PORTLAND — State transportation leaders signaled Friday that they are leaning toward recommending a new Interstate 5 bridge that looks a lot like a design rejected earlier this month.

The composite truss design would be the cheapest of three alternatives presented by an expert review panel and the most likely to keep the overall $3.6 billion Columbia River Crossing project on schedule.

However, the composite truss design is not the preference of Vancouver city councilors, who said they lean toward a cable-stayed bridge as a more aesthetically pleasing alternative. Both the cable-stayed and composite truss bridges would be cheaper and more likely to stay on schedule than the rejected open-web box girder bridge. But the high towers on the cable-stayed bridge would require a waiver from the Federal Aviation Administration to accommodate small planes using nearby Pearson Field.

Washington Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond, after a Project Sponsors Council meeting Friday in Portland, said that’s an important distinction between the two designs.

“It tilts toward certainty versus uncertainty,” she said.

A composite truss bridge on a straighter alignment is the cheapest of three alternatives recommended by a panel of bridge experts who delivered a report to the Washington and Oregon transportation directors on Feb. 3. Govs. Chris Gregoire and John Kitzhaber agreed with the panel’s recommendation to kill the CRC’s open-web box girder design because of concerns about costs and durability.

The experimental design had also been derided by critics as resembling a beached aircraft carrier.

Though it would be cheaper and easier to build than the old design, the bridge experts had no illusion that the composite truss would be a thing of beauty.

“It is difficult to present any truss bridge as an architectural solution that would be appropriate for this special crossing of the Columbia River,” the panel concluded in its report. “Ultimately, the composite deck truss closely resembles the open-web in appearance and form.”

The composite truss would save about $100 million compared with the CRC’s old open-web box girder. The cable-stayed design would save only about $40 million; a tied-arch alternative that was also considered would save about $10 million.

Panel chairman Tom Warne noted that the bridge itself will be responsible for only about a quarter of the overall cost of the project, which includes five miles of improvements to I-5 and an extension of Portland’s light-rail transit system into downtown Vancouver.

Hammond said she and Oregon Department of Transportation Director Matthew Garrett will make a draft recommendation to their respective governors next week.

For his part, Kitzhaber said, he lobbied for the project directly during President Barack Obama’s Oregon visit Friday.

“I told the president I am pleased to see this project in his budget, and I am working with Gov. Gregoire to move forward this year,” he said in a prepared statement. “We look forward to a meeting with Transportation Secretary (Ray) LaHood later this month in Washington, D.C.”

Print this article