Bridge linked to rail vote

Vancouver-area residents hold the key to regional transportation

By Jim Redden

The Portland Tribune, Jun 26, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (19 Reader comments)

An artist’s sketch shows the alignment of a proposed light-rail line connecting Portland and Vancouver, Wash., that would run alongside a replacement Interstate 5 bridge.

COURTESY OF COLUMBIA RIVER CROSSING PROJECT

Voters in the Vancouver, Wash.-area may have the final say on whether a replacement Interstate 5 bridge is ever built — and city officials there are split over who should be allowed to cast ballots.

They will not be allowed to vote on the bridge itself. But regional officials say a light-rail line between Portland and Vancouver must be included on any new Columbia River bridge. Washington law requires a public election on new transit lines, potentially giving Vancouver-area voters the power to veto the entire project.

Exactly who will be allowed to vote on the new transit line has yet to be resolved, however.

Vancouver Mayor Royce Pollard, who supports light rail, thinks the election should be restricted to those voters mostly likely to use it.

“People who will get the most value out of it, that would be good,” said Pollard, who thinks such a line will help reduce traffic congestion and spur downtown redevelopment projects.

But Vancouver city Commissioner Jeanne Stewart, who opposes light rail, thinks Pollard is trying to rig the outcome by restricting the vote to the urban parts of Vancouver, where support for light rail is thought to be the strongest. She believes the entire city should be allowed to vote on it — a decision that could doom the project.

“If they let everyone vote on it, they might find out that light rail isn’t as popular as they think it is,” Stewart said of Pollard and other light-rail supporters.

The vote is needed to increase the sales tax to pay for maintenance and operating costs. The smaller the voting area, the higher the tax increase.

“If they restrict the vote to only those areas that support light rail, it will be too expensive for them to pay for it,” predicted Stewart, who believes expanding bus service is more cost-effective than building a new light-rail line.

Under current state law, all voters living within the C-Tran transit district that serves Vancouver are eligible to vote on the proposed rail line. The district includes other portions of Clark County that would not be served by the line.

Both Pollard and Stewart agree the 2009 Washington Legislature is likely to amend the law to allow the vote to take place in a smaller portion of the C-Tran district, however. The exact size of the tax increase cannot be determined until then. The vote will be set after both decisions are made.

Restricting the vote to parts of Vancouver may be key to winning approval of the line — and, ultimately, the entire replacement bridge project.

Clark County voters rejected a measure to extend light rail from Portland to Vancouver in 1995. The vote delayed TriMet’s plan to build the Interstate MAX line for several years and is the reason why it now ends at the Expo Center in North Portland instead of continuing across the river to Washington.

Traffic chokes bridge

Political pressure has been building for years to do something about the current I-5 bridge, long considered a major bottleneck on the West Coast interstate highway system that runs from the Canadian to Mexican borders.

Congestion has been a major problem on the bridge, which carries around 135,000 vehicles per day. Congestion now lasts six hours a day and is expected to increase to more than seven hours southbound and eight hours northbound by 2030 — further compromising on-time freight delivery in the metropolitan region.

Safety is a major problem. The bridge has no shoulder lanes, and the connecting interchanges are substandard and blamed for an increasing number of serious traffic accidents.

Doing something about the bridge is the responsibility of a joint Oregon-Washington project called the Columbia River Crossing. A 39-member task force advising the project approved an in-depth study of a replacement bridge with a light-rail line at a June 24 meeting.

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