The "Bridge of the Clods."
I can add this title to "loot rail" and that "steaming pile" as my lexicon for this sorry effort.
I am not the only one that feels this way, as it turns out: Steve Duin has a few hundred well-chosen words to sum up this government abortion. Enjoy.
Deconstructing the Columbia River Crossing - that Bridge of the Clods
Published: Monday, February 14, 2011, 4:34 PM Updated:
Monday, February 14, 2011, 4:47 PMLast July, an independent review panel delivered a 317-page report on the abomination commonly known as the Columbia River Crossing.
The most stubborn cheerleaders of the project -- including the governors, Chris Gregoire and Ted Kulongski, who impaneled those experts -- reduced that gut check to the "duh" moment in its second paragraph: The panel was unanimous in its belief that a new bridge should "be built at the earliest possible date."
The boosters were less inspired by the panel's other findings:
The environmental impact statement was a mess. Public outreach for a $3.6 billion bridge has "lost its effectiveness and momentum."
Clearance issues at Pearson Field and Portland International Airport "make reasonable bridge solutions difficult."
The experts saw no proof that the state legislatures in Washington and Oregon would cough up $750 million to $850 million necessary for financing.
And, oh, yeah, this: The bridge design was both risky and costly, in that it was "one that has never been built anywhere in the world."
Think about that for a moment. After five years of debate and more than $100 million in engineering and consulting costs, the state transportation departments on both sides of the Columbia and their gubernatorial groupies were told the bridge design was problematic.
Did they roll out a stop-work order? Shelve their arrogance and institutional hubris
and start over?
Nah. They hunkered down and convened another panel, which -- seven months, $10 million and 150 pages later -- restated the obvious:
The "open-web box" design was a non-starter. Last week, Gregoire and Oregon's new governor, John Kitzhaber, finally took the hint and ordered the CRC -- I still can't believe "cluster" isn't part of that acronymn -- to review other options.
An "expedited" review, of course.
Check, please: At the end of 2010, the CRC boosters at ODOT and WSDOT had spent $115.3 million to document what David Bragdon calls one of the basic laws of bureaucratic physics:
"An agency hat has created a big mess like this tends to spend ever-increasing amount of energy covering up and defending the mess, rather than cleaning it up."
More:
The main bridgers/loot railers; The Liar, Stuart, the local rag, the Downtown Mafia... all have become the local version of Baghdad Bob. No lie they won't tell, no exaggeration they won't engage in.
And this is what we have to show for it:
If Tim "The Liar" Leavitt ain't that, than besides a lying slimeball, I don't know what he is.Check, please: At the end of 2010, the CRC boosters at ODOT and WSDOT had spent $115.3 million to document what David Bragdon calls one of the basic laws of bureaucratic physics:
"An agency that has created a big mess like this tends to spend ever-increasing amount of energy covering up and defending the mess, rather than cleaning it up."
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1 comment:
From Steve's comments that I really loved and feel some of Vancouver's local politicians suffer from the same paranoia:
"And this is precisely the challenge Kitzhaber faces in changing the undisciplined, unproductive, even childish way Oregon does business.
"Leadership is about discipline and priorities," Bragdon reminds us.
Imagine the possibilities -- at the Columbia River Crossing and beyond -- if we finally have a governor who understands that."
I think Bragdon hit the nail on the head with this. With both of our mayors (Vancouver & Portland) generally younger than what I see most around the United States, I am beginning to wonder aloud about the childishness, the problems and when even descent comes around, how its handled?
Some times I begin to wonder aloud what the city might look like if the Mayor actually had been Royce?
And is Vancouver's Mayor still playing with his dump trucks and army men while he is doing the mayors job.
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