It’s a good idea, but it amounts to a Band-Aid when extensive surgery is needed.
Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Battle Ground, has asked the U.S. Coast Guard to review its drawbridge lift protocol for the Interstate 5 Bridge, particularly during rush hour. Currently, lifts to make way for marine traffic on the Columbia River are prohibited between 6:30 and 9 a.m., and between 2:30 and 6 p.m.
As anybody who has sat in traffic while trying to cross the bridge understands, those periods represent a conservative view of “rush hour,” which lasts nearly all day. An average of about 140,000 vehicles cross the bridge daily; in 1981, the last full year prior to the opening of the Interstate 205 Bridge upriver, I-5 saw 110,000 crossings per day.
A bridge lift on I-5 halts traffic for 15 to 20 minutes, and the lifts increase in frequency when the river level is high. Last spring, the two spans were opened as many as six times in a day, resulting in a hemorrhaging of the local economy and taking a toll on our quality of life. “Lifts of the drawbridges during the peak traffic hours only serve to compound the challenges the region is experiencing in the movement of traffic and freight across the bridge,” Herrera Beutler wrote to U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral David Throop.
Herrera Beutler is right to bring attention to our bridge of sighs. But she also acknowledges that her request is likely to stall, noting that “the Rivers and Harbors Act gives precedence to navigation traffic over vehicular traffic.” Most importantly — or perhaps most distressingly — she wrote about “the interim period while the region works to reach consensus on a plan for replacement of the two drawbridges.”
That interim period appears to be interminable. Leaders from Washington and Oregon must make replacement a priority — along with future plans for additional crossings. It has been five years since the Columbia River Crossing project (which Herrera Beutler opposed) was scuttled, and precious little progress has been made since then. Govs. Jay Inslee and Kate Brown should take the lead in creating bistate discussion that focuses upon the most pressing issue — increasing traffic capacity.
Meanwhile, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler has said he “fully supports” studying a passenger ferry between Vancouver and the heart of his city. If Herrera Beutler’s request amounts to a Band-Aid, a passenger ferry is equivalent to rubbing dirt on an open wound and asking, “Does that feel better?”
The problem might be too big to fix. Because of nearby Pearson Field, the height of a replacement bridge must be limited; because of a bottleneck along I-5 that Portland has been slow to fix, a new bridge might provide only minimal benefits; because a tunnel under the Columbia would bypass downtown Vancouver, it is not a reasonable alternative. The list of drawbacks is extensive while the list of solutions is minimal. Meanwhile, morning traffic across the I-5 Bridge travels south at an average of 9 mph.
Local consensus and local ideas are needed. That likely will require compromise on the part of car-averse Portlanders in addressing the Rose Quarter bottleneck, and it likely will require compromise on the part of Clark County residents who are opposed to light rail. But the economic costs of failing to replace the bridge are felt throughout the metro area and throughout all of Washington and Oregon.
Reducing the number of bridge lifts might provide a little bit of salve. But it would focus upon the symptom rather than the disease.
