Pulp Fiction: Costly makework project for consultants

The projects that transportation planners should be working on are how to use the rail and the river to make autos unnecessary, not how to promote more driving. Image via Wikipedia

As the forecasts for Oregon under a destabilized climate become ever more dire -- and still manage to underestimate the rate of change being observed -- the Boondoggle on the Willamette known as the "Salem River Crossing" project plods on, busily drafting a monumental fictional opus about a project unlikely to ever be funded (thank God).

This particular opus, known as the "Draft Environmental Impact Statement" is intentionally omitting any analysis of peak oil and, even worse, climate change. In other words, the "environmental" analysis is going to ignore the most crucial environmental question of the millennium, as it relies on travel demand models that assume a future like the past and boundless cheap gasoline available for all. Your tax dollars, hardly at work.