Port to hold bridge replacement meetings in HR, WS next week

“This meeting … is really an example of the types of meetings that the port is hosting to increase opportunities for the public,” said Project Director Kevin Greenwood of Tuesday’s work session.

The work session will consist of a presentation by Rick Gobeille, a traffic specialist with Stantec Corporation, which is based in New York City.

“(Traffic & Revenue, or T&R) studies are very expensive, some costing more than $1 million, but are necessary for obtaining financing of large transportation projects,” Greenwood said. “It’s critical that elected officials and the public understand why T&R studies are important and how they can effect the revenue generated to support bonding requirements for bridge financing.”

Thursday’s meeting will be the second for the EIS Working Group, which consists of stakeholders from both sides of the river, with the intent to serve as communicators between consultants and communities while the final EIS and other National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requirements are completed.

The group held its first meeting on Nov. 8 and intends to meet once per quarter until the end of the NEPA process.

“I think that we’ve got something that’s going to make sense,” Greenwood said at a Nov. 6 port commission meeting. “We’re looking more for a consensus-based structure … and really, I think the route that is going to allow that consensus structure to be successful is all the preliminary studies and reports that have already been completed.”

Greenwood recently learned that the project will be allowed a scaled-down version of the full supplemental EIS — which will be quicker to complete and thus cuts several months off of the replacement project as a while.

“Now we know the strategy for the level of analysis,” Greenwood said at a Feb. 5 Port Commission meeting, “but because of that, we’re going to have to create a new schedule.”

Greenwood said he should have an updated project schedule ready later this month.

Even so, it will still be years until a replacement bridge is operational, and work has to be done to maintain the current bridge.

Upcoming maintenance projects include upgrading the lift span skew system — which “keeps me from being able to raise one end of the bridge without the other,” said Facilities Manager John Mann — and involves stringing new cables and replacing span drive motors.

“We’re looking at four weeks (of single-lane closures) on the bridge, which is a long time for us, but it’s limited,” he said. That project will commence once parts have been delivered, likely mid to late March, Mann said.

The second project, portal truss and steel repair, is significantly more intensive and requires an estimated 25 consecutive days of night closures, 9 p.m. to 5 a.m.

“I really doubt we’ll see it go the full 25 day duration,” Mann said, adding that the project will go out to bid in the next week or so.

During night closures, construction crews will coordinate with the port’s emergency phone line and police dispatch to get emergency vehicles across the bridge.

Some of the commissioners expressed concern about the closures affecting harvest season, as welding projects negatively impacted the pear harvest last year. Mann assured that both maintenance major projects should be done by June 1, and welding should be done by the end of July, in advance of the pear harvest in August.