Oregon and Washington are moving ahead with tolling plans for the present and future Interstate bridge.
Tolls primarily occur east of the Mississippi River and are not created to benefit the public but are used to privatize our road system. The I-5 tolls are purportedly considered now “to help fund the replacement” project.
People have short-term memory loss.
Under the Columbia River Crossing slogan, those who advocated for “studies and more studies” cost us at least $200 million. Then, officials overseeing the City of Vancouver preferred to focus on expanding the eastside, off of Interstate 205 (the Growth Management Act?), and repaint lines on local roads.
President Obama and his administration intended to expedite the bridge replacement plan and adopt some high-speed rail. It didn’t go anywhere. The Republican majority in Congress failed to move (bills sponsored by Obama’s White House) to jumpstart the economy necessitated by the excesses (boom or bust) caused by a relative handful through Wall Street.
Former President Obama continued to try but remained hamstrung at the national level. By 2023, almost a decade after the Columbia River Crossing was nixed for want of funding, the I-5 bridge replacement received a $600 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation and another $1.5 billion from President Biden’s landmark investment in U.S. infrastructure. This is in addition to the funds added by Washington and Oregon state legislatures.
In 2011, the bridge replacement was estimated to cost $3.2 to $3.6 billion. Replacement costs continued to rise and are expected to range from $5 billion to $7 billion. Tolls should end when the cost of building the bridge is paid, and any public-private funding cooperatives shouldn’t create profit for the private sector solely. It should be a profit share to generate reinvestment by creating a National Infrastructure Bank, like Obama envisioned.
The public sector maintains control over our infrastructure. This bridge has already been paid for over the years; we all paid. Without the needless delays, a reasonable project to replace the bridge — for the priority reason, safety — should have been done by now and at half the cost. Creating a banking structure for (private) investment avoids conflict of interest to the fullest extent possible. The control of the funds remains public under the bank’s charter.
Helen Nowlin
Glenoma
