many are not so. They have to stop somewhere and pay. And merge off & back on. That creates gridlock. There's no getting around it. I'd like to see this a ballot measure: To Oregonians... we do not know much it will cost. Some will be paid for by the feds. At $321 million per mile Max will be forced on Vancouver. We will have to siphon off general funds for all Oregon counties currently used for children, teachers, schools, the elderly... to fund a large part of it and the cost overruns will be a minimum of 50%. Think that would pass? Maybe, but I think it deserves a vote.
The bridge is at risk from a big subduction zone earthquake. Secondly, it's not a matter of if, but when such a subduction earthquake will occur, most recent studies done by DOGAMI and other regional geologists suggest a 40% to 50% of that happening in the next 50 to 100 years for a magnitude 9+ earthquake. If that happens the I-5 bridge is probably going to fail. So yes, we need a new bridge to account for that, and they probably need to build in the capacity for light rail, as projections for the next fifty years suggest Clark County will continue to grow putting an even bigger burden on existing transportation infrastructure. Build it with bonds and available federal transportation funds, repay it with tolls (on it and the I-205 bridge with discounted monthly commuter rates for people who have to go back and forth every day) and pay the thing off in 20 or 30 years via the people who use it. It worked just fine in the bay area and it will work just fine here.
And for those people bitching about light rail, I use it every day to commute to work and it's fucking awesome. Why are some of you so opposed to park and ride?
Nothing is perfect, but there's a lot of advantages. My company subsidizes yearly Trimet passes for its employees, so it's free for me, I walk a mile to and from the train station every day which gets me just a little bit of extra exercise, I don't have to pay the $450/yr fee to park in the garage (or the $1000/yr it would cost me to park on the street) and after timing it, it takes me about 30 minutes to get from my front door to my desk every day compared to the 20 to 25 it takes me to drive and find a parking space. Sure there's plenty of weirdos on the train, but there's a reason somebody invented ear buds and audio books.
