I would expect nothing more from Ted. He hides from the public and ignores the wishes of all Oregonians. The day he leaves public office for the well deserved obscurity he will fade into cannot come quickly enough for this Oregonian.

The bridge is a very high priority need to the rgion as all N-S truck traffic must pass across the Columbia if traveling the I-5 corridor. Parochial views of strident Portlanders aside, our governor would have been well served to have appointed at least 1-2 credible Oregonians to the panel.

River towns along state borders have long struggled with this issue. It has been going on in Louisville, KY for at least 25 years. There they have not one major interstate, but two.

Kurt,

How do get from here:

...all N-S truck traffic must pass across the Columbia if traveling the I-5 corridor.

to here:

The bridge is a very high priority need to the rgion....

There are two bridges over the Columbia in Portland that are far from capacity most of the time. Traffic management is much less expensive than adding lanes. As a society, we should be promoting water and rail transportation of goods [low energy intensity] over trucking [high energy intensity and local economy over long-distance trade.

Society should shape transportation, instead of allowing transportation [and those who profit from it] to shape society.

Please think before reaching conclusions.

What.a.travesty.

No surprise to those of us that consider him a virtual Republican that only plays the Dem card because he lives in Oregon.

As to the mechanics, this is an old stat trick. You have a big, hairy problem and a number of competing models. You want the status quo to prevail (which would be the mega bridge). So, what you do, you bring in all kinds of face valid variables that ANYONE would recognize as being relevant. That's the bit about the individuals having "particular expertise". No doubt. In fact those variables don't correlate with the outcome, which, here, means that those experts won't pull the considerations in a major way towards their own consideration. Since nothing really is exerting any pressure on the dominant model, the equations regress toward the mean, as will these deliberations, and you end up "demonstrating" that the status quo is most reasonable.

It's a way to rubber stamp what you've already decided.

The most dangerous interchange in Oregon? WTF? How many people have died at that interchange?

What else are you going to make up, Governor?

The key thing is what they have (and haven't) been asked to do. So, they can say they had an independent panel, even if that panel never asks or answers the key questions of the project.

From the press release:

The panel has been asked to: Assess the implementation plan for the CRC project Review the financial plan for the project * Review and evaluate post-construction performance measures

They haven't been asked to: Consider more affordable alternatives Review the modeling assumptions * Look at climate impacts

So, pretty much: we've hired a bunch of engineers who do bridge building to sign off on this, so we're just like any other place (Atlanta? That's scary!). We haven't hired anyone who has expertise in land use impacts, in climate change analysis (possibly Brown?), in human health impacts, or in minimizing costs.

If you want independent review, here's what it really looks like when it happens. Answer: CRC is a MegaBridge of the past.

CRC is a very good example of the corrosive effect on democratic governance of self-interested parties with lots of money to put into the political process. Oregon, Metro, Multnomah County, and Portland are led by environmental-protection-minded Democrats. Yet, when a project that means $billions for engineers, contractors, material suppliers, construction workers, developers, etc. is proposed, concern for the environment [not to mention the long-term economy] goes out the window.

Throughout Kulongoski’s time in office as Oregon’s Governor, his posturing seemed to be more one of buffoonery rather than as the CEO of the state working for all Oregonians. Supporting the manipulated numbers and excessive unaffordable costs of the BETC program is a good example of that. Now that Kulongoski’s term in office is about to expire, and he no longer has to kowtow to the progressive socialist mindset of the far left wing in the legislature, he seems to be making far more realistic and rational decisions for the people of Oregon. They include his State of the State speech to the City Club where he acknowledged that the size and spending of state government must be reduced, his appointment of Ted Wheeler as State Treasurer (which unfortunately is also Multnomah County’s loss), and NOT appointing an Oregonian to the CRC independent review panel.

All the criticism and protest flag waving against the existing the current CRC design is coming from a petty but loud vocal group of eco-crony bloggers, deadbeat bicyclists and socialistic public transit supporters that want their choices of transport mode to be front and center with world class infrastructure that is paid for by somebody else. Additionally, they want to limit the choices other people can make such as driving, Along with statements like “we tax people for what we don’t want them to do and don’t tax people for what we want them to do” is part of the basic ideology of socialism. The “we” in that statement represents the selfishness of the special interests and not the freedom of choice of “we the people” in a democratic society. Any independent review panel must be truly independent of this socialist control mindset and agenda. .

The Portland-Metro area has a transportation based economy. That includes movement of goods and people by land, sea and air. Highways are an integral part of that economy as are the supporting services like motor vehicle repair shops and parts houses. New car dealerships alone average 60 family wage jobs per dealership. One out of every ten jobs nationwide is tied to the auto industry. Portland doesn’t have and never will have a bicycle based and/or taxpayer subsidized public transit economy.

The CRC not only serves the Portland-Metro area as one of only two roadway bridges that cross the Columbia, but it is also part of the I-5 transportation corridor, the primary highway corridor for interstate commerce on the West Coast. It is also serves as a national defense corridor. The historical twin bridges are approximately nearly 100 years and over 50 years old respectively. That however is not to say they have outlived their usefulness as a local river crossing, but they are in effect obsolete and not safe as a modern freeway crossing.

Currently the CRC is the most congested choke point on I-5 between Canada and Mexico. Any bridge built must withstand the test of time and be useful for the next 100 years. Building a bridge too small without significantly increasing roadway capacity on the crossing would be a costly mistake. Such a move will only have a negative impact on the entire local economy in both the short term and probably the long run. Although the future can not be predicted, it is a complete fantasy to assume bicycling and an unaffordable, highly subsidized, mega-mass transit system will replace the need for adding or even doubling the number of motor vehicle highway lanes. Instead of allowing the protesters of fantasy to continue to run-a-muck with an unrealistic agenda that exploits other taxpayers, freeloading bicyclists and transit passengers need to be required to pay for their share of infrastructure on any new crossing built by way of bicycle tolls and surcharges on transit fares. In other words: put up or shut up - it is time deadbeat bicyclists and activist transit passengers open up their wallets and pay their own way instead expecting their lifestyles be funded on the backs by the working class taxpayers they criticize. The people currently being cheated are the motorists. Kulongoski appears to be right by not naming an Oregonian to the review panel.

Couldn't you have posted the link, since you've put that out a million places and cut and pasted it here?

Terry Parker has many opinions about who opposes the CRC megabridge. Do those opinions matter?

He claims that the future cannot be predicted, and then predicts it. It will have more cars, up to twice as many, he suggests.

Climate change, peak oil, the economic decline of the US: these are all in the future that cannot be predicted, eh? But the need for twice as many truck and auto lanes crossing the Columbia at Portland; that's a foregone conclusion, according to Terry Parker.

The difficulty of predicting the future is no excuse for concluding it will look just like the present, but bigger. Twenty-first century America will not be a bigger version of twentieth century America.

Setting up non-tax-paying bicyclists as straw man opponents makes Mr. Parker's argument no more convincing.

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