Probably not the kind of news we were hoping for.
PDOT strolls past design team on Gibbs Street Pedestrian Bridge
Transportation planners say preliminary designs for the $11 million bridge over Interstate 5 were too costly, so the city’s starting over
POSTED: 06:00 AM PST Wednesday, February 13, 2008
BY LIBBY TUCKER
After hiring KPFF Consulting Engineers and Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects to design three concepts for the Gibbs Street Pedestrian Bridge, city transportation planners have decided to walk on by the team.
Instead, the Portland Office of Transportation decided to reopen the project to new proposals, and last week chose CH2M Hill to oversee final design and public involvement on the $11 million pedestrian bridge over Interstate 5 near the aerial tram in Southwest Portland.
“It’ll probably start fresh this time,” Jody Yates, a project manager for the Portland Office of Transportation, said. “We have a different team.”
Southwest Portland residents for decades have fought for the bike and pedestrian bridge, which would connect the new South Waterfront District with the Corbett-Terwilliger-Lair Hill neighborhood at Southwest Gibbs Street. City Council in 2002 agreed to build the bridge as part of a South Waterfront development agreement, which included the tram and a neighborhood transportation plan.
PDOT in 2006 hired KPFF and ZGF to work up three preliminary designs to help estimate the cost of the bridge and get the ball rolling so the city could fulfill its obligation to the neighborhood, Yates said. In December, the city received six bids for the final design, including one from KPFF and ZGF that did not make the cut.
The Federal Transportation Administration has earmarked nearly $10 million for the project.
And the city has already received $5.7 million from the FTA for the bridge. The remaining $1 million will come from the Portland Development Commission and city transportation system development charges.
“There were some preliminary designs done and (the costs were) … outside of the budget we have,” Yates said.
The KPFF/ZGF project team members, however, disagree that their designs were all over budget and say they were surprised by the decision to start from scratch.
“Our project was capable of being on budget and was well-received by the community, so I don’t know what happened,” Greg Baldwin, with ZGF, said.
Public input on the initial concepts favored the design that came closest to mimicking the angular geometry of the tram, but the bridge was also “substantially” over the target price, Baldwin said. The most basic design came in slightly under budget, he said. And the third design fell in between, about 10 percent over budget, with a cost that the architect says could have been engineered down.
Members of a citizen advisory committee for the bridge, which helped select the final design team, hope to wring even more money out of the budget, however.
“We were promised if we can come under budget, we can use the extra money to work on the South Portland circulation plan,” Ken Love, president of the Southwest Portland Neighborhood Association and a member of the committee, said. “So the design is just going to be simple, and we’re hoping to maybe do some additional artwork on it.”
The final cost of the project is largely up in the air again because the bridge will be completely redesigned. However, the city says it will not allow the cost of the bridge to exceed the budget.
“Sam does not want to spend any more transportation dollars we have at PDOT on a pedestrian bridge,” Roland Chlapowski, transportation policy advisor to Commissioner Sam Adams, said.
The project team that CH2M Hill pulls together will work under ODOT’s “truck load” of design constraints, which govern where the bridge supports can be placed to allow future widening of I-5, Mark Foster, the Federal Highway Administration’s liaison on the project, said. And the difference in elevation between the east and west ends of the bridge is large, which also poses a design challenge, he said.
“The transportation plan really needs to come out of another budget,” Baldwin said. “I don’t think it’s possible to dramatically lower the cost of the bridge, but I could be wrong.”
City Council today will consider signing an inter-governmental agreement with the Oregon Department of Transportation giving the city the go-ahead to build the bridge over I-5.
Construction on the bridge is scheduled to begin no later than the fall of 2009 to meet federal funding requirements, according to the city.