Portland has some bridge issues of its own. The answer, of course, is light rail:
So Portland is proposing to spend a billion dollars replacing the bridges with new freeway bridges of no greater capacity than today. These I-5 bridges will continue to carry at least 200,000 people across them per day (approximately 130,000 vehicles times 1.6), with demand for both crossings expected to grow by nearly 200,000 more in the next twenty years.
To accommodate this demand, Portland wants to spend another billion dollars building a light-rail line that might possibly carry about 20,000 people per day, or only about 10 percent of the projected growth in traffic. This is an absurd waste of resources, especially considering that light-rail fares won’t even cover the operating costs, and will cover zero percent of the capital costs, of the rail line and bridges.
