PORTLAND, Ore. — With the Earthquake Ready Burnside Bridge Project officially entering the design phase in December, Multnomah County will hold an open house Thursday night to provide information on where the project stands and show off design pieces to the public.
Last week, the county announced the contractor that will build that new bridge, a joint venture called Burnside Bridge Partners. The county said the not-to-exceed-cost of the project is $895 million, $300 million of which will be raised from county vehicle registration fees.
A viewer email to KGW raised some concerns around the price tag for the project and the design of the bridge, which prompted us to reach out to Megan Neill, design phase project manager, to get some insight and answers about the project. To begin with, she said the team knows that the bridge's design aesthetics will be important to Portlanders.
"This bridge is located in the geographic center of Portland. It is on display to everyone who travels through this region," Neill said. "So we understand the community does not want to squander an opportunity to have something that they're proud of."
But that doesn't mean it's going to be an art project; the bridge suffered a funding setback with the failure of a Metro transportation ballot measure, and the county made some high-level design changes in 2021 to trim the cost from more than $1 billion down to the current level.
Those updates included selecting a girder design for the western approach and a bascule design for the central drawbridge, rather than any of the more elegant but expensive alternatives. More controversially, the project also reduced the planned bridge from five traffic lanes to four in order to shrink the overall width.
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Work on the Earthquake Ready Burnside Bridge started in 2016, after it was determined that downtown Portland would not have any functional bridges left in the wake of a major Cascadia Subduction Zone Earthquake, other than the car-free Tilikum Crossing.
Oregon law gives the counties with a population of at least 350,000 the power to use vehicle registration fees to pay for bridge projects. Multnomah County first did so in 2009, enacting a $19 annual fee that brought in $11 million per year, earmarked to help pay for replacement of the Sellwood Bridge.
The fee will need to be bigger to raise $300 million for the Burnside Bridge project, but there's no need to brace for impact; the county already hiked the fee to $56 per year in 2019 and changed the policy to allow the money to go to any Willamette River bridge, not just Sellwood.
The higher fee took effect in January 2021, and Neill said the county plans to stick with the new rate for the foreseeable future.
"The community has already significantly supported this project and we don’t have any interest in going back and raising the fee again," she said.
Thursday's open house will be held from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Multnomah County building, room 100. An online option is also available.