The primary purpose of the I-5 Columbia River Crossing must be one of functionality that brings the two sides of the river closer together. But wait, if the Portland City Council, the Adams Government and the Socialistic Metro Council have their dictatorial way, the bridge is now a social engineering program for Clark County. Functionality on the bridge will be compromised by restricting the number of highway travel lanes, drivers and small independent businesses will be hosed by tolls, and billions of dollars will have been wasted on a short sighted project that doesn’t address developing new fuel and more eco-friendly power sources for motor vehicles.

So let’s at least make the bridge as pretty tribute to wasting taxpayer dollars just like some of the rest of the junk art that taxpayers paid for to plop on Portland sidewalks. Further compromises could include running only one track instead of two across the river for Max, and narrowing the down bike infrastructure to no wider than eight feet – or better yet, not including bicycle infrastructure at all(the pedal pushers are freeloading and not currently scheduled to pay for it anyway), Then maybe some extra money can be found to possibly super glue some junk on the side of the bridge to make it artsy. Why bother with financial accountability to taxpayers? Eventually the cost overruns will be transparent just like the tram.