The Interstate Bridge seen from Vancouver, Washington, looking south toward Hayden Island in north Portland, Oregon, where Interstate 5 crosses the Columbia River. The railroad in the foreground parallels Washington State Route 14 east through the Columbia River gorge, and a C-Tran bus can be seen headed toward the corner where southbound Columbia Street becomes eastbound Columbia Way.
To the north, two of the companies that would be adversely impacted by the sort of low-clearance Columbia River bridge that TriMess requires in order to push its crime trains into Clark County have signed some sort of "remediation agreements" with Oregon and Washington. While details are omitted, it's fairly obvious that both states have committed to shovel millions more in dollars that they don't have in order to compensate the companies for their loss of the maritime corridor.
It appears that they're willing to sacrifice any future maritime traffic involving large shipments in the corridor for the forseeable future as well.
One item that remains in question: since the dredges used by the US Army Corps of Engineers also won't fit under their low-clearance light rail bridge, have they arranged to "mitigate" that as well, or is the grand plan to screw all river traffic from here to Idaho so that they can allow TriMess to continue to play choo-choo driver?
To the south, the latest feather in TriMess's cap involves the addition of a "Regenerative Braking Energy Storage Unit" to the Portland/Milwaukie Light Rail line that they're forcing into Clackamas County. This is a VERY BIG DEAL because SUSTAINABLE. In layman's terms, they're installing a large battery pack at their Tacoma Street station; roughly the midpoint of their $1.4 Billion, 7.3-mile choo-choo line. Somehow, nickel-metal hydride is more sustainable than plain old electricity. They truly inhabit an alternate universe, which would be perfectly fine if they didn't impact our real world in such spectacularly negative fashion.
