VANCOUVER, Wash. — If the push to replace the aging I-5 bridges that connect Portland and Vancouver can be said to have champions in Congress, Washington's two U.S. senators sit atop that short list. On Wednesday, Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell paid a visit to Vancouver in order to meet with organizers behind the project and discuss their efforts to secure federal funding.
Those efforts have already paid off. In mid-December, the project won $600 million from the federal Mega Grant program, which was the full amount requested by the Interstate Bridge Replacement team. But that's just the first of several dominoes that the project will need to topple in order to get the federal funding it needs — about $2.5 billion, all told.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Federal funding begins to flow to Interstate Bridge replacement project with $600M grant
Luckily, some of those dominoes are ones that Murray and Cantwell helped to set up in the first place — and ones they're helping to knock down.
Both lawmakers are particularly well-positioned to make things happen for Pacific Northwest infrastructure projects like the IBR. Cantwell chairs the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, while Murray chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee. Together, they had a great deal of say on what components received funding through the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, including several of the grant programs that the IBR now competes for.
With Mega Grant funding in the bag, the IBR is now angling for funding from the Bridge Investment Program and the Federal Transit Administration's Capital Investment Grants Program.
Current estimates put the total price tag for the IBR between $6 billion and $7.5 billion, and it could go higher. Both Washington and Oregon have pledged $1 billion apiece, on top of the combined $200 million they've already contributed. If the IBR succeeds in getting the $2.5 billion in federal funding project organizers hope to secure, the balance — $1.2 billion, conservatively — will be raised by tolling on the bridges, both old and new.
Sens. Murray and Cantwell arrived for their visit at noon Wednesday, beginning with a tour of the Interstate Bridge itself. After that, the lawmakers retired to the IBR offices for a roundtable discussion on the project and its upcoming funding hurdles. The Story's Pat Dooris had a chance to talk briefly with each of the senators about the project and what they still hope to accomplish.
For whom the bridge tolls
Tolling will inevitably be the most unpopular aspect of the Interstate Bridge Replacement project for the thousands of commuters and freight operators who take I-5 over the Columbia River every day. Unsurprisingly, it's not something that most lawmakers want to enthusiastically endorse. But could it actually be avoided?
Sen. Maria Cantwell said tolling will be the province of Vancouver Mayor Anne McEnerny-Ogle and other local leaders, not herself.
"I'm leaving that to the mayor," Cantwell told Dooris. "You know, personally, I think it's a very important corridor that you want it to flow as unimpeded as possible, and that's why we've worked hard on things, like freight and others, to improve that. But I'll leave that to the mayor and the region."
"On our show, we call that a pivot, ma'am," Dooris replied.
But Cantwell insisted that it's not a pivot — the decision shouldn't be up to senators. But if she had her druthers, perhaps tolling would not be on the table.
"They're the impacted people, and they need to make the decision," Cantwell said. "I think you should leave it as unimpeded as possible."
Cantwell suggested that there may be options to build the bridge without tolling, although she didn't elaborate on what those plans would look like.
Greasing the cables
The way things are shaping up, the IBR project is much more than an effort to replace the aging I-5 bridge, half of which is more than a century old. If it gets to the finish line, something both senators insist will happen, organizers want the new crossing to feature a total of three new bridges and seven revamped interchanges.
Like the current Interstate Bridge, the new version would have separate spans for northbound and southbound traffic, but would also include a bridge from the Oregon side over to Hayden Island.
Taking a tour of the current bridge, walking along a catwalk as traffic whizzes by at freeway speeds, is a bracing experience. Dooris joined the lawmakers as they walked across the bridge and went up into the mechanical room, where the motors that raise and lower the draw bridge sit in wait for a sufficiently tall ship.
Within that little room, the floor shook beneath the tour group's feet near constantly as cars and trucks crossed the bridge below. Dooris asked Marc Gross, the bridge manager, how the vibration and shaking impact the steel that makes up the bridge.
"The steel handles it just fine," Gross said. "The electronics don't like the vibration, but the steel ... you want to feel vibration with steel because the bridge needs to be flexible, and it's designed to be flexible."
Gross later showcased the grease that is used to coat the bridge's massive steel cables. Together, the cables stretch 6.5 miles long. It costs $40,000 per year just to purchase this specialized grease.
When it comes to funding the new bridge, the two senators from Washington were adamant that the IBR will get federal funding, even have it in spades.
"I can just tell you from the federal side that we are going to do everything we can to try and meet the estimate of what we need," Sen. Patty Murray said. "When Sen. Hatfield and I first started this, I think it was estimated at $2 billion, and look what time has done to us. So, yes, prices have increased; inflation has increased. This project is not gonna get any cheaper and that bridge is not gonna get any safer, so we're gonna do everything we can to meet the goals that we can."
Cantwell was even more direct. She said that there are billions of dollars still available in the federal Mega Grant fund, which she played a key role in creating in 2021. Those funds were set aside to help build things that will help the economy of entire regions. Now that the federal government is in for a penny, it's in for a pound.
"I would just say that the $600 million out of basically $5 billion shows that the federal government was committed. And so they're in now. They're in. And so once they're in, they're gonna want to see it done," Cantwell said. "So, out of the $12 billion we put into the bridge program, about a few billion — I think we still have about $9.5 billion left in that. ... as long as we answer these questions about how we're going to decrease the commuting time, which is true and it's a huge value; how we're gonna move freight, which is a huge value; how we're going to make this corridor, which goes all the way from Canada to Mexico, more efficient for our whole country.
"My sense is they're going to say yes to the bridge program, and it's going to be somewhere in the neighborhood."