http://couv.com Audio and video stories from Southwest Washington. Fri, 07 Nov 2014 16:49:26 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5 Audio and video stories from Southwest Washington. Audio and video stories from Southwest Washington. no Audio and video stories from Southwest Washington. http://couv.com/wp-content/plugins/powerpress/rss_default.jpg http://couv.com http://couv.com/issues-viewpoint/3-lanes http://couv.com/issues-viewpoint/3-lanes#comments Thu, 16 Oct 2014 02:57:06 +0000 COUV.COM staff http://couv.com/?p=32030 http://couv.com/issues-viewpoint/3-lanes/feed 15 http://couv.com/featured/crc-drama-update http://couv.com/featured/crc-drama-update#comments Wed, 21 Nov 2012 14:08:53 +0000 COUV.COM staff http://couv.com/?p=26353 http://couv.com/featured/crc-drama-update/feed 0 http://couv.com/issues/clark-county-today/the-crc-gorilla http://couv.com/issues/clark-county-today/the-crc-gorilla#comments Fri, 20 Apr 2012 07:15:44 +0000 COUV.COM staff http://couv.com/?p=20833 http://couv.com/issues/clark-county-today/the-crc-gorilla/feed 0 columbia river crossing light rail project,CRC,david madore,kevin peterson,video,wsdot World renowned transportation architect Kevin Peterson says the manual for the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) is well written and well respected around the nation, but he has difficulty understanding why it was not followed to cr... World renowned transportation architect Kevin Peterson says the manual for the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) is well written and well respected around the nation, but he has difficulty understanding why it was not followed to create the design for the Columbia River Crossing Light Rail Tolling project. Kevin Peterson says the CRC is like a gorilla sitting in your front yard, and your view is the hind end. In 2010 frustrated engineer friends requested that Peterson review the Columbia River Crossing (CRC) as proposed and offer feedback. What Peterson saw was enough of a concern that he contacted the CRC directly and asked to meet with project officials. “When I looked at the project in 2010, I could not see that they had considered a collector distributor for a bridge replacement,” says Peterson. “Why the project did not consider a collector distributor is what I find disturbing.” The collector distributor option (CD), one that is spelled out in the WSDOT manual, greatly simplifies the design by placing local traffic on the bottom level with the faster freeway traffic on the top level. During their spring 2010 CRC meeting, Peterson presented a “notional indication of the benefits associated with a collector distributor” versus the braided design the CRC pursued. A braided design gets its name from its appearance. When viewed from above its intertwining on and off ramps appears braid-like. Peterson feels that on this project the braided design creates interchanges that are spaced too closely together and ultimately unsafe. Based on his experience, expertise and solid reputation that has been the foundational bedrock of Peterson's career, he believed that his input would be valuable. The CRC’s response to Peterson? “Nothing. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” Peterson watched with increasing disappointment as the CRC, when questioned in public, suggested that there were problems with his idea, but the CRC only alluded to problems, and called his concept “fatally flawed,” without ever identifying anything specific.   According to Peterson there are significant benefits to the collector-distributor model. It straightens the grossly amplified curve in the current CRC design. It avoids massive land-take in the downtown area and virtually eliminates encroachment on Fort Vancouver. It even goes farther and connects downtown with the fort. The biggest plus of Peterson's concept offers superior safety and congestion relief with a projected outcome of reducing the number of potential deaths from vehicular accidents. From all appearances, the CRC bulldozed forward with a braided design, which grossly impacts Hayden Island. Hallmarks of the design that Hayden Island can look forward to are objectionable noise, the takeover of the equivalent of 19 to 21 city blocks, or 33-46 city blocks when the broadcast of freeway noise is considered.   As currently planned, the overwall CRC freeway structure swells over Vancouver in a manner that Peterson hasn’t seen since the 1960s when freeways were built without real regard or consideration for urban environments. “It’s a brutalistic structure that is being laid over Vancouver,” says Peterson, and if the freeway has to be raised 30 feet to accommodate river shipping it makes his assessment even more dire. He compares it to a “gorilla sitting in your front yard, and you get to look at the hind end.” Peterson now joins the frustrated engineers who pulled him into this review. He doesn’t understand the CRC mentality that is content with using a braided design that only meets minimal standards and costs substantially more. “When I saw that this was the solution it shocked me,” says Kevin Peterson. Peterson continues to seek answers to his fundamental questions: Why does the CRC project office refuse to consider a collector distributor? What are a design flaws that the CRC office has alluded to in a collector distributor model? Audio and video stories from Southwest Washington. no 1:23:43 http://couv.com/issues/the-unraveling-of-the-columbia-river-crossing http://couv.com/issues/the-unraveling-of-the-columbia-river-crossing#comments Sun, 18 Mar 2012 00:01:41 +0000 COUV.COM staff http://couv.com/?p=19588 http://couv.com/issues/the-unraveling-of-the-columbia-river-crossing/feed 0 http://couv.com/issues/kevin-peterson-bridge http://couv.com/issues/kevin-peterson-bridge#comments Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:58:21 +0000 COUV.COM staff http://couv.com/?p=15813 http://couv.com/issues/kevin-peterson-bridge/feed 0 http://couv.com/issues/clark-county-today/cct-peterson http://couv.com/issues/clark-county-today/cct-peterson#comments Thu, 07 Jul 2011 16:32:41 +0000 COUV.COM staff http://couv.com/?p=1793 http://couv.com/issues/clark-county-today/cct-peterson/feed 0 Boondoggle,bridge,Clark County Today,columbia river,CRC,david madore,kevin peterson,Light Rail Tolling Project,video Architect Kevin Peterson stopped by COUV.COM to share his transit and transportation planning knowledge in the latest episode of Clark County Today. - Peterson has more than 30 years of experience that includes work on transportation projects the worl... Architect Kevin Peterson stopped by COUV.COM to share his transit and transportation planning knowledge in the latest episode of Clark County Today. Peterson has more than 30 years of experience that includes work on transportation projects the world over, including design and consultation on at least a half-dozen bridge projects and numerous rail transit systems. Locally, Peterson has played a role in the Seattle Sound Transit project, the Downtown Olympia Transit Center, the Westside Corridor Project in Portland and the Pierce Transit Centers in Tacoma. During his examination, Peterson noticed a discrepancy between the airplane glide slope criteria from Pearson Airport used in the bridge plans and the criteria used in more common downtown Vancouver construction projects [to see a COUV.COM profile of Pearson Airport click here].  A glide slope is how much lateral distance is needed for every vertical foot of space an airplane needs to land or take-off. Construction of new buildings or infrastructure cannot interfere with that air space. The bridge plans called for a 1- to 34-foot ratio glide slope, while the more common downtown glide slope calculation is a 1- to 20-foot ratio, according to Peterson. These ratios determine how tall structures can be without disrupting air traffic at Pearson field. The 1- to 34-foot ratio is the most restrictive of the two ratios. Bridge planners also have a ground level restriction to ensure that any bridge plan leaves enough space for trains to pass below on the existing railroad tracks that the new bridge is slated to be built above. The situation, based on the current 1- to 34-foot glide slope ratio included in the bridge plan, created a narrow window within which a new bridge could be positioned as not to interfere with Pearson air traffic above or railroad traffic below. The bridge plan’s ratio glide slope made a stacked bridge design impossible to fit within the cleared space, but if the ratio was too conservative then planners could use the standard 1- to 20-foot glide slope ratio which makes a stacked bridge design possible. That realization led Peterson to conclude that there is a simpler way to build a new I-5 bridge both with a lower cost and a more elegant design. He suggests a two-level straight aligned bridge with dedicated interstate traffic on the upper level and more local shore-to-shore traffic on the lower level - something Peterson calls a collector/distributor model. With the current project proposal*, Peterson said the design is based in a freeway-only mentality, but a stacked bridge option with a collector/distributor mentality would not only satisfy the freeway needs, but also assist local traffic needs. Above all, Peterson said the replacement of the I-5 bridge system is an important opportunity to create a transportation platform that future generations can manipulate to meet their needs – something he sees best accomplished with a straight-aligned stacked bridge design. Peterson's report on collector/distributors:  "How a collector distributor might work" PDF: Download (1.6MB)   A shorter version of the video interview:   * The well-documented cost to taxpayers, if the CRC stays on budget, is $10 billion. This was established by the Cortright Report (PDF) which used data from an independent review panel hired by the governors of Washington and Oregon. (View the panel’s final report.) See our continuing coverage of the Columbia River Crossing Light Rail project. Do you have information to share on the CRC? To respond anonymously call 260-816-1426. To allow your comments to be used on COUV.COM call 260-816-1429. Audio and video stories from Southwest Washington. no 1:21:37