A
Bridge to the
Twentieth Century: Megaproject Technocracy and the Columbia River
Crossing
What
is the Columbia River Crossing?
Portland, Oregon and neighboring Vancouver, Washington are located on
opposite sides of the Columbia River and are connected by bridges on
Interstates 5 and 205. The bridge on I5, first constructed in 1917 and
expanded with a second identicial span in 1958, serves as the primary
transportation artery between the two states. The span across the entire river is over a mile
long, and the only transportation link for Hayden Island residents
and businesses to the mainland.
It is almost impossible to argue that nothing should be done about the
state of both the facility and the problems the megaproject aims to
tackle; one of the spans is over 90 years old, the link features the
only drawbridge on the entire I5 corridor between Canada and Mexico,
freight companies have called the bottleneck the biggest traffic jam on
the west coast (which, considering the traffic congestion of Los
Angeles and Seattle, might be hyperbole). Engineers have voiced
concerns about the bridge’s potential response to an earthquake, and
the traffic congestion along the corridor frustrates commuters,
increases the risk of automobile collision, and costs local businesses
and citizen’s valuable time and money.
The provisional inclusion of public transportation and bicycling
facilities make the Columbia River Crossing a unique megaproject to
study; the ways in which these amenities are emphasized as contributing
towards a “multimodal” facility reflects the region’s commitment to a
narrowly defined version of sustainability that is typically not
articulated in other interstate megaprojects across the country. Many
public transportation and bicycling activists across the country would
actually be happy to see this expressed intent to provide alternative
facilities along a major highway project.
Provocative activists have asked of the intelligence of spending $4.2
billion on a project that doesn’t drastically improve the Portland
Metro region’s environmental sustainability; the same funds (the
equivalent of $2000 per resident in the metro area), could instead
provide roughly 80 miles of light rail, countless green-collar jobs and
tax incentives (located so that Vancouverites wouldn’t have to cross
the bridge), or other astronomical projects to ready Portland for an
uncertain economic and environmental future. Is this the best
use of our scarce financial and environmental resources? Who is
articulating that this particular facility is the correct intervention
to make, what are the problems that this facility is attempting to
solve, and how has the planning process for the region’s largest
infrastructure project ever engaged the local agents who have the most
to gain or lose from this facility?
Nick Faldo, a local critic of the Columbia River Crossing as currently
planned, produced this video to describe the overall context of the
megaproject (The role of local advocacy of this project is discussed here and the importance of the embrace of new media here):
