Steve Duin has been allowed to write and publish another column that actually hits target: writing about the $160 million wasted thus far on the so-called "CRC" project (cutesy PR-speak for "a new I-5 bridge"), he notes that it isn't going to solve doodle, assuming it's ever built. The traffic bottlenecks asscociated with the existing bridges could have been taken care of long ago, and likely for not much more than the $160 million blown on "planners" and PR - though it wouldn't have solved much; the main bottlenecks are on I-5 near the Rose Quarter and the infamous Terwilliger curves, and of course the "CRS" wouldn't address those issues.
The reason the "CRC" has such a honking big price-tag is because local politicians insist that it has to dump a crime-train line into downtown Vancouver. Without the crime-train fixation, the bridge would cost around $1.5 billion less. And with mere upgrades, the bridges could be serviceable for at least another 50 years, at a cost of perhaps $200 million. The local politicians can't stand the idea.
