In response to Philip S. Parker’s Sept. 23 letter, “Project derailed by defeatists,” I strongly disagree with his point. I have no desire to be connected to downtown Portland, nor do I consider myself to live in the greater Portland metropolitan area. I live in Washington, not Oregon.
It seems that supporters of light rail to Clark County seem to forget (or don’t really care) that Clark County is more than just Vancouver. Here in northern Clark County, things are a little more spread out. If Vancouver wants to add light rail so bad, let Vancouver pay for it. I have a hard time supporting something that will be run by an entity based in another state. TriMet can’t run the light rail lines they have already without tons of money subsidizing them.
I have no problem with another bridge, but until Oregon fixes the bottleneck at Interstate 5 and Interstate 405, we could build a bridge with 20 lanes each way and still have traffic issues.
Now Oregon is trying to force its will on our state and jam light rail into Clark County whether we like it or not. Maybe Washington should force its way into downtown Portland and fix the bottleneck ourselves. Seems fair.
