Current CRC from Vancouver. Photo by Daniel Ronan.

PDXppl is a series of profiles of Portlanders and area residents and what they do.

The CRC, or Columbia River Crossing is perhaps one of the largest and most controversial public projects ever proposed in the  Portland Metropolitan Area (PMA). The project’s goal, to replace the two aging I-5 bridges across the Columbia River, has presented Portland with a test of its environmental values and resolve for sustainability.

The project includes many stakeholders, including the cities of Portland and Vancouver, Metro, Oregon and Washington state governments, two port authorities and the federal government. Many non-profits, including the Bicycle Transportation Alliance (BTA), not to mention the citizens of the PMA, have also taken interest in the project.

In an attempt to learn more about the project costing the region over $65 million in planning and another $30 million more as of last week, I decided to contact Mayor Royce Pollard's office in Vancouver. Matt Ransom, Vancouver's Transportation Manager, was kind enough to respond.

Below is the email of Matt Ransom's questions and responses. Perhaps as a community we can together ask for clarifications on this project.

Note: this email was written on August 12. It has taken me a while to post this, but the debate around the CRC is still alive and well.

I have been asked by Mayor Pollard to assist you with your questions at this point. I have served as on the City’s primary project managers for this effort and can serve as a main point of contact at this point.

I will attempt to answer your questions in brief below and then you can follow-up with clarifications.

PDXme: What would be the ideal Columbia River bridge for the City of Vancouver?

The City of Vancouver’s Comprehensive Plan anticipates that and is built upon the assumption that a new and updated Columbia River bridge will be built to serve the community and region’s future mobility needs.  The City’s basic vision of this project is that it will be: multi-modal with the inclusion of light-rail transit; that the pedestrian and bicycle corridor will be updated to sufficient size and that is strive to meet world class standards for these modes of travel, that the adjacent interchange and new bridge serve freight truck traffic in a safe and efficient manner, the implementation of the project will achieve sustainability goals in terms of construction methods, materials selection and operations and maintenance practices, and that the funding plan is equitable and sustainable.  These broad objectives have been laid out in our adopted policy plans and were stipulated in the City Council’s resolution of support for a locally preferred alternative in July of 2008.

PDXme: The $4.1 billion dollar price tag for the proposed span has lifted a lot of eyebrows and with a $65 million price tag for planning alone, many have criticized the feasibility of the bridge. How does Vancouver view the currently proposed bridge?

Broadly speaking, the City’s policy plans (Comprehensive Plan and City Center Vision plan) recognize the importance of this bridge infrastructure, both in terms of its inherent value for community circulation and economic well being, coupled with the direct benefits and effects that is places upon downtown Vancouver in particular.  For the vibrancy and future well being of our downtown, the Council has laid out a vision where a bridge should be re-built to ensure downtown multi-modal access, and done in a manner which allows for future growth while delicately inserting the re-built infrastructure in direct adjacency to our downtown core and historic reserve.

Updating this infrastructure to meet our community’s future needs, is a very important task and a myriad of important and inter-connected issues relate to this effort.  In our view the project efforts to date have been thoughtful and detailed in their study and with that effort costs result.  That is to be expected for such and important regional decision.  Based upon the reports we have seen, it is our understanding that the costs incurred to date are within the norm of other similarly sized and complex projects and are in line with preliminary estimates which were developed at the outset of the project.

PDXme: Specifically, light rail to Vancouver has been a major goal of Portland leaders for quite some time. How do you view light rail, as well as other amenities for pedestrians and bicycles affecting downtown Vancouver’s development?

The City Center Vision Plan for downtown Vancouver, which was updated in 2007, calls for significant increases in mass transit to support downtown’s growth and development.  At a minimum, the Plan proposes that to sustain our downtown environment and to support housing and employment growth, over 35% of future commute trips into downtown need to occur in non SOV (single occupancy vehicle) modes.  With the adoption of that general policy direction several efforts are now underway to enhance our transportation networks to support this goal.  Significant expansion of our bike networks and bike parking facilities are underway and the linkage to a new bridge corridor will provide a significant increase in safety and capacity for that mode in particular.  The regional transportation planning agency, the Southwest Regional Transportation Council, recently wrapped up a multi-year planning effort to design the broad plan for expanding mass transit, and specifically bus-rapid transit systems, to serve greater Clark County.  Each of the proposed rapid transit lines would feed downtown Vancouver, which would result in a significant infusion of peak-hour commute trip supply.  Finally, the proposed extension of light-rail transit north into downtown Vancouver would be a significant addition of bi-state transportation supply into downtown which would support an increasingly important bi-state reverse commute, as the downtown Vancouver employment market expands into the future.  Bottom line; our plans are reliant upon the expansion of mass transit and bike systems into downtown and current initiatives will go a long way towards providing us the infrastructure systems to support of growth and development objectives.

PDXme: In terms of economic development for Vancouver, the installation of I-5 in the 1950s hampered much of downtown’s economic vitality. In your view, what effect would the proposed bridge design have on Vancouver’s downtown economy?

Downtown Vancouver prosperity has, from its outset, been reliant upon the river and the bi-state infrastructure systems.  Early river ferry traffic and the initial Interstate bridge fed downtown with activity and most of the commerce of those early days lined Main Street to support and take advantage of the cross river activity.  The same is true today.  Multi-hour congestion on I-5 and SR-14 at the doorstep of downtown Vancouver currently stifles downtown access and economic activity in many ways.  A new bridge which provides multiple net new enhancements to transportation infrastructure supply (light-rail, bikes, etc) with efficiency upgrades (auto and freight) feeding downtown Vancouver will help foster additional economic growth within this important regional center.

Quotes that strike chords in Matt's responses in reference to the CRC project include the mention of "a myriad of important and inter-connected issues relate[d] to this effort" and  "inherent value for community circulation and economic well being." To me, the CRC is more than just a circulator for getting across the river and back, and I believe Matt Ransom and his colleagues share this sentiment. Additionally, I see the tangential issues of the bridge as being "inter-connected." The discrepancy I see in this project, however, is the lip service paid to the concerns of global warming and community building, while effectively (and ironically enough) ignoring the economic impacts of a 12-lane bridge.

Yes, people need to get across the river, and in a timely manner, but will a twelve-lane bridge design really help solve this recurring issue? Will a bridge inspired by 1960s design, with its inhuman scale and propensity to induce demand for single occupancy vehicles really aid the economic and community issues of automobile congestion and pollution? If both Portland and Vancouver intend to grow responsibly and "sustainably" as two cities of a common region, shouldn't the one link between them be rebuilt (or not built at all) to reflect the desires of its visionary planners and citizens?

Something is not right in the Rose City. "Sustainability" seems to have become a buzz-word for a project that has frustrated stakeholders like the BTA, which wiped its hands clean of the public process surrounding the bridge design. With the City of Portland, Metro, the State of Oregon, and Oregon's congressional delegation all on board or eerily silent about this project, one can't help but think of the fitting parallel to the Mt. Hood Expressway, a freeway never built, but which would have sliced through SE Portland, destroying Ladd's Addition and 1% of all Portland's housing at the time.

As with every large project, I believe there is a door of opportunity, to paraphrase the often-recanted phrase. When citizens of Portland didn't want a freeway, they stood up against their elected officials to successfully derail the project by laying down the rails of our now extensive MAX system. I ask Portlanders, Vancouverites and other citizens of the region: are we going to sit idly by while our values and quality of life are at stake? Could over $4 billion in the middle of an economic recession perhaps be better spent on a longer-term solution to our region's connectivity, including improvements and upgrades to the existing 1-5 bridges and significant investments in high-speed rail?

I believe that the CRC could be successfully geared towards increased regional thinking by focusing not only on the regional benefits of a new bridge, but also on north-south connectivity issues of the entire Pacific Northwest. The Obama administration's dedication of $8 billion dollars for high-speed rail shows a commitment to passenger rail, and a large local investment by the state of Oregon (with what would have been borrowed CRC money anyway) would work to provide a cleaner myriad of cross-Columbia transportation options. I liken these transportation options to Matt's, "myriad of important and inter-connected issues relate[d] to this effort."

The sheer amount of money needed to build this super bridge, which will become obsolete with the onset of the effects of global warming, is not merely one of many inter-connected issues; it is the issue. If Portland is pledging to meet its climate goal of 80% of 1990 emission levels by 2050, we cannot afford to spend over 4 billion dollars on a project that will hamper our efforts to meet this goal. The prospect of borrowed money represents another burden for future generations in addition to increased environmental harm. For $4.3 billion, according to Metro cost estimates, we could build MAX lines from Portland to Gresham along Powell, from Portland to Sherwood along Barbur, and from Clackamas Town Center to Oregon City along I-205. These three projects are at the top of list of high capacity transit corridors for future MAX line expansions, showing just how far $4 billion dollars could go if "sustainability" were treated as more than just a buzz-word.

Regardless of the way you talk about the CRC project, we must define our priorities as a city and as a region. The task at hand is to find a more sustainable alternative to the proposed Columbia River Crossing. Contact your legislators and elected officials. Get involved with the citizen campaign and read additional information here and here in opposition to the bridge proposal. For the Facebook inclined, I couldn't find a group addressing this issue, so I went ahead and started one, Citizens for a Better Bridge - NO to the Columbia River Crossing. Together we can find better solutions for Portland and regional transportation needs.

You should follow PDXme on twitter @djronan!

1937 intersection at SE Powell Blvd. & 39th Avenue looking north, one of the many street scenes in the Archives' collections. Photo courtesy of Portland City Archives A2005-001.517

This spring term in my Honors College history class, I was assigned to write a ten to fifteen page research paper on a topic of my choice. Being the Portlandphile (or PDXphile, if you please) that I am, I took to researching Forest Park, a large, forested park no less, not ten minutes from the city center. Over Memorial Day weekend I took a trip up north to jump start my research. The process to secure the park's current size of over 5,000 acres, which began in 1947, was a treat to investigate. Much like the growth of a now cherished and developed Forest Park, the place of my research, Portland's City Archives, its records dating back to the beginnings of Portland, is a wonder in itself to behold.

The archives are located in Chimney Park in North Portland, in a building once designated as the center for waste collection of a former city dump. During my two visits to the archives, Diana Banning, the City Archivist, helped me work through numerous boxes and files for the primary sources I sought. To my surprise, Diana, a humble public servant, expressed her amazement, "normally, people your age don't know about the archives." "Really?" I enquired. The wealth of information pared with the diligence of Diana and her colleagues as the keepers of the City's history, impelled me to give them their due recognition. I got into contact with Diana again in an attempt to let people know more about one of Portland's lesser-known treasures.

PDXme: What is the Portland City Archives?

The Portland City Charter assigns the City Auditor responsibility over City records and so the Archives and Records Management division resides in the office of the City Auditor. The City of Portland Archives and Records Center is managed by Archives and Records Management and is the official repository for the City’s historical records.In addition to housing and managing the archives, we also provide off-site records storage for City bureaus.

While we provide many services to City bureaus and their employees, those that are available to the public are probably of most interest here! As a public archives, our collections are available for use by the public for free. I feel that this is one of the most important services we can offer citizens: free and open access to the documentation of the City at work.

Our collections are focused on records created by or for City agencies; our earliest official records begin in 1851, with the first City Council meeting. We have records detailing the activities of all bureaus, including those that are no longer active like the Motion Picture Censor Board and the Milk Inspector. Essentially, if you wonder what the archives contains, think about what services the City provides and you’ll have a sense of our subject matter: transportation, water, sewer, solid waste, recycling, police and fire protection, parks, planning, development, and neighborhood collaboration are only a few out a much longer list.

While most of our collections consist of correspondence, reports, studies, and project files, we also have photographs, maps, and plans. We don’t have an exact count, but I estimate that we have nearly 750,000 photographs in our collections and they document City officials, activities, and projects. Even though a large portion of our images were taken to provide evidence of public works projects, they also document the neighborhoods where the projects took place and capture how life in Portland has changed throughout the decades.

Although our collections are primarily bureaucratic by their very nature, they also document social history. Local governments are involved in so many aspects of our everyday lives that the official records can’t help but document society.

PDXme: What is your job? Can you describe an average day?

As the City Archivist, I’m convinced I have the best job in the City! Really, how cool is it to work with old records, photos, maps and plans? Add to that, I also get to help people find information they need. I’m the first to say that I’m not the City’s historian – there are other more qualified people out there doing excellent work interpreting the city’s history; rather, my job is to collect, protect and provide access to the documentation of the City of Portland.

One thing that people don’t realize is that archival records are being created as we speak – just because a record is new doesn’t mean it lacks historical significance! As such, I work closely with my colleagues, Tim Hunt and Brian Brown, on contemporary records issues. Now that more than 90% of our records are created in the electronic realm, archivists and records managers are presented with great challenges when it comes to preserving the public record.

As for an average day, I’m not sure there is one. I spend approximately 20-30% of my time working with researchers and answering reference questions. I also have the administrative duties that come with managing a facility and staff. I also work with bureaus on records management and archives issues, spend time on outreach activities and other professional duties.

PDXme: How did you become interested in archiving? What do you enjoy about your profession?

While I’d like to say that I wanted to be an archivist when I grew up, I can’t. In fact, I didn’t even really know what an archives was prior to my first job in one. When I was accepted into library school, I wanted to find a job working in a library. Listed on the job board was a post for a student processor at the King County Archives in Seattle. I never looked back. I’ve spent my career working for local government archives and records management programs and continue to love it.

I think what invigorates me and makes me very proud to be an archivist is that I feel like I’m helping connect people to their past. Connection to the past is much more than researching your family tree (although I believe genealogy is the nation’s second-most popular hobby); rather, it’s linking who we are to who we were as individuals, neighbors, communities, regions, and nations. There is a statue at the National Archivesthat contains a quote from Shakespeare’s The Tempest:  “What is past is prologue” and it well-defines the role of archives in society. Add to that, as a public archivist I absolutely believe in the role that archives play in government’s responsibility to citizens for an open and democratic process. After all, without the evidence of the government’s actions or documentation of a society, there is no accountability. It’s no coincidence that archives are often an early victim of a regime change.

PDXme: What kinds of people do you provide services to?

We provide services to everybody; archives are not just for scholars! Our researchers come from as close as down the street and as far away as Japan. We work with attorneys, students, neighborhood activists, businesses, government employees, and genealogists – to name a few. It’s difficult to fully classify all of the people who use our records. Serious scholars working on dissertations and publications can be researching next to a person doesn’t really see themselves as doing research. Rather, they have a need to find out something that pertains to them on a personal level. My favorite example of this is an elderly man who came to the archives many years ago looking for a list of approved street trees. It turns out that his sidewalk was damaged by tree roots and he was trying to prove that the tree he’d planted many years ago was recommended by the City as a tree that wouldn’t disrupt the sidewalk. We found a pamphlet for him and he happily took a copy away with him to help him prove his case. Unfortunately, I didn’t find out if he was successful, but I think he personifies my assertion that archives are important to everyone.

PDXme: The City of Portland has been working with Portland State University to move the Portland Archives into its new Student Recreation Center. Why is this happening, and what are some changes we can expect with this move?

The Archives and Records Center has been experiencing space shortages for years and we’d done as much as we could do to stay in the building as long as we could. The timing for the new PSU building was perfect and the City purchased space from PSU in a condo agreement so we could move the City’s Archives and Records Center. The new building will provide us room to grow (local, state and federal laws dictate how long we need to maintain records), and more importantly, we’ll be much more accessible. Our current location is 11 miles from City Hall and access via public transportation is spotty.  The new location sites us between the streetcar, the MAX and buses.

We anticipate that we’ll begin moving the collections sometime in January 2010 and that we’ll be closed to researchers for 6-8 weeks once the move commences. Moving nearly 30,000 boxes, thousands of maps and plans, hundreds of ledgers and a variety of other materials – all needing to be precisely tracked and relocated – means that we’re planning for a complicated and finely orchestrated move.

However, once we are moved into the new facility, our researchers are going to love it! The reading room will have a lovely view, lockers to place their belongings, and nice tables and chairs from which to do their research. We’re also planning for a wireless connection so people can search our online catalog,Efiles and other resources they might need. While the hours are not yet set in stone, we plan to offer some extended and drop-in hours to compliment our current by-appointment research times.

This is an exciting move that will bring City information resources closer to the community; after all, a core tenet of archives is access and soon we’ll be so much more accessible.

PDXme: If one wanted to visit the archives, what would you suggest that he or she do?

At this time, making a research appointment is all that is needed to begin the process of accessing the City’s archives. Currently, we are open 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday-Friday, by appointment only.  One may make an appointment by calling 503-823-4631 or emailing. After our move, please check our website for updated hours and contact information.

PDXme: Anything else you'd like to tell us about the Archives?

I’d like to make a plug for our Annual Open House, which is scheduled this year for October 2^nd, 1-4 p.m. This is the public’s chance to get a “behind the scenes” tour and enjoy a root beer float as our thank you for stopping by. This year marks our 10^th open house and our 30^th anniversary at the Stanley Parr Archives and Records Center (SPARC). The celebration will take a fond look back on our time at SPARC, as well as forward to our exciting new location.

Bike Corral at Mississippi & Beech

In an evening jaunt up North Mississippi Avenue in 2007, I came across this bike corral on North Beech.  I was able to take a good shot of it in spite of the drizzly weather.

So now that bike corrals are appearing in greater numbers (as seen on this map), why don't we expand this concept of efficiency by creating spaces for bikes that celebrate bicycling instead of placing them on the margins of roads? I would argue that taking bikes off of the side-walk is good for pedestrians, but it is at a relative cost to bicycles. Bicycles, like cars, have an air of freedom about them. When they are regulated by parking structures, they seem to lose a bit of their appeal. This is obvious if you drive a car. God knows how long you wait to get into and out of a parking garage in the Rose Quarter. With bikes, the appeal is similar, but there is something to say about finding a real gem of a vélo on display in a standard sidewalk lock-up. When we regulate people and things to certain rights of way, we sacrifice "something," and I think that lacking "something" is community.

A classy lady on N. Mississippi

A blue bike near N. Mississippi & Fremont

Communities in Portland are, in a word, resilient. We like our meetings. Our neighborhood association are among the most vibrant  in the nation with relatively high political influence. Why would their be a Facebook Application pertaining solely to which Portland neighborhood one should live in? As seen with the creation of City Repair, a non-profit dedicated to the creation of public gathering spaces, Portlanders like to shape their communities, each leaving his or her own mark on our city. In one project, community members came together to perform an "intersection repair." The community found its strengths among it, finding carpenters, painters, and good-willed neighbors willing to help. As a result, the community created a space for all to enjoy and changed city-wide policy for the use of public spaces. The reclaiming of "public" space is however, just the first step. Once we recreate an intersection, a vacant lot, it's important that we keep using the reclaimed space.

Now, you might be wondering, don't we want bike corrals? Of course. Walking along North Mississippi and seeing 10-20 bikes all in a row excites anyone crazy for bikes. (And that's a fair number of people here in River City.) Bike corrals are visible, but I'd like them so visible as to take up the underutilized space that cars could do away with at no expense to the driver. Case in point: traffic circles. What goes in the middle of a traffic circle? Usually plants. But often, this patch of green is left to members of the neighborhood to maintain. What if we could use traffic circles to their full potential, designating them as covered bike corrals? Only this time they would be accessible to bicyclists looking for bike parking from four directions, and visible to everyone. No longer will bikes, and the concerns of its bikers be left at the margin, but at the center of attention. Here is a sketch that I created with the help of my friend to give you a better idea of what I envision.

A Traffic Circle is made into a bike corral, a more efficient use of space.

Notice what you see (beyond horrible drawing skills). You see people. Bike corrals create people flow, the lifeblood of any livable community. But what we have in the middle of the intersection is a space that citizens hold dear, a place where bikers can leave their wheels. But why stop there? The space could be a covered meeting place for cyclists, or people waiting for a ride. Creating an "X" in order to access the space creates a uniqueness to the intersection that slows drivers down. Forcing pedestrians to walk through the space insures that watchful eyes maintain and keep an eye out for the space.

If one of these were to be placed on a corner with local restaurants or bookstores, I could imagine people waiting for the table in the middle of this neighborhood street, or kicking back with a book.

The engineering of such an intersection could be difficult. To make more space  in the center, there may need to be bowl cuts in the curves, as illustrated in the sketch. There is also the safety component. What about speeders? We could place speed bumps before the stop signs (which, I judged to hard to draw here) and additional reflectors around the gazebo-like bike corral. Steel posts around the structure are a must to protect people and bikes in the space. The fire department may have something to say about this, but lest we mention our prized statue of Joan d'Arc at NE 39th and Glisan? As long as this intersection an important emergency route, I couldn't see an issue.

Latin American countries often call a block the Spanish manzana, or apple. An intersection like this is at the edge of several blocks, or several apples. Sliced apple anyone? Perhaps some apple pie? These may be some names in the running for this proposed intersection. To my knowledge, I do not know if anything of  similar exists. Large scale roundabouts are, of course, commonplace in larger cities such as Columbus Circle in New York or the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

Columbus Circle in New York

Arc de Triomph in Paris © Editions Hazan

I am excited at the prospect of bringing more bike corrals to Portland. As we work through this down economy, its important that we work to support our local economy, and bike corrals, as seen in the video above, do just that.

This proposed intersection works to engender community and, as my economic professor would say, "an efficient use of resources." I want to talk to my neighbors again, and I want to be a part of my own community, not a drone behind a piece of metal.

At the end of the day, I believe Portland has a choice. We have the ability to change our cityscape to reflect the purpose of where we live: as a space amenable to community and human needs, not of machines out of scale with their surroundings.

So on your next jaunt up Mississippi, remember, apple pie!