Lawmakers Move To Revive Plan To Replace I-5 Bridge Over Columbia River
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In 2013 the Washington Legislature killed the idea of a bigger, safer bridge between Portland and Vancouver, Washington. Three years later, Washington state lawmakers could take preliminary votes to revive plans to replace the aging Interstate 5 bridge over the Columbia River.
Association of Washington Business Government Affairs Director Mike Ennis testified Monday a new bridge is “critical” to the whole region’s economy.
“This project is sometimes characterized as a Southwest Washington problem,” Ennis said. “However, I can tell you that traffic congestion due to the Interstate 5 bridge negatively impacts freight mobility and the economy not only of Washington state, but the entire U.S. West Coast.”
A trio of bipartisan bills in the Washington Legislature: HB 1222, HB 2905 and SB 5806, would create some form of bi-state work group to begin planning a replacement I-5 bridge. Preliminary votes could be held as early as Tuesday afternoon.
A previous plan would have made the new span a toll bridge.The current legislation does not specify how a new bridge would be paid for or if it would have room for light rail. The politics of light rail helped kill the deal last time around.
The Oregon Legislature has so far not reciprocated Washington state’s renewed interest in interstate bridge planning.
Copyright 2017 Northwest News Network
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Less than two years ago, the administration of President Joe Biden announced what tribal leaders hailed as an unprecedented commitment to the Native tribes whose ways of life had been devastated by federal dam-building along the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest.
The deal, which took two years to negotiate, halted decades of lawsuits over the harm federal dams had caused to the salmon that had sustained those tribes culturally and economically for thousands of years. To enable the removal of four hydroelectric dams considered especially harmful to salmon, the government promised to invest billions of dollars in alternative energy sources to be created by the tribes.
This story comes to you from Oregon Public Broadcasting and the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.
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