Project name: C-TRAN Maintenance Building

Location: Vancouver, Washington

Completion: January 2024

Size: 14,500 square feet

Cost: $11 million

Owner/Developer: C-TRAN

Owner’s Representative: The Wehana Group

Architect: Ankrom Moisan

Interior Designer: Ankrom Moisan

Engineers: Miller Consulting Engineers, Glumac, Shaprio Didway

General Contractor: Tapani Inc.

Submitting Company: Ankrom Moisan

Other Associates/Key Consultants: The Wehana Group

Subcontractors: Able Fence, Alcal Specialty Contracting, Ambrose Glass, Architectural Specialties, Arctic Sheet Metal, Axiom Roofing Oregon, Benz Air Engineering, Bryker Enterprises, Castle Masonry & Restoration, Davis Door Service, Empire Painting, Farwest Steel Reinforcing, Freres Engineered Wood, Galifco Oregon, GB Manchester, Glenco Creations, Graymills, Hydro-Tech Fire Protection, Insulpro Projects, Interior Technology, Larusso Concrete, Mass Tank, MC Interiors, Mill Plain Electric, MJS Contracting, Mt. Hood Steel and Wood, North Star Industries, Northwest Lift & Equipment, NW Flooring Solutions, Nwestco, Oregon Door Consultants, Peak Environment, Piper Mechanical, Polished 3, Rixir Systems, Sawtooth Caulking, Spray On Foam & Coatings, Standard TV & Appliance, Valley Shades, Western Wood Structures, WH Cress

C-TRAN has completed a multi-phase campus expansion featuring a new maintenance facility designed to accommodate the agency’s diverse fleet while prioritizing employee well-being.

What began as a request for “a small barn for buses” evolved into a comprehensive facility after a needs assessment revealed greater requirements. The project prioritized immediate needs first: expanded parking followed by the maintenance facility. The project began with the demolition of the existing administration building and temporary operators trailer to construct an expanded parking system. Throughout construction, the site remained fully operational, a critical requirement for the public transportation provider.

The site’s new layout is devoted to safety, movement and security. The flow of buses and the different needs of end-users were centered throughout the multi-step process.

The maintenance building, a one-story industrial concrete tilt-up structure, can service up to six transportation vehicles. Following site diagrams of how buses enter the facility and identifying what they need before being sent back on the road again, the project team reviewed the various site users and made room for every type of transportation vehicle – from trucks and vans to special types of buses, including short and articulated. The facility features specialized machinery for different maintenance levels. Buses enter the facility to fuel up, undergo exterior washing to remove grime and excess fuel, and park in designated areas for fare collection before returning to service.

Unlike typical maintenance buildings that often feel enclosed and rely heavily on harsh fluorescent lighting, C-TRAN’s facility incorporates glass apertures and windows to maximize natural light. Even with its doors closed, it is a great space to work, utilizing natural resources like light to feel spacious and open. This design choice aims to enhance employee well-being while working indoors.

The Wehana Group, a tribal-owned owner’s representative, played a critical role as an intermediary between designers, owners and the project contractor.

The campus expansion includes parking areas for employees, buses, visitors and an upcoming park-and-ride facility.

All safety precautions and programs implemented during construction met or exceeded industry standards.

“By integrating sustainable design, innovative layout solutions and durable materials, the facility ensures long-term operational success,” said Mariah Kiersey, Ankrom Moisan senior principal and Office/Retail/Community Studio co-leader, in the project submission form. “This project demonstrates how thoughtful design can elevate essential infrastructure.”

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Two Portland-area transit projects will receive a total of nearly $125 million in funding from the Federal Transit Administration, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced.

The funding includes $99.99 million for an extension and improvements to TriMet‘s MAX Red Line and $24.9 million for a 10-mile C-TRAN bus rapid transit line through Vancouver, Washington. The projects are among 12 nationwide selected to receive a total of $891 million via the FTA’s Capital Investments Grants program.

The MAX improvement project, named A Better Red, will extend MAX Red Line service west from the Beaverton Transit Center to the Fair Complex/Hillsboro Airport station. Also, a second track will be added near the Gateway Transit Center and Portland International Airport; that upgrade is expected to improve reliability of Green Line and Blue Line trains that share the same tracks.

The project’s design and environmental review phase is expected to last through early next year. Construction is expected to commence in spring 2021 and last through 2024. The total project cost is $206 million, including six new light-rail vehicles to accommodate increased service. TriMet will cover the remainder of the project cost, with contributions from Metro and the Port of Portland.

C-TRAN’s Mill Plain BRT is a $49.86 million project that will provide bus rapid transit from downtown Vancouver to east Vancouver. The bus line will span 10 miles and include 21 stations at key locations including Clark College, PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center and Columbia Tech Center.

The line’s seven buses will travel east from downtown along West Evergreen Boulevard before crossing Interstate 5 and proceeding slightly north to Fort Vancouver. From there, buses will travel along East Mill Plain Boulevard until the line terminates at a new transit center near Southeast 184th Avenue.

About $21 million in C-TRAN capital funds and $4.2 million in Federal Highway Administration flexible funds will cover the remainder of the project cost. Construction is expected to begin by next year, and service is scheduled to begin in October 2022.

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The path to bring high-speed transit to the streets of Clark County became clearer this week – but obstacles still exist.

The board of the Clark County Public Transportation Benefit Area – known as – on Tuesday unanimously called for a ballot measure seeking a controversial sales tax increase. If voters within the C-TRAN service district were to approve the measure in November, the tax revenues would pay for maintenance of a light-rail system on the planned Columbia River Crossing as well as for part of a proposed rapid-transit bus line in Vancouver, Wash.

C-TRAN and other public officials initially proposed a sales tax increase to pay for the transit efforts; however, Vancouver City Council pushed for consideration of other funding options as well. After months of review, city councilors endorsed the ballot measure on Monday. Although Mayor Tim Leavitt and others remain skeptical of the need for the tax hike, a November vote is almost certain.

“The issue has been discussed ad nauseam,” Leavitt said. “But my position has been and continues to be that it is imprudent to ask voters to increase taxes when it’s within the current capabilities of government agencies to handle these costs.”

An advisory group formed by the mayor spent the past six months researching other funding sources for the approximately $2.5 million necessary to pay for light-rail operations and maintenance. Leavitt said the money could come from many possible sources, such as savings generated when bus routes are eliminated or shortened after light rail is in operation, or sales tax revenue generated by CRC construction.

But the council, in Monday’s 5-1 vote, ultimately endorsed the ballot measure that will ask voters for a 0.1-percentage-point boost in the local sales tax rate, which would generate up to $5.5 million per year. Then on Tuesday, Leavitt voted with his council in support of C-TRAN’s resolution.

“We were concerned that the sales tax might not be the best way to go in these economical times,” said City Councilor Larry Smith, who is also chairman of the C-TRAN board. “The economy still hasn’t gotten much better, but it turns out that the sales tax is the best approach.”

The endorsement breaks a “logjam” in terms of how to pay for the projects, according to Scott Patterson, C-TRAN’s director of development and public affairs. City councilors were the last ones to show support for the ballot measure.

“The path forward seems much clearer now,” Patterson said.

But if the measure were to fail, as Leavitt expects, he said that the city council’s efforts to identify alternative project funding options will lay the groundwork for a plan B.

The potential sales tax increase would also cover some capital costs and operations costs of the planned enhanced bus system on Vancouver’s Fourth Plain corridor, which has won support from City Council but also generated some resistance in the community.

“I want them to stop this project,” said Debbie Peterson, who has campaigned aggressively against the rapid-transit bus project and is running for a seat in the state House of Representatives. “It’s the same thing on many transportation projects – they over-optimize revenue and under-value expenses.”

C-TRAN last year proposed the enhanced bus system as a way to ease congestion between downtown and the Westfield Vancouver mall. The system, expected to cost $40 million to $55 million to construct, would use larger vehicles, elevated boarding stations and other features to ultimately reduce travel time along the corridor.

The project would need approval from three local bodies – including the Southwest Washington Regional Transportation Council, which last week delayed its vote because of questions about funding. The deadline to apply for federal grants that would pay for the majority of the bus system is in September, but C-TRAN expects more clarity to come out of its July meeting.

“It’s convoluted to go through all of this, which is frustrating for everyone,” Smith said. “These projects sometimes progress slowly, but that’s democracy – and it’s a healthy process.”

After an expert review panel weighs in later this month, the C-TRAN board will be able to formally adopt a resolution to place the request for a sales tax increase on the November ballot.

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Public transit officials in Vancouver, Wash., are looking for another way to pay for new light-rail line in light of the city’s unfavorable view of a sales tax.

The board of directors for Vancouver’s public transit agency C-TRAN voted on Tuesday to explore other funding options to pay for the operating costs of a light-rail line from Portland to Vancouver over a new Interstate 5 bridge. The bridge and the light-rail line are part of the Columbia River Crossing project.

The board originally proposed an increase in sales tax to cover the costs, estimated to be $2.57 annually, but views changed on Monday, when the Vancouver City Council voted to impose a bloc veto on a sales tax vote this fall.

Clark County Commissioner Steve Stuart posed the idea of looking into other funding options as a compromise to the veto, to which the board agreed.

Jack Burkman, city council member, said the board’s decision was what the council hoped to achieve with the veto, which he said was passed not to eliminate the idea of an increase in sales tax, but to encourage the examination of other funding options.

“For any big project we have, the last thing we look at is sales tax, because sales taxes are so hard on businesses,” Burkman said. “The decision was to say, ‘Don’t lock on one thing right now; let’s see how much we can do in other places.’”

The C-TRAN board has until July to decide on an option that will go on the ballot.

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While many people involved in the Columbia River Crossing project continue to move ahead, others question whether the current plan is even viable.

Metro councilor Robert Liberty is among those who believe a number of insurmountable financial hurdles loom for the proposed Interstate-5 bridge project. This week he and other community members called for creation of a backup plan.

The Columbia River Crossing project team over the past seven years has spent $97.8 million on planning, but Liberty said the team has no “plan B.” Liberty this week hosted a meeting to present and discuss 14 citizen-submitted alternatives to the present Columbia River Crossing project. The panel consisted of Gary Toth, senior director of transportation initiatives with the Project for Public Spaces; Mary Nolan, Oregon House Majority Leader; Chris Girard, CEO of Plaid Pantry; and Keith Lawton, a transportation consultant and former transportation planner for Metro.

The latest blow to Columbia River Crossing project funding came from the board of directors for Clark County‘s transit agency, C-TRAN. The board this week voted to split a measure on a tax increase for county transportation planned for next year’s ballot.

The first measure would be for a sales-tax increase of two cents per $10 to fund future bus operations. The second ballot measure would be for a sales-tax increase of one cent per $10 to fund light-rail and bus-rapid-transit projects.

The Columbia River Crossing project, meanwhile, is counting on $850 million from the Federal Transportation Administration’s New Starts program. Under the program, projects must show local revenue is available to maintain and operate light-rail components. That funding is now in question.

To make the matter more complicated, said Scott Patterson, spokesman for C-TRAN, the transit agency must also be able to show the FTA that light rail will not interfere, from a financial standpoint, with the region’s ability to provide bus service. If the two-cent tax to fund future bus operations were to fail, Patterson said C-TRAN would have no choice but to cut bus service.

Columbia River Crossing designers were aware of the ballot issue, said Carley Francis, spokeswoman for the project.

“We’ll just have to wait and see how the measures fare,” Francis said.

But Liberty stressed that the “vast majority of the funding associated with the current plan is in question.”

Nolan expressed her concerns over the financial questions still facing the project. In an attempt to avoid an “all or nothing” project, she encouraged those involved in the process to choose a phased approach.

“I come to this process now with an interest in finding a project that can move forward quickly,” Nolan said. “We’ve already spent a lot of time and effort on this project. We need a project that will get moving and get people working.”

The goal of a phased approach, which the other panel members and the majority of submitted alternatives support, would address the Columbia River Crossing’s biggest problems first.

Nolan suggested securing money first and then building solutions to ease freight traffic. Then the project could move to the next phase.

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Clark County’s board of commissioners passed a resolution on Thursday asking its transit agency C-TRAN for two ballot measures, instead of one, to fund new transportation projects.

The county requested that funding for a light-rail project on the planned Columbia River Crossing be broken out in a separate measure from general transportation fund on the November 2011 ballot. The separate measures would provide the county with a clearer picture of where the public stands on the light-rail project, said Scott Patterson, spokesman for C-TRAN.

County commissioners prefer separated measures because of the public opinion that C-TRAN, a bus system, should not venture into high-capacity transit systems like light rail, Patterson said.

“One of the measures would be a tax of two cents on every ten dollars spent, which would go toward bus projects. The other would be a one-cent tax on every ten dollars spent that would go towards operating light rail and a bus rapid transit project on Fourth Plain,” said Patterson. Fourth Plain Road is a major artery in Vancouver, Wash., in Clark County.

The resolution is expected to frame the discussion at C-TRAN’s board of directors meeting on Tuesday, said Patterson. “They will begin the discussion on possible ballot measures and what they could look like,” he said.

“In 1995, a county-wide vote for light rail was voted down,” Patterson said. “At that time, the ballot measure was a much larger ask; it was looking for capital to build the project and operating costs. This measure would be just for the operating cost.”

Funding for the project is expected to come through the Columbia River Crossing project, an Interstate 5 bridge over the Columbia River which would connect Portland’s Expo Center to Clark College with light rail.

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When transit agency TriMet added two hybrid buses to its fleet in 2002, the transit agency was not impressed with their performance. But nearly a decade later, TriMet has decided to give hybrid buses, which are powered by electricity and diesel fuel, another test drive along one of its busiest routes.

TriMet last week announced a $2 million award from the Federal Transportation Administration to purchase four new hybrid buses for Line 72 – Killingsworth Street to 82nd Avenue. The line accounts for more than 16,500 trips each weekday.

But while TriMet’s hybrid buses save 8 percent more fuel than its other buses, they also cost 40 to 50 percent more than new diesel buses, according to Alan Lehto, the transit agency’s director of project planning. However, hybrid technology has improved significantly over the past few years, he said, leading more transit agencies to look again at the vehicles.

“Our older hybrids were not penciling in terms of cost, emissions benefits and fuel economy,” Lehto said. “But other transit systems are ordering hundreds of hybrids today because the technology has improved. With this grant, we have an opportunity to track the performance of the new technology.”

A hybrid bus, when traveling at low speeds, runs purely on electric power from a battery pack. At medium speeds, a hybrid bus uses a combination of electric and traditional mechanical power from a diesel engine. Because the electric power is used for a portion of the duties performed by the diesel engine, these vehicles are considered to have greater fuel economy and reduced emissions than diesel buses, Lehto said.

C-TRAN, the transit agency for Vancouver, Wash., in early 2008 purchased 12 Gillig Corp. hybrids after monitoring Seattle’s use of hybrid buses for many years. King County’s Metro Transit, which serves Seattle and its surrounding areas, operates 285 hybrid buses, according to Rochelle Ogershok, public affairs specialist with King County’s Department of Transportation. Those vehicles use 47 percent less diesel fuel and have lower maintenance costs than diesel buses, Ogershok said.

C-TRAN’s hybrid fleet uses 30 percent less fuel than its non-hybrid buses, said Scott Patterson, C-TRAN public affairs manager, which is why the transit agency later this year will purchase another six hybrid buses.

“You’re using the brakes less, so there are fewer brake repairs,” Patterson said. “It’s hard to quantify, but we are saving some money in maintenance as well as fuel costs.”

However, the greater fuel economy and reduced maintenance comes at a price. The cost of a hybrid bus for C-TRAN is approximately $650,000, compared to $450,000 for a new diesel bus. TriMet has not decided yet which manufacturer’s hybrids it will purchase, but Lehto said he expects them to cost more than new non-hybrid buses would.

“The cost of these vehicles is significant,” Lehto said. “But if the price of diesel goes up, the operating savings from the hybrids could outweigh the capital cost to purchase them.”

The new hybrids are expected to arrive within 20 months, said Lehto, who added that he didn’t know when the transit agency might purchase more.

“The hope is to be able to replace a portion of our fleet with hybrids every year or so,” Lehto said. “But we’ve had to defer some of that due to a reduced budget. Right now, the plan is to purchase the four new hybrids and go from there.”

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