Sam brought this up at just about every one of his neighborhood meetings on street maintenance fees and I later confirmed it with Roland who was then his transportation advisor. Garbage from Sam Adams? There is an awful lot of that takes place and an over abundance of social engineering hot air too, but I think this time he correct about the busses doing damage to the roads – the reason being there is so much weight on just two axles as compared to trucks that have a greater number of axles.

Furthermore, to respond to Erik, what I am suggesting is that an extra nickel or dime be added to each TriMet fare that would go towards maintaining and repairing the streets the busses run on thereby in an equitable way making transit passengers in addition to motorists who already pay gas taxes responsible for the streets and roads they use.

Yes, it will use a transponder.

No, it will not use GPS.

Transponder ≠ GPS. RFID tags are incredibly inexpensive, and purpose-built for exactly this type of application. Using GPS for knowing when something passes a fixed point of infrastructure is like using a nuke to take out a rifleman behind some sandbags - it's massively out of scale.

And it doesn't allow walking across open spaces like parks.

These aren't insurmountable problems for Google, and many of the pedestrian trails should be available somewhere (Metro?), but the open space thing is a tough one.

The good news is that Toyota has announced they'll be assmgling Prii in Mississippi starting in 2010.

I'm afraid I can't earn any Gold Stars from you today. :-) I remember that a thread somewhere on CommissionerSam.com discussed PDOT's share of the equation, but I can't find it at this moment.

If you want an anecdotal example of dedicated bike infrastructure and subsequent maintenance costs, check out the paved trail from Portland to Sellwood which is part of the Springwater Corridor. It opened 4 or 5 years ago, and we biked it just a few weeks ago and it's basically in pristine condition. Even the yellow paint looked especially sharp, but perhaps the lines were repainted recently. The pavement itself was smooth and exhibited no potholes or substantial cracks that I could see.

As I stated in several responses back then, I'd love to hear more about the original context. After all, it's passenger-miles that count for this kind of damage analysis, and that's a missing component from the discussion. (For example, if a bus delivers 22,000X or more passenger-miles of service compared to that one automobile, then the damage factor is only a minor point.)

There are no media accounts, blog entries, or otherwise where Sam Adams is recorded making this statement, so at this time it is impossible to know the context.

Interested persons can repeat the Google search themselves:

Google: "sam adams" buses damage 22,000

In an effort to not rehash the whole argument here, you can see my responses to Terry (and JK's defense of Terry) in this CommissionerSam.com thread from January, 2008.

The problem is that damage done by a vehicle is proportional to the weight per axle to the 4th power, so a 2 axle bus at 10 tons does 10,000 times as much damage to the pavement as a 2 axle 1 ton car. Now, Terry does leave out the fact that vehicle damage to pavement isn't actually the biggest deal for most streets, (with the possible exception of things like the bus mall,) that storm water management costs (which are payed for by our sewer bills, not the gas tax,) far exceed the cost of repaving streets that have actually been worn out by vehicles, (as opposed to other things, like plain old weather,) and so replacing buses with private cars would actually cost the city more money on street maintenance, (assuming you widened the streets so that people would have room to drive and places to park,) but yes the fact is true that the buses do do a lot of damage...

Most of the problem is caused where the vehicles stop and start, (another part of the problem with garbage trucks, they stop every 50 feet,) so the bus stops wear out the fastest, and there is a rather easy solution for that: Put a concrete pad at the bus stop on frequent service routes, (what is called a "bus pad.") It lasts almost forever, and then you don't have to repave that section of the street any sooner than you'd have to repave the rest of the street.

Terry has mentioned this before elsewhere and attributed it to Sam Adams, but I've yet to see a reference to a direct source or exactly what specific figures Sam used (if any) regarding the damage caused by buses, so I wouldn't get too enraged at Sam just yet.

Garbage from Sam Adams.

If this is true, then should all busses be banned from City streets because they are so bad and evil, and Portlanders would be better off driving single-occupant vehicles?

Even if, every TriMet bus rider had to pay their share of the ODOT weight-mile tax that would be assessed to TriMet, it would barely register as a nickel increase on top of the TriMet fare (determined by multiplying the weight-mile tax for a 40,000 pound vehicle by TriMet's estimate of miles driven by TriMet busses per year, then divided by the number of bus boarding rides.)

I'm happy to pay that extra nickel, as long as it is dedicated towards improving the streets that busses travel on. Knowing TriMet, though, the nickel would be raided for MAX, and Sam Adams would still complain because he isn't getting the nickel for one of his pet projects like another Streetcar line.

And since Baby James Taylor is playin' in town tonight, how can I not include this?

Bob - could you post a breakdown of the cost of construction of a highway/arterial traffic lane, along with the equivalent cost for a bicycle lane on the same? And then contrast that with whatever the city/county/metro use as maintenance figures? A second gold star for a breakdown of fixed monthly maintenance costs and variable costs.

Terry Parker, Jim Karlock, and others: I'm guessing that the maintenance cost of freeways and roads vastly outweighs construction costs in the medium and long run at very least. I'm also willing to wager than maintenance cost for bicycle infrastructure is a minute fraction of auto infrastructure, even on a per-user-mile basis. If this turns out to be the case, can you at least temper your "bike riders are hippie freeloaders who need to PAY" stance to at least acknowledge that the cost differential between cyclists and motorists?

The use of a transponder on a person’s dashboard is exactly what the various government councils have been talking about on both sides of the river to collect tolls. It is already used on one bridge in Washington.

“One of the main reasons that automobiles are assessed some sort of tax to pay for roads is that automobiles (and trucks) (and automobiles with ridiculous studded tires) damage the roads so that they must frequently be repaired.”

Motor vehicle assessed taxes are also used to pay for constructing new roads and for replacing existing infrastructure like the CRC. Bicyclists need to be assessed taxes for constructing specialized infrastructure (that motorists do not use) including the bicycle infrastructure on the CRC. Furthermore, because TriMet’s two axle busses do the heaviest damage to Portland streets and roads (source; City of Portland Commissioner Sam Adams), transit riders also need to be assessed taxes directly through the farebox to help pay to maintain and repair roadways.

Not to mention you'd also believe in global warming, a round earth, etc....the usual bunch of baloney from the usual suspects.

• RealClimate: What does the lag of CO2 behind temperature in ice cores tell us about global warming?
• RealClimate: The lag between temperature and CO2
• New Scientist: Climate myths: Ice cores show CO2 increases lag behind temperature rises, disproving the link to global warming
• Grist: "CO2 doesn't lead, it lags"

Under laboratory conditions you can introduce CO2 to a closed system and indeed watch temperatures rise, so your oversimplification of what little is left about the global warming "debate" doesn't even work.

Here's a radical concept (one accepted by the overwhelming majority of actual scientists): CO2 can both be a follower of temperature rise (increased temperatures gradually release more and more trapped CO2 from various natural sinks), and a precursor of temperature rises. The science on this is well-established and backed by experimentation and measurement, not just models.

But you've been told that before.

The correlation between asthma and freeways is way stronger than the one between foot size and mathematical skills (I couldn't even find a study, serious or otherwise, got a link?), whereas investigations into asthma, living locations and air quality abound.

Notwithstanding what the scientific illiterates at the NYT say, the fact is that as pollution goes down, asthma goes up. And NOBODY knows the cause of asthma.

This is also the error the Al Gore and his ilk make in blaming CO2 for temperature increase - CO2 and temperature appear to move up and down together. There is even a crackpot theory to explain CO2 causing temperature to rise. Just one problem - the real world data shows that first temperature increases, then CO2 rises. And cause cannot FOLLOW the effect.

Thanks
JK

As for transponders, motorists already pay a fuel tax to pay for roads, but bicyclists continue to freeload on the financial backs of others. Therefore it makes total sense to have transponders on all bicycles used in Portland to pay for the infrastructure the bicyclists use.

One of the main reasons that automobiles are assessed some sort of tax to pay for roads is that automobiles (and trucks) (and automobiles with ridiculous studded tires) damage the roads so that they must frequently be repaired. Do you think a bicycle and rider damage roads to any measurable extent at all?

Federal money for transit projects currently comes out of the Federal Highway Trust Fund which supported by the Federal tax on motor fuels.

I have no doubt it is "supported" by federal fuel tax, but I see no evidence that it is "entirely funded by fuel tax" as you stated.

The technology nowadays exists for a camera mounted at a convenient location, to record and automatically log the license plate of any vehicle passing by. Such systems are not widely deployed, but the technology is there.

Although this might seem abusive at first, over the 100-year long run, i think it will end up being fair.

I don't think anyone but the pie-in-the-sky crowd at ODOT in Salem is talking about GPS-enabled tolling. Most transponder schemes utilize an RFID chip in your car, and as you drive under an antenna mast, it reads the ID number from the chip and logs it.

This is currently in use on the FastPass lanes in California on I-15 in San Diego, as well as the 91 Freeway express lanes. Users of the system actually approve of it, because they save a ridiculous amount of money on not being late picking up kids from daycare. $5 paid to save $50/hr is a pretty good deal.

(Channeling a Yakov Smirnoff voice...) In great old Amerika, people read the papers. In glorious new Amerika, the papers read you...

1-Get the hell out of Iraq and Afghanistan,

2-cut the military budget by 2/3,

3-use that money to build "toll free" bridges and "fare free" transit.

P.S. And while their at it, single payer national health care would be nice to have in the richest country in the world

(I keep dreaming anyway)

1) Transportation, whatever mode, should primarily be funded by:

a. The general public, without regard to usage (i.e. through general taxation)
b. As much as convenient or tractable, users of transportation (i.e. through tolls, fares, fuel taxes, license/registration fees, weight-mile taxes, etc.)
c. A combination of both should be used. The general public benefits from transportation, even if specific members don't use it; however, some usage fee is appropriate to fairly charge heavy users and discourage free-riding or overuse.

2) Transportation funds should be allocated among the various modes of transport based on:

a. Established current (and recent past) usage trends--if x% of trips are on the roads, then roads should get x% of funding. Funds recovered from fees on one mode should not be diverted to another mode.
b. With regard to future needs--if mode X is likely to be more practical or useful given predictions about the future (things like population growth, fuel prices, pollution), even if doing so causes expenditures on a mode that well exceed current usage.

For the record, I'm 1)c 2)b.

THIS IS AMERIKA BOB!

There is no such thing as privacy anymore!

Don't ya read the papers old buddy?

Al M

It makes total sense to use a device which costs more than most of the actual bikes themselves? I don't think so. (Not to mention the privacy ramifications... I've been on record in the past about my opposition to any GPS-based revenue schemes for any vehicle type because of privacy concerns in addition to technical hurdles.)

As for transponders, motorists already pay a fuel tax to pay for roads, but bicyclists continue to freeload on the financial backs of others. Therefore it makes total sense to have transponders on all bicycles used in Portland to pay for the infrastructure the bicyclists use.

While I tend to think the former is more likely, whichever happens, the choice will be relatively easy to make in its time, rather than our trying to predict what will happen in the future. So long as the decision is conditioned to require approval from both sides of the river to remove tolls at that future time, it's not that critical to decide now.

The question of tolling for construction funding, and tolling for other reasons (congestion management, operations/maintenance) are two separate ones.

Many assume it as a given that tolls (backing revenue bonds) for construction funding should only be on the new infrastructure; i.e. that a toll shouldn't be imposed on the Terwilliger Curves in order to finance the CRC, in whatever form.

But tolling the other inbound freeways as a means of congestion management certainly is an issue separate from the CRC. Of course, the costs of the CRC make a new toll more politically doable (coupled with the fact that if you want to cross the Columbia, you only have two choices; whereas commuters can elect to use surface streets to avoid tolls on other corridors). But there is no reason, in general, that Vancouver commuters should have to pay for "congestion management" whereas commuters from Tualatin, Beaverton, Gresham, or Oregon City should not.

ODOT and Metro are lookening into widening Highway 217 and one of the options on the table is a tolled express lane. Tolls are also being considered for the Newberg/Dundee bypass; in both cases, the tolls appear to be key parts of the funding for construction. In both cases, there are surface street alternatives, and in the 99W case, there has been the proposal to toll the existing 99W alignment as well--an unpopular idea.

The alternative, of course, is dollars out of the general fund. Or not building at all.

NOW YOUR TALKING!

I like it.

This would fit Portland perfectly!

Portland's City Council, along with Metro and TriMet, can right now, this very day, impose a congestion charge on the City (save for state highways, but realistically the only highways truly exempt are I-5, I-205, I-84, I-405, U.S. 26 (Sunset Highway west from downtown) and U.S. 30 (Yeon Boulevard/St. Helens Road). The other "state highways" can easily be taken over by the City of Portland (i.e. Barbur Boulevard, Lombard/Killingsworth, 82nd Avenue, Powell Boulevard, McLoughlin Boulevard, Marine Drive (west of I-5), Sandy Boulevard (east of I-205) - PDOT has already taken over several former state highways - Front Avenue, Interstate Avenue, Sandy Boulevard, Grand/Union Avenues (now M.L.K. Boulevard), and Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway.

Any vehicle travelling on city streets should be charged a fee dependent upon the zone of travel (i.e. downtown will be more expensive than Lents), time of travel (8:30 AM on Monday more expensive than 11:30 PM on Saturday night), by weight (a motorcycle will be less expensive than a compact car than a SUV than a truck). All vehicles travelling within the City of Portland will be required to register with the city and carry a transponder, and there will be various transponder antennas located throughout the city (along with mobile units).

Likewise, TriMet should also adjust their fare structure to impose a congestion charge, so that people using TriMet at rush hour will pay more than someone commuting at off-hours.

Doing that will have far more impact than any toll on the Interstate Bridge intended to "impact the choices that people make".

As I've stated previously, the various agencies can start with themselves - eliminate all City/Metro/TriMet owned "free" parking, and charge congestion fees to access all City/Metro/TriMet facilities. There is no reason that Metro can claim to demand a fee to cross the non-Metro owned Interstate Bridge, but at the same time charge only $1.00 to park at the Metro owned Oregon Zoo (when parking should be more legitimately $10.00/day if not more); and TriMet should be charging for use of a TriMet owned park-and-ride lot (whereas I contribute to my smaller "carbon footprint" by, get this, WALKING to and from both my home and work bus stops without the need to drive to a parking lot)

It should also be noted that all current funding for highways, transit and bicycle infrastructure that comes from the Federal Government is paid for by motorists paying the Federal tax on motor fuels. Therefore, the drivers of cars and trucks will already be subsidizing the transit and bicycle components of the CRC, and therefore no local contributions using motorist paid tolls ought to be made to those non-highway components.

If that were true, why would the FTA have to request funding from Congress? The money comes out of the General Fund and FTA has to request specific amounts for specific projects and programs. You can look at the FY08 budget document at the FTA website and there is nothing in there that ties the funding request to the income from the fuel tax, at least nothing I can find.

A cabal of "activists" have seized the reigns of power, at the expense of the majority of citizens.

In Washington it's the right that has taken over, in Portland its the left.

It's the majority of working stiffs that have to suffer for it!

Those of us neither on the right or the left

THIS IS FREAKING PORTLAND!

They got so many layers of government here who knows what the hell any of them are actually doing and how many governmental functions are overlapping and duplicating.

Ignorance is EXACTLY how the government keeps itself in power, ignorance and fear.

You need a masters degree in public administration to figure it out!

Ignorance is no excuse. You CAN call them elected, because that is precisely what they are. Directly elected to serve, among other things, as the conduit for federal transportation funding (a power granted to them through a little thing called a public vote).

Included in the RTC resolution was an amendment that all commuter tolls paid by Washington residents that have jobs in Oregon should be deductible from the Oregon Income Taxes they pay. (See my post under the topic “Last Vote on CRC LPA”)

“Every local government group seems to agree there should be six freeway lanes across the river, plus light rail, and the project should be paid for by tolls.”

Not true, the number of auxiliary lanes are still in dispute. The local government groups have agreed on six through lanes. WTC appears to want four to six auxiliary lanes while Metro and the Adams Government want the final say on which may mean zero, more congestion and spending 4.2 billion dollars for a highway crossing no better than we have now.

“This isn't democracy because a: the tolls for payment would only be a percentage of the cost. The rest would come from local/state/federal dollars.” that.”

The percentage of the project covered by tolls is part of what is in dispute. Tolls have climbed to the point of now being projected to pay for one-third of the project. Since the Columbia River Crossing is on an Interstate Highway, WTC wants the federal government to pay for 90 percent of the project with the remaining 10 percent shared equally by the states of Oregon and Washington. WTC also agrees with tolls only as a last resort to cover the state’s contribution.

“Everyone gets a say in that. b: This crossing impacts lots of people that don't drive over it every day.”

Maybe everybody should also get a say in who pays the tolls and/or user chargers. Put it to a vote of the people: Tax or toll bicyclists for their share of the project and add a surcharge to transit fares to pay for the transit component.

“It's also worth noting that ironically, it may be preferable to implement the tolls on the Washington side, since the revenue can be used more flexibly (toll revenue in Oregon is limited by the constitution to road uses). So if we want the tolls to help pay for the light rail (not necessarily part of the plan - but if we want the option), they would have to be collected on the north side of the bridge...”

Motorist paid tolls must not be used to subsidize light rail and/or light rail operations. Metro Counselor Rex Burkholder made a comment during his closing statement just before the vote on Metro’s resolution to accept the LPA (with conditions) that went something like this: “people who use something should pay for it”.

I agree with that premise in principal, and in particular applying that premise to the CRC. However, having Burkholder say it, the statement is all rhetoric. If it was not, Burkholder would be standing by his own words when it comes to bicyclists and transit passengers paying for the infrastructure they use thereby requiring transit passengers to be obligated to pay any proportionate local share of the transit infrastructure costs on the CRC (possibly with a surcharge on transit fares), and instead of freeloading, bicyclists too would be expected to pay their own way with a bridge toll or tax to cover any local match monies spent on providing bicycle infrastructure. However, the resolution introduced by Burkholder and passed by the Metro Council only tolls cars and trucks.

It should also be noted that between Canada and Mexico - nowhere on the I-5 Interstate Highway do tolls exist, and the CRC ought not to be the place to set that kind of precedent. The bottom line is that any tolls motorists pay MUST be kept to a bare minimum, MUST only help to pay for the highway portions of the project, and MUST be removed when the project is paid off!

Most of my family, neighbors, and peers think of them as a department that runs the garbage service and the zoo...

Then how come they are all, always, clones?

Just,,, sort of, kidding :)

I love the socialist arguments... Why is it that when people vote to ignore problems, take the me first mentality etc. it's democracy. But when people VOTE for funding for bike lanes, transit, etc it's social engineering. You guys crack me up:-)

Terry Parker Says: "Or better yet a vote of only the people who drive across the bridge"

This isn't democracy because a: the tolls for payment would only be a percentage of the cost. The rest would come from local/state/federal dollars. Everyone gets a say in that. b: This crossing impacts lots of people that don't drive over it every day.

lastly,
Douglas K. Says:
"Every local government group seems to agree there should be six freeway lanes across the river..."
I don't think this is accurate. I have been to some of the council meetings and read the votes. From what I've seen they are only voting on the LPA. They are all in favor of a replacement bridge but the details of exactly how many lanes is not on the table at this moment. Correct me if I'm wrong but that's my understanding. I'm guessing the decision makers in PDX will likely want fewer lanes.

My wish: Three through, 1 merge all the way, remove Hayden Island ramps and build a bridge off of Marine Drive/Columbia for local Hayden access. (each direction)

I beg to differ. This has HUGE implication on traffic volumes land use over the long term. If the crossing becomes free after 20 years, we would see huge jumps in traffic and development when that happens (actually, development would probably anticipate it by a few years).

It's also worth noting that ironically, it may be preferable to implement the tolls on the Washington side, since the revenue can be used more flexibly (toll revenue in Oregon is limited by the constitution to road uses). So if we want the tolls to help pay for the light rail (not necessarily part of the plan - but if we want the option), they would have to be collected on the north side of the bridge...

I believe that under existing law, the only portion of this whole project that has to go to a public vote is the operating funding for Light Rail on the Washington side.

Of the two MPOs in the Portland metropolitan region, ___ has democratically elected leadership.

To be fair, most of the RTC members are in fact elected, but to local government positions, not to the RTC itself (comparable to JPACT on our side of the river).

Of the two MPOs in the Portland metropolitan region, ___ has democratically elected leadership.

a) RTC
b) Metro

I like how Matthew assumes that a measure put on a ballot in Clark County can't also be put on a ballot for Multnomah County.

He said that? Funny, I thought the comparison was between people who traveled on the bridge and those who only live near it. How did that turn into Clark v. Multnomah counties?

Are you are suggesting that we shut down Boardman tomorrow even though a new nuclear plant is probably 10 years away? No? I'm not advocating that people throw away perfectly good appliances right now either, I don't know where you read that. How many people do you know with 30 year old refrigerators? In 30 years, how many people do you expect to have the same refrigerator as they do today? They eventually wear out and then people buy new ones, and when they buy new ones they should be setup to integrate into the grid, and they should do it intelligently, not by telling you to kick rocks, but by displaying the price of baking the cake during the middle of a calm cloudy day across the entire west coast during high or low tide in a drought year, vs waiting a few hours. Likewise I think the fridge should decide that it would only let it get a few degrees warming than normal at that time period, and if you were standing there with the door open, it would still turn on...

"We have proven technologies, available today, that solve the problems we have today, and don't create new ones if implemented properly - and in fact can solve a "problem" that exists today only because people want it to (nuclear waste). Why do we need to reinvent the wheel?"

Couldn't have said it better myself. The very technology that is in the switchgear of almost any powerplant, (including breeder reactors,) that enables it to load follow, is the same technology that I'm advocating we install in our appliances.

This doesn't need to be either / or. I'm pretty sure both sides of the bridge can vote.

Tax persons coming into Portland only. Those wishing to leave can do so for free. (Just like drivers crossing the Oakland-SF Bay Bridge only pay a toll heading into The City--if you want to leave the socialist paradise, nothing stops you...)

:-)

Seriously, the issue of whether or not tolls should be discontinued after construction bonds are paid off is one that needn't really be visited for quite a while--like, when the bonds are actually paid off, or close to it.