The Metro Council discusses the Columbia River Crossing project with CRC and Metro staff at Tuesday's work session. The Metro Council is a week from its "Last Crusade" moment on the Columbia River Crossing, with a public hearing and vote to move forward with the project set for June 9.
That's when the council is expected to vote on a resolution saying that concerns that were raised when it adopted the Crossing as its "locally preferred alternative" have been satisfactorily addressed.
At its May 31 worksession, the council had a lengthy discussion with staff from the Crossing project, including project chair Henry Hewitt, who pointed out that his involvement with the project came when Bob Stacey, a transportation advisor to then-Gov. Barbara Roberts, recruited him in the early 1990s.
Nearly 20 years later, not all the questions have been answered. But with planners spending $1 million a month developing the Interstate 5 mega-project and the deadline for approving a final environmental impact statement approaching, it was Roberts, now a Metro councilor, pushing for her colleagues to take a leap of faith.
Roberts said she felt like Harrison Ford's character in the third Indiana Jones movie, "where he gets ready to step off into space and the magic road appears and he walks across the canyon… there is a requirement that you have some faith before you step off into the canyon."
The Metro Council isn't the only group being asked to take a leap of faith on the project. Voters in Clark County could be asked to vote on whether to hike the sales tax there (by a dime per $100 spent) to support light rail, and many in the core of Portland are squeamish about building a 10-lane freeway to an area perceived by many as an epicenter of sprawl.
If anybody blinks, Hewitt said, "we don't get the bridge."
Much of the council's discussion at the work session was funding for the $3.6 billion freeway and transit project and mitigating the widened freeway's impacts on nearby communities. Councilors focused on the lasting impact that construction of freeways can have on neighborhoods.
Bridge lifts
Other notes from the council work session on the Columbia River Crossing:
- Councilor Shirley Craddick expressed concern about the design of the project, calling the proposed double-deck bridge "mundane" and saying the bridge's architecture should reflect the significance of the crossing of the west's largest river. Craddick also expressed concern about noise levels for the bike/ped path on the bridge's lower deck; Crossing staff said that would be quieter than putting cyclists and pedestrians on the upper deck.
- Councilors expressed concern about "spillover" traffic to Interstate 205, particularly from drivers trying to avoid tolls on Interstate 5. (According to Metro staff, federal rules prohibit tolls on the Glenn Jackson Bridge on I-205 because it's not a new project.) Staff from the Crossing project said that traffic on I-205 would actually drop if the I-5 bridge is replaced, even with some drivers using I-205 as a toll-free crossing of the river.
- According to Crossing staff, 35 percent of southbound traffic crossing the Columbia in the morning rush hour gets off I-5 at Oregon's first three exits. In the afternoon, more than 60 percent of the traffic crossing the Columbia exits at the first three interchanges in Washington. Four of the bridge's 10 lanes are proposed to be so-called auxiliary lanes, that would start at the first few interchanges on one side of the river and end at the first interchanges on the other side.
"The folks who have lived in the area, and the folks who are moving there now… have been feeling the real impacts that highway divide has created," said Metro Councilor Kathryn Harrington of the I-5 corridor. "We should continue to do what we can to address that."
She went on to list some ideas she called crazy, including emissions-absorbing concrete on soundwalls. Once those filtering soundwalls reach the end of their service, Harrington said, they should be replaced with new, top-of-the-line filtering walls.
"Just keep working at it over the decades this highway and bridge will continue to exist, long after we're gone," Harrington said.
Councilor Carlotta Collette talked about the Metro-Oregon City Enhancement Fund, which funds community projects to offset the impacts of Metro's waste transfer station in Clackamas County. Collette said even $1 million could provide benefits for a community that lasts generations.
"A million dollars in this budget is pennies – half pennies," Collette said.
"Budget dust," said Metro Council President Tom Hughes.
Easy to say in a project that’s expected to cost $3.6 billion, the most expensive public works project in Oregon's history and second-priciest for Washington. Oregon's share of the project (not including toll revenues) is expected to be about $400 million, money that Metro expects to be allocated during the 2013 legislature.
Councilors are concerned that the legislature could go ahead and allocate that money – at the expense of other projects that need funding about that time, such as a transit corridor to Southwest Portland and Tigard or a rebuild of Highway 217 in Washington County.
"I think there is general support in the region for the project, but it begins to wane the quicker other stuff… that is of immediate concern gets (dropped) in the process," Hughes said.
Another cost shortfall scenario worried Collette – one where revenue-creating vehicle counts drop off, jeopardizing toll revenue.
"If demand drops off in a righteous and promising way, and tolling doesn't meet the $1.2 to $1.4 billion, I think there is a sense the state is at risk," she said. "That is a huge question, because if the state's on the hook for another $500 million, it ain't happening."
Even the money currently being spent on the project, which Councilor Carl Hosticka estimated at $1 million a month, was questioned in the meeting. He wondered if some of the money spent now could be put off until after construction is a sure thing.
"The first time I met Barbara (Roberts), we were sitting on a revenue committee where we spent a year designing a sales tax," Hosticka said of the nugatory effort. "We got this down to arguing about whether ice was a refrigerant or a consumable. All that effort never produced anything – so I'm not saying stop, I'm just trying to say, is there a way we can sort of save some of our energy until we know this thing is actually going to happen?"
Staff from the crossing project said expenses are reined in and focused.
The council's resolution next Thursday, if adopted, will either say its questions have been answered satisfactorily or it's endorsing the locally-preferred alternative but it has some outstanding questions. The latter, Roberts said, isn't necessarily a problem, and prompted the Indiana Jones reference.
"I've always said that light rail going into Gresham was the best public decision I ever made, because it wasn't just that decision but all the other decisions that came as a result of it," she said. "I have a sense that this bridge is one of those. I hope we can continue to ask the questions and continue to find the answers."