I hope you will read this as another warning to what "progressive" politics will look like in your area. This time in fiscal expense on senseless projects:

(Since I haven't been participating in ALIPAC very much for the last few months (since the veto of the DREAM Act last December) I thought I would draft this article to let all here know how the Progressive agenda plays out---especially in a city that through most of its history had been immune to corrupt, big city politics. We had corruption, but is was usually more on the order of law enforcement taking bribes to allow certain vices to continue. That was the conservative "brand" of corruption. )

Now we have local officials planning multi-billion dollar projects that simply ignore any competing suggestions or proposals, plus high level politicians maneuvering in Washington, DC to make sure, despite all the financial troubles at the federal level, that we will all be on the hook for these schemes. For all of our projects on the drawing board the costs could easily rise to $20 to $30 billion dollars. Of course that is part of the $11 trillion "investment" in infrastructure that many progressive groups would like to see accomplished in the US. However, how much of these are the right thing, or instead something that will quickly become obsolete as technology progresses remains to be determined.

Locally in Portland, OR, officials seem to be determined to go ahead with the $4 Billion "Columbia River Crossing" project to replace a present duo of bridges carrying Interstate 5 traffic between Oregon and Washington state. Never mind that the present bridges are structural steel and have at least 50 years left in them. Never mind that concrete is proven to be more vulnerable in seismic events as numerous quakes in California have demonstrated. Never mind that the high expense of the project is partly due to the addition of light rail tracks----yet barely adds two miles of trackage actually on land where anyone would board. Never mind the inflated claims of both (Democrat) governors, that the project will "create" 25,000 jobs---as if nothing else would, assuming that this outlandish claim could be believed in the first place.

Well, the Guvs arranged a private meeting with Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood three weeks ago to plead the cause, likely knowing that this project has stiff opposition both at home and in the US House and even in state legislatures. If Sarah Palin, as governor of Alaska, had dreamed up even $1 billion of unneeded projects (on a state almost seven times our land area) can you imagine the political uproar? Maybe, the fact that Mayor Adams has "innate designer sense" somehow mitigates the expense?




Portland Mayor Sam Adams urges Gov. Kitzhaber to consider most attractive Columbia River Crossing design
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/inde ... ges_1.html
Portland Mayor Sam Adams is urging Gov. John Kitzhaber to pick the most attractive design possible for the Columbia River Crossing.

While he will back up the governor no matter what the design choice, Adams says in a letter to Kitzhaber sent Thursday that he also wants "to have done everything possible to help you choose the most cost-effective and best-looking bridge."

That would be the cable-stayed version, Adams says. Not the deck-truss design (similar to the Interstate 205 bridge) recommended by Oregon and Washington officials in February. Contrary to what project staff members have told him, Adams says choosing the cable-stayed design wouldn't cause significant delays.

Project staffers said further environmental studies would have to be done, and officials would have to review whether the towers in a cable-stayed bridge would violate the airspace of Vancouver's nearby Pearson Air Field or that city's zoning restrictions. But Adams says city attorneys and other experts analyzing the project found that additional reviews could supplement already-finished studies and would take no more than a few months to complete.

Earlier this month, Kitzhaber said the project was on track to break ground in 2013.
Replacing the aging Interstate Bridge, which carries an estimated 135,000 vehicles a day, is considered a top transportation priority in the region. At last count, designing and planning the projected $3.6 billion bridge has cost taxpayers $109 million.

Adams says the recommended deck-truss design -- which would have two rectangular decks with light rail, bicycles and pedestrians on the bottom and no towers to affect air traffic -- lacks an iconic look and "adequate consensus." "The lack of community support for the deck truss bridge is a risk in its own right," he writes.





The real problem, however, is that the growth that has caused cries of "obsolete" for the present structures, has been due to private industry "job creation" primarily out in suburban regions west of Portland, the "Silicon Forest," not in the central city which the I-5 corridor serves. And no matter how much they spend on central city infrastructure improvements the problem will only compound as they fail to address where the real economic growth is taking pace. But failure only creates more "need" doesn't it? And as long as the federal pipeline for infrastructure spending remains in place, the progressives can go on, making only band-aid cures, never getting to real issues or to rational planning.

Unfortunately this is likely the model for the rest of the country, since groups like SEIU and construction unions keep beating the drum for more federal dollars for the nation's infrastructure. And they possess compliant governors stepping up to the plate for them. Whereas our earlier light rail transit systems, typically were built at $15 million per mile (and utilized federal funds that were already designated) current estimates are more likely at $200 million/mile. And this is the "model" that our visionaries try to promote to the rest of the country as well. As if they didn't have enough problems! For every two dollar light rail ticket, federal contributions are about twenty dollars.

But compared to $11 trillion dollars, it isn't that much!