In Our View: Reduced Rancor

Don’t look now, but there appears to be more light and less heat directed at the Columbia River Crossing project. Many unresolved issues remain, but this much is certain: Planners, politicians and the public have moved beyond bickering over how many lanes the new Interstate 5 bridge will have. As Erik Robinson reported in Tuesday’s Columbian, the CRC’s Project Sponsors Council has unanimously endorsed a 10-lane replacement bridge.

That is a significant step for a complex project that involves multiple states, counties, cities, transit agencies and transportation departments, not to mention a bevy of elected officials salivating over the chance to impress voters.

The council, which is an advisory board to the two governors, also on Monday approved a redesigned interchange on Hayden Island that would feature a small bridge connecting the island to northeast Portland. Two things to keep in mind about the CRC’s impact on Hayden Island: On the negative side, the replacement bridge’s footprint will be bigger. On the positive side, east-west traffic on the island will be improved. Currently there are just two ways to get from one side of the freeway to the other. Even before Monday’s action by the council, plans have included extending Tomahawk Island Drive under I-5, for a third route in the middle of the island.

It’s good to see leaders from both sides of the river finally agreeing on the number of bridge lanes. Influential leaders on this side of the river had argued for as many as 12, while Portland Mayor Sam Adams had lobbied for as few as six. The day after the council’s unanimous opinion emerged, U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., visited Vancouver and noted the benefit of what happened on Monday. “It helps,” she said. “If there is complete controversy at the local level, (the project) has no chance” when it comes to federal funding, estimated to be about one-third of what could become a $3.6 billion project.

Despite this progress, the Project Sponsors Council was cautioned against expecting the rapid pace to continue. Tom Warne, chairman of an independent review of the project, said a formal record of decision likely could not be reached by the start of next year. Too many questions persist, including uncertainty about the bridge’s six-block-wide impact in Vancouver, if and how bridge designers should produce an “icon” bridge with a distinct personality, and the most basic issues about cost and funding sources. The cautionary comments from Warne, a former Utah Department of Transportation director who has consulted on projects nationwide, should be heeded. These latest signs of trans-river collaboration, however slight, have us thinking it would be discouraging to see the project pushed back by new, surprising disagreements.

In the meantime, Washingtonians and Oregonians could benefit from the continued slow demise of two unproductive myths. The first one goes something like this: If we could just fix the Delta Park bottleneck, congestion would be eased and we wouldn’t even need a new bridge. That’s false. For weeks, the bottleneck has been opened to three through southbound lanes (during daytime hours), and we’re still stuck with a too-small, dangerous, substandard bridge with an unacceptable drawbridge and seismic-protection shortcomings.

The second myth: A new bridge would only move the congestion problem south to the Rose Quarter. No, the CRC has pointed out that two-thirds of cars crossing the river get on or off the freeway in the project’s four-mile “bridge influence area.” (The same study also noted that about 65 percent of southbound traffic is headed farther south.) And as Susie Lahsene of the Port of Portland pointed out earlier this year, “If you feel like you had to fix the entire system, you would never do a project.”