They should go for overcapacity. Saves a lot of money and work later when it is needed a few years down the road.
Sometimes I live in the country, Sometimes I live in the town. Sometimes I get a great notion. To jump into the river an' drown ...
Why are they absurd man? Kansas City is currently building a new bridge (the Christopher Bond Bridge in honor of the former Missouri governor and current, soon to be retired Senator) that will replace a 1954 span that long ago outgrew it’s ability to handle daily traffic demands. The new bridge will allow six lanes of traffic on I-35 and is purported to be expandable to 8 lanes.
So if 16 lanes are needed at certain times of day in Portland, why not? High speed or slow speed, light or heavy rail is not the answer. It contrains freedom to move about and isn’t freedom the bulwark of a free and prosperous nation, any nation?
Use guns if we have to to force people on these light rail boondoggles. /s
Light rail will replace about one highway lane each direction. Since the proposed bridge already includes light rail, I don’t see where you’re going to get much gain over the 10 lane bridge proposed. And it sounds like the tolls are probably going to about equal the rail fares.
Who will be using them, what rush hour? No one will have a job...
Light rail sucks, 4 hrs via light rail what takes 40 mins in a car
Uh, Willie, Portland, OR is Nirvana for your central planning idiocy.
Ah, yes. "Light rail", the government mandated socialist answer to the problem. Face it, nobody wants rail except government planners and their socialist underwriters.
Except in areas of very high population density light rail is a proven money loser.
Doesn’t go where people want to go when people need to be there. Further when they do get to their location they are stuck without a car to get from the rail station to their final destination.
We do have lightrail and it carries 1-2 per trip losing about $250K per month after the 2 Billion initial rat hole. Using the Peoples Republic of Portland as an example is a good choice for you. Perhaps they could build an 8 lane bike bridge?
Pray for America
Say WA? Evergreen State ping And keep the two three-lane drawbridges, to provide extra capacity.
Most cities located on a major river have more than one bridge across it. See Pittsburgh, for example. Cincinnati. Or St. Louis. Even New Orleans.
Hell, Astoria, Longview, Pasco and The Dalles have one bridge. Shouldn't Portland have more than one...???
Don’t build the bridge or the rail.
There’s no problem. I don’t have a problem with the traffic. The people in traffic want to be there. It’s quite popular. So, what’s the problem?
Don’t like traffic? Move. Stay. Accept. What ever.
There is a way around this problem that on the surface sounds fantastic and improbable, but is actually practical.
In modern airport concourses, there are “moving sidewalks” that efficiently carry a high volume of pedestrian traffic long distances. They are a marvel, because otherwise pedestrians would have to walk several congested blocks, with frequent clogs of groups of people. Instead, there are two moving sidewalks, and a wide, almost empty area between them for anyone else, such as courtesy vehicles.
This could be applied to multi-lane bridges, and would keep traffic flowing at a constant rate of speed.
The two normal middle lanes would be for heavy vehicles, and when traffic was light enough for faster speeds for passenger vehicles. Drivers who went onto the moving lanes would just put their vehicle into neutral, then park, and ride the distance of the bridge. The only oddity would be for special pull out lanes at the end of the bridge, so vehicles with engine problems could coast out of the flow of traffic.
This technique could also be used in bottleneck sections of freeways, that regularly cause traffic jams.
Importantly, in either case, the rolling roads would only be used during times of peak congestion.
Ha....we got light rail running 18 hours a day in Seattle...you can watch the empty rail cars go by.
We need to provide more light rail to stop this insanity.
I don’t want any toll on this bridge. Leave the existing bridge in place; it’s paid for.
The last thing we need is a toll bridge with light rail. The voters in Vancouver have already voted against it. A regular lane of traffic moves many times more people than a light rail line.
By the way, this bridge is not intended to have any more actual through lanes than the current bridge. They’re just counting entry/exit lanes as regular lanes.