Think traffic's bad now? It will get worse (Portland: license plates, stations)

[skiffrace]

Not just those roads. It can affect every major road in town. The only real way to fix it would be to continue 217 north and make a third river crossing. CRC never will, even with the addition of Light Rail and more lanes.

Even then, it'd still only be a temporary fix.

Of course. Like any other road "improvement", the extra capacity will be soon filled by masses of new car commuters.

The Columbia River Crossing project is a splendid example of the 2 allegedly opposing factions: the government and the business, actually in bed together.
The business is salivating over the massive lucrative contracts. The government sees CRC as a a huge public works project: "we are doing something important".

The current quagmire is actually quite easily solvable, without building anything new, through market-based solution: Congestion pricing
A set of tolls should be established on I-5 and I-205. All commercial and 3+ carpool traffic should be exempt. The toll should be substantial enough, say $8 to $10 per round-trip crossing, to make a difference.

People move to Vancouver primarily in search of cheaper housing. Their current calculus is "even if I spend 2 hours every day in traffic on I-5, it's still worth the 20% to 30% lower mortgage"
Adding $200 per month to the cost of their commute would strongly nudge them to do what they stubbornly refuse: carpool and use public transit (like C-Tran) en masse.

Alas, all this is a pure fantasy. Any voice that proposes tolls on existing roads would be drowned by the usual deafening cries of "extortionist government imposing job-kiling taxes on freedom loving Americans"

[bler144]

Originally Posted by skiffrace

The current quagmire is actually quite easily solvable, without building anything new, through market-based solution: Congestion pricing
A set of tolls should be established on I-5 and I-205. All commercial and 3+ carpool traffic should be exempt. The toll should be substantial enough, say $8 to $10 per round-trip crossing, to make a difference.

To a point I agree, though I think there are significant complications.

1) there's no viable bypass, so you're catching a lot of through traffic, who certainly are part of the congestion, but don't have a viable alternative because of the absence of a bypass (which 205 was intended to be). Though I suppose a family would potentially fall under your carpool exemption.

2) building toll infrastructure has a cost, and pure congestion pricing uses a sliding scale. If you do use a sliding scale, you confuse people. Someone might bring $8 for the toll only to discover they're crossing at a time when it's $20. If you don't slide the scale you're charging $8-10 for people who are driving off-peak, for family/shopping/etc. and you really just have a toll road.

3) usually toll roads have a viable bypass - currently if you toll both 205/5 there is no bypass within 50 miles in either direction.

4) Structurally, you're pretty limited in where you could plop a toll station. Either out on the bridge (problematic) or at the very north end of Hayden Island, which would involve building pretty high above ground (i.e. at a cost). You can't build on the northside without major renovations, including the 14 interchange, even if WA were willing to play along, and you can't build south of the river without cutting off Hayden island, unless you completely redo the road access.

[oldtintype]

Originally Posted by bler144

Personally I'm not convinced light rail will actually solve the I-5 congestion problem by itself.

Of course it won't but refusing to pay for developing public transportation for the future is definitely not going to help. Investment in rail, park and ride options, etc are necessary but with Clark County voting everything down, things will never improve.

[oldtintype]

Tolls would help but wouldn't solve the problem. San Francisco has tolls on all the bridges but the traffic is still horrible. Tolls would be nice though--I hate the mentality that a lot of people in Vancouver seem to have about the traffic. The "oh well" mentality. Tolls might encourage more carpooling and public transit use.

[hamellr]

Originally Posted by bler144

To a point I agree, though I think there are significant complications.


4) Structurally, you're pretty limited in where you could plop a toll station. Either out on the bridge (problematic) or at the very north end of Hayden Island, which would involve building pretty high above ground (i.e. at a cost). You can't build on the northside without major renovations, including the 14 interchange, even if WA were willing to play along, and you can't build south of the river without cutting off Hayden island, unless you completely redo the road access.

Make it totally electronic like 520 is in Seattle. We went through it and got a bill in the mail about two weeks later. Paid the $2.50 or whatever it was online in about 20 seconds. Quite easy to do.

[AndyAMG]

The real solution is to maintain status quo. It's cheap, it doesn't benefit Vantuckyians in anyway, and eventually it will get so bad on both bridges people will finally start thinking twice about living in Ridgefield or Battle Bround so they can buy a cookie cutter dr horton mini mc mansion for 200 dollars less per month.

Build a bridge from Portland Rd (well actually suttle dr) over marine and on to Hayden island and be done with it.

[EnricoV]

Originally Posted by bler144

To a point I agree, though I think there are significant complications.

1) there's no viable bypass, so you're catching a lot of through traffic, who certainly are part of the congestion, but don't have a viable alternative because of the absence of a bypass (which 205 was intended to be). Though I suppose a family would potentially fall under your carpool exemption.

2) building toll infrastructure has a cost, and pure congestion pricing uses a sliding scale. If you do use a sliding scale, you confuse people. Someone might bring $8 for the toll only to discover they're crossing at a time when it's $20. If you don't slide the scale you're charging $8-10 for people who are driving off-peak, for family/shopping/etc. and you really just have a toll road.

3) usually toll roads have a viable bypass - currently if you toll both 205/5 there is no bypass within 50 miles in either direction.

4) Structurally, you're pretty limited in where you could plop a toll station. Either out on the bridge (problematic) or at the very north end of Hayden Island, which would involve building pretty high above ground (i.e. at a cost). You can't build on the northside without major renovations, including the 14 interchange, even if WA were willing to play along, and you can't build south of the river without cutting off Hayden island, unless you completely redo the road access.

The bridge was originally built as a toll bridge. So, it's had all that infrastructure and lack of bypass, etc.

I see no reason it can't be done again.

[bler144]

Originally Posted by oldtintype

Of course it won't but refusing to pay for developing public transportation for the future is definitely not going to help. Investment in rail, park and ride options, etc are necessary but with Clark County voting everything down, things will never improve.

That's not quite what I meant. My point was mostly that Vancouver residence patterns don't lend themselves to a single line, the way say, Beaverton at least kind of does.

It's not as simple as building a line over the bridge, you'd need a pretty sophisticated plan for what the line would do on the other side. That's why I said personally I think a bus-to-Max link from multiple smaller 'stations' around Vancouver works better, and again, requires less sunk cost in terms of building a new station/lines.

[bler144]

Originally Posted by EnricoV

The bridge was originally built as a toll bridge. So, it's had all that infrastructure and lack of bypass, etc.

I see no reason it can't be done again.

Tolling was discontinued in 1928 when a portion of the tolled traffic was horseback.

Demands on modern bridges are quite different, both for higher speeds and higher loads (trailer trucks, esp.), creating more extreme vector loads, but the bigger difference with the modern bridge is the volume. As best I can tell that original span only had a single toll lane in each direction plus train. The modern bridge would likely still need at least 6 lanes plus additional width for tolling equipment, plus bike lanes and maybe a rail line (or an express bus lane?).

Electronic tolling is interesting, though it's not without potential problems. If you're not using an EZ-pass, the system has to assume the owner is the driver, which raises various interesting legal/ethical questions. And even if the bulk of the equipment is overhead, you need maintenance access, not to mention a plan for what to do when equipment is out of order/off-line. Do you close down the lane (adding congestion) or just give freebies?

[Deezus]

Originally Posted by bler144

Tolling was discontinued in 1928 when a portion of the tolled traffic was horseback.

There were tolls in the early 60s--my girlfriend's father mentioned this the other night when were discussing the CRC(he didn't get to Portland until 1962).

When both bridges were first open concurrently, in 1960,each bridge became one-way, and tolls were reinstated at $0.20 for cars, $0.40 for light trucks, and $0.60 for heavy trucks and buses, until removed in 1966 after the construction expenses were paid off.

Interstate Bridge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia