The I-5 highway is the main freight-trucking node in Oregon, and in 2007, the last year for which data are available, over $30 billion worth of goods crossed the Columbia. According to Port of Portland statistics, for every $1 million in export sales that the state loses, ten jobs are lost as well. Oregon has the fifth-largest export-supported job base in the country, and one in five jobs here is trade-related. After all, the economy of Oregon-and of Portland in particular-is built on exports. (For a similar story, see “The Tappan Zee Is Falling Down.”)įailure to replace the bridge has already exacted steep economic costs. For six years, not a brick has been laid or an action taken, except for the establishment of a task force to study possible bridge designs. But with equal tenacity, environmentalist journalists, politicians, and activists have been thwarting the project. The coalition is pushing for a new, 12-lane bridge that would replace the current structure. The existing bridge is only six lanes across, nowhere near enough to support the 135,000 vehicles that cross it each day. Since 2005, a coalition of pragmatic politicians, developers, businesspeople, government agencies, and commuters has been trying to solve this problem by doing the obvious: building a bigger bridge with federal, state, and local funds. The bridge from Vancouver to Portland is less than three-quarters of a mile long, but it takes 45 minutes to cross it at peak times. According to statistics compiled by the Port of Portland-the agency that oversees the city’s airport, railroads, highways, and container ports-the I-5 Columbia River crossing is one of the nation’s most clogged highways, comparable with far more populous thoroughfares like the corridor from Boston to Washington, D.C. This shouldn’t surprise the frustrated early commuters, for such bottlenecks occur every weekday. As a result, they’ve created the congestion that they hoped to avoid. Of the 59,000 people who live in and around Vancouver and work in Portland, many have decided to head home before rush hour. The northbound side of I-5 is choked with cars and trucks, all inching forward at less than ten miles an hour as they cross the Columbia River, which divides the two states.
It’s only a little after 2 pm, and the traffic headed north on the bridge from Portland, Oregon, to Vancouver, Washington, is already at a standstill.
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