PORTLAND — In July, officials secured nearly $1.5 billion in new federal funding to replace the century-old Interstate 5 Bridge.
Officials celebrated that investment at the Holiday Inn Columbia River on Hayden Island Thursday morning.
At the outdoor event, the bridge loomed behind speakers as they discussed its history and its future.
When Interstate Bridge Replacement Program Administrator Greg Johnson took the dais, the bridge’s lift span began to rise. Within seconds, the bridge was leaden with motionless cars, tractor-trailers and pedestrians.
“You couldn’t have scripted this any better,” Johnson said. “Now you see what the issue is.”
Johnson was joined by Federal Highway Administrator Shailen Bhatt and Democratic U.S. Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell of Washington, as well as U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Skamania, and other state and local officials.
“If you can think back and imagine back 107 years, the traffic on this bridge was cattle and Model T’s,” Johnson said.
Now, more than $132 million worth of goods crosses the I-5 Bridge daily, Johnson said.
“We need to replace this bridge with a modern structure,” he said. “This is tremendously important not only for this region, but for the entirety of the West Coast.”
Murray agreed, adding that she has been trying to help replace the bridge since she was elected more than 30 years ago.
“Much like the citizens on I-5,” she said, gesturing to the stalled traffic behind her, “this bridge replacement project has been stuck in gridlock for too long.”
The bridge is rated the worst truck bottleneck in Washington and Oregon and the fifth-worst on the West Coast, with seven to 10 hours of slow-moving traffic during the morning and evening commute periods, according to the American Transportation Research Institute. Additionally, neither span has had a seismic retrofit, and the entire structure is at risk of collapse in the event of a major earthquake.
The $1.5 billion in federal funds is from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bridge Investment Program that Murray helped establish and fund in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
Last November, Murray penned a letter of support to U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg alongside Cantwell and Perez. Buttigieg visited Vancouver and toured the bridge in February.
“Good things come to those who don’t stop pushing, and we have not stopped pushing,” Murray continued. “Thanks to these federal dollars we have brought back to the Pacific Northwest, the day we replace that bridge in the distance is closer than ever.”
The investment brings total federal funding to $2.1 billion. Oregon and Washington have also each committed $1 billion to the project. The replacement bridge is expected to cost roughly $7.5 billion. Tolls are expected to fill in the funding gaps. Construction on the new bridge could begin as soon as 2026, Cantwell said.
Officials are confident that the project will be completed this time around, unlike the failed Columbia River Crossing megaproject.
“You better start taking pictures of this bridge, because it’s not going to be around much longer,” Cantwell said.
Shailen Bhatt, the federal highway administrator, said the replacement bridge will ultimately help the local economy.
“Those trucks that are sitting there — that’s adding costs to goods,” he said. “This is going to speed those goods to market and reduce costs for people.”
Perez argued that not replacing the bridge could be more expensive in the long run, and that a new bridge will become a source of pride for future generations.
“It is the manifestation of our values, of our sense of pride, of being the best trades people in the nation, in the world,” she said.
An average of 131,747 vehicles crossed the bridge each weekday in 2021, including many of the 65,000 Clark County residents who work in Oregon, according to the Southwest Washington Regional Transportation Council.
