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The Oregon Legislature last week approved legislation committing the $1 billion needed for Oregon鈥檚 share of the Interstate Bridge replacement project. House Bill 5005 is now awaiting Gov. Tina Kotek鈥檚 signature.

The bill authorizes sales of general obligation bonds for the project, beginning with $252 million initially and then $750 million over the next three biennia for a total of roughly $1 billion to support the approximately $6.3 billion project. Last year, Washington committed $1 billion to the project.

鈥淲hile we know nothing is final until signed by the governor, the legislative commitment to fund Oregon鈥檚 $1 billion share of the anticipated costs needed to replace the Interstate Bridge is an important step that creates momentum for other critical conversations moving forward,鈥� Greg Johnson, Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) program administrator, stated in an email. 鈥淗aving the nonfederal matching funds committed in both Oregon and Washington demonstrates the strong bistate support to complete these critical multimodal investments as the Interstate Bridge Replacement program seeks to maximize competitive federal grant funding.鈥�

The IBR program team can now apply for up to $3 billion in federal grants. Johnson said the team is targeting grants from three sources: the U.S. Department of Transportation鈥檚 (USDOT) Mega Program for major infrastructure projects, USDOT鈥檚 Bridge Investment Program, and the Federal Transit Administration鈥檚 Capital Investment Grants Program. Potential federal grants could total between $2 billion and $3 billion.

Other funding for the project would come from tolling revenue. Right now, the IBR program team anticipates tolling will generate approximately $1.1 billion to $1.2 billion in revenue. Tolling could begin in 2026.

Currently, the project鈥檚 design is 10 percent complete. The Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement will be published later this year and then be open to public comments for three months.

The next step, the Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, is set to begin in March 2024 and wrap up in November.

鈥淒uring that time, we will continue to do robust community engagement and make sure everyone is knowledgeable about how they can make their voice heard on this draft supplemental document,鈥� Johnson said.

WSP is serving as the IBR program鈥檚 general engineering consulting firm and partnering with Parametrix.

Transportation department staffers in both Oregon and Washington are overseeing design. ZGF Architects and London-based Knight Architects are on the subcontracting team.

鈥淲e do have architects who are helping us look at both urban design and aesthetics for the bridge itself,鈥� Johnson said.

The Modified Locally Preferred Alternative and program area improvements are currently undergoing environmental evaluation, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act. The program team has created visualizations of how multiple bridge types could look from four different vantage points along the Columbia River.聽The visualizations include the three configurations currently being studied: single level, double level, and movable.

The double-level bridge would be a stack with vehicle lanes on top and light rail, a bikeway and a pedestrian path underneath. The single-level bridge would have all modes of transportation on one level. The team is looking at the movable span configuration, as requested by the U.S. Coast Guard, but also continuing conversations with affected users and hoping to move on from this option, Johnson said.

Project construction could begin as early as 2025.