To estimate what the bridge should cost, take the square footage of the deck of the I205 bridge and inflation adjusted it. Next calculate the square footage of deck of a 12 lane bridge from Evergreen Blvd to Hayden Island. They are within a couple percent of the same, therefore the CRC bridge should cost about the same as the, inflation adjusted, I205 bridge, $382 million.The other $3 billion is the true cost of the light rail project!
3 comments:
FYI, that's a Jim Karlock thing. And the CRC is about more than a bridge. One of the main problems is interchanges, not the bridge.
Anon is correct - the vast majority of the $3B goes to highway expansion and interchanges -- some say these were necessary to placate Clark County into accepting light rail (which is necessary to placate Portland into accepting....welll....anything for Clark County).
The bottom line is that this project is so expensive it will burden all of us with crushing tolls for several decades (forever if Metro gets its way). The tolls will be at least $1200/yr for people just trying to get to work. Some zealots want the tolls to be triple that.
If one wants to NOT hurt working families, one should NOT require tolls to upgrade intersections that are working, but not optimal.
Of course all of those interchanges would need extensive work to accommodate the original LRT plan to running it beside I5.
My best guess is that rebuilding the interchanges served two purposes:
1) To move light rail costs to the highway account.
2) To run up the bill so that the tolls would be high enough to serve as a credit to the LRT local match, causing the Feds to pay 100% of LRT.
I view it all as a cynical ploy to force light rail on the region with complete disregard to who gets hurt.
Thanks
JK
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