Blogtown, PDX: Meet the Contenders - Question #14

The Portland Mercury's Blogtown, PDX site has been producing a weekly series of questions for the various candidates running in the Portland mayor and city council races. This series is a great way to meet the candidates and learn about the issues affecting the public and Portland city government. We're reproducing (with permission) Chris's responses here, while also providing links to the original Blogtown posts.

Question #14:

(Original Post from Mar. 20, 2008)

Our region is poised to consider what to do about the Columbia River Crossing—and we’re faced with an option that costs roughly $4.2 billion dollars, and possibly doubles the size of the bridge over the Columbia River. In your opinion, does the staff-recommended option—a 10 to 12 lane bridge, plus light rail transit, tolls, and improved pedestrian and bike crossing—meet Portland’s goals and needs? What would you advocate for as the optimal plan for the crossing, and how would you ensure that Portland’s needs and goals aren’t lost in a massive regional, bi-state project?

Chris's Response:

The Portland Transport blog that I publish on regional transportation policy has been one of the major venues for skeptical discussion of the Columbia River Crossing project. I would invite interested readers to check out almost three years of discussion at:
http://portlandtransport.com/archives/projects/columbia_crossing/

This project attempts to address a number of issues: freight access in an important corridor, high capacity transit across the Columbia, traffic safety, maintenance of 50/100 year old bridges, among others. All of these are valid goals, but we have to ask how this fits into the big picture. I have two key questions in this regard:

1) How does this project fit in the larger picture of Portland’s goals to get out in front of Peak Oil and Global Warming?

2) What is the opportunity cost of this project? Are there other ways to invest $4B+ that would have better returns for the community? What are the cost/benefit trade-offs for this project?

Recently three people that I greatly respect: Oregon Transportation Commission Chair Gail Achterman, Metro Councilor Rex Burkholder and TriMet General Manager Fred Hansen attempted to address the first question and essentially said “in the big picture this doesn’t increase greenhouse gas production very much” (I’m paraphrasing)

Well, that may be true (depending on how flexible your definition of “very much” is), but in the big picture we’re failing to address greenhouse gases in an effective way and this goes in the wrong direction. I’m imagining this question from my grandchildren in 30 years:

“You spent $4B, the largest public works project in Oregon history, on something that didn’t REDUCE greenhouse gases?!!”

If we’re going to make an investment this large, it MUST move us in the direction of sustainability. Even being “mostly neutral” is not acceptable!