News Column

Flanders bridge is just for starters

On the town

By phil stanford

The Portland Tribune, Apr 22, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (89 Reader comments)

It should come as no surprise that the proposal to build that cockamamie $5.5 million bikes- and pedestrians-only bridge over Interstate 405 has become a featured attraction in the mayor’s race.

It’s one of those issues — like the city’s previous attempts to cap the reservoirs or rename North Interstate Avenue — that ordinary folks seem to understand a whole lot better than the current crop of commissioners down there at City Hall.

For starters, it doesn’t take an expert to see that a bike- and pedestrian-only bridge at Northwest Flanders Street is simply unnecessary.

If you want to walk or pedal across I-405 in that neighborhood, there are already two perfectly serviceable bridges a block north and a block south of Flanders.

And if neither of those meets your standards, you can always go another few blocks north to Northwest Johnson Street, which goes under the freeway. You can’t get much safer than that.

In other words, as anyone except perhaps the most spirited member of the local bike lobby should be able to see, a bridge at this particular location ranks way down on the city’s list of transportation priorities.

• • •

Why, you have to ask, does the city transportation Commissioner Sam Adams — who not incidentally, also is running for mayor — keep trying to push this bridge down our throats?

Especially at a time when it’s generally agreed that the city’s streets are in such sorry shape that a new tax might be needed to bring them up to standard.

Just a few months ago, Adams himself proposed a $464 million “Safe, Sound and Green” street tax to pay for drastically needed maintenance and safety work.

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