Federal government commits $600M to I-5 bridge replacement

Last week delegates from Washington state announced that the effort to replace the Interstate 5 bridge spanning the Columbia River will get $600 million from a U.S. Department of Transportation grant. Replacing the century-old bridge is expected to cost around $6 billion. Planners overseeing the project hope $2.5 billion of that will come from federal grants. Oregon and Washington state have each committed $1 billion to the project. Troy Brynelson, OPB’s Southwest Washington bureau chief, joins us to discuss where the project stands.

Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We start today with a major update on the now decades long effort to replace and expand the I-5 bridge across the Columbia River. Last week, members of Washington State’s congressional delegation announced that the project was awarded a $600 million grant from the US Department of Transportation. It is a big chunk of money but it’s just a fraction of the total cost of the ever bigger project. Troy Brynelson is OPB’s Southwest Washington bureau chief. He joins us with more details. Welcome back to the show.

Troy Brynelson: How’s it going, Dave?

Miller: Doing very well. Thanks for joining us. It seems like there was some drama and a lot of uncertainty about this federal grant. What were officials in the Northwest expecting?

Brynelson: Yeah, it was a pretty interesting week last week because we’ve been hearing that the grant was coming, but we also didn’t really quite know how much the grant was going to be worth. And I think that that’s an important piece of context here, because the price of this bridge is, on the low end, gonna be $5 billion. And on the high end, $7.5 billion, right now. And planners are really banking on $2.5 billion to come from the federal government. So when we talk about these federal grants coming in, this being the first federal grant, there’s a lot of interest in making sure, how much of that $2.5 billion that we hope can we actually pitch in here.

A lot of the folks I heard from last week were actually hearing, behind closed doors, that it was actually gonna come up short, maybe even half. Somebody in a lawmaker’s office said that we’ve been told to be happy with any number that begins with three.

I did manage to ask Washington Governor Jay Inslee on Friday, what he’d heard, and this is what he had to say.

Brynelson [recording]: Is that 200 to 300 number what you’ve heard? I want to ask that very directly.

Governor Jay Inslee [recording]: No, I have not. I don’t have any secret intelligence from back rooms on this. All I can tell you is I think we’ve made a very strong case and we’ve got an administration that understands the importance of multimodal transportation. So I hope for the best.

Brynelson: Yeah. So lo and behold, it actually ended up being the full $600 million that planners had asked for.

Miller: So what did you hear from various elected officials on Friday in response to this news?

Brynelson: As you can imagine, there was a lot of celebration from the politicians involved. You mentioned that the announcement came from three Washington delegates. So they came out and they put the announcement out. They were very celebratory. They wanted to lay out how they brought home this money. And I think it’s important to note, because the last time we talked about replacing a bridge over the Columbia River, those talks never got out of the state houses in Olympia or Salem. So federal agencies never committed any funds this way.

When I talked to Washington Senator Maria Cantwell, she helped write the grant program itself and she said that she was confident that they would bring this money home, because so much federal funds were up in the air and this project seemed to be kind of tailor made for this grant program. Here’s what she had to say.

Senator Maria Cantwell [recording]: It’s, it’s kind of like this bridge was the poster child for some of the other infrastructure problems in the United States. And it kind of represented the kind of projects that weren’t getting done in the past. And so when we were working on the infrastructure bill, we said we needed a new category of funding for projects just like this. And so we very much had it in mind, if you will. It became a model for the national program.

Brynelson: So to her too, I also think that this kind of speaks to the hope that this program is going to be a viable contender in future federal grants as well. And locally too, there was celebration. Vancouver’s mayor, Anne McEnerny-Ogle, told me that she was practically dancing in the streets.

Miller: So $600 million is a lot of money. But what’s the estimated cost of the bridge right now? I mean, the number I had been seeing was $6 billion. Then a few days ago, the AP reported that according to some members of Washington’s delegation, it could be closer to $7.5 billion.

Brynelson: Yeah, I mean, I mentioned earlier that they’re using a range right now. So $6 billion is the number that we’ve been reporting. It’s a likely figure that planners are really trying to aim for, but it’s also an approximation. They’re ranging at between $5 billion and $7.5 billion.

But it’s a good question to ask because the project has already gotten more expensive. Just last year, as recently as 2022, planners were telling the public that it could cost between $3.2 billion and $4.8 billion, and now we have already seen this really large jump. So in the context, $600 million does seem like a kind of a drop in the bucket. But I think - this is all pretty numbers heavy - it’s important to remind folks that planners are basically assuming that we’ve committed $3 billion already. So $600 million isn’t a ton, but it brings us up over $3 billion that we’ve already got committed through state funding and forecasted revenues from tolls.

Miller: So let’s turn to that stuff right now. Where does state funding from both states stand right now?

Brynelson: Oregon and Washington have each pledged $1 billion towards the project, and they’ve done those in recent years. They were both effectively viewed as down payments for the project. Washington went first because famously, it was the Senate Republicans in Washington who refused to pay for the Columbia River crossing and effectively killed it. And they put their money down in 2022. Oregon agreed to put in their own $1 billion earlier this year.

If you talk to planners, I think those are important milestones. They needed to have this state funding ready to go to show that they could clear the hurdles that they cleared last time and now they can take these to federal agencies and say we have skin in the game and we’re ready for federal dollars too.

Miller: All right. But the back-of-the-envelope math says there’s still, what, hundreds of millions of dollars missing? So, where might the rest of that money come from?

Brynelson: Yeah, I mean, it’s a good question. There are two federal grant programs that they’re really eyeing over the next year. One of those would be actually significantly larger than the grant that they just received. They applied for a $1.5 billion grant as well. And so I don’t think we’re expected to hear about that till next year, so it’s likely that that would also be another big windfall that comes our way. And then another grant down the road that’s gonna bring in hundreds of millions of dollars.

So I think, based on that math, you’re kind of looking at a pie chart where you’re hoping that federal grants that are large and really well-funded through some of these huge congressional acts that have gone through in recent years will be able to put in a significant amount of money towards the bridge. And then that pie chart of state funding and tolls, I think the hope is that to keep those as thin as possible because those will effectively have to act as sort of a backfill, they’ll have to adjust based on how much federal funding we get.

So, yeah, it’s an interesting question of how much are we going to rely on tolls in the long run? How much do we expect planners or this project to have to go back to lawmakers in Oregon or Washington and say this is where our numbers looked out and where we ended up after going through these grant processes and now we may or may not need more funding or to adjust our models.

Miller: Well, can you remind us what lawmakers in Olympia and Salem have agreed to in terms of tolling?

Brynelson: Well, both states have agreed to tolling in and of itself. Drivers crossing I-5 will have to pay tolls, probably before the bridge is actually breaking ground because they want to start collecting that revenue as soon as possible. But there are a lot of questions that have to get sorted out before tolls can actually come to fruition. I mean, we’re talking about how much a toll is gonna cost and when will that start date come? And so the cost function, I’ve heard that it could be between $2 and somewhere closer to $3.50. But again, we’re still waiting to hear that information.

Miller: Now, are officials talking about a flat rate of tolling – meaning drivers would pay the same price all the time - or congestion pricing to incentivize some drivers to cross at less busy times, and thereby reducing congestion [and] speeding up the time that people would take to cross?

Brynelson: It’s a little bit of the same answer where it’s gonna be a little while before we know this. I mean, specifically what we’re waiting to hear from is a planning study, a tolling study, that’s supposed to get done sometime in the next year. And that’s gonna shed a lot of light on the actual mechanisms of how the tolls will work. I do know that there have been lots of conversations, like federal delegates. I think it was Earl Blumenauer who was a big proponent of variable rate tolling rather than flat rate tolling. And of course, there’s also been a lot of discussion around when you have a flat rate like that, how equitable is it? And the conversation around ensuring that there are caveats in place that allow low income families to use this without being hurt every time they’re trying to get to work or what have you. Those conversations are really strong as well. So I would imagine that we’ll have some clarity on that too, once that tolling study comes out.

Once the tolling study comes out, the next step that we’ll be waiting for is it’ll be the transportation commissions of the states, those bodies, not necessarily the project itself, that will determine what that toll ends up looking like.

Miller: What does this project actually entail? I mean, how much can we even say in response to that question right now?

Brynelson: It’s not just the I-5 bridge itself. The bridge that connects Portland to Hayden Island is also part of this project. There’s a segment of Mill Plain in Vancouver that’s also a part of this project. There are seven interchanges on either side of the river that are also part of this project. I mean, it’s not just the span or the two spans that are crossing the river that’s for sure.

Miller: Is there an agreed upon design?

Brynelson: It’s amazing because so much is in flux. I would say what we do know they produced in recent months, this like locally preferred alternative, and that lays out that this is gonna have three lanes going north and south and one auxiliary lane in both directions. And so those auxiliary lanes I’m told are gonna be roughly half a mile long, but effectively for a lot of people that means four lanes on both sides.

There will also be navigable shoulders. I cross the bridge on a regular basis and they don’t have shoulders currently. So if you have any sort of fender bender, it really snarls traffic. The widening to allow for shoulders is something that’s also been discussed. And buses will also be allowed to use those shoulders too. I think Tri-Met and C-TRAN in Vancouver are becoming proponents of bus rapid transit and that’s something that they view these shoulders as being able to cross the buses pretty quickly across the bridge and use that to invite ridership.

Miller: Do you then just call a shoulder a lane?

Brynelson:  Well, I don’t know. I mean, it’s a good question for the planners. I think that they...

Miller: I will ask the planners.

Brynelson: I think in that context or that example I was just using though, it wouldn’t be a lane that’s usable by traffic, by general single occupancy vehicles. It would be dedicated or more exclusive to buses in that sense.

Miller: And then what about the questions in terms of the design?

Brynelson: I think the big question right now is…like height is a big one, and the design. This is more of an aesthetic thing, but some conversations around, do we need this to be a single-decker or a double-decker where north is below south or what have you. But the bridge design is really the big question. The height right now requires it to have a lift. And I think one of the biggest talking points among supporters of overhauling this bridge has been that lift is the only place between Canada and Mexico where I-5 effectively has a stoplight, that bridge-lift. And so I think a lot of folks have held out hope that a new bridge will also mitigate the need for bridge lifts.

I can tell you right now that the conversations are still ongoing. I mean, the planners are still having to plan for a movable span. They don’t know how it’s gonna look, it could be very different than the one that we currently have. But right, they can’t write off the idea of needing that. And that’s because they’re talking to the Coast Guard about the height of the bridge. They gotta make sure…there’s businesses on the north side of the Columbia River, on my side, that still use the Columbia River to transport rather large projects and they need that lift, they need clearance to get their projects through all the way to the Pacific Ocean. And that’s another option that the bridge planners are having to go through right now, is actually negotiating with those companies - “Is this X height acceptable for you or not?” And then perhaps it could be those projects, this project, that helps relocate those businesses entirely. I think those are gonna be really interesting questions to see answered.

Miller: You mentioned this in passing, but I want to dig deeper into it. There was very nearly a new I-5 bridge a decade ago. And then Republican lawmakers in Olympia killed what was then called the Columbia River Crossing because they didn’t want Max trams, light-rail, going into Vancouver. Where does light rail stand right now?

Brynelson: I can say that that sentiment is still around. Just the news on Friday of this bridge getting $600 million certainly brought out a lot of people on social media in Southwest Washington who are willing to call light-rail, ‘too far.’ A lot of those same talking points that were raised the last time around haven’t gone away. But I can say that light rail is a big commitment by planners right now. They are absolutely relying on it for a lot of these federal grants. I mean, there’s one of these grants that they’re coming up with called the Capital Investment Grant. Light rail is a very important piece of that application.

So going back to what we were talking about earlier, if planners are trying to recoup this $2.5 billion and they’re really trying to make sure that they can get as much federal funding as possible, then light rail is actually a pretty important piece of that.

Miller: So what is the timing as we know it at this point?

Brynelson: I think the big milestones are federal grants coming in, it could very well be next year. I don’t want to put a deadline on it, but I’m hearing in a couple months, we could be hearing about this $1.5 billion application. And how much are they actually bring in on that one? And so we could be going through the exact same thing we did last week. And then after that, or around that same time in the spring, we’re hearing that the draft supplemental environmental impact statement is coming out and that is a big document that’s going to shed a lot of light around what the bridge actually does look like. And in particular, it’s gonna answer a lot of questions about the environmental impact of this program, which I think a lot of folks are gonna be very interested in seeing what that document looks like.

Then in the long term, officials are still optimistic that they can break ground in 2025, but they’ll say it might be December 31, 2025. That’s what they’re hoping for.

Miller: Well, obviously we will see. Troy, thanks very much.

Brynelson: Thank you for having me.

Miller: Troy Brynelson is OPB’s Southwest Washington bureau chief.

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