Portland has designs on a new bridge
by Dylan Rivera, The Oregonian
Wednesday March 04, 2009, 9:31 PM
An artist's rendering shows the favored design for the first Willamette River bridge in downtown Portland in more than 30 years. A combination of a cable-stayed bridge and a suspension bridge, it pays tribute to the St. Johns Bridge in North Portland.
After months of wrangling, after all the chatter about a Willamette River bridge that could look like a clothespin or even a wave, Portland's design experts have spoken. The first downtown Willamette crossing in more than three decades should instead be a sleekly modern-yet-modest update of the much-loved St. Johns Bridge.
Intended to carry a new MAX light-rail line between Portland State University and Milwaukie, to the southeast, the bridge would be a hybrid of a cable-stay and a suspension structure, like the celebrated Brooklyn Bridge but without stonework or Gothic arches.
The design won a strong endorsement from the Portland Design Commission and a TriMet advisory committee headed by former Portland Mayor Vera Katz.
"It provides both the elegance of the St. Johns Bridge and the modernity of the cable-stayed idea, and it ends up being a unique bridge to Portland's collection of bridges," said Lloyd Lindley, chairman of the Portland Design Commission. "It's a great contemporary spin on a classic idea."
The selection has emerged as a way to combine inspired architecture and cost efficiencies in what will likely become a landmark for downtown and the region's mass transit system. Yet TriMet, weathering cost overruns on a Washington County rail project, remains nervous about anything that deviates from bridges of more common design -- and lower cost.
When it opens in 2015, the bridge will carry the new MAX light-rail line, the Portland Streetcar, buses, bicycles and pedestrians -- but no cars. Construction of the $1.4 billion light-rail line would start in 2011, with stops in Southeast Portland and the burgeoning South Waterfront area.
The bridge is expected to take up to $134 million to build.
TriMet had intended to present to the public a handful of different bridge types -- arches, cable-stayed, and perhaps a low, wavy design -- by December. An advisory committee chaired by Katz considered them all and more since last summer and found itself unable to agree on a handful.
the article goes on, with many more pictures:
http://www.oregonlive.com/environmen..._on_a_new.html
Light-rail project
Steering committee meeting
3:30 to 5 p.m. today
Metro Regional Center
600 N.E. Grand Ave., Room 370 AB
Portland
Southeast Portland Open House
Tuesday, March 10
5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
St. Philip Neri Church
2804 S.E. 16th Ave.
Portland Planning Commission, Tuesday
Portland City Council briefing March 12
Metro Council briefing March 19
April: Steering Committee adopts final bridge type
For more information: trimet.org/pm
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