The Sprawl Lobby Wants to Build One of the Biggest Things in Oregon On Top of Soils that Will Do This

The Bridgasaurus Boondogglus is the $500 million (liars budget -- total would be over $1B) monstrosity "3rd Bridge" designed to enrich developers and impoverish ordinary folks in Salem. There's so much wrong with the absurd idea -- it would be one of the biggest elevated structures in Oregon, for example -- but perhaps most absurd is that the planning has settled on a route that takes it over a section of the Willamette where the soils will liquefy in an earthquake.

Watch the video to see what liquefied soil looks like.

And ask yourself -- are you willing to pay

1. TOLLS across every bridge in Salem, and
2. LOCAL GAS TAX, and
3. HIGHER CAR TABS FEE, and
4. MORE PROPERTY TAX

(That's right, the BB "funding memo" -- which is itself a pathetically far cry from the required funding plan that the National Environmental Policy Act requires be in place before this can be submitted to the feds -- shows that this sucker is so outrageously expensive that EVERY local option tax would have to get a YUUUUUUUGE increase -- so it's not one or the other, it's ALL FOUR.)

And that's just so that developers can get you to build them an unnecessary piece of highway sprawl over a section of river that will turn into a milkshake when the Big 9.0+ Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake comes (1 in 3 chance of arrival in next 50 years)? 

Not to mention -- the tolls needed to fund this monster are so big that they would, by themselves, radically drop the number of trips across the bridge, making any construction unnecessary. In other words, all that is needed is to toll the Willamette River crossings in Salem now, and presto, problem solved. With a little bit of creative thinking, we could use the funds raised to provide 7-day bus service from 6 a.m. to midnight with heavier runs to and from West Salem during commuter hours.