Email This   Larger Font      Print This   Smaller Font Columbia River Crossing Open Houses Plans for a new Interstate 5 Bridge go back before the public this month with two open houses to discuss costs, routes and schedules. The Columbia River Crossing, the bi-state planning group, has been studying a new route across the river. It's considering proposals that involve various combinations of building a new bridge, keeping the old one, adding mass transit and improving interchanges. The open houses are planned for: Wednesday, Oct. 17 , 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., the former Hayden Island Yacht Club, 12050 N. Jantzen Drive, Portland. Saturday, Oct. 20 , 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Lincoln Elementary, 4200 N.W. Daniels St., Vancouver. Project officials said the meetings will provide information that has been developed by the staff in recent months: new traffic data, new cost estimates and the new schedule for decisions.

Sunday, October 07, 2007
BY DON HAMILTON, Columbian staff writer

On Feb. 1, the Columbia River Crossing will release a series of recommendations on the route, cost and scope of a new Columbia River bridge.

On that day, three years after the task force first started meeting, the staff will issue both the draft environmental impact statement, a study of project alternatives in detail, and a draft of what's called the locally preferred alternative.

Both reports are crucial for the outcome of the project. But the locally preferred alternative will spell out in detail for the first time staff recommendations of what should be done. The major questions include:

Whether to replace the old bridge with a new one, or supplement the old one with a new bridge.

Whether to put a new bridge upstream or downstream of the old one.

What mode of mass transit to use: light rail or express buses.

The cost and the way to finance it. Indications are tolls will be part of the financing package.

The staff recommendations, though, are far from the final version.

The full 39-member task force will have 90 days to reject, accept or amend the recommendations; final decisions will be made later.

The two reports play different roles in the bureaucratic process that may lead to building a new bridge.

The draft environmental impact statement, for starters, will only be a prelude to the final environmental impact statement, which will come later in the process. But even the draft will be a doorstop of a report, with thousands of pages of words, charts, graphs, findings and other evidence of bureaucratic sweat.

Justification for the final decision will be based on this report.

But that's where the draft locally preferred option comes in. Releasing the staff recommendations on the same day provides perspective to the mass of data in the draft environmental statement, offering guidance to the decision-makers and a way to frame the debate.

"It will say that, based on the data, this is what would work best," said Danielle Cogan, spokeswoman for the Columbia River Crossing.

Few hard details have emerged so far about what choices the panel will make. The staff and members of the task force staff, though, said they favor tolls to pay off the massive cost of the project, estimated at anywhere from $2 billion to $6 billion.

Some task force members also expressed interest in keeping tolls in place after the bridge is paid off, providing money for long-term maintenance and operation.

Crossing officials hope to place the package before Congress by summer for inclusion in the 2009-2014 reauthorization of a big transportation spending bill.

Don Hamilton can be reached at 360-759-8010 and don.hamilton@columbian.com.