"Maybe if we scratch the light rail and the bike lanes, we could save a few hundred million?"

Way to bait a blog war, Matt. :-)

Surprising that you haven't yet reported what every other media outlet in town is reporting - that the most likely possibilities on the table to reduce costs are delaying redesigning a couple of the interchanges, and having one fewer lane in each direction... Exactly what you've been editorializing in favor of for months...

I guess being against something (see: stadiums) is more fun than being for something and taking responsibility if it doesn't work out?

Keep Vancouver normal. Stop the crime train and the fag path!

Was that what you were hoping for, Matt? I've got more where that came from...

Hahah. "fag path". Sounds like a party.

Matt, Mr investigative reporter, what would it cost to:

Seismically retrofit the existing I5 bridge and expand it on either side to add one extra lane per direction
Devote one lane to trucks only
Make all drivers pay tolls except trucks, which have their own lanes.
Build an extra stand-alone rail and bike bridge

And while your at it, can you get the opinion of a traffic engineer?

"Make all drivers pay tolls except trucks, which have their own lanes.
Build an extra stand-alone rail and bike bridge "

That's called a subsidy for the truckers, which is an unfair market advantage consider railroads are privately financed and get no such advantages.

"That's called a subsidy for the truckers, which is an unfair market advantage consider railroads are privately financed and get no such advantages."

And the entire CRC as it stands now isn't one in the first place?

For clarification, every semi-truck on the road pays $550 a year for the privilege of driving on federal highways. The feds, in turn, use this money to subsidize the railroads. That $550 is charged for the whole year, unless the truck is wrecked and sold for scrap. If I bought a truck (which I have done in the past) and use it for ,say, 5 months and then sell it, I'm still responsible for the whole $550, unless the new owner agrees to pay the rest of the year. By the way, you can pay the fee quarterly, which a lot of truckers do.

Matt are you lazy or dumb? Either your lazy and didn't even read the article you linked to or your really really dumb and bad at reading comprehension.

What part of the following quotes from Wagner didn't you understand:

"Possible cuts include delaying one or more of the interchange projects and slicing off a bridge lane in each direction, he said."

AND

"Wagner said he doesn't believe it's politically possible to replace the Interstate 5 Bridge without extending light rail into Vancouver and predicted the crossing project would be on "life support" if voters shoot down a light-rail measure."

AND


Saving another $750 million by killing light rail isn't going to happen, Wagner said.

"The two sides of the river have to come together on what's going to happen," he said. "And on the Clark County side, while there is growing support for light rail, I am going to stop way short of saying that everybody likes light rail because I've certainly had enough people tell me that they don't like light rail."

Seriously dude, even by your standards this is pathetic.

"For clarification, every semi-truck on the road pays $550 a year for the privilege of driving on federal highways. The feds, in turn, use this money to subsidize the railroads."

Freight rail is a private industry. Their rail lines were built by the industry, not by the government.

There may be a few lines that are not doing well, but you need some evidence before you put these false accusations out.

Trucks, bar none, do the most damage to roads but pay the least in proportion to the damage they cause.. They also go slower than cars, take up more space, and create congestion. We need trucks, but our roads are saturated.

Yes, they pay $550/year, but put that number in context. Considering that a good trucker does about 100,000 miles/year, that works out to less than a penny a mile. A lot of people pay more in registration fees for their cars. And asphalt damage is proportional to weight to the 4th power, so a truck does much more damage than a car in the first place.

@Matthew D: If you can find the information, you will, I think, be highly surprised how much money the State of Oregon makes every year on road taaxes on trucks and diesel fuel. Look it up. I don't know where to look cause I'm not a computer whiz. I know that I bought my last truck (licensed in Washington) for $18,000, drove it for three years and was still paying excise tax on $18,000, even though the value had gone down. If you really look into what the trucking industry pays every year to the various entities, you will be quite surprised. IMHO

Trucks cause the most damage to the interstate* and they pay the most. Makes sense.

*In temperate climates like west of the Cascades. In regions where the ground freezes often in the winter, weather causes the most damage.