Talk about a marriage of convenience. Sen. Don Benton, R-Vancouver, has teamed up with Portland opponents of the CRC project that would replace the aging Interstate Bridge spans between Vancouver and Portland. Benton showed up at a rally held by bridge foes yesterday in Portland.
State Sen. Don Benton, a southwest Washington Republican, urged the crowd to hold elected officials accountable for their views on the project.
“We need to hear loud and clear: If you don’t stop this boondoggle we will replace you,” Benton said.
Benton left out his often acerbic criticism of light rail and Portland-area urban growth policies. After his speech, Benton said he would prefer a highway ring around the Portland-Vancouver area, perhaps widening I-5 in North Portland and a third Columbia River bridge to relieve congestion on the I-5 bridge.
The Bicycle Transportation Alliance, Coalition for a Livable Future, 1000 Friends of Oregon and Smarterbridge.org were among the organizers and presenters at the event.
These Portland groups have relentlessly attacked the CRC project by yammering endlessly about a “12-lane bridge,” virtually ignoring the fact a new bridge would also (finally) get light rail across the river and yield a vastly improved bicycle facility. Now they’re teaming up with a far-right Republican who wants to build a third bridge and a loop highway around Portland. Which tells you all you need to know about the intellectual honesty of these Portland groups.
I always thought maybe I was being too harsh on these Portland “environmentalists,” but now I’m pretty convinced they are just banging their particular tribal drum. Portland good, Vancouver, bad. There are legitimate reasons to keep discussing the new bridge, as it stands to be one of the most important investments this region will make in our lifetimes, but anyone who has taken a cursory glance at the project knows half of those 12 lanes would be used for “mixing” traffic in a short stretch of I-5 before and after the bridge.
If these Portland groups want to team up with a guy like Benton, nobody in Washington state progressive circles should really take them very seriously. If they were serious they would present their arguments in an intellectually honest manner instead of focusing on a distorted messaging campaign and sideshow tricks.
The Sierra Club joined with right-wing Republicans like Kemper Freeman to kill Roads and Transit in 2007, and though they were excoriated on this blog, it turned out they were right, and we got a transit-only package the very next year.
Organizations with good motives can team up with people they disagree with to accomplish a common aim. That doesn’t make them intellectually dishonest.
@1: The Sierra club was patheticaly stupid to team up with Kemper Freeman – we need new roads and transit. With electric cars and biodiesel – we still don’t have the roads. The Sierra club essentially killed the roads and transit initiative becuase it was attacked from both sides.
Yes – transit passed on its own – but the roads are even in worse shape. Traffic jams waste fuel and keep the busses stopped too. We don’t have enough trains yet to ignore the roads and the busses.
So, the bottom line, the Sierra club was stupid to team up with Kemper Freeman and now we have a transit package but no roads for the busses – great. You are right that the Sierra club is not intellectually dishonest – they are just too idealogically and too dumb to see that they were being used.
Sorry Jon, while I usually could care less about the world of SW Washington that you bring us, this is one that I have to comment on. A frigging 12 lane bridge! WTF! I don’t care how many of the lanes would be used for “mixing” local traffic, it is essentially putting a chunk of the Columbia River in a tunnel. (And we all know, tunnels are a Seattle exclusive.) As for light rail, obviously a new bridge should be built to provide for it, but I don’t recall the good folks of Clark County reversing their fairly strong opposition to actually paying for light rail. And I am not about to support paying for it for you, given that you aren’t helping pay for ours.
You just need to admit it Jon, this 12 lane monstrosity is a boondoogle akin to the ever wider 405 and 520 ideas or former Senator Jim Horn’s dream of a “605” ring. Getting into bed with Don Benton is a terrible idea, but Benton is nothing if not opportunistic. As with Horn’s “605”, ring roads are terrible ideas, but a smaller third bridge with room for possible future light rail and a rehab of the existing bridge is a far better idea.
I’m for “cost-effective” transportation.
Light-rail has yet to prove to be such here.
@4 Moron – but it has in Portland where this is being discussed.
Are really as stupid as you seem? And the only reason it hasn’t worked here is the naysayers like you. Yeah, the people who said in 1978 that I-5 wuld never be crowded – you fools are truly a prescient lot.
cnr–
I-5 would be much better had they not INTENTIONALLY built the Convention Center where they did to preclude any further expansion of the freeway.
It’s soooo obvious that part of the Convention Center agenda was to eventually force light-rail on us…at an extraordinary cost.
Who is responsible for the Convention Center design and footprint anyway??
@6 OMG, how can you possibly reconcile your position that our local leaders are stupid and corrupt and yet at the same time believe they were so well organized and forward thinking as to plot the location of the convention center as a future tool to force light rail on Seattle?
The convention center decision was merely an early example of Seattle’s love affair with tunnels. We want all of the transportation options, we just don’t want to look at them.
I’m not very familiar with Clark County politics. What does Benton ultimately want? A moat around his county to keep Seattleites, Portlanders, and other foreigners out?
randall–
They are corrupt and stupid…taking orders from the anti-car ideologues without thinking thru the consequences.
Now we are stuck.
Are you denying that the Convention Cention created a “bottle-neck”??
Obviously it did.
Was it intentional?
I believe so.
Did our leaders who voted for it all think thru the consequences we are experiencing today?
No.
Why? Because they are stupid.
Cyn, this is about the Portland – Vancouver Metro, not Seattle.
That being said, some of the same problems that plague traffic in Portland exist in Seattle. Portland has the same kind of I-5 bottleneck (in the Rose Quarter) that Seattle has (from I-90 to under the WSCC). Sorry Cyn, these have NOTHING to do with some sinister conspiracy to force alternative forms of transportation on people. The bottlenecks arise from the antiquated 50’s-era design of the I-5 corridor, and said corridor simply not being broad enough in critical areas (as in the urban cores) to be expandable to meet demands the designers. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that there’s simply no room to put down any more concrete in these areas. ODOT was able to alleviate the pressure somewhat with the double-deck bridge moving I-5 across the Willamette from downtown, and creating the 405 loop around the western flank of downtown, while WSDOT’s ultimate failure in downtown Seattle was to not create a second complete limited-access corridor through the downtown core when they had the opportunity to do so, and what they did create……. well, we’ve discussed the AWV enough already, haven’t we?
Getting back on topic, Benton is a fool. The only way I-5 could be widened in north Portland would be at ridiculous cost to ODOT, buying several hundred homes and businesses from the Rose Quarter north all the way to Jantzen Beach. Just buying the property needed would cost billions, and any attempt at eminent-domain seizures would tie the construction up in court. Somebody would fight those plans to the death, and the project would likely not be finished for decades. And the granola crunchers are no better. As much as getting people completely out of their cars and into more environmentally-friendly modes of transport is a good idea and a noble quest, it’s largely unrealistic, and leaning strongly towards Don Quixote territory.
CRC is basically a valid concept IMHO. The best course of action is to make token improvements based on the lunatic rantings of the extremists while bringing Portland’s light-rail into Vancouver with say, a double-deck bridge with 8-10 lanes (with HOV/bus lanes in each direction) on the top deck, with a light-rail track flanked by bicycle lanes on the lower deck. Theoretically, such a bridge could also be designed to accomodate wind-turbines (like we’d talked about in previous threads) to try to catch what’s left of the ‘nuclear wind’ coming down out of the Columbia Gorge.