Vancouver Rally to Stop the CRC

With the Oregon legislature expediting wasteful spending the fate of Cascadia turns to Washington where they hate tolls almost as much as they hate lightrail. They have even organized a rally coming up soon!
 
We shall not go quietly. Gather the forces and connect with others!

Date: Friday, March 29th.
Time: 2:30pm to 4:00pm; 4:00 to 6:00pm – Post-Rally Social Gathering

Location: Grand Ballroom at the Vancouver Red Lion at the Quay, 100 Columbia Street, Vancouver, WA 98660


Want more info? Here the organizing group's website: http://www.crcfacts.info/

Bizarro Bridge stumbles on

 Bizarro World has come to Cascadia:

• The Governor did a complete 180 and has now pushed a pro CRC bill through the House.
• The majority of Oregon's environmental groups have been eerily silent about the biggest construction project to happen between Seattle and San Francisco.
• Everyone seems to be comfortable with going into massive debt, possibly because they don't think they will be alive to suffer the consequences.

In short, a region that is world redound for smart transportation will try to build itself out of a traffic jam.

How are we to measure the onslaught of colossal failure that is sure to come? Will we time the commute for a Vancouver resident? The cancer-carrying capacity of a child's lungs living near the I-5 bottleneck? The number of trees consumed by the shoddy environmental impact studies? The gigawatts of electricity used by bloggers decrying it as a waste? The number and variety of metrics for how much this is going to suck is mind-blowing!

But rather than looking ahead to the misery, let us focus the present. Our opponents would love for us to roll over and allow them to rape our future. I advocate we use our voice and tell them to stop. Now.

By Monday, March 4th you must call your Senator

Here is our simple 4 step plan:
1 - consider why it is that you hate this project. There is an impressive list of reasons below
2 - look up your legislator in the Oregon Senate
3 - Call your Senators office
4 - Make someone you care about repeat steps 1-3


This will take ~180 seconds of your life. That is probably less time than you spent reading this. 

 

You may hear a great number of reasons this bridge must be built. Lets examine them:

* Bridge Safety
Pro CRC folks will say the current bridge is old and should be replaced. They won't mention that the people whose job it is to keep an eye on this stuff, The Army Corps of Engineers, says the current I-5 Bridge has a higher safety rating than Portland’s Marquam Bridge, and 29 other bridges in the Oregon highway system. Also notable is that there are many more accidents occurring on the Marquam Bridge. If we want to improve safety, this would be a good place to start.

* Bridge Lifts
"A red light on an interstate?!?" Well it does sound like a bad idea, but ask how many times it happens during rush hour. For the 300+ lifts every year only a handful are during peak traffic. We wont lie, it sucks being stuck in traffic, but even according to the CRC's own website - "Bridge lifts cause vehicles to stop on I-5 for up to 20 minutes at a time to allow river traffic on the Columbia River to pass." Can you believe that? 20 Minutes! And yet we have among the shortest commutes of any west coast city. I guess the only reasonable thing to do is make sure we try and shave one minute off the commute to Vancouver, WA.

* Future Traffic
They say we have to plan for the future of traffic and we should expect traffic to get worse, but traffic is not getting worse. There have been fewer and fewer bridge crossings over the past five years. This trend means A) there would be less money from the tolls we would be collecting and B) we dont need to replace a working bridge.

* Freight Economy
Most everything gets put on a truck at some point in its life so it is pretty important. Strangely, the CRC proponents would have you believe that truck drivers are not smart enough to avoid traffic. Truckers should be offended! If the pro-CRC people were actually worried about freight they would be working on making the railroad bridge a few miles downriver. For 1/20th of the cost of the CRC we could fix the railroad crossing. Speaking of moving big boxes of stuff, our own Coast Guard says the current CRC design is too low, preventing some ships from sailing upriver. Sure enough maritime business upstream is fighting mad that our tax dollars are going towards this "solution" to the problem of moving stuff around. But dont worry we are make more jobs by moving the company to another location downstream.

* Wasting Funds
We are told that we should support it because we have spent millions on the plan. That if we dont spend billions than all those millions will be lost. Can you imagine a doctor talking about gang green in a similar fashion? "It has spread to your leg and is growing. We could amputate, but maybe we should wait." Only in this case the doctor caused the infection and will get money money if the patient dies.

* Jobs
For sure, we can spend a lot of money and employ a lot of people. But considering the epic scale of this freeway expansion project one would hope these jobs that we are creating will be around for a while. When the Pro-CRC camp talks about the 20,000 jobs they are creating they mean they are expecting 2,000 job increase over ten years. 2,000 x 10 years = 20,000. More accurate analysis showed that there will be an increase of about 1,150 temporary jobs.  We are all for making jobs but there are plenty of ways to make something better for cheaper. But this is Bizarro Cascadia. The workplace may soon be very, very different.

Please sign our petition to stop the CRC project and ask lawmakers to consider many alternatives. ( Like the CSA - Common Sense Alternative )
Click here URL: http://goo.gl/IrW89

http://signon.org/sign/stop-the-5-billion-crc

Here's a myth spread by Oregon Democrats:
There's no need to take action to stop the 12 lane freeway costing $5 billion. It will never get funding. Reality: The Governor and House majority leader have included $400 million in their budget for 2013

It is up to every voter to call or join our petition to spend our money better.  The Legislature has a majority of support and the check will be in the mail.

List of phone numbers:  http://goo.gl/WXCjN

quote: "The Democrat’s proposed 2013-15 budget includes $450 million for the CRC. That’s roughly the share Oregon is expected to come up with as part of the project’s $3.5 billion price tag. CRC planners are banking on Washington lawmakers to commit about the same amount, though project leaders have suggested that may not have to come all at once.

Kitzhaber’s budget outline doesn’t guarantee funding for the CRC — far from it. That will ultimately be up to the Oregon Legislature, which convenes in January"

http://www.columbian.com/news/2012/nov/30/oregon-gov-recommends-key-crc-funding/

Hey CRC, Pay me! Pay me!

The comic stylings from those zanny folks at the Columbia River Crossing just dont stop. Here is the latest from their desk which might as well be accompanied by a cartoon strip:

For tall sailboats and yachts, the CRC proposes pulling them out of the water and towing them around the bridge. Another idea: acquiring the vessel and “taking it out of service so that the user no longer has a vessel that needs to transit under the new bridges.” - wweek

Also they want vessles to just take their mast down.

They have not yet suggested that boats float in from the other direction, possibly taking a cruise around Tierra del Fuego or the Cape of Good Hope, but I figure that suggestion will be forthcoming soon.

So now I am left wondering, how do I get a job at the Columbia River Crossing? I am sure I could do just as good a job as they have done ignoring advice, thumbing their nose at government officials and generally offending the local population. That plus I am also qualified at creating things that are absurdly dysfunctional.

Hire me! CRC! I have lots of experience and will need health care from all the cars you are planning on cramming down my throat.

President demands bridge... also wants pony

This article in the Willamette Week reveals a happy truth to the startling news that President Obama has given the Columbia River Crossing "Expedited Status"

'Obama is not the first president to offer such encouragement to the CRC', the Wweek noted, 'President Bush ordered the same expedited status in 2008. But neither Bush nor Obama offered anything more than encouragement. 

Permitting has not been the issue, as local, state and federal agencies have rubber-stamped the plan developed by the Washington and Oregon Departments of Transportation.

What is preventing construction is that no one wants to pay for it. And why should anyone want to pay to replace a working bridge that is rated better than the bridge, which a few miles south of the CRC as you leave Portland on I-5 (the Marquam Bridge)

But Congress—which is supposed to provide a third of the $3.5 billion cost—is not looking to send money to blue states these days; neither Washington or Oregon's Legislatures have approved the $450 million each state is supposed to provide; and the projected toll revenues that are to provide the final third have been found to be wildly inaccurate.

 Even looking at USA Today's coverage the press release stating support from the White House seemed tepid, even passive. (note the other projects listed request 25 million for a bridge in Maine and 89 million for railroads in Washington, as opposed to the 3500 million for the CRC. That's TWO extra zeros if you weren't paying attention.)

Finally our favorite economist, Joe Cortright offered some scathing words for the project costing taxpayers a million dollars each month:

"The sooner the CRC faces its day of reckoning, the sooner we can stop wasting money on a project that we don't need, can't afford, and doesn't solve the region's transportation problems," says Portland economist Joe Cortright, a longtime critic of the project.

 Thanks for setting the record straight!

Back That Quotable Ass Up

  "Simply put, it's Orwellian -- our tax dollars are being used to deliberately hide inconvenient facts from the public's eyes," said Evan Manvel who has worked against the CRC project for the Coalition for a Livable Future. "Taxpayers and legislators should be outraged."

This quote via an article in the Columbian that calls into question the role of the Oregon Dept Of Transportation (ODOT). Are they the states auto mechanic, or are they a car salesman?

Oh. They are both.

Now unless you have a close, trusting relationship your mechanic/salesman you probably want to have them be separate entities. If not, you would certainly raise an eyebrow if every time your car needed a repair their suggestion would be to scrap it and buy a hummer-limo.

Forget "picking the kids up from the pool" try putting a pool in your car!

But even Hummer-limos are cheap compared to the cost of the Columbia River Crossing. Estimates hover between 3-8 billion dollars, which might seem like a lot for a bridge, but then this is more than just a new bridge, its a massive freeway expansion project.

ODOT spokesman Don Hamilton said both the northbound span, built in 1917, and the southbound span, finished in 1958, were rated as functionally obsolete in their 2011 inspections.

 
Manvel called the definition of a 'functionally obsolete' bridge a "term of art."

"I just think their spin machine is in full cycle," Manvel said. "They're working to remove anything that undermines their case. If we can't trust the information they're putting out on their own web page, why would we trust them in their new reports?"

He pointed out that the states lack money for the maintenance they need to do now, let alone find more funding for large new projects like the CRC.

ODOT is in a difficult place.  On one hand this governmental body is advocating for taxpayers to pay for the largest, most expensive infrastructure the region has ever known, and on the other hand it is responsible for providing info about the status of the current infrastructure to be replaced. For those following the project, this sort of conflicting interest, along with the numerous inconsistencies (such as their models showing traffic levels increasing over the next 20 years when they have also reported that traffic has decreased over the past 20 years)  has caused a significant credibility gap in our regional planners.

Drilling Holes In Their Arguments

They claim they are not building anything yet, that this is just a test. However considering the "hell or high-water" stance the pro CRC folks have been using I wouldn't be surprised if the building equipment that has appeared on the Oregon banks of the Columbia river near the I-5 bridge just stuck around for a while, slowly getting us all used to its presence so that we wouldn't be at all alarmed when we hear:

"The bridge? Oh, we have already started building and can't stop. But don't worry we will have a lot of people you can trust making sure it is done right."

Curious thing, trust. It is something that is usually earned rather than simply given. Moreover when trust is broken it usually takes twice as much work to regain the lost trust.

This organization of bumbling bureaucrats has already spent $140 million of your tax dollars on the project. So far they have tried to deceive us by telling us that traffic is getting worse, when their own projections prove otherwise.  They say it will make traffic smoother, when their own projections say that at best drivers will save one minute.

Never mind that they have avoided answering questions pertaining to how they will protect, fish and wildlife the original source of currency in the region, how it will affect air quality due to moving the bottle neck closer to the city (because all 8-12 lanes become 4 at the Rose Quarter, just where their construction stops), or even something as simple and tangible as how they plan to pay for it.

But we are to trust them because even though they have lied to us in the past and continue to lie to us now, they are really telling the truth about the future when they promise they will stop lying to us.

We may be in an abusive relationship...

DTMFA