With the Portland
City Council voting unanimously this week in favor of a new I5 bridge over the
Columbia River, it would seem that the project is a done deal.
But the proposed
light-rail segment of the bridge needs to be approved by Washington voters, and
several other bureaucratic hurdles must be overcome before the four-point-two
billion dollar project can move forward.
At today's City
Club, economist Joe Cartright argued against the new bridge in a debate with
Metro Councilor Rex Burkhol0der.
Here's a clip of
Rex Burkholder, arguing in favor of the I-5 bridge:
While
Burkholder contends that the new bridge will be built to fix existing
infrastructure, there are other proposals to renovate the existing bridge.
One such proposal
would cost one to two hundred million dollars, and was promoted by Joe
Cartright in today's debate.
The debate held today may be a pre-cursor of
what's to come. There has been very
little public input into the question of the new I-5 bridge, and the city
government says it won't take public input until the final plan is already in
place
- KBOO