Having the wrong discussion about the bridge

Perhaps freed from fear of a recall, or perhaps remembering why he ran and how he won an easy election, Mayor Sam Adams recently came to his senses to oppose the 12-lane uber-bridge over the Columbia River:

"I’m committed to making fact based decisions…. Based on the facts, I think every aspect of this bridge has to shrink, including thse number of lanes."

Oddly, not everyone agrees with Hizzonor:

The Columbia River Crossing Coalition represents many of these supporters. In Mayor Sam Adams' recent statements about the crossing project, he championed the importance of light rail and tolling, which we agree with, and reducing its cost by reducing the number of lanes, which we do not agree with.

As happens too often with supporters of the Big Bridge, traffic is the only issue mentioned. In this case, it gets rather silly:

When the I-5 bridge lifts for barges, the only stoplight between Mexico and Canada turns red.

Because when you are trying to get your goods from Tijuana to Victoria, the last thing you need is a 5-minute delay at Jantzen Beach. Blaming barge traffic on the Columbia for congestion on I5 is like blaming pedestrians pushing the walk button at SE 39th & Powell for the drivers running those red lights. The problem is not barges, nor a skinny bridge, nor even too many drivers.

The problem is the way we live: in cars, and in homes too far away from where we work, shop, go to school and to to play. It’s called “sprawl” and it’s the bottom-line problem in most of the issues we face as we try to create livable communities. Sprawl is the very definition of unlivable community. Here’s what I wrote for Onward Oregon this week:

The sprawl in the Houston area is out of control. The city spreads for hundreds of square miles, and yet in between developed areas are large tracts of unused land. The sprawl simply goes on and on. Life in Houston, as in so many American cities, is lived on freeway and in automobiles.

You may love your car, and you may love driving, but do you want to spend 2 or more hours each day just getting from home to work to the store and back home again? Is that your definition of livable? Fortunately, there is plenty of opportunity for you to do that in Houston and Atlanta. In the Metro region, most people do not want that particular lifestyle.

If people’s lives are more compact — if they can get to most of the places that are part of their life without having to spend hours in their car — then the need for big bridges and more lanes of traffic is ameliorated. If we define the planning goal as creating livable communities, which is what Metro is seeking to do (for the most part), then we’ll be looking at solutions that are not auto-centric.

The Columbia River Coalition does not address core transportation issues. The CRC leaps to a solution without defining the problem adequately, but that serves their purpose: Vancouver-area development, lots of union jobs (short-term but what the hell; that approach worked so well for the timber industry), and a Big, Expensive Thing to point at and say, Lookit, lookit what I did!”

If you see the Metro region being more than a place for people to drive around rather than live in, you can let Metro know your view directly. A series of open houses and public hearings are in progress:

Tuesday, Oct. 13 - 4 p.m. open house, 5:15 p.m. hearing at the Clackamas County Public Services Building, 2051 Kaen Road, Oregon City.

Thursday, Oct. 15 - 4 p.m. open house, 5:15 p.m. hearing at the Metro Regional Center, 600 NE Grand Ave, Portland.

Lots of materials available for reference at Metro’s “Greatest Place” website.

The wrong discussion will always lead to the wrong decisions. Talking about having enough lanes over the Columbia is the wrong discussion. We don’t need more lanes; we need more options on how we live and move. Increasing car lanes reduces those options. In the end, there is a single option we will either choose or reject: creating a livable region or letting developers and cars turn the area into another Houston or Atlanta.