SUBMITTED?BY: OREGON?DEPARTMENT?OF?TRANSPORTATION, MAJOR?PROJECTS?DIVISION

The Interstate 5 Willamette River Bridge stands as an example of an all-inclusive effort that not merely met, but exceeded expectations on multiple levels.

The Oregon Department of Transportation sought public involvement from the start through open houses, social media and participatory groups in a project that illustrates a bridge as more than a structure spanning a divide.

“It’s impressive when you first see it,” said Jeff Firth of Hamilton Construction.  “It’s sleek, skinny, elegant, and from a construction standpoint, presses engineering boundaries, sequencing parks, the cities, bikes, rail and traffic.”

The structure incorporates three distinct methods of bridging – reinforced box, reinforced deck girder and signature arch span – with a focus on addressing the task of a transportation feature while considering environmental and public concerns.

The nearly 1,800-foot span is situated in a complex urban environment, crossing railroad tracks, a four-lane highway, and a river with sensitive habitat for trout, salmon and chub.

ODOT worked with the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde to recognize the significance of the bridge named “Whilamut”, the Kalapuya word for “where the water ripples.”

The double arch touches down once in the riverbed with minimal disruption to a sensitive natural environment. The strong, but lightweight bridge also shares accolades with the new World Trade Center building in New York as recipients of 2013 Slag Cement Association Project of the Year awards.

Completion of the Willamette River Bridge project restored and enhanced a vital transportation link in the highway connecting the Western U.S to Canada and Mexico.  At the same time, it has made travel easier for local drivers and has improved access for emergency vehicles and commuters between two vibrant Oregon communities.

PROJECT?TEAM + STATS:
Location: Eugene – Springfield, Oregon
Cost: $204.6 million
Start date: May 2008
Completion date: August 2013
Owner/developer: Oregon Department of Transportation
Engineer: OBEC Consulting Engineers
General contractor: Hamilton Construction Co.

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Three contractors passed the first test to build the new Willamette River transit bridge. Transit agency TriMet announced today it selected the following firms to submit design-build proposals for the bridge:

• Flatiron Constructors of Lafayette, Colo.
• Kiewit Pacific of Vancouver, Wash.
• The joint venture of PCL and Traylor, Bellevue, Wash.

The bridge will carry light-rail MAX trains on trips between Portland and Milwaukie when that line opens in 2015. Three bus lines that currently use the Ross Island Bridge will switch to the new bridge.

Plans call for streetcars to use the bridge in the future.

The bridge will be Portland’s first in 35 years and the only bridge open to pedestrians, bicyclists and transit users but not passenger vehicles.

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A for the Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail Project was released Monday in advance of Thursday’s citizens’ advisory committee meeting.

The report gives details on design options for the light rail project’s stations and alignments, as well as the design of the Willamette River Bridge, which will take the light-rail across the river from Portland State University to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.

A 60 percent match from the Federal Transit Administration will be requested for the estimated $1.42 billion project. The remainder will be funded locally through lottery-backed bonds, bonds backed by the Metropolitan Transportation Improvement Program, the cities of Portland and Milwaukie, Clackamas County, TriMet and other sources.

The preliminary engineering phase of the project is expected to be complete in March and a Final Environmental Impact Statement will be completed and published by the FTA in May. If a grant agreement is struck with the FTA, construction would begin in 2011, with light rail service starting in September 2015.

A citizens advisory committee meeting on the project will be held Feb. 18 from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at St. Philip Neri Parish, Carvlin Hall, 2408 S.E. 16^th Ave., in Portland.

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Michelle Poyourow, the advocacy manager for the Bicycle Transportation Alliance, has announced that she will resign from the organization in mid-February. Gerik Kransky, formally an outreach director at 1000 Friends of Oregon, will take Poyourow’s place.

Poyourow has been an active presence in city policymaking, often acting as the sole voice of Portland bikers at city council, planning and other meetings. Most recently, she was the face of the BTA’s Build It campaign for the Portland Bicycle Plan for 2030.

She’s also been a common voice in 91��Ƶ stories, giving commentary on biking issues for the Willamette River Bridge, Columbia River Crossing, and even solid-waste disposal rates. Poyourow is even one of the Daily Journal of Commerce’s Newsmakers for 2010.

In a conversation with our editor Stephanie Basalyga, Poyourow said she plans to stay involved in Portland advocacy and may even expand her focus into larger sustainable transportation issues outside of just cycling.

I have a lot of respect for Poyourow. When facing opposition from people that feel that biking should be seen as recreation and not an important future means for sustainable transportation, she has always spoken on the issues with poise and intelligence.

Here’s hoping she’s on to great things.

The post Poyourow to leave Bicycle Transportation Alliance appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Michelle Poyourow, the advocacy manager for the Bicycle Transportation Alliance, has announced that she will resign from the organization in mid-February. Gerik Kransky, formally an outreach director at 1000 Friends of Oregon, will take Poyourow’s place.

Poyourow has been an active presence in city policymaking, often acting as the sole voice of Portland bikers at city council, planning and other meetings. Most recently, she was the face of the BTA’s Build It campaign for the Portland Bicycle Plan for 2030.

She’s also been a common voice in 91��Ƶ stories, giving commentary on biking issues for the Willamette River Bridge, Columbia River Crossing, and even solid-waste disposal rates. Poyourow is even one of the Daily Journal of Commerce’s Newsmakers for 2010.

In a conversation with our editor Stephanie Basalyga, Poyourow said she plans to stay involved in Portland advocacy and may even expand her focus into larger sustainable transportation issues outside of just cycling.

I have a lot of respect for Poyourow. When facing opposition from people that feel that biking should be seen as recreation and not an important future means for sustainable transportation, she has always spoken on the issues with poise and intelligence.

Here’s hoping she’s on to great things.

The post Poyourow to leave Bicycle Transportation Alliance appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Though architect Donald MacDonald has worked with community cycling groups on bridge designs before, he’s been surprised with Portland.

The level of involvement of Portland bikers in the design of the new Willamette River Bridge impressed the architect, who is currently working on a finalized design for the multi-modal transit bridge.

“Your cyclists really know their stuff,” said MacDonald. “It’s more intense than in San Francisco. The bike coalition is strong there, but in Portland, the cyclists are more into the details. They want to know how their handle bars will work with handrails. I’ve got to say it’s a very sophisticated bicycle community that we’re dealing with here.”

For Portland’s many cyclists, accessing the southernmost portion of downtown from the east side can be a roundabout endeavor. But besides providing a route for the future MAX orange line, the newest bridge to span the Willamette in 35 years will give Southeast cyclists and pedestrians a more direct route to destinations such as Portland State University and Oregon Health and Science University.

Michelle Poyourow, an advocate and educator for the Bicycle Transportation Alliance, hopes that the new bridge will encourage more Portlanders to get on their bikes and ride.

“Right now people in Southeast have to go across the Hawthorne Bridge and then cut over to PSU,” said Poyourow, who has been working closely with MacDonald on the design of the Willamette River Bridge. “This bridge will cut time and distance off of that commute. It won’t benefit cyclists so much as people not biking today.”

One detail that has been decided is the width of the bridge’s bike lanes, according to Poyourow. The bike lanes on the new bridge will be 14 feet wide to give enough room for pedestrians and cyclists to travel side by side. For comparison, bike lanes on the Hawthorne Bridge are only 10 feet wide.

“There are different widths needed for people biking side by side, and people walking side by side,” said Poyourow. “We asked TriMet to make those paths as wide as possible. Fourteen feet was the minimum we requested, and that’s what they are doing on each side of the bridge.”

Another design aspect that is important to the Bicycle Transportation Alliance is how the bridge will connect into existing pedestrian and bicycle paths on either side of the river.

“For cycling to be appealing and easy, having easy trail connection is really important,” Poyourow said. “You have to give people clear expectations about who goes where and who yields to whom. This bridge gets so much attention, but it’s actually a whole corridor project.”

On the east-side bridge connection, TriMet hopes to connect the bridge into the Springwater Corridor, a multi-use trail that winds from Powell Boulevard up into Gresham and Boring.

“We’re just laying out the connection right now,” MacDonald said. “It will basically have a 5-percent grade coming off the bridge and will connect into that trail by going underneath the bridge. It’s not completely approved, but there will be continuity between the form of the bridge and the landscape and pathways underneath.”

MacDonald will be in Portland on Wednesday to present different configurations for how the bike paths will link into trails on either side of the river. Another meeting of the Willamette River Bridge’s Advisory Committee will be held on Nov. 10 from 3 to 5 p.m. at David Evans and Associates, 2100 S.W. River Parkway, in Portland.

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Architect Donald MacDonald has some fancy ideas for the newest bridge to cross the Willamette River in 35 years. Think slender. Think delicate. Think flowing waterfalls and curving bike paths.
Or maybe not.

At a Friday design forum for the Willamette River Bridge, which will take the planned Portland-Milwaukie light-rail across the river, local architects suggested MacDonald go back to the drawing board and try a simpler approach.

“My main point here is, less is more,” said local architect Rick Potestio after MacDonald’s presentation. “The basics here are great, but they could be diminished by elaborations. At the end of the day, it’s a bridge.”

But simply creating a bridge isn’t what MacDonald had in mind. He sees the structure he’s designing as a public space that he thinks should reflect Portland’s identity.

“I’m looking at the bridge as a platform for public use,” said MacDonald. “We want to link this bridge into the community.”

A past bridge design of MacDonald’s in Dubai incorporated the image of a falcon, a native resident of the Arabian desert, into the bridge’s legs. For a bridge he designed near Sixth Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, he included six towers made to resemble Los Angeles’s numerous downtown skyscrapers.

For Portland, MacDonald wants to integrate the image of nearby waterfalls, such as Multnomah Falls, by placing water pipes on the bridge and allowing the water to cascade off the side. MacDonald also mentioned locating a public amphitheater beneath the bridge, as well as placing sculptural solar panel installations on the bridge to highlight Portland’s commitment to sustainability.

“People here have a real concern for their environment that you don’t see everywhere else,” MacDonald said.

But architect Cassidy Bolger with Holst Architecture is worried that flashy additions will overwhelm what he thinks should be a simple and elegant design.

“I am concerned about all of the different parameters that have to be met with things like waterfalls and solar panels,” Bolger said. “Are the goals of lightness and slenderness being met?”

MacDonald’s idea for a belvedere, a viewpoint that would be located in the center of the bridge, and his indicated width for bike lanes were also points of concern.

“People will not stop in the middle of a bridge,” Potestio said. “We have a very elaborate waterfront and there are plenty of amenities in place. You need to understand how much cycling has become a major form of transportation in our inner city. If you have too narrow of a bikeway, it won’t work.”

Not everyone was ready to veto MacDonald’s version of a Portland bridge, however. At least on person attending the forum spoke up in favor of being able to find a spot in the middle of a bridge to safely stop and enjoy the view.

MacDonald still has time to convince Portland’s architecture community that his design ideas are feasible; the project design will only be 15 percent complete by Aug.15, and a final design will not be ready until the middle of next year.

“We’re at the point now where we’re synthesizing all of our information,” TriMet architect Bob Hastings said. “In August we’ll be able to bring a cost analysis to the project’s citizen advisory committee.”

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