At last night’s BTA Board meeting, three representatives from Multnomah County presented an update on the Sellwood Bridge effort and solicited input from our Board. The Sellwood Bridge, a two-lane structure built in 1925 and owned by Multnomah County, is the only crossing of the Willamette River for 12 miles, and the busiest two-lane bridge in the state.
The Sellwood was also the top project for cyclists in our recently-released Blueprint for Better Biking. Despite the clear need to get across the river, the bridge has no safe bike facilities. Many people walk their bikes on the narrow sidewalk, and others try to share the car lane.
Luckily for cyclists, the bridge is due for major work. The bridge is twisting, sagging, and generally falling apart, having reached a score of 2 out of 100 in structural sufficiency. About 1400 buses and trucks a day have to find alternate routes, forced off the bridge by its 10-ton limit, and large trucks cannot use the tight ramps at the west end of the bridge. Nor is the bridge a Portland-specific priority: five out of every six trips across the bridge begin or end outside Portland city limits, and many are Clackamas County commuters.
Multnomah County has outlined a process that aims to have the bridge fixed by 2014, with construction occurring from 2010 to 2014. County leaders have found enough funds for the initial planning, design, and engineering work, but the funding for the construction is yet to be acquired. Preliminary cost estimates run from $40 million for rehabilitation to $140 million for a new bridge.
County Commissioner Maria Rojo de Steffey assures us that the new bridge will have decent bike facilities, and at the Board meeting, several Board and staff members explained that facilities for bicyclists that are separated from cars, such as those on the Hawthorne Bridge, will be most used and feel safest to beginning and intermediate cyclists. We also reaffirmed what County staff already know: a good bike bridge connection will serve both those using bicycles for transportation and those using them for recreation. A high-quality bike facility would connect Southwest Portland and Lake Oswego with the Springwater Corridor and the Springwater on the Willamette path.
Multnomah County is looking for volunteers to sit on an advisory committee, and has an e-mail mailing list for those interested. Contact Mike Pullen for information about both at 503-988-6804.
For now, BTA staff members are attending the Bike Summit in Washington, DC and lobbying Congress for Sellwood Bridge construction money, among other projects. We will continue to lobby Multnomah and Clackamas Counties as well, and the state legislature, to make sure that the Sellwood becomes a bike-friendly bridge, instead of its current hair-raising experience.
I hope funds can be found before 2014. This is such an important connection. And a top priority of many cyclists.
I am interested is the advisory committee. How do I proceed?
Richard,
The BTA has already selected a volunteer representative for our seat on the Advisory Committee, but there are other spots for neighborhood representatives, and I don’t know if they are full. There will also be other ways to weigh in besides sitting on the committee, such as open houses, surveys, and public forums. We’ll do our best to keep BTA members updated on those opportunities, but if you’re interested you might want to get on the email list for the project too. You can do that by contacting Mike Pullen at Multnomah County (mike.j.pullen@co.mulnomah.or.us or 503-988-6804); he’s also the right person to ask about other seats on the committee.
Cheers,
Jessica