Columbia River Crossing: The Biggest Project Seattle's Never Heard Of

Proposed Columbia River Crossing
By ANDREA DAMEWOOD

With the debate about funding the Columbia River Crossing over for now in Oregon, the fight for money moves to Washington state.

And as Portland Afoot reports in its latest news magazine, the fate of the $3.4 billion megaproject now lies in the hands of Seattle—and most people there don't even know about it.

Publisher Michael Andersen visits our binary star of a city to the north and finds that aside from transit trackers, environmentalists and conservatives, not many people have heard of the Interstate 5 bridge and light rail project. (Here's a Seattle transit blog's recent take on the CRC.)

The camps in Seattle dislike the project for the same reasons they do in Portland. Environmentalists and urbanists hate the freeway widening. Conservatives can't stand light rail.

But the critics may be stymied by the same thing that keeps local anti-CRC activists from running a smooth campaign: lefties and righties don't play well together.

Andersen quotes one anti-freeway critic who "can't imagine left-wing Seattle Democrats crossing their leaders to join right-wing Republicans on anything."

Washington's Democrat-controlled House is expected to approve $450 million for the CRC in its transportation bill, up for a committee hearing this week.

But the project is far more uncertain in the Washington state Senate, where two conservative Democrats have crossed the aisle to give Republicans a majority. As WW reported, it may be there that the embattled project dies—for this year, anyway.



WWeek 2015

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