Bridge to Nowhere

Now I know why liberals think Sam Adams is so smart. His proclamation on the proposed Columbia River Crossing is so packed with tortured metaphors and bureaucratic clichés that it could only have been written by someone who has spent his entire adult life in committee meetings, surrounded by chart packs and earnest discussion about how many ways you can get words like “impacts” and “partnerships” and “innovation” into the departmental mission statement.

Normal people build bridges. For Portlanders, it's got to be a “performance-goal-based thermostat” that increases safety, reduces carbon footprints, actively manages daily mobility, and shows the world "a smarter way forward" (not to mention a slew of new acronyms). I can see now why the price of the Portland Aerial Tram ballooned to four times its initial cost estimate.

After reading this piece three times, I figured out that it’s just Sam’s way of saying he wants a few more lanes on the bridge, which of course will be “phased and managed” by Sam and the other smart folks at City Hall whose contribution to the science of traffic management thus far has been to jam Portland’s neighborhoods with speed bumps and curb extensions.

Back on earth, most of us think the purpose of the bridge is to get people from one side of the river to the other as efficiently as possible. Hopefully the politicians will get out of the way and let the engineers build a bridge that gets the job done. With any luck, it might even be beautiful.

Now there’s something future generations might actually thank us for.