Columbia River Crossing project cancelled

[CHamilton]

Columbia River Crossing: ODOT to pull plug, bridge project is dead

The Oregon Department of Transportation announced Friday it is closing the project's offices, issuing cease-work orders to its many contractors and shutting the project down entirely by May 31.
The Oregon Legislature adjourned Friday having taken no action on the CRC other than a committee hearing. Oregon lawmakers lost their appetite for the project after the state of Washington pulled out as a co-funder last summer.

The shutdown comes after more than a decade of planning and nearly $190 million worth of planning, engineering, financial and traffic forecasting and other work.

It is an enormous victory for both environmental and urban planning groups from the left and conservative fiscal hawks from the right. This Green Tea Party, as they came to call themselves, attacked the project as a wasteful, bloated plan that was both bad for the environment and too risky for one state to bear alone.

This project would have included light rail between Portland and Vancouver, WA, but its other provisions found critics in many quarters.

 

[Rail Freak]

Columbia River Crossing: ODOT to pull plug, bridge project is dead

The Oregon Department of Transportation announced Friday it is closing the project's offices, issuing cease-work orders to its many contractors and shutting the project down entirely by May 31.
The Oregon Legislature adjourned Friday having taken no action on the CRC other than a committee hearing. Oregon lawmakers lost their appetite for the project after the state of Washington pulled out as a co-funder last summer.

The shutdown comes after more than a decade of planning and nearly $190 million worth of planning, engineering, financial and traffic forecasting and other work.

It is an enormous victory for both environmental and urban planning groups from the left and conservative fiscal hawks from the right. This Green Tea Party, as they came to call themselves, attacked the project as a wasteful, bloated plan that was both bad for the environment and too risky for one state to bear alone.

This project would have included light rail between Portland and Vancouver, WA, but its other provisions found critics in many quarters.

What is your personal opinion of this decision?

 

[SubwayNut]

Are there any proposals to reinstate tolls (for a third time) to pay for the new crossing? That seems like the best solution to me.

 

[CHamilton]

What is your personal opinion of this decision?

I have not studied it in detail, but the project had a lot of problems. AORTA, the Oregon rail advocacy group, was opposed to it, and supported the "Common Sense Alternative," which seemed to me to make a lot of, er, common sense.

 

[CHamilton]

Are there any proposals to reinstate tolls (for a third time) to pay for the new crossing? That seems like the best solution to me.

It's unclear what, if anything, will happen now. Neither state wants to pay for it. Portland doesn't want to pay for it. And Clark County, WA, doesn't want to pay for anything, since it is a very red area of a blue state.

 

[Bob Dylan]

What is your personal opinion of this decision?

I have not studied it in detail, but the project had a lot of problems. AORTA, the Oregon rail advocacy group, was opposed to it, and supported the "Common Sense Alternative," which seemed to me to make a lot of, er, common sense.

Sounds like some of the Transportation Shenanigans in the New YorkCity/New Jersey Area! :help:

 

[brentrain17]

I have never felt comfortable driving the current I-5 bridge, this is too bad.

 

[CHamilton]

From the Seattle Transit Blog:

The writing’s been on the wall for a while, but after our Gov. Inslee, to his credit, failed to back it, its days were truly numbered. If you want to know why the CRC was such a terrible idea, read our coverage in three parts: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. If you don’t have time, skip to part 3, which includes some sensible suggestions for what to do now, including tolling the existing bridge, building light rail with federal money, and building a new rail bridge to eliminate 90% of the current drawbridge openings....

http://vimeo.com/21585967

When you’re faced with a wicked problem like a megaproject, you can either keep growing the scope, or you can cut back, simplify, and take it in pieces. For whatever reason, our political system typically creates a one-way ratchet. Projects only ever get bigger. As they drag on, more stakeholders are heard from, or needs change, and so they get even bigger. Sometimes the resulting monstrosity gets greenlit anyway, like the Big Dig, or Alaskan Way Tunnel, and sometimes they get so big they just get cancelled, like the CRC.

Usually, though, the right answer is to scale back and do something simpler. That was the right answer for replacing the Viaduct, and it’s the right answer for the Columbia River.

 

[CHamilton]

Columbia River Crossing audit finds $17 million in questionable spending

The Washington State Auditor’s Office has found more than $17 million in questionable and excessive payments among the $188 million paid for the aborted Columbia River Crossing.
Most of that $17 million – about $12.3 million – was listed as questionable because the approximately 30 subcontractors that collected the payments did not submit proper overhead and profit markup documentation to the general contractor, David Evans and Associates.

Columbia River Crossing: Tab approaches $200 million after I-5 bridge projected shuttered

It will go down in history as one of the largest public works project in Oregon history that never happened.
But the Columbia River Crossing was highly lucrative while it lasted for a handful of big engineering and consulting firms. The CRC paid $199.4 million to 171 companies, consultants and others in the last 10 years, according to the latest numbers released to The Oregonian by the Oregon Department of Transportation.