Lars Larson: The $9 Billion ‘green bridge’ plan that isn’t

By Lars Larson
NW and national radio host,

Now it turns out that planners behind what could be a nine billion dollar interstate bridge replacement on I-5 over the Columbia River aren’t as green as they planned. Transit activist John Ley dug into the documents and found that what’s known as the “locally preferred alternative” is one of the choices because it’s thought to reduce CO2. Greenies fear CO2 because they see the gas not as plant food, but as a driver of global warming—whose new name is climate change after the predicted warming didn’t show up—or something like that.

State Senator Lynda Wilson wanted to know HOW MUCH the new bridge could cut carbon dioxide. Even though the planners have given over more than half of the new bridge to pedestrians, bicycles, and rail, and less than half to cars and trucks, I kid you not—the savings amount to about 31 metric tons of CO2. At that rate, it will take 41 years for the interstate bridge replacement to save as much CO2 as its construction required and break even.

So the new bridge may be a fake green bridge according to Ley’s research, published at Clark County Today. No matter, neither Oregon nor Washington has managed to locate even half of the nine billion the bridge is forecast to cost. Nor has the Coast Guard granted the required permission to build a bridge that’s at least 60 feet too short to clear river traffic. Oh, and by the way, if they do build this excuse for a light rail project, the MAX stop on Hayden Island will be 55 FEET in the air—and don’t count on enough elevators to get you there—and the one at the Vancouver waterfront is nearly 75 feet in the air.