Comparison

From DJCoregon.com, "A tale of two cities’ crossings: different takes on congestion"

Portland’s Columbia River bridges have close parallels with the Burrard Inlet crossings in Vancouver, B.C. But different views on handling congestion have set the two areas on separate paths: a new bridge in the works for Portland, and no new construction planned for Vancouver, B.C.

Each waterway has two highway bridges: an old, narrow one to the west and a newer, wider one eight road miles to the east. Each area includes a third bridge that carries trains.

The similarities between the two metro areas don’t end with the two-bridge setup and the name Vancouver. Each one has nearly the same number of people: 2.16 million in Portland and 2.12 million in Vancouver, B.C.

The city populations are 558,000 for Portland and 578,000 for Vancouver.

Vancouver, B.C.’s central city is among the densest spots in North America. The downtown averages 31,360 people per square mile. Yet, the only bridge from downtown across the inlet is the three-lane Lions Gate Bridge, built more than 70 years ago.

That’s three lanes total: two in one direction and one in the other.

A second bridge, called the Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing, opened in 1960. The six-lane bridge carries the Trans-Canada Highway across the inlet.

Both bridges are at least as congested as Portland’s Columbia River bridges, according to traffic counts from the British Columbia and Washington state transportation authorities. The Second Narrows Crossing carries about 20,100 weekday trips per lane, compared to 17,700 trips per lane on the eight-lane Interstate-205 bridge.

The Lions Gate and the Interstate-5 bridges each get 21,100 trips per lane.

Dealing with bridge clogs

But the two areas differ in their response to the congestion. Columbia River Crossing officials are working to maintain momentum for a replacement I-5 bridge and improvements to the five-mile corridor around it. In Vancouver, B.C., there’s no effort in the works to replace or widen one of the Burrard Inlet’s two crossings.

It’s not even a topic of discussion, said Jeff Knight, spokesman with the British Columbia Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure. “There are other major bridge projects, but not over that inlet,” he said.

The time for discussion was the 1990s, before the Lions Gate Bridge’s last major rehabilitation project, Knight said. “There were all sorts of different options.”

But the historic, iconic suspension bridge has sentimental appeal, Knight said. And Vancouver residents didn’t want a bigger bridge bringing extra traffic and wider streets through town.

“That process ran its course,” Knight said.

In the last few years, traffic on the inlet’s two bridges has actually decreased. The Lions Gate Bridge carried more than 2,000 fewer weekday trips in 2008 than it did in 2004; the Second Narrows Bridge dropped 7,000 weekday trips from 2005 to 2008.

Small bridge, livable downtown

The comparison between the Portland and Vancouver, B.C., metro areas goes only so far, officials from both areas are quick to point out. A transportation decision that’s good for one region won’t necessarily be good for the other.

That said, Gordon Price, director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University and a former longtime Vancouver, B.C., city councilor, is glad to have a narrow, three-lane Lions Gate Bridge. “The conclusion I’ve drawn from looking at the history is that it’s one of the reasons we are one of the most livable cities in the world,” Price said, “on both sides of the inlet.”

Vancouver and its northern suburbs had a chance to see whether maintaining the size of the crossing would lead to increased congestion and a worse economy. “The answer, apparently, is no,” Price said. “If it were true that congestion would lead to an economic decline, you wouldn’t have the affluent area on one side and a vibrant urban area on the other.”

In any community, Price said, residents need clarity on transportation-planning decisions that determine where people live, where they work and how they commute. In Vancouver, people know there won’t be a new Burrard Inlet crossing.

“We said, ‘That’s OK; we will live with the existing capacity,’ ” Price said. “Once it became clear that wouldn’t change (and) we wouldn’t be overruled by the provincial and federal governments, then we took the other (transportation) options seriously and started to design cities to be walkable, to have more transit, and to be more bicycle friendly.”

When people have the opposite understanding that freeways and bridges will keep expanding as metro areas sprawl, they’ll count on that as well, Price said. “When it comes time to decide where they’re going to live and work, they’ll live farther away.

“And then the government comes along and builds them a wider road,” he said. “Because the government has done such a great job of delivering that for three generations, people expect that will continue forever.”

A West Coast economic engine

Freeway choke points might cause commuters to live closer to work, or closer to transit lines, Price said. That could lead to increased development on both sides of choke points, development that isn’t geared toward drivers.

That’s not the view of congestion in the other Vancouver. Allowing traffic clogs to continue hurts the entire local economy, said Eric Holmes, economic development director for Vancouver, Wash.

People who work in Portland might hesitate to move to Ridgefield, Wash., or Battle Ground, Wash., if the bridge crossings increasingly clog, Holmes agreed. If they want to live in Clark County, they may even pick a closer place to live: Vancouver, Wash.

But Vancouver doesn’t gain from other Clark County communities’ loss, Holmes said. “We are a regional economy with a shared workforce.”

And there’s a bigger potential loss, he said. “The I-5 bridge is actually a West Coast economic engine, not a Portland-Vancouver engine. It’s the only place you’re forced to stop based on the function - or the dysfunction - of the interstate.

“It does serve commuters,” Holmes continued, “but it’s primarily a freight mobility issue. It goes beyond the question of commuting and not commuting.”

Pricing the toll right

Keeping goods flowing is a typical argument for building bigger roads and bridges, Price said, and for doing so without adding tolls. But the new capacity fills up quickly, he said, unless tolls are high enough to discourage people from driving.

“If congestion’s a problem, let’s price the road at peak hours,” Price said. “And that additional road space we make will be available for people who need to pay for it.”

When tolls are too small to reduce traffic, they can actually encourage more people to drive, Price said, by allowing agencies to build much bigger roads and bridges than they have money for up front. The more people drive, the more tolls can be used to pay back the debt.

Tolling is a key piece of the current Columbia River Crossing discussions, said Ethan Seltzer, director of Portland State University’s School of Urban Studies and Planning. Congestion pricing, for example, makes people think about whether they really need to drive instead of taking their car trip for granted.

“As long as we keep providing roads as if there’s no cost to the next additional user, we’re going to continue to come into these problems,” Seltzer said. “We can’t build our way out of congestion.”

More than just a bridge

It’s interesting to look at how choices made in Vancouver, B.C. affect that area’s transportation, Seltzer said. But Portland doesn’t have to follow Vancouver’s lead.

Plans for the Columbia River Crossing include a light-rail line to Clark College, for example. TriMet estimates 17,000 daily boardings for that line by 2030. The Burrard Inlet crossings, by contrast, have no passenger rail lines.

The Columbia River Crossing isn’t just a bridge, or a five-mile stretch of freeway and interchanges, Seltzer said. It’s a piece of the regional transportation network that includes cars, transit, bicycles and pedestrians.

“It’s like if you’re building a house,” he said. “You could conceive of it as eight separate systems, but the systems complement each other.

“It’s always interesting to ask the question, ‘Are we being as smart at putting the pieces together as we should be?’ ” Seltzer said. “But as we’ve always shown in this region, there (are) benefits to thinking about things differently.”

“The question is, what else is there that hasn’t been attempted that we really should think about.”