As advocates complete the final steps they hope will lead to a groundbreaking in two years for a replacement, Oregon highway workers were preparing for routine maintenance of the current Interstate Bridge that connects Portland with Vancouver, Wash.

The northbound span, opened in 1917, was closed for two nights Aug. 19-20 to allow for electrical work and repairs to the bridge deck.

The southbound span, opened in 1958, are scheduled to be closed the nights of Sept. 9 and 10 for similar activity. (Closure times are between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.)

The bridge across the Columbia River is a key link on Interstate 5, the main West Coast highway that connects California, Oregon and Washington.

Among the annual maintenance tasks is the lubricating of bridge cables that, if laid out in straight lines from their towers, would extend 6.5 miles to central Portland. Each set of cables requires 46 large buckets of grease, which at $340 per bucket add up to a total cost of about $30,000. According to Marc Gross, bridge supervisor for the Oregon Department of Transportation, it takes a crew of 20 to do that work — more than double the usual crew of nine for bridge operations.

Costs for annual maintenance of the bridge run about $1 million.

As Gross spoke to a group gathered on Aug. 23 in one of the two towers — both of which were built in 1958 — the steel bridge shook from some of the more than 130,000 vehicles that cross the two spans on an average weekday, three lanes in each direction. Those traffic flows are interrupted occasionally by bridge lifts, some of them for the passage of ships on the Columbia River, others for bridge maintenance. Many of those lifts (about 300 annually) are conducted at night, but they still result in long traffic backups.

According to figures compiled by the Southwest Washington Regional Transportation Council, average weekday crossings of the Interstate Bridge reached a peak of 138,530 in 2019. The coronavirus pandemic and the resulting closures or curtailments of businesses reduced that average by about 13% in 2020, but the total rebounded to 131,747 in 2021.

In contrast, average weekday crossings of the Interstate Bridge in 1961 — just three years after the southbound span was opened — were 33,537.

For comparison, the Glenn Jackson Bridge that carries Interstate 205 across the Columbia peaked at 166,152 average weekday crossings in 2019. That number fell off by about 15% in 2020 but went back up to 150,711 in 2021. That bridge, which is fixed and has no cable lifts, opened in 1982.

The media tour was sponsored by the bistate Interstate Bridge Replacement project.

Bridge shortcomings

Both spans of the current Interstate Bridge rest on wooden pilings.

“They did not have the technology to get steel piles down that deep to bedrock. So we have wooden piles that this (bridge) sits on in silty soils,” said Greg Johnson, manager of the bistate Interstate Bridge Replacement program.

“We know that if a Cascadia subduction earthquake (off the Oregon coast) does hit, those piles are going to move. We don’t know what the final result may be, but it’s not going to be anything good. So we think this bridge could be potentially inoperable if the big earthquake hits before we get this replaced.”

The current bridge has three lanes in each direction, but they are narrow — and there is no shoulder that allows room for disabled vehicles. There are metal barriers separating bicyclists and pedestrians from vehicle traffic, but they are inadequate — and there are no lanes available for express buses or light rail.

Johnson said: “As we get through this environmental process, we are hoping we can get standard freeway lanes 12 feet wide, and safety shoulders between 12 and 14 feet wide that would allow express buses to use them during peak hours to move through some of the traffic back-up they may experience.”.

Also unlike the current bridge, ODOT’s Gross said, a new bridge would capture runoff of oil and other substances from road surfaces and channel it for treatment, instead of letting it run into the Columbia and damage fish and other aquatic life

About 80% of the current bridge is dedicated to motor vehicles. But Johnson said that share would drop to 50% for a new bridge that would accommodate public transportation, plus bicyclists and pedestrians.

He said a new bridge would lower traffic congestion from 10 hours to a projected three hours daily.

Although the Columbia River Crossing project died in 2013 — only to be revived a few years later — a new bridge gained momentum after Congress passed and President Joe Biden signed a massive public works bill in 2021. Although much of the $1.2 trillion in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act simply renewed federal aid to states for highways and bridges, the law also contains new money for public works, including projects to offset the effects of climate change.

Though Biden on two visits to Oregon in 2022 and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on a brief Portland swing July 7 declined to make promises or be specific, administration officials have spotlighted a new bridge across the Columbia as a potential project of national significance. The 2021 law reserves $100 billion for such projects as determined by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Environmental and citizen groups had opposed the Columbia River Crossing and its proposed successor. But in 2022, they dropped their opposition to a new bridge, though some still seek to limit the number of travel lanes for cars and trucks.

Next steps

Johnson spoke as advocates of a replacement bridge move ahead with three steps they hope will lead to a construction start in late 2025:

Completion of a supplemental environmental impact statement, which is required under a 1970 law prior to major federal actions. That statement is expected to be released for a 60-day period for public comment late this year or early next year. Such a statement evaluates all the alternatives for a project, including a no-build option. The original statement was completed a decade ago, when the project — then known as the Columbia River Crossing — was shelved after a Republican majority in the Washington Senate declined to put up a state share. Democrats rekindled the project in 2016, after they won control of the Washington Senate and a bistate legislative committee was revived. Legislatures in both states have now approved $1 billion each for their shares in the form of bonds, plus authority for state transportation agencies to levy tolls. Oregon lawmakers did so during their 2023 session, and Washington did so last year.

Applications for two grants from the Federal Highway Administration ($600 million and $1.2 billion) and one from the Federal Transit Administration (between $900 million and $1.1 billion) for the rest of the project. Yet to be decided is whether there are tracks for light rail alone or a stronger pathway for a bus rapid transit line, akin to the recently opened project along Division Street in Portland. (Opposition to light rail on the Vancouver side of the river helped kill the 2013 project.)

Approval by the U.S. Coast Guard of the final bridge design. A movable span is still an alternative, though Johnson said it would add up to $500 million to the overall cost. The preferred alternative is a fixed span 116 feet high, which still would bar some ships from passing under a new bridge.

ODOT’s Gross said maintenance of a new bridge would await an agreement between the Oregon and Washington transportation agencies. He did say that if a fixed span is decided on, the bridge would not require a crew on duty 24 hours.

If no new bridge is built, Johnson said, it would still cost $250 million to replace the deck on the northbound span and repaint the bridge.

Rising costs

The former Columbia River Crossing project was estimated at a total of $3.4 billion, Oregon’s share (excluding tolls) at $800 million.

The proposed new bridge would cost $5.9 billion, according to a 2022 analysis by the bridge replacement program, including higher materials and construction costs.

“We will be repeating that risk analysis this year for things that have changed,” Johnson said. “The more we know, the better estimate we can get out.”

Included in the estimates is about $200 million for removal of the current bridge, including all the metal.

Informational materials have pegged the cost at between $5 billion and $7.5 billion.

A group of Oregon House Democrats had proposed to attach conditions to the state’s $1 billion share, among them a project cap of $6 billion (though adjusted for inflation), a requirement for the project to secure $2.5 billion in federal grants before Oregon issued any bonds, a limit of $250 million on state bonds backed by the tax-supported general fund, and completion of the bridge and transit components before any work on seven interchanges on the bridge approaches.

But legislative leaders simply included Oregon’s $1 billion commitment in the end-of-session measure for state bonds, and inserted authority for the state to spend related federal grants into the end-of-session budget reconciliation measure. Both measures passed despite a few dissenters.

Johnson said the project team is aware of continuing concerns about rising construction costs.

“So that is why the team is focused on staying on schedule,” he said. “It is one of the best ways to control costs on a mega project.”