Couldn't more airport capacity be created by displacing the Air Guard now stationed at PDX and putting them at another Oregon airport with less utilization, freeing up the Guard's capacity for commercial jets and what not? As regards accompanying air emissions, Boeing is developing more fuel efficient planes which might offset some of the painting fumes for the local area overtime.

Finally, if folks don't like living by an airport, maybe they shouldn't have bought a place by the airport? The airport's been there a longtime and one should have anticipated growth in airport operations.

Brussels and Paris are 175 miles apart. The Thalys train runs every half hour in each direction. Travel time: 75 minutes each way. With high-speed trains, we could be at Sea-Tac in an hour, in Vancouver in 2 hours, San Francisco (well, ok, Oakland) in 4.

Allan L- You make a very good point and I couldn't agree with you more. I don't understand why the Airline industry gets so much Govt support and the train (Amtrak) gets treated like a red headed step child. I ride the Amtrak Cascades quite often between Portland and Seattle and I really enjoy it...but it would be much better for the trip to be 1-2 hours...

There's something else fishy about our infrastructure investments, too. While we're talking about a $6 billion car and truck bridge across the Columbia at Vancouver, the Swiss built this for a little more than half of that amount.

Why is it nobody mentions the un-burned jet fuel residue that collects on lawn furniture in Mountain Park?

Mix that with some of the black tire dust that blows in from the freeway and we have a new energy source.