Someday, somehow, the Vancouver-Portland metro area will get a new Interstate 5 bridge. When complete, the more than $3.1 billion project will have profound impacts on the area’s commuter traffic, freight mobility, public transit and Vancouver’s downtown development.
The earliest construction of the project could be under way is 2012, but in April, the Columbia River Crossing’s Urban Design Advisory Group is expected to recommend narrowed options for the bridge’s design type and aesthetic, said CRC Public Information Officer Carley Francis.
Shaping a design
With design elements such as safety, aesthetics and sustainability, the bridge design must address six of the metro area’s major transportation issues – growing travel demands and congestion, freight mobility, the operation, connectivity and reliability of public transit, traffic safety, pedestrian and bicyclist safety, and seismic vulnerability of the current crossing.
To address sustainability and possibly even cost, the project’s Florida-based bridge designer Touchstone Architects, has put the idea of bridge wind turbines up for consideration. Discussion of the idea began in December, but it needs further research, leaders said.
“I think the turbines are a long shot,” said Ron Anderson, consultant team project manager for CRC and an employee of Portland-based David Evans and Assoc. Inc., the primary consulting firm leading the project.
“The UDAG members are saying it would need to pencil,” Anderson said. “There’s certainly the technology, (but) there’s the question if there’s a return on investment.”
The possibility of hydro turbines below the bridge came up at a January UDAG meeting and has surfaced in public discussions on the project, but Francis said its technology is relatively new to project leaders.
“We don’t have a lot of information about what potential it would have to create electricity based on the electricity needs of the project. … There are a number of concerns,” she said.
Those concerns include fish safety, debris management and conflicts with water traffic.
Getting started
The project is about 20 percent down the road toward a fixed design, but a few things are certain at this point, Anderson said.
On Jan. 23, UDAG members informally voted to recommend a two-bridge design, which involves stacking highway lanes on top of light rail lines. The concept would allow a smaller physical footprint than other options and could be built with less need for material and stormwater collection and treatment, Francis said.
Even with UDAG support, the option presents challenges because the crossing must be high enough to allow boat passage and low enough for aircraft from Vancouver’s Pearson Air Field to pass overhead. And sharing highway and transit facilities is a relatively new concept and would require hammering out new policies with the new structure, Francis said.
On Feb. 25, the mayors of Vancouver and Portland and the Portland City Council, formally expressed their support for building a bridge with up to three through lanes and three entry and exit lanes on each side of the crossing.
They also proposed forming a multi-jurisdictional committee to advise Columbia River Crossing leaders on the bridge’s physical capacity of the crossing for years to come.
Project development will include the Evergreen Lid – a mini-park where Evergreen Boulevard now passes over I-5 that would extend to the south. The city of Vancouver will likely request bids for its design this year, Anderson said.
Other certainties of the project are the replacement of the current I-5 bridge and the addition of light rail between Vancouver and Portland. The bridge will include bicycle and pedestrian paths and fewer piers than the current bridge.
Part of the project costs, which could reach $4.2 billion, would be partially funded by tolling, Francis said. Tolls would be collected electronically, so toll booths will not be part of the bridge design.
“We’re trying to find the most cost effective bridge design and solution that meets capacity needs,” Anderson said. “People want a good-looking bridge, effective use of light at night and an entry feature on the Oregon side. When it’s all tied together with a nice waterfront park, it’ll be pretty cool.”
The decision makers
If all goes well, the bridge design could be settled on this year – even by early summer, Anderson said. Choosing the final design will be a group representing the Washington State and Oregon departments of transportation, the cities of Vancouver and Portland, the Southwest Washington Regional Transportation Council, the Metro Council, C-Tran and TriMet.
The group includes two citizen co-chairs, Francis said.
“We are working to get to some kind of reasonable consensus,” Francis said. “Our ability to get funding from the federal government doesn’t exist if we don’t have one voice from the region about what we want.”
Advising that group is UDAG, which has 14 members with equal Vancouver and Portland representation. Six of Vancouver’s members are from the public sector, with only Rob Barrentine of Architects Barrentine Bates Lee directly representing the city’s business community.
Barrentine runs the Vancouver office of the firm, which also operates in Lake Oswego.
Anderson said the public hasn’t had much opportunity to give input on the bridge design, though Francis noted that public input always has the potential to influence project design.
Barrentine stressed that UDAG’s members represent the public on design matters, but said he’s never seen anyone outside the group attend UDAG meetings, which are open to the public.
“The ways in which it is structured for the public to give input are useful,” Barrentine said.
“The difficulty from the public standpoint is the lack of knowledge of how much work has been done. There are good things that come out of public input, but it’s the input that is more informed about what has happened and what the possibilities are that tends to have more of a response.”
PRIVATE PLAYERS
Assisting the primary consulting firm leading the project, Portland-based David Evans and Assoc., are more than 20 subcontractors from the West Coast, said Ron Anderson, consultant team project manager for CRC and an employee of David Evans.
But other than David Evans, which has a marine sciences subsidiary in Vancouver, no Southwest Washington firms are contracted on the project.
Anderson said firms in this part of the state typically don’t have experience with projects of CRC’s scope.
“A lot of the large firms that do these kinds of projects are in Portland and not in Vancouver, it’s as simple as that,” he said.
Many of the 20-plus firms working under David Evans as sub-consultants – such as Minneapolis-based Parsons Brinckerhoff, Denver-based CH2M Hill and Omaha-based HDR Inc. – have international project portfolios and offices in Portland or Seattle, Anderson said.
The bridge architect is Bradley Touchstone, principal of Florida-based Touchstone Architects. David Evans was chosen for its international bridge portfolio, Anderson said.
Anderson said the firms such as HDR were chosen in a thorough selection process.
“We had interviewed quite a few different bridge teams and HDR was chosen for several things, (including) its expertise in doing these kinds of bridges,” he said. “It was important to us that we have their senior national bridge engineers 100 percent available to the project.”
WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
Ideas considered and dropped for the I-5 crossing
A third highway crossing at I-5: About 70 percent of Interstate Bridge trips in peak hours begin or end within the project area, so a new bridge east or west of I-5 would not divert many of those trips.
A tunnel under the Columbia River: A tunnel would bypass interchanges at Vancouver’s city center, state Route 14 and Hayden Island, and would have more impacts on water quality, right of way, and historic resources than other options.
Ferry service: A ferry would be slower than other transit modes with no congestion improvements.
Reversible lanes: Such lanes would have increased width with right-of-way impacts in Downtown Vancouver and wouldn’t significantly reduce congestion in CRC’s five-mile project area.
Source: columbiarivercrossing.org
Submit public comment on CRC design:
feedback@columbiarivercrossing.org
360-737-2726
columbiarivercrossing.org/contactus.aspx
Charity Thompson can be reached at cthompson@vbjusa.com.
