House approves plan advancing
rapid transit, new Columbia River bridge

Bill OKs local options, and citizens have final say

April 17, 2009

OLYMPIA – The state House of Representatives very early this morning (Friday, April 17, 2009) passed a plan that two of its lead backers call essential both for the building of a new Columbia River bridge and for the economic recovery of southwestern Washington.

State Rep. Jim Moeller, D-Vancouver, said that Senate Bill 5540 “is extremely important for our 49th Legislative District in Clark County.
“In the next few years, we're going to be building a new bridge across the Columbia River,” he said.

“The federal government has made it abundantly clear that a new bridge will not be built unless the plan includes a high-capacity-transit component,” Moeller noted, “and this legislation helps our county meet that requirement.”

State Rep. Jim Jacks, D-Vancouver, joined Moeller in supporting the Senate measure that is prime-sponsored by their 49th District colleague, state Sen. Craig Pridemore, another Vancouver Democrat.

Jacks said the Senate legislation, which is very similar to a House bill that he and Moeller are sponsoring, “gives Clark County voters the final decision on the idea of creating a High Capacity Transportation Corridor Area.”

“This bill provides local communities a variety of tools to solve local transit problems,” Jacks stated.

Moeller said the plan allows Clark County’s C-TRAN to create a subdistrict, and then ask voters who live in the subdistrict to decide whether they want to fund a light-rail system connecting with TriMet. Voter-approval would be needed before such a plan could be implemented.

“Our regional transit agency would be authorized to provide service for high-capacity transit funded through voter-approved revenue measures,” Moeller said.

To assure development of an effective system of high-capacity transit, Moeller said that the local authority must establish a plan for setting up and funding the system “to make sure that members of the public are involved in the process.”

A review panel would be created to provide independent technical review for development of any plan that would be funded either partly or entirely with public dollars.

Moeller and Jacks re-emphasized that the legislation, which is back in the Senate now for concurrence with House amendments, does not create a new high-capacity transit system.

“This new bridge of ours will be the new frontier in transportation,” said Moeller, who is a member of the House Transportation Committee. “It offers not only freight mobility and congestion relief, but high-capacity transit.

“All objective science that has researched the building of this bridge and the high-capacity-transit district supports the locally preferred alternative,” Moeller said. “And light rail is that alternative for this much-needed system of high-capacity transit.”

Jacks said that “the whole price tag for light-rail construction will be covered by the Federal Transit Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation.”

It is expected that parts of the project could get off the ground as early as 2012, according to Jacks, who added that the work “would be an extraordinary shot in the economic arm for southwestern Washington by bringing our region approximately 40,000 jobs.”

The full House approved a Moeller amendment requiring that the transit agency couldn’t submit an authorizing proposition for voter-approved taxes until July 1, 2012.

The House passed the bill, 52-45, and the Senate passed its original version of the bill, 30-17, a month and a half ago.