The traffic in the Albany area on the day before Thanksgiving made it look as though it's already late in the game to start planning for another bridge across the Willamette River.

Too late, probably. The way Oregon does bridge construction these days, it takes about 20 or 30 years to get anything done. We have become paralyzed in responding to obvious needs for public improvements, especially where transportation is concerned.

A generation ago, we didn't have that trouble. In May 1968 the Democrat-Herald reported that planning would soon start on the second Albany highway bridge. Five years later the Lyon Street bridge was finished and in use.

The growth in population and the economy around here already have made the present two Albany highway bridges and connecting couplet insufficient some of the time. This will only get worse.

The same has been true for a long time in Corvallis. But there, at least planning has begun on replacement of the outmoded Van Buren Street Bridge. Commuters are sick of getting stuck in traffic jams on their way out of town.

Yes, one alternative to all these demands for building, expanding or replacing the bridges built during the past century is to say: Don't do anything because the automobile is killing the world and we should all find other ways of getting around, by walking, riding a bike, or staying home and commuting online. Either that or just be patient when you're waiting in traffic.

It sounds reasonable, but unfortunately the real world doesn't work that way. For the foreseeable future we are going to have to commute and otherwise move around the countryside in person, and despite all the logic for alternative ways, we're going to do so mainly in private cars. That's just the way people are.

And that means we are going to have to plan for new facilities so that life does not become one long, frustrating, wasteful wait.

In the Albany area, one essential part of that planning has to include another way to get across the river so as to avoid the central part of town, where there is no way to widen the main drags. One answer is to build a third bridge downstream, taking through traffic off Ellsworth and Lyon streets.

If Oregon doesn't have the money for such projects, it has to find it, even if it means tolls or sharply higher taxes on driving. Our state leaders have to show the courage required to propose, enact and collect the revenue to support the new facilities we are going to need. (hh)