Bridge Authority Commissioners

My name is Arthur Babitz and I am a commissioner with Hood River County as well as a commissioner on the new Bridge Authority. Professionally, I'm an electrical engineer, and I’m currently consulting. And I am a volunteer at the History Museum of Hood River County, as a photo archivist. I'm also a mountain biker, so I'm involved in a lot of mountain biking organizations.

I remember, I had some folks from out of town and I was trying to explain the trepidation that folks have when crossing the bridge. And I happened to be talking to the then-mayor of White Salmon. I was mentioning how friends of mine carried devices with them so they could break their window if the current bridge were to fail when they were on it. Just as I said that he pulled one out of his pocket to show us.

So I am quite aware of the fact that a lot of folks are really uncomfortable driving on the current bridge, to say nothing of the difficulties in maintaining it and keeping it functional. It is just a beast that was developed for a different time, a different era.

I happen to own a Model T. It's hard to believe that the bridge was three years old when this antique car I have was brand new. Seeing how small and light that car is compared to modern trucks and understanding what sort of vehicles we're now dealing with, it’s astonishing that something that was built in 1924 can actually still be serving traffic.

We have a regional economy. We have small cities -- Hood River, White Salmon, Bingen -- all quite small, and they work together. Hood River County, Klickitat County, Skamania County and Wasco County all kind of work together as an economic unit.

The thought of not having a bridge physically linking White Salmon and Hood River, or Bingen and Hood River, it's hard to imagine what changes would be necessary to our economy were the bridge to fail, and the bridge will eventually fail. We don't have an economy without it.

Get a bridge built as fast and as inexpensively as possible.