Light-rail line to Clark gains speed

[Chief]

Gregg Herrington

Maybe.

Probably.

Almost certainly.

Pick one of those three choices to fill in the blank in this sentence:

_________________ you can forget the arguments about where a Max light-rail line from Portland would go if it comes to Vancouver because political momentum is building for a relatively modest, unintrusive and financially easy route that would terminate near Clark College.

Local elected officials, whose political careers depend largely on their ability to distinguish between dreams and the doable, are looking with increasing favor at the so-called "Minimum Operating Segment" -- a plan that might leave the civil engineers, transportation policy wonks and shoot-for-the-moon crowd saying, "Is that all there is?"

Kiggins Bowl plan fading fast

But it should (would?) leave residents of Vancouver's Arnada, Lincoln, Carter Park and Shumway neighborhoods angst-free. The same can probably be said of members of the First Presbyterian Church at 43rd and Main Streets. Under the plan, notions of a light-rail terminus and park and ride lot in the Lincoln area near the church and Kiggins Bowl are toast.

The MOShas the support of the Clark County Board of Commissioners, and on Jan. 8 could win the backing of the C-Tran Board of Directors. C-Tran Board Charmian Tim Leavitt of the Vancouver City Council says the board, at a recent retreat, made clear its preference for a route that (1) would not be anathema to business owners on upper Main Street and resindent in the Lincoln-Kiggins Bowl area and (2) would use only federal funds for construction.

Steve Stuart, charman of the Clark County Board of Commissioners and C-Tran Board member, says the emerging plan is good, although not perfect from the standpoint of creating a light rail system that would serve the most people as fast as possible. But he hastens to cite this version of Voltaire's quote "The perfect is the enemy of the good."

To those dreamers who might hold out for a more extensive or "perfect" initial light rail line, as well as those who might oppose any light rail service into Vancouver under any circumstances, Voltaire also said, "Common sense is not so common."

The Clark College route is enthusiastically touted by Stuart and more tangentially and cautiously by Leavitt, who stresses that any plan must get a public airing and an environmental OK. But they seem to agree that the idea could be acceptable to the public while offering relief to I-5 commuters.

Details of the deal

Here's how it would work:

Light-rail tracks would run from the north end of Tri-Met's Yellow Line at the Expo Center (three-fourths of a mile south of the Columbia) across the river on or adjacent to a new I-5 vehicle bridge. The line would run north, probably up Washington Street, to McLoughlin Boulevard. There, it would turn east. cross Main Street and continue another seven blocks and pass under I-5. (Washington Street is especially wide, having been the route of the old Highway 99 before I-5 was built in the early 1950's).

Then, opposite the Marshall center, it would turn left into a terminus and park and ride west of Clark College.

Avoiding neighborhood disruption is just one reason, according to Stuart and Leavitt, that this plan has gained support on the C-Tran Board. The other is that it could be built without tapping local governments or taxpayers for cash. Enough money to do this much has been promised by the Federal Transit Administration. Vancouver residents might be asked to approve a small sales tax increase for operation and maintenance, however.

For those who wish something more far-reaching, the advantages of incrementalism ought not be overlooked. If this gets built and gains public acceptance, the community might then think about exthending it north to Fourth Plain Boulevard or state Highway 500, east to Interstate 205 and then to PDX and Portland light-rail connections.

Stuart obviously wants light rail to happen here, but is cognizant of the realities. "If you bite off more than you can chew," he says, "you choke."

Gregg Herrington's column of personal opinion appears on the Other Opinions page each Friday. Reach him at gregg.herrington@columbian.com

[Chief]

A few things are falling into place now, and I have a number of comments on this piece.

I mentioned a week or so ago that I had heard wildly opposing estimates for light rail maintenance and operations expenses and wondred why that was. The annual $50-$60 Million estimat, funded with an operating levy was likely for the full meal deal, park and rides included. The annual $5 Million operating cost, funded with a voter approved 1-3 point bump of the sales tax is obviously for the "Minimum Operating Segment".

The MOS has been out there for a while, and the last time I looked at it, my initial thought was "You have got to be kidding...". We'll dredge up the pertinent documents today, but if you look at it, you can tell it is a pure desperation measure, and if anyone is talking seriously about going with the MOS, then things are more dire than I thought.

Clark College is not a destination. If a college in the County deserved high speed transit consderation, it would be WSU's Vancouver campus in Salmon Creek, not Clark College. The MOS does nothing for the college students, and is so far outside of the Bridge Influence Area, you can't even joke about it taking any pressure off of I-5 any more.

As far as the Federal Government paying for 100% of the construction costs of a light rail loop into Vancouver, that's not what the same Feds are telling Portland about their streetcar line. In fact, the Federal Smart Starts people prefer buses.

I would like to know exactly who it was at the Federal Transit Administration that "promised" to pay for this project? How on earth is that possible??

Tim Leavitt is trying to sell the idea of paying the O&M costs with a sales tax boot of up to 3 points. That's exactly what Oregon just tried and failed to do with their tax on cigarettes that was supposed to pay for Children's Health Care. If you don't raise enough money with the Sales tax, you end up covering the bills with general funds, and the City of Vancouver doesn't have that kind of money to throw around. Keep in mind that C-Tran has to remain fully funded boys and girls...

The Columbia Crossing Project's light rail proposals are solutions in search of problems. What is being proposed is so onerous, even the neighborhoods in Downtown are rejecting major portions of the project as unworkable. It seems to me that we have spent one hell of a lot of money to revisit almost exactly the same project that was proposed and soundly rejected back in the 90's.

tefen, it's map time.

Developing...

[tefen]

Here's the map, I just added it in green.

http://tinyurl.com/3dhtum

I can see the merits in this plan. It gets the rail across the bridge at the lowest cost to local tax payers which can serve to transfer bridge trips out of cars and onto trains. It set the stage for further expansion into the county. It even lines the tracks up with the Fourth Plain Corridor which is outside the bridge influence area but already has a rail-transit line as part of it's redevelopment plan. It also avoids a massive park and ride near my house, and appeases many of the downtown residents' desires to not disrupt Main Street.

On the other hand, I won't be trading my car for a yearly rail pass and I'm still left to wonder what is to become of the WS DOT property.

Chief, you're right. Clark College is not a destination, just as the Lincoln Neighborhood is not a destination. In the end this is still a commuter line, and this terminus requires less initial construction cost and is close to the freeway. I don't think it's really about the college at all, or the county health building, or the Marshall Center, or the VA hospital....

[Chief]

"Chief, you're right. Clark College is not a destination, just as the Lincoln Neighborhood is not a destination. In the end this is still a commuter line, and this terminus requires less initial construction cost and is close to the freeway. I don't think it's really about the college at all, or the county health building, or the Marshall Center, or the VA hospital...."

Just because it costs less than the other bad plan, does not make this a good plan by default. If neither Clark College or Lincoln or the Kiggins Bowl are destinations, then what are we really doing here??

If we are going to spend that much money on any kind of transit program, it has to go somewhere besides the city limits of Vancouver, and especially further than Clark College. What do I consider worthy distinations for high pseed transit?? The Fairgrounds, PDX, WSUV, and a a whole bunch more places that are far from Downtown Vancouver.

Here's my question to you tefen: At what point do we pull the plug on the Columbia Crossing Project's transit options, and proceed to build a replacement bridge only?

[tefen]

The statement all along by the CRC group was that the bridge MUST include high capacity transit of some sort in order to get federal funding. So I doubt the transit options are likely to be pulled entirely.

Other light rail lines don't terminate at a "destination". I can't think of any reason I would want to go to the end of the line in Gresham or Hillsboro. Who do you think would be riding this line? Portland residents who want to come to destinations in Vancouver? I find that unlikely.

I would say that "what we're doing here" is defining the current "start" of the light rail line. You go to the start of the line via bus, car, bicycle, or foot; get on light rail and commute to work, or play in Portland, Gresham, Beaverton, Hillsboro, Clackamas....

[Chief]

I see hooking up to the Red Line as a faster way of getting anywhere in Portland via light rail, because Gateway is a destination for Max. If you hook to Gateway, you can get anywhere on the system faster than you will by hooking up to, (and adding more stops to ) the Interstate Avenue Yellow line.

There has to be more to it than settling for a connector between Clark College and Interestate. I say build the bridge, and wait for RTC to finsih their evaluation of a County-wide high speed, high capacity transit system. In my book, if the County is not included, it isn't worth doing. If the system never leaves the City limits, there is no reason for the County to pay for any of it.

[tefen]

So you've just agreed with the opinion of the C-Tran board in the article. They can't expect the entire county to pay for this thing, so they're trying to bring the cost down to where the Feds are paying the whole of the construction. By the way, commuters in north county will be allowed on these trains as well, even if they have to go to Vancouver to get on one.

Also, your Red Line thing across the 205 makes a ton of sense. It's where I think LRT will go eventually. But it's not the subject of the CRC project. It's well outside the project's focus area.

How 'bout this? We get the Feds to pay for as much of the eventual LRT loop through Vancouver as we can with this project. Then we apply for grant money for a 205 section. Then we make the connection in another grant cycle later? It's about biting off what we can chew. The City/County taxpayers are never going to approve a monumental loop through all of Vancouver and a spur to the fairgrounds all at once, but you've got to start somewhere.

[Chief]

If you go back and re-read my original comments, there is absolutely nothing in writing that guarantees that the Feds will pay for any of this, especially not without some sort of agreement in place to positivly fund the Operations and Maintenance.

It doesn't matter how you slice it tefen, you still have to have a local contribution in order to keep the trains running. Fares alone will not do it. By federal law, the tolls on the bridge cannot be used to pay for light rail. That means you must have some sort of operating levy, or crank up the sales tax in order to pay for the power to run those trains and the salaries of the people who run it for you. the only way to do that is to run it past the voters, and you can figure the odds of that passing any time soon.

The mission of the CRC Project was to solve a freight mobility slowdown in the BIA. If no consensus can be reached on light rail, I say drop it from the CRC, and proceed on with the Bridge. That is a Federal Highway tefen, and Portland cannot opt out of the replacement bridge, if light rail is not included. That is an urban myth, and I challenge you to find me one credible, quotable source to back that claim up,.

[Waterbuffalo]

Since I am just in the background tonight reading this Here are my comments:

I love the idea of a LR going to where it would be most effective. And that would Definately not be in Downtown Vancouver, the better place would be a long I-205 into East and North East Vancouver. But hey, this isn't the area of the BIA of the CRCP.

Running the LR up I-205 could hit WSUV, Camas and Battle Ground Road surfers (aka commuters) that tend to make up a lot of the Traffic from Vancouver in Portland? Any one ever been on I-84 betweeen Lloyd Center and I-205? Is it never jammed up during the day?

Can someone give me a link to this MOS or MOS stuff?

Honestly the main question of this isn't MOS or SOM, its which community is going to get its way. Clark County (except a certain few) want Light Rail and Portland won't build that new bridge WITHOUT Light Rail taking some of the traffic off the Oregon portion of Interstate 5..

[Waterbuffalo]

I thought this might be a good place to link the video from the city of Vancouver workshop.

This is specifically directed at Chief but any one else can watch it too.

Listened to it but didn't have enough energy to take notes, it basically characterizes Chief, Greg Herrington's points and quite a few others.

This video is about the C-tran board resolution on the future of HCT or LRT, its 50 minutes long but might be worthwhile to a lot of people to watch how our council is deal with this and not from a perspective of a few City of Vancouver residents or local paper's editorial staff. Wouldn't you like to know what they are thinking on the subject?

http://www.cityofvancouver.us/cvtv/cvtvarchive/City_Council_Workshops/2007_Events/December_2007/12-17-07/3_C-TRAN_Discussion.wmv

From page 5 of the 12-17-07 Agenda:

"On January 8, 2008, the C-TRAN Board will be asked to take action and give direction to the Agency for participation in the Columbia River Crossing Project. At a recent retreat, the Board generally agreed that C-TRAN must continue to be involved in the project, but under certain conditions. Council will discuss the issues, with an opportunity on January 7 to address follow-up questions and give direction to the three C-TRAN Council representatives."

(This is for Chief and Tefen, think you might be interested in this as they are approaching CRCP votes soon.--WB)

[Chief]

Again, someone find me one, just one, credible and quotable source that backs up the claim that Portland will back out of the CRCP if light rail is not included in the deal.

[tefen]

Last I heard, Clark County was recommending the Minimum Operable Segment and C-Tran was expected to do the same at their January 8th meeting. How did that come out? Did we get a recommendation from C-Tran?

[Waterbuffalo]

There was discussion at the meeting and it was voted on. Want to say if you read my comments just before the discussion, that meeting was very tense and angry.

They did pass the resolution with one or two dissenting votes if I remember right. (The CRCP recommendation.) But the original proposal that came from the City of Vancouver to the County's comments that were from the retreat in August was modified to make Betty Sue and City of Vancouver happy in the same realm.

If your interested in what happened, please contact C-tran for the public notes and scribblings. Might contact Jeff Hamm or June Berry, his executive assistant/clerk of the board.

[tefen]

Help me out here, WB.

Clark County: Minimum Operable Segment to Clark College

C-Tran: MOS? Main Street Alignment? I-5 alignment?
City of Vancouver: To be Decided

[Chief]

Help me out here, WB.

Clark County: Minimum Operable Segment to Clark College

C-Tran: MOS? Main Street Alignment? I-5 alignment?
City of Vancouver: To be Decided

That's a pretty lame endorsement from Clark County, don't you think?? What is their stake? (zero)

Let's not forget the other player in this too tefen: The Port of Vancouver. to date, they have been silent on what they intend to endorse about the project, and they do have a seat on the Task Force.

[Waterbuffalo]

Monday or Tuesday will the Port be deciding in its meeting either way?