New I-5 bridge has little leeway, council told
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
BY JEFFREY MIZE, Columbian staff writer
Building a new Interstate 5 bridge will be the engineering equivalent of threading a needle.
River traffic on the Columbia River requires the new span be high enough to avoid bridge lifts. Air traffic from Pearson Field mandates the bridge be built low enough to avert aeronautical disaster.
Historic buildings along the freeway corridor's east side, representing Vancouver's past, and multistory buildings along its west side, representing the city's future, leave engineers with little room to maneuver as they design the bridge and set an alignment.
"We have a very narrow window," Ron Anderson, a manager for the Columbia River Crossing project, told the Vancouver City Council on Monday during the latest in a series of briefings on a project that likely will reshape west Vancouver.
The Columbia River Crossing is expected to cost anywhere from $2 billion to $6 billion. Most of the money would be spent on road improvements, freeway ramps and other projects that funnel traffic onto the bridge on both sides of the Columbia River. Only one-third of the cost is tied to the actual bridge for cars and some type of high-capacity transit, either light rail or bus rapid transit.
A transit route would come into Vancouver along Washington Street or possibly on a couplet system, with southbound traffic on Washington and northbound traffic on Broadway.
One alternative calls for the transit line to cross over or under I-5 to serve downtown before continuing north and crossing back over the freeway and ending at a Park & Ride garage north of Kiggins Bowl.
A second alternative calls for the line to continue north along Main Street. Initially, planners were considering ending this option at the same Park & Ride north of Kiggins Bowl.
They are now considering using a larger area, either for surface parking or a multistory garage: the former Washington Department of Transportation district headquarters, along the west side of Main Street north of 39th Street.
The transportation property is currently under-used as a maintenance shop and for storage. Officials envision using a 17-acre area, which would involve demolishing a few homes and businesses near the northwest corner of 39th and Main streets, to accommodate surface parking for as many as 1,500 cars or tiered parking for 2,500 vehicles.
Several council members voiced reservations about parking so many cars in what borders a residential area.
Councilwoman Jeanne Stewart, who lives in the not-too-distant Carter Park neighborhood, said the option would effectively isolate part of the city's west side.
"The whole plan for the light-rail portion of this just seems premature to me," Stewart said.
In late March, council members voiced a strong preference for a transit alignment that would follow the freeway.
Both alignments will be evaluated in the project's draft environmental impact statement, which is scheduled to be released in early February 2008. Mayor Royce Pollard urged council members to be patient.
"There's lot of things here I don't like, but I am willing to let them do their work," he said.
Pollard, however, has never tried to hide his disdain for one option: the possibility of retaining the existing I-5 bridges and using them for northbound traffic while building a supplemental bridge for southbound traffic and transit.
Anderson said officials are considering what type of retrofits would be necessary to the existing bridges so they could withstand a significant earthquake, but those retrofits could be so expensive that they might not be built.
"So we tell our citizens you have a 50-50 chance of being on the new bridge that won't fall," Pollard said sarcastically.
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