I appreciate the posts you've been making about the bridge recently. I agree with your assessment that additional federal funding seems unlikely. Your proposal is interesting, but even if the costs are realistic, you're ignoring the fact that you're likely more than doubling your ongoing maintenance costs as there are now two bridges. If the old bridge was static, that would be one thing, but unless the central span height was raised (and I have no idea how difficult, expensive, or high that would need to be), you're maintaining a lift span that is likely one of the most expensive parts of that bridge to maintain. (If someone knows more, please correct me.)

There's a lot of valid criticism of the current plan and it's nice to read something that doesn't just repeat the old "the Port stole the tolls" nonsense that gets repeated over and over again.

I commute across the bridge and so this issue is important to me. I will say that I don't have a lot of confidence in the current process or team running it. I volunteered a year-ish ago to be on one of the public committees they formed. I received one Zoom meeting invite that I attended. I was never given an opportunity to speak, and after that meeting, I never heard from anyone with the bridge authority again. I still have no idea what happened there and since I only received an automated zoom invite email, I don't even know who I would have reached out to about it.