Fed funding pushes construction start on Washington-Oregon bridge

A render of a single-level bridge, which is one of the designs considered to replace the Interstate Bridge over the Columbia River between the US states of Oregon and Washington. (Image: Interstate Bridge Replacement Program)

The IBRP said the structure will be replaced with a “new seismically resilient, multimodal solution”.

The recent grant is in addition to $600 million in funding announced by the federal government’s Department of Transportation earlier this year.

The more than $2 billion from US agencies along with $1 billion from each state puts the total raised at more than $4 billion.

The entire Interstate Bridge project is expected to cost more than $6 billion and will eventually build-out highway expansions and connections on both the Oregon and Washington sides.

With more than half the projected total allocated, pre-construction for the bridge replacement is expected to start soon. The program, however, is still in the design phase, considering four different single-level designs, one double-level scheme and a moveable steel girder concept.

Contractor and subcontractor information is not yet available, and principal construction is expected to start in 2026.

The Interstate Bridge connects the cities of Vancouver, Washington, and Portland, Oregon, with a six-lane stretch of the US Interstate 5 motorway. It’s actually two nearly identical steel vertical-lift, Parker through-truss bridges, one of which opened in 1917 and the other in 1958.

A render of a movable steel girder bridge design for the Washington-Oregon Interstate Bridge replacement project. (Image: Interstate Bridge Replacement Program)