Morrison Bridge To Close For 2 Weeks, Heavy Traffic Expected

The Morrison Bridge in Portland will be closed for two weeks starting Friday, July 21 as crews work to replace a plastic material the county expected would last almost five decades but only lasted five years.

There are currently only two lanes in service on the six-lane bridge. Mike Pullen, a Multnomah County Spokesman, said most of the 50,000 vehicles that regularly use the bridge have already shifted use to adjacent bridges.

The closure, beginning 8 p.m. Friday, will push the remaining 15,000 vehicles that have continued using the Morrison Bridge onto Burnside and Hawthorne bridges.

“A big impact when you don’t have the Morrison Bridge at all, like we won’t have for next two weeks, is if you’re coming to downtown on the freeway and you want to go downtown you’ll have to choose a different route,” said Pullen.

Officials also expect an increase in traffic on Grand Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

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The bridge will need additional adjustments to accommodate the new deck pouring, which weighs more than what the bridge has been used to for the past 50 to 60 years.

“The bridge wasn’t designed to carry this much weight,” said Pullen. “So we have to make a number of changes to it so it can handle that concrete deck where there hasn’t been one before.”

Pullen said the bridge's original open steel grating worked for the first 40 years before wearing out. It was replaced with a fiber reinforced polymer that the county expected to last decades.

“We’ve been patching it since, from the first year it was installed,” said Pullen. “None of us wanted to go with the same product again.”

The county entered a lawsuit and received money from parties involved in the failed project.

The east side of the Morrison Bridge is expected to reopen August 4 at the latest, while contractors shift work to the bridge’s west side. They anticipate all work to be finished in October.