U.S. Coast Guard approval of a fixed-span design for a new Interstate Bridge marked a key regulatory step forward last week, but soaring costs have clouded the project’s outlook.

Cost estimates for the Interstate Bridge replacement program have more than doubled, with a high-end estimate for a fixed span rising to $17.7 billion, according to recently unearthed Oregon Department of Transportation documents.

The documents were obtained by City Observatory, a Portland-based think tank, through a public records request. ODOT hadn’t publicly updated its cost estimates since 2022, when it gauged the bridge’s cost at $5 billion to $7.5 billion.

“I was shocked,” said Joe Cortright, a Portland economist who runs City Observatory.

Cortright added that he expected the project’s cost to rise to $9 billion to $10 billion, far below the actual estimates, which range from $12.2 billion to $17.7 billion. The rise in estimated costs far outpaces overall inflation and construction cost indexes, he noted.

ODOT pushed back, saying the cost figures do not represent a complete cost estimate, which involves an in-depth examination of the costs of labor and equipment materials as well as the schedule.

“The IBR program has been clear with its partners and the public that the cost of the IBR program is going to increase, but since the cost estimating process remains under way, we do not have a final number to share at this time,” IBR program administrator Carley Francis stated in an email on Wednesday.

An official cost estimate is expected in March, according to ODOT.

Infrastructure projects across the nation “are currently experiencing significant price increases,” Francis stated. “We do not expect the IBR program to be immune to the cost increases we are seeing around the country.”

It’s unclear where leaders in Oregon and Washington will get all the funding needed to construct the bridge. In all, the program has more than $5 billion in identified funding, Francis stated.

The states have pledged $1 billion each, in addition to $217 million in existing state funding. Federal grants and toll revenues are also expected to help foot the bill.

“Ultimately, it’ll continue to be a mix of contributions from different levels of government,” said Mike Salsgiver, executive director of Associated General Contractors’ Oregon-Columbia chapter.

Ongoing state and federal sources will need to be tapped for the project, he said.

“With a project of this length, it will be an annual revisiting of federal appropriations and each legislature,” he said.

Salsgiver and other transportation advocates will visit Oregon’s congressional delegation in Washington, D.C., in April to push for continued funding.

“The region will have to continue to make sure those funding streams are open and able to get this project complete,” Salsgiver said.

Cortright cast doubt on federal willingness to pay for the project.

“Right now, the congressional Republicans and the Trump administration — they’re not really favorably inclined toward transit projects generally, and particularly not those in blue states and cities,” he said.

Project backers were buoyed by the Coast Guard’s determination that a fixed span with 116 feet of vertical clearance will provide adequate room for boats to pass underneath. A movable span would have been even more expensive, according to estimates.

“They’re portraying it as a big step forward,” Cortright said. “They dodged a bullet.”

ODOT recently told transportation commissioners that the project is marching ahead.

The IBR program team “will continue working to ensure a successful transition from environmental and planning to delivery and construction,” ODOT interim Director Lisa Sumption wrote in a Jan. 15 letter to the Oregon Transportation Commission ahead of a meeting on Jan. 22. “This includes coordinating with partners to update the construction sequencing and funding strategy to advance the first set of investments towards delivering the full program.”

Tools to address costs could include value engineering, seeking additional federal, state and local funding, and construction phasing. That would mean “building portions of the investments that have adequate funding and working to secure funding for remaining investments in the future,” Sumption wrote.

Cortright has been critical of ODOT for what he describes as a pattern of beginning work on projects that have not been fully funded.

“They basically turn the sunk-cost fallacy into a management strategy,” Cortright said. “They want to create the sense that hey, we’ve started this and we need to finish it.”

2026 is likely to prove a decisive year for the project. Looming ahead is a Sept. 30 deadline to obligate a significant portion of grant funds from the Federal Highway Administration bridge investment program.

Project officials also expect to complete a final supplemental environmental impact statement this year. That will be followed by an amended record of decision that will include an updated cost estimate and financial plan.

IBR program officials are conducting a tolling study for those documents. The study will examine how much tolls will cost, and how much revenue they will raise.

Both project supporters and opponents point to tolling as a potential political vulnerability. Opposition to tolling has been intense, causing Gov. Tina Kotek and legislators to backtrack from a portion of the 2017 transportation funding bill that called for tolling on interstates 5 and 205.

Drivers are unlikely to look kindly on paying tolls for a new Interstate Bridge, either.

“Tolling is a broader challenge,” Salsgiver said.

ODOT’s toll scenarios range from $1.55 per crossing before the bridge is completed to $4.70 post completion, with some offsets for lower-income drivers.

The bridge has been tolled before. Salsgiver recalled as a child that he would throw a quarter into a toll box to cross the existing Interstate Bridge; its second span was completed in 1958.

Today’s drivers have become unaccustomed to paying tolls, Salsgiver said.

“It’s unfortunate,” he said. Removing tolls “taught a generation of Oregonians — and more — that we don’t do tolling here.”

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CHICAGO — President Donald Trump‘s transportation department has been pulling back grants already announced for recreational trails and bicycle lanes, telling local officials their projects fail to promote road capacity or are “hostile to motor vehicles.”

The U.S. Department of Transportation recently sent letters to local governments in at least six states — Alabama, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts and New Mexico — informing them it was withdrawing money awarded under the approximately $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act signed into law by former President Joe Biden in 2021.

The reversals are among the clearest signals yet of the drastic shift from the Biden administration’s emphasis on alternative transportation, such as transit and bicyles, to the Trump administration’s focus on preserving and expanding lanes for cars and trucks.

While the new grants announced by the transportation department this year reflect that change, it’s practically unprecedented for an administration to claw back grants awarded by a predecessor without a compelling reason, such as potential environmental harms. However, the latest recalled projects didn’t have in place fully funded grant agreements, which would have made reversing them far trickier.

The transportation department’s press office didn’t respond to emails requesting comment.

Connecticut won a $5.7 million federal grant last summer to help design segments of a 44-mile recreational trail connecting several communities along the Naugatuck River.

Rick Dunne, executive director of the Naugatuck Valley Council of Governments, said the grant’s final details were being negotiated when the U.S. Department of Transportation last month sent a letter to inform local officials that the project wouldn’t move forward. The agency wants “multimodal grant programs” to focus on “projects that promote vehicular travel,” the letter explained.

“They’re defining quality of life for Americans as enhancing automobile operations,” Dunne said.

The same reason was given in a letter sent to Albuquerque, New Mexico, pulling $11.5 million in funding for a leg of a rail trail cutting through the city’s core. It was among the first active transportation projects awarded under the infrastructure law, with funding announced in 2022, but it was still going through the approval process.

“We are going to stand up for Albuquerque and prevent the Trump administration from pulling money from a project the people of Albuquerque want,” Mayor Tim Keller stated in a press release. “We will see you in court.”

Kevin Mills, vice president of policy for the Rails to Trails Conservancy, called the cuts “an affront to the priorities set by Congress and Americans’ demands for safer, more convenient walking and biking routes.”

The transportation department also withdrew a $20 million grant awarded in 2022 to transform three streetscapes in Boston. The reversal was based in part on the project’s electric vehicle charging stations, which the administration said contradicted its preference for promoting “traditional forms of energy and natural resources,” the Boston Globe reported.

Some of the withdrawn projects were relatively small in dollars and scope but still targeted for reversal due to the department’s changing priorities.

One applied to just a single block in San Diego County, California, where the community wanted to test whether it could improve safety without disrupting traffic flow. It sought to employ “creative roadway features” such as roundabouts in place of traffic signals, with plans to expand the approach to other intersections if the model proved successful, said Donna Durckel, spokesperson for the county’s Land Use and Environment Group.

But Trump’s transportation officials flagged it as “hostile to motor vehicles” in a letter sent Sept. 9 because the project included a so-called road diet that would have reduced the stretch from four lanes to two.

On the same day, McLean County in central Illinois got a similar letter recalling federal funding awarded last year to help design a final 9-mile segment of a bicyclist and pedestrian trail along Route 66. The project wouldn’t affect motor vehicle travel but would promote safety by getting bicyclists and pedestrians off the road, county engineer Jerry Stokes said.

“We’re kind of at a standstill now until new funding sources become available,” he said.

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NEW ORLEANS — The textile mills that once served as the backbone of Mount Pleasant, North Carolina, were shuttered long ago, and officials believed federal money would be key to the town’s overdue revitalization. They hoped an improved stormwater drainage system and secured electrical wires — funded through a program to help communities protect against natural disasters and climate change — would safeguard investments in new businesses like a renovated historic theater to spur the largely rural economy.

Mount Pleasant was about to receive $4 million when the Federal Emergency Management Agency eliminated the program. City officials say their plans — years in the making — and those of hundreds of communities nationwide supported by the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program have been upended.

“This is a generational set of infrastructure projects that would set us up for the next hundred years and it just — poof — went away,” said Erin Burris, assistant town manager for Mount Pleasant, 25 miles east of Charlotte.

FEMA’s elimination this month of the BRIC program revoked upwards of $3.6 billion in funding earmarked for communities like Mount Pleasant. Though President Donald Trump has openly questioned whether to shutter FEMA completely, local officials said they were blindsided by the move to end BRIC, which was established during the Republican’s first term.

Many affected communities are in Republican-dominated, disaster-prone regions. FEMA called the BRIC grants “wasteful” and “politicized” tools, but officials and residents say they were a vital use of government resources to proactively protect lives, infrastructure and economies. Money would have gone toward strengthening electrical poles to withstand hurricane-force winds in Louisiana, relocating residents in Pennsylvania’s floodplains and safeguarding water supply lines in Oklahoma’s Tornado Alley.

Disasters affect most Americans — 95 percent live in a county that since 2011 has had a federally declared weather disaster, said Amy Chester, director of Rebuild by Design, a nonprofit focused on disaster prevention.

BRIC program administrators told communities, “We’re going to help your community be stronger ahead of time,” she said. “Cutting one of the sole sources of funding for that need is essentially telling Americans that it’s OK that they’re suffering.”

Across multiple states, officials said the BRIC program was far from perfect — they were often frustrated with the wait for funding.

But in southeastern Louisiana, Lafourche Parish President Archie Chaisson said despite his issues with FEMA’s bureaucracy, he’s seen firsthand that money invested to fortify homes and infrastructure works.

The hurricane-ravaged state receives the highest rate of federal disaster assistance per capita, with more than $8 billion pouring in since 2011, according to Rebuild by Design. Lafourche Parish has seen more than a dozen federally declared extreme weather disasters since 2011.

Lafourche had been set to receive more than $20 million from several grants to replace wooden electrical poles with steel ones and take other steps to lower the soaring costs of home insurance.

Chaisson, a Republican whose parish saw 80 percent of voters support Trump in November, said he backs efforts to streamline federal agencies — as long as funding continues to flow for disaster prevention.

“I’m hopeful that that’s what the president’s trying to do with this,” he said. “Is there some other way to get the money so we can continue to do these projects? … No matter where you sit on the political spectrum, the programs themselves and the dollars allocated make our communities more resilient.”

Research backs him up: A 2024 study funded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce found every $1 invested in disaster preparation saved $13 in economic impact, damage and cleanup costs.

Democratic officials in states that lost money have publicly expressed outrage. Few Republicans have joined in at a national level, even though about two-thirds of the top 15 states in total FEMA funds received, spending per person and number of federally declared disasters lean heavily Republican.

An exception has been Louisiana’s senior U.S. senator, Bill Cassidy. He took to the Senate floor this month calling for BRIC’s reinstatement, saying it’s “a lifesaver and a cost-saver.”

About $185 million intended for Louisiana evaporated, and officials had to shelve dozens of applications for hundreds of millions of dollars in new funding, according to data compiled by state and federal agencies.

“This isn’t waste,” Cassidy said. “To do anything other than use that money to fund flood mitigation projects is to thwart the will of Congress.”

More than $3.6 billion of BRIC funds will be returned to the federal Disaster Relief Fund for disaster response and recovery, and $882 million more will be returned to the U.S. Treasury or reapportioned by Congress in the following fiscal year, FEMA said. Agency officials did not comment further for this story.

Twenty-two mostly blue states and the District of Columbia have filed a lawsuit demanding the federal government release obligated funding, including FEMA grants.

The lawsuit highlights Grants Pass in conservative southern Oregon, where FEMA has refused to release BRIC funding awarded for a $50 million water treatment facility.

Flooding could knock out the water supply for 60,000 people for months, said Jason Canady, city public works director. Funding would have been used in part to build a modernized plant on higher ground.

“If you can’t provide drinking water, hospitals, groceries, restaurants are going to have trouble,” he said. “Economically, it would be devastating. It really is the cornerstone on which the community is built.”

In Stillwater, Oklahoma, Mayor Will Joyce spent two years working with FEMA on a BRIC application to overhaul and provide backup supply for a regional water system used by 100,000 people. Its 36-mile-long pipeline is at risk of damage from tornadoes and flooding. If it breaks, Stillwater has less than a day’s worth of reserve drinking water.

“We can’t just hope nothing bad happens,” Joyce said. “This project is a necessity.”

Without FEMA’s support, he said, Stillwater will have to double the cost of water for residents to fund the project.

U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan Jr., a northeast Pennsylvania Republican, in an open letter urged FEMA to revive BRIC, saying communities in his district would struggle to fund disaster adaptation work, including relocating families in flooded homes.

Bresnahan wrote that “programs like BRIC are not wasteful, but well within the purview of federal coordination of disaster relief efforts” and noted that Trump “promised not to leave the forgotten men and women of America behind.”

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Portland City Council will vote Wednesday whether to apply for $7.2 million in Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant money through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The money would be used to increase disaster resilience via project planning, solar microgrid construction, and tree planting.

City commissioners discussed the potential grant application during a meeting on Nov. 9. The discussion revolved around the Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan, also known as the Mitigation Action Plan, and included a resolution on the plan, progress report and a first reading of the grant application. The plan was adopted, and the report was approved by the council during the meeting.

The BRIC grant program supports states, local communities, tribes, and territories as they undertake hazard mitigation projects. FEMA anticipates awarding $2.295 billion through the 2022 BRIC grant program, with funds appropriated by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the city’s proposed ordinance states.

This year, prioritization will be given to activities that mitigate risk to public infrastructure and disadvantaged communities, incorporate nature-based solutions, and enhance climate resilience. Portland’s Mitigation Action Plan identifies hazard mitigation projects that are potentially eligible for BRIC funding.

The Portland Bureau of Emergency Management worked with Portland State University to develop the Mitigation Action Plan, Chief Resilience Officer Jonna Papaefthimiou said. The purpose of the plan is to assess risk. Earlier this year the plan was submitted to FEMA, which accepted it.

There are 115 projects included in the plan, Papaefthimiou said. Three high-priority projects include: East Portland Community Center solar system installation (up to $5 million), East Portland tree planting (up to $2 million), and Fanno Creek slope stabilization (up to $200,000).

The proposed ordinance would authorize Mayor Ted Wheeler to apply for $7.2 million in BRIC grant money.

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