By: Lee Fehrenbacher//July 5, 2012//
Lee Fehrenbacher//July 5, 2012//
This week, the Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail project reached something of a milestone as it began its second year of construction.

Crews evidently made the last concrete pour on Monday for the final drilled foundation shaft. These are essentially massive sticks in the mud that keep the bridge from falling into the river. There are 12 and the deepest runs 155 feet beneath the west tower pile cap. The pile cap is the concrete section that gets poured over the foundation shafts and serves as the base of the towers.
To date, Ross Island Sand and Gravel has delivered approximately 18,100 tons of concrete via 900 truck loads. Within all that concrete is 1,300 tons of rebar that, together with the concrete, will rise 296 feet above the water at the tallest point of the two towers.
When crews finished their last concrete pour Monday, construction of the bridge was officially 41 percent complete. That’s according to an announcement by TriMet. So far, 64 firms have worked on the bridge, and work on the entire 7.3-mile line has reportedly created 1,525 jobs.
The entire PMLR project is expected to be complete by September 2015, and TriMet said work is under way on the west side of the bridge as well. That phase will soon transition from a marine operation to a land-based, crane operation, which – if you happen to get excited about big construction contraptions like me – should be kind of fun to watch from afar.
If you want to keep up with the project, TriMet has made handy construction timeline:
