I was disappointed that Ed Lynch, a former head engineer for Kiewit Engineering Co., would throw his weight behind a flawed engineering plan — the Columbia River Crossing (“Local View: Columbia River Crossing: It’s now or gridlock,” April 28). It reminded me of a former boss who’d say “Do something, even if it’s wrong.”
The flawed thinking of “we have to do it because the money is there” is foolish. I am no “austerian,” but money is never there until they print it. If the Interstate 5 Bridge did go down in the “big one” because its feet were in jelly, I believe a new bridge would be up in a year because of the hindrance of interstate commerce.
It is laughable that the original plan was not approved by the Coast Guard; $100 million and planning years later and the engineers have yet to resolve this bridge-height problem. No one has yet said how the three businesses that will be impacted by a shorter bridge will be mitigated. Will they stay? What will be the cost to the project? What will be the cost in lost tax revenue?
Let’s see: Still three lanes on the bridge. Not high enough. The real bottlenecks still remain. We should not just light-railroad it on through.
