Portland's War On The Car Continues...
The folks at Portland’s excellent cascade policy
institute deserve the credit for pointing this out…but the Sellwood bridge
replacement plan is crazy.
The cost of
replacing the bridge has increased dramatically even before construction of the
new bridge has begun. The new bridge,
cascade points out, is twice the width of the current bridge but the tens of
thousands of cars that use it every day…get no more room.
Instead, taxpayers are going to be forced to
fund a 300 million dollar bridge that provides two huge sidewalks for bikes and
pedestrians, and gives nothing more to cars.
This is more of Portland’s war on the car, a fight that’s waged nearly
every day.
Inadequate freeways force
cars onto surface streets, and when that becomes dangerous for residents the
city’s answer is to reduce the size of the neighborhood street.
The Rose city
is choking off the arteries that move goods, services and workers around the
region and then people wonder why jobs are scarce and paychecks are thin.
Go figure.