Over on Portland Architecture, Brian Libby posted a letter from the Columbia River Crossing's design advisory group asking that asks the project to please, please, not choose the cheapest, ugliest option from the three new plans on the table.

The "composite truss" bridge looks the most like the original design for the new I-5 bridge, but costs $340 million compared to the original $440 million pricetag. The more graceful cable-stayed and tied-arch designs are estimated to respectively cost $400 and $430 million (pictures here). The design group wants the CRC to go for the cable stayed option:

In the past we have seen the tendency to make top-down decisions to try to force through a critical decision without meaningful public input. As the various independent reports of Bridge Panel experts have repeatedly confirmed, this has led us down the wrong design path. It did not work in the past, and we feel strongly that we should not repeat that mistake again.

We support a cable-stayed bridge for a number of practical and beneficial reasons.

Read the whole letter here.