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Comment by valuearb | Hacker News Reader

Portland's is also misleading. Getting off the freeway still involves massive long lines to get anywhere.

This is a city that just replaced the Sellwood Bridge, an aging bridge that was a huge bottle-neck because it was only a single lane both directions. They spent $324M to build a brand new Sellwood bridge that is still only a single lane both directions.

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Tacoma street East of the bridge wasn't gonna get any wider no matter how many lanes wide they made the bridge (which is mostly one lane each way). It would make no sense to widen the bridge beyond the width of Tacoma.

The road to the east of the bridge narrows to one lane each direction for 100 yards, then returns to two lanes wide. And there is clearly room to make that hundred yards two lanes wide.

And worse, eventually PDX is going to wake up and realize they need to widen key surface streets to address their traffic hell. That will be expensive enough on it's own. But after you already blew $300M on a bridge to ensure it will always be the bottle-neck, it will be far more expensive.

And then returns to two lanes, rinse, repeat. Not sure how you think widening Tacoma would happen. You'd need to tear down most houses and businesses that line the street. I live in Sellwood, trust me, the bridge is not the bottleneck.

I've driven over it many times, it's clearly a bottle neck. And read my post again, the worst part is they spent hundreds of million on a bridge that will become THE bottleneck if they ever try to improve traffic flow in Sellwood itself.

From what I heard, the old bridge was pretty much falling apart (it had temporary girder braces and such), so it seemed like it needed to be replaced. Oregon in general has lots of aged bridges in need of repair or replacement.

Regarding Sellwood, I have heard that the new bike lanes on the bridge are an improvement. That is just second hand information though -- I don't ride on it.

The bike and pedestrian improvements are huge. The old bridge had no shoulders (death trap to ride) and one ~3' sidewalk on the North side that was shared between pedestrians and bikes heading West and East.

Edit to add photo...

You can see the old span alongside the new bridge here:

http://www.sellwoodbridge.org/files/12-15-15.jpg

What's all the space in the middle for?

You're seeing both the old span (moved North from its original location) and the new bridge under construction in that photo. Once the new bridge was finished, the old span was torn down.

More photos here:

http://www.sellwoodbridge.org/?e=518

The bike/ped improvements haven't done anything for the massive traffic jam the bridge causes. Even at non peak hours, such as 2pm in the afternoon there can be a quarter mile of cars lined up waiting to get on it from the west side.

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