Lenny Anderson | Oct 28, 2005 9:04:48 AM
Sam,
I hope some of this new awareness can be applied to the only true Mega-project on the horizon...the Columbia River Crossing. Now that will burn up a lot of public money, dump more cars onto already crowded Portland streets and maybe save Clark county commuters five minutes.
JK:
As to burning up money on the Columbia crossing: as a member of the I-5 task force Lenny voted in favor of spending over a billion dollars to build light rail to Vancouver, even though, according to Metro and consultants estimates, 82% of the rail riders would ride a bus system. The incremental cost of the rail option, over bus, was almost $500,000 per evening rush hour rider across the river.. This can be found at www.I-5partnership.com/reports/q3.html (You have to do the math from their data.)

(I hope this bit of history is not considered personal, it is all public record and official actions and gives a background on the present argument.)

As to dumping cars into crowded Portland streets:
1. That shows that we need more road capacity in Portland, not less.
2. The number of cars probably will not change much, they will just waste less time getting to Portland.
3. Many of these cars are going THROUGH Portland and those could be routed away form Portland with a new route from Washington to the Beaverton area.

Thanks
JK
(Who is not paid by anyone in the field of transportation, planning or any related field.)