I-5 Columbia River Crossing Ideas Begin to Narrow

Last night the I-5 Columbia River Crossing(CRC) Task Force met with the primary goal of narrowing the set of "improvements" that will be considered for further study. The task force shortened the list of river crossing ideas slightly, while decisions about all of the transit ideas and new bridge recommendations got pushed forward to the next meeting (May 17th, 4-6:30 in Vancouver).

Before the last CRC meeting, the Coalition for a Livable Future issued an action alert regarding several proposals for new river crossings. (Visions of the Western Bypass were dancing in our heads). These new crossings were voted out last night. (Yeah!) However, part of the reason this came so easily is that the Clark County Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) stepped up at that last meeting with a proposal to initiate a parallel process that will study new river crossings. The RTC is still considering whether or not it will take this on. Thus, we can expect to see more on this in the not so far future.

A majority of task force members also voted to include only one arterial option (RC-23, in case you want to get into the specifics). CLF pushed for an arterial solution in the past and strongly support an arterial-multi-modal transportation solution in this process. However, we are concerned that it is likely that only one arterial alternative will be studied, and perhaps half a dozen or more new freeway bridge alternatives studied.

On other fronts that we care about, staff promised to provide the CRC with a briefing on how they will integrate Peak Oil into their modeling and a detailed plan on environmental justice training for the task force at the May meeting. In addition, the public and task force members continued to raise numerous concerns about communications with the public and the community involvement process.

More on how you can help shape this project soon.