TriMet held the first ride on the Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail Transit Project between downtown Portland and northern Clackamas County Friday. Approximately 500 people rode two of the agency’s new Type 5 light rail vehicles on the 7.3-mile future MAX Orange Line from the Lincoln St/SW 3^rd Avenue Station near Portland State University to the SE Park Avenue Station in Oak Grove. After a short ceremony and remarks by public officials, the trains returned to downtown Portland.

Work on the approximately $1.49 billion project is nearing completion and is millions of dollars under budget. Systems testing is slated for completion this month, with operations training and simulated service to take from June through September before service begins Sept. 12.

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Portland’s new transit bridge isn’t finished yet, but it does have a name: Tilikum Crossing, Bridge of the People. The name, which derives from a Native American word meaning both connection and people, was announced by TriMet on Wednesday.

Approximately 9,000 name suggestions were submitted. A 10-person bridge naming committee first culled the list to four finalists, and then two, committee chairman and historian Chet Orloff said. The other finalist was the Abigail Scott Duniway Transit Bridge, he said.

The multimodal bridge will accommodate light rail trains, streetcars, buses, cyclists and pedestrians, but no private vehicles, according to TriMet.

“It wasn’t a popularity contest,” Orloff said. “We had to determine which of the names best fit the criteria of connection, community and crossing because that’s what a bridge does.”

The word Tilikum is Chinook Wawa, a language that previously was spoken throughout the Pacific Northwest. Fur traders and the first generations of Portlanders spoke some of the language and jargon, which is still used internationally, Orloff said.

“It had all the right stuff,” he said. “It was not only unanimous, but there was strong unanimity.”

TriMet General Manager Neil McFarlane ultimately OK’d the committee’s recommendation.

Orloff acknowledged that many people may call it simply ‘the Tilikum Bridge,’ but added that the naming committee wanted to convey a sense of the bridge’s purpose. “The Bridge of the People” communicates how it will be used, he said.

“We felt because this is a transit bridge, which will primarily be used in mass transit, it is more communitarian as opposed to most bridges,” he said.

The bridge is scheduled to open Sept. 12, 2015.

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Tony Perkins, an electrician with Elcon Corp. and a member of IBEW Local 48, installs a traffic signal at Southeast Milwaukie Avenue and Clinton Street. The work is being done for the Portland-Milwaukie light rail project.

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As I’ve mentioned before, Portland is at a very interesting time in its planning history. We have great opportunities to shape the future of our city that may not be available again for decades. One of those opportunity areas is what’s referred to as the southeast quadrant of the Central City Plan.

This area is defined by the new Milwaukie light-rail corridor and its two station areas within the Central Eastside. In the past few days a group of stakeholders met to discuss alternative land uses and urban design concepts for the area, and what the implications would be for moving away from the existing industrial zoning, especially given the reality of new light rail service.

The first station on the eastside of the Willamette River is near the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), and there are clearly some real opportunities to build on the institutional uses that are there. But the bigger question is: Are there other, more innovative ways to develop here to take full advantage of the proximity to the waterfront and light rail’s capacity to move people, and use them to create a unique blend of buildings, public spaces and uses?

The other area is centered on the Clinton Street station.  It has some very big challenges, including being adjacent to the Union Pacific mainline and within close proximity to the iconic Ladd’s Addition neighborhood. But as with the OMSI area, there is also great opportunity to creatively address the conflicting city priorities of taking full advantage of the new transit capacity, while respecting the need to protect and enhance inner city “industrial” jobs. The quotation marks around the word industrial are the real issue here. What does it mean in this context, and how do we reconcile the competing objectives along with the other concerns of neighbors and property owners?

Stay tuned to this one: it should prove to be very interesting.

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An industrial complex on Southeast McLoughlin Boulevard is being demolished by to make room for the new Portland-Milwaukie light rail line. The site formerly housed a liquid sweetener plant owned by Archer Daniels Midland, which is relocating to the Rivergate Industrial District in North Portland.

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Construction crews today began welding the first length of track for the Portland-Milwaukie light rail line.

Each 80-foot length of rail weighs just over 3,000 pounds. Those segments will be connected via a thermite welding process that superheats aluminum, iron oxide and alloy elements to produce molten steel and permanently join the rails, according to a press release from TriMet.

Mary Fetch, spokesperson for TriMet, said each weld takes about 1.5 hours to complete; another 2.5 hours is then required to grind and finish the weld. Just under 1,000 welds will be made today on the west segment of the line.

Stacy and Witbeck/Mowat Construction is the construction manager/general contractor for the job and has hired union laborers for the task. Evraz Rocky Mountain Steel in Pueblo, Colo., manufactured the rail.

Witbeck/Mowat will fuse more than 29 miles of rail together to complete the 7.3-mile line, which will stretch from Portland State University in downtown Portland to North Clackamas County.

That works out to approximately 1,914 segments of light rail, weighing a total of 2,871 tons. The Portland-Milwaukie light rail line is slated to open in September 2015 and is approximately 30 percent complete.

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Construction of Portland’s newest bridge continues, now with a massive pour of concrete that will make up the base of the bridge’s east tower.

Crews with begin the pour today for the Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail Bridge. The pour will last 36 hours and will total of 1,700 cubic yards of concrete. That’s about 6.8 million pounds.

The bridge should be completed in 2014. Service is scheduled to begin in 2015. See more photos of the pour after the jump.

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Two costly items that were cut from the Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail project’s Southeast Bybee Boulevard Station have been added back because of safety concerns.

The two items are an elevator and a bus pull-out, which is an area for buses to pull over. TriMet‘s Safety & Security Committee recommended restoring the two elements after a peer safety review, which was requested by the East Moreland Neighborhood Association.

With the additions, the station will now have bus pull-outs and elevators on both sides of the street. The amenities are estimated to cost an additional $1.5 million.

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If your commute takes you along Southeast McLoughlin Boulevard, you’ve probably noticed the giant crane just past the Tacoma Street overpass.

I was wondering if it had anything to do with the Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail project. It does.

Crews are beginning work on the bridge that will carry the light rail trains over the on- and off-ramp for northbound McLoughlin. It’s called the Tacoma Structure. Just south of this structure, the light rail tracks will continue under the Tacoma overpass, then over Johnson Creek via a second bridge, and then east to a station area.

The Tacoma Structure has four drilled shafts. The massive rebar cages for these shafts are visible lying along the side of the road as you drive by. There are 12 piles that will anchor the shafts and the pile driving started last week.

Just an FYI.

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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:

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