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39th Street overpass enables rail upgrades

By Erik Robinson
Published: October 29, 2010, 12:00am

After dignitaries cut the ribbon on a new 39th Street overpass on Wednesday, it will mark the first time in two years that motorists will be able to connect directly between west Vancouver’s Fruit Valley and Lincoln neighborhoods.

The $11.6 million bridge will provide smooth passage to drivers who previously had to wait for as many as 100 trains a day — followed by a teeth-rattling drive across seven sets of railroad tracks.

Yet, over the long term, the project’s biggest beneficiaries may be Amtrak passengers whizzing by underneath the new span.

“The 39th Street Bridge in Vancouver is one piece of a larger strategy of investing in rail-mobility improvements in the Amtrak Cascades corridor,” state Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond said in a prepared statement.

The overpass will span a new bypass track paralleling the east edge of BNSF Railway’s notoriously congested main line through Vancouver. The overpass, in fact, is part of an overall $150 million project designed to alleviate one of the most significant railroad chokepoints in Western Washington.

Officials say the bypass tracks, along with a slew of other improvements planned by the city and the Port of Vancouver, ultimately will free up space to accommodate projected increases in freight traffic while improving the speed and on-time reliability of passenger trains. The state plans to add two Amtrak Cascades trains to the four daily round-trip journeys currently operating between Portland and Seattle.

The state Department of Transportation’s Vancouver rail project is due to be finished in 2013.

DOT project manager Kevin Jeffers said BNSF contractors have already excavated much of the hillside north of 39th Street to provide room for a bypass line stretching about three miles from Eighth Street in downtown Vancouver all the way north to the Fruit Valley Road overpass. He said BNSF is negotiating to acquire right-of-way at two locations near 11th Street, but the railway already controls the remaining property to the north and south.

Earthwork is expected to get under way next summer, followed by the laying of track in 2013.

State officials say they expect to receive $30 million in federal economic stimulus funding, as part of the Obama administration’s initiative to improve high-speed passenger rail nationwide.

Contractors will continue making a series of improvements on the south end of the BNSF main line in Vancouver. Most notably, workers will move the curved track that connects the east-west main line from the Columbia River Gorge to the bridge spanning the river to Portland. The new line will be moved slightly north, toward the Amtrak station. By making a broader curve, Jeffers said, trains will be able to travel at 25 mph rather than the current limit of 10 mph.

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