Mislabeled bridge over the Columbia, Photo by Willem Van Bergen
The Columbia River Crossing Project Sponsors Council has recommended a 12-lane bridge for I-5 over the Columbia between Vancouver Washington and Portland. The current I-5 bridge over the Columbia is three lanes in each direction, this plan would double that and add a bike lane and space for a future light rail extension from Portland to Vancouver. The Columbia River Crossing Project Sponsors Council is made up of leaders both in Oregon and Washington including leaders of Vancouver, Portland, TriMet (Portland’s transit agency) and Oregon DOT and Washington DOT.
Twelve lanes seems excessive to me, even with the severe commute-time congestion over the bridge. Still, I am very happy that light rail was included in the bridge’s design, especially since Max’s Yellow line basically reaches the river already and a connection across the river would be relatively easy. If you compare the Columbia Crossing to the 520 bridge replacement, it doesn’t look like our leaders in this area are being very forward-thinking. Sure 520 isn’t the right route for East Link right now, but the decision to have no light rail capabilities on the 520 bridge replacement is going to be a huge mistake down the road. Even if it takes a very long time for transit expansion to work toward a second Lake Washington Light Rail crossing, the 520 bridge replacement is going to last a very long time, at least 75 years.
In other Portland Light Rail news, this bike and transit only bridge across the Willamette is going to be very attractive.
That’s a nice photo, but it’s not the I-5 bridge in question- it looks more like the Kelso-Longview bridge about 40 miles north. The green monster linking Vancouver and Portland can be found here.
Here’s a photo of I-5 approaching the bridge from Vancouver.
As the photographer, I can say that this indeed is not the I-5 bridge in Portland. I’ve never been to Portland in my life :-)
It is the Longview bridge north of Portland. The picture is taken from Oregon State Highway 30.
Your ‘I-5 over the Columbia’ photo is actually the Lewis and Clark Bridge that takes SR 433 over the Columbia in Longview.
http://columbiariverimages.com/Regions/Places/lewis_clark_bridge.html
Doh! I dunno what I’m talking about.
The Interstate Bridge is actually a twin lift span, one span north, one span south. It has a characteristic hump toward the north part of it.
Great pic. Initially I didn’t even notice the bridge I just thought Portland did a massive public works project that removed all the parking lots from Jantzen Beach.
I think 12 lanes is a mistake, particularly when on the Portland side it’s a six lane highway and by the time you get to the Rose Quarter it’s four lanes, but what do I know. If it is going to be 12 lanes, hopefully it’s not as fugly as the initially rendering depicted it. Looked like a beached Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier, but without the charm.
I too hope they opt for a bit more of a “signature” bridge for the CRC. The renderings show something out of the “not one dime for appearance” ugly-slab school of bridge design.
Would it really kill them to use a cable-stay bridge for part of the span?
I understand that the reason they can’t do a signature bridge for the main span across the Columbia is that towers for suspension or cable-stayed bridge types would intrude on FAA flight paths for Pearson Field. So then politics come into play – does this small airfield (City of Vancouver…) have the power to force this project into this low-profile design? It would appear so.
I think if it remains like this, I’ve heard there’s a chance a signature-type span could be used for one of the other bridges that’s part of the project (maybe to the south, in the Columbia Slough area?)
Exactly! 12 lanes over the river won’t help at all. At least in the Southbound direction, I never have trouble getting across the bridge unless I happen to hit rush hour. But I always get just past the bridge and traffic grinds to a standstill. Northbound is less predictable, but usually by the time you’re to the bride, you’re through of most of the bad traffic and into Vancouver which is always less congested. The problem with I-5 through Portland is not the Columbia bridge, it’s the rest of I-5 going through Portland. Thank God for Amtrak or my family in Oregon would see a lot less of me!
By the time Light rail is ready for the 520 bridge, it will be time to replace the replacement… there is no capacity for light rail on the Seattle side of 520. There is no plan to connect a line from 520 at the UW, there is no room except to rip up Eastlake to run another line into the city, there is no room to run a line out to Ballard. Light rail on 520 is a vertible pipe dream for the next 50 years. It will will make much more sense to extend light rail up I-90 to North Bend, North 405 and meet the line going to Everett, extend the line South on 405 to Renton, down 167 to Kent and connect to the line in Tukwilla, and continue both South on toward Tacoma and North to Everett before a 520 line makes any passenger or cost wise sense.
If you follow the link, the 520 bridge is going to last a lot longer than 50 years. And there is a long-term plan to run a line from the UW to Ballard, so that point is off-the-mark.
Anyway the 520 replacement bridge is going to last at least 75 years, and we can’t know what the future will look like. The folks who built I-90 were smart enough to plan rail into its design, the 520 bridge should get the same treatment
Considering we’re still having issues designing light rail onto a bridge with existing light rail capacity, it won’t fly on the 520 bridge. And then where on earth does it go once its on the Bellevue side? Theres no room along the 520 corridor. The next issue is where the 520 line will tie into the I5 line. The to downtown tunnel would have to be ~15′ below the proposed ULink tunnels, then swoop up before the 4.11% grade starts, to tie in! Maybe if the SB tunnel went right under the UWS and turned south to tie in it might be possible. But there isn’t any location designed to tie into. The from-downtown tunnel would have to switch off and start to turn before going under the Mountlake Cut while the SB tunnel would have to go under Husky Stadium, and this would put the interchanges in different places. Hopefully you can see some of the problems. We’re not designing ULink w/ the ability to tie into a 520 line.
I dunno, there’s a lot of space on the south side of 520. Anyway, why would you need to tie the lines together? Force a transfer.
Even then, that’s the whole problem, no one is planning far enough ahead
There won’t be much room on the south side of 520 once the new highway is constructed. The flyer stops are already being removed in order to get more lane room. In any case, that’s pretty far away (and over a drawbridge) from Husky Stadium—walkable, but we can do better.
In order to avoid having to route a 520 line right below the stadium and U-Link, it might be easier to run it into an elevated station, from which which it could go north along Montlake then underground around 45th.
I love the idea of a signature bridge although sometimes just a plain old concrete slab gets the job done. While extra lanes isn’t always a good thing and usually just results in wider gridlock excess capacity, or what seems to be at the time of building excess capacity, for a bridge makes a lot of sense. Exactly the opposite of the SR 520 plan.
Seriously hijacking this thread here with SR 520 talk. There seems to be lots of interest on 520 corridor planning (or lack of). A new post please?
In fact, the replacement 520 bridge is likely to be in place 100 years from now. It certainly won’t start construction in the next several years, and will take years to complete, so I guess it won’t open to traffic for 10 years. It will almost certainly last 15 years longer than it’s engineering estimate was (the currenty bridge is nearly 15 years older, and has 10 years to go), so that plus the 75 years makes 100.
They’re starting construction this summer on SR 520. Accelerating the construction schedule is part of the “funding solution”. The new SR 520 has always been scheduled to open before East Link. The Evergreen Point Bridge is approaching it’s Golden Jubilee and unlike the Queen of England has not aged gracefully.
They are not starting on the bridge, they are starting on the road on either side. Surface roads can last a long time (ask people driving on roman ones still). The new floating bridge will certainly be better and last longer than the last one, which was built to just a 40-year standard.
The replacement will get a 75 year standard.
They’re starting on pontoon construction this summer. They’re going to be poured in Grays Harbor (because they need employment there) and barged up the coast and then through the locks.
Pontoon construction or installation? I am talking about bridge construction, not pieces of bridge construction. If they use a 10-year-old light bulb, did construction begin a long time ago?
While I would support making the new 520 span “rail-ready” I don’t think this should be used as an excuse to drag East Link planning back to square 1 like many seem to be trying to do.
Furthermore I’d be reluctant to see any ST funds go toward the bridge. While I understand this project is seeing funding shortfalls I don’t think raiding either the North or East sub-area funds is a solution, especially since doing so would endanger being able to complete East and North link in a timely manner.
The bridge enjoys funding sources that aren’t available to Sound Transit such as tolls on 520 and I-90 and the gas tax with potential additional money from the State General Funds.
The 520-first idea is a loser (as I said in the post) but the 520-someday idea shouldn’t be, but is.
…No room? There’s about 2 1/2 miles between Lake Union and Lake Washington, and hundreds of feet of dirt that could possibly be tunneled through. But I like the force a transfer idea better; it saves us quite a pretty penny.
as explained by this blog a transfer is not going to work very well considering the trains will be packed full by the time they reach UW from the north.
Off peak it wouldn’t be bad, but peak is when we need it the most.
A forced transfer is a dumb idea. It kills the idea of light rail being a smooth, one-seat ride. Its the idea that makes light rail and rail in general so appealing. Its the idea that Sound Transit has been promoting for years. I suppose Seattle to Ballard then east via 520 would be cool (replace the monorail route). But you’re till missing a critical connection to the North Link and getting under the Mountlake Cut, a connection at UWS to the 520 bridge, or the North Link tunnels.
You can’t run every train to station on every line. You have to make some transfers. In ST2 you’ll have to transfer if you’re coming from the Eastside going to the airport.
rail-rail transfers aren’t that bad.
Just for the sake of accuracy, the SR 520 bridge replacement is actually being designed with the ability to add light rail in the future. This doesn’t mean the actual replacement will have space for light rail track when it opens, it just means that extra pontoons may be added to the replacement bridge to allow for light rail expansion in the future.
They’re going from 6 lanes to 12 lanes? Ugh. Expect double the sprawl in that area, and more once light rail is built. We should be reducing road capacity and replacing it with rail, not increasing both.
The extra lanes are supposedly for all of the entrance/exit ramps in the area.
Here’s a link to the 520 project schedule. Note four lane traffic opens in 2014, 6 lanes in 2016. Note that pontoon construction is listed as part of the construction phase. It’s every bit as much a part of construction as the beams for the New Narrows bridge that were built in Idaho (Montana?) and trucked across I-90.
Contrast this schedule with East Link where the most optimistic schedule in the DEIS shows construction is expected to start in 2013, with operation under way between 2020 and 2021.
Seems about the same. If 520 construction begins this year and ends in 2016, that’s seven years. If East link construction begins in 2013 and operations start in 2020 and 2021, that’s seven and eight years.
Pretty ambitious schedule for a project that hasn’t been fully funded.
in any case, make it rail ready. However lets not throw out several years of planning by pushing for East Link on 520.
Or the EIS being filed. Oh, wait they have to publicly commit to a final plan to do that. No worries, if it starts to impact the construction schedule the State simply declares an emergency (not too much of a stretch given the condition of the bridge) and full steam ahead.
And on the topic of EIS (and Shoreline Management Act), was there one done for the construction facility in Grays Harbor? I don’t think so since they’re still looking at about three different locations.
They should run it over both, and they should do it now, and they should use the next stimulus (which may be far more transit friendly).
The new Vancouver Bridge will be 12 lanes, 4 of each (2 in each direction) will serve for on/off ramps. So only 4 usable lanes between the 2 states.
From Vancouver into Portland, 1 lane will be longer “runner” lanes which will go from the Washington Avenue on-ramp to Jantzen Beach. The other lane will go from East Mill Plain BLVD on-ramp to the Pacific Hwy E On/off ramps.
From Portland into Vancouver, 2 lanes will go from Pacific Hwy E to East Mill Plain BLVD with one of the lanes leading off to the Hwy 14 onramp.
So the freeway will go from 8 lanes to 4 lanes by the time it hits Lombart but at least the HOV lanes will remain in tact =)
The LRT part will run either under the Southbound lanes or be attached to the West side of the bridge.
http://columbiarivercrossing.com/FileLibrary/ConcepMaps/HighCapacityTransitAlignmentMap.pdf
http://columbiarivercrossing.com/Resources/Images/PagePictures/RepBridge_CrossSection.jpg
http://blog.oregonlive.com/environment_impact/2008/05/bridge.JPG
The LRT across the Columbia is the part of the CRC I’m most excited about.
Maybe this was discussed a long time ago, and I realize the cost involved compared to using a bridge, but has ST (or any other agency) explored the possibilities of boring a tunnel under lake Washington between Bellevue and Seattle for LRT?
I don’t think it was studied but if anything, I would be more comfortable with something such as the Transbay Tube.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transbay_Tube