Welcome

The Smarter Bridge Committee welcomes you to our web site, which is undergoing refurbishing.

This site held considerable background material from the 2008 debate about the Columbia River Crossing. We have removed most of the links to that older material from our home page, but will soon provide a way to navigate to that useful historical information.

Read about our Jan. 12, 2012 press conference:

• Opponents say scrap CRC design, build smarter bridge as reported by COUV.COM.
• CRC foes of all stripes share concerns as reported by The Columbian.
• Conservatives and Enviros Join Forces to Criticize CRC Spending as reported by The Portland Mercury.
• Full Press Conference Video .
• Commentary on Blue Oregon: Gov. Gregoire: No money for costly, risky CRC in budget.

The following web sites and/or proposals are independent of the Smarter Bridge Committee, but partially represent the range of alternatives that must be looked at as alternatives to the unaffordable and harmful Columbia River Crossing project (more links to be added):

• ThirdBridgeNow.com A separate bridge west of I-5.
• Common Sense Alternative Separate local and passenger rail bridges -- on You Tube.
• Twin Bridges Solution A lower cost alternative.
• Cascadia High Speed Rail Rail alternatives to expanding I-5.

We will be adding more sites to this list.

Some older information about how the CRC has gone wrong:

• Time to rethink the Columbia River Crossing by Professional Engineer Gerald Fox Feb. 2009
• Financial Risks of the Columbia River Crossing by economist Joe Cortright
• Clark County Land Use Is it development, not freight, behind this?
• CRC highway project hits speed bumps Bike Portland, Tuesday May 27, 2008
• A Bridge Over The River Why? Willamette Week, Wednesday, May 21, 2008 by Nigel Jaquiss
• On Video: Reconsidering the Crossing-April 8, 2008 Presentation to Portland Planning Commission by economist Joe Cortright (or Slides Only)
• PSU Professor of Real Estate, Will Macht, looks at the crossing.
• 21 bad reasons to build a $4 Billion Columbia River crossing
• Creating a climate-smart I-5 Columbia Crossing - Coalition for a Livable Future
• Bridge to Disaster, March 13, 2008 article in the Portland Mercury by Amy Ruiz
• Good Letter to the Portland Planning Commission
• What the proposed Columbia River Crossing bridge really gives bicyclists.
• New Washington State VMT Law to reduce future Vehicle Miles Traveled
• CRC Gas Price Forecast (confidential)
• Analysis by Lenny Anderson

What are the alternatives?

• Phased Alternatives - to the big project.
• What about the big earthquake?
• Eliminating bridge lifts
• Wrongly Eliminated Alternatives (short article to be expanded later)
• Tolls on existing bridges? (article under construction)
• Metro's Advice to CRC: (Will Metro be a doormat, or enforce their prior requests?)

Upcoming Events:

• This area under construction.
• Note: calendar is out-of-date. Ignore for now.
• Calendar - upcoming events

Thanks for visiting! - Our web site with (old) news and information regarding alternatives to the massive and expensive Columbia River Crossing project has had a construction pause, but we hope to resume updating it with more current information. We have recently reorganized opposition to the CRC with a strong alliance between fiscal conservatives, opponents of expanding I-5 in the wrong places, and environmentalists ("Green-Tea Movement") However, we believe that the current content can help provide an important factual basis for discussion, and will help get you started looking into this project. Also, check out our documents, links, and "about us". We hope to start updating our calendar soon.