Rails on new Sellwood Bridge…? City explains

By Eric Norberg

The Bee, Nov 4, 2009

Various political deals have been made to help raise the money to replace the Sellwood Bridge.

Multnomah County owns the bridge, but doesn’t have the money for the replacement — which is basically what has held up this needed project for nearly three decades. The need to replace the bridge is now recognized as urgent, which has brought in cooperation to fund the replacement from the city, the state, and the federal government.

State funding for the bridge replacement has taken the form of direct appropriation, and special legislation allowing Multnomah County and Clackamas County to enact a special additional vehicle registration fee, for a prescribed period of time — and only if the raised funds go towards replacement of the Sellwood Bridge.

The City of Portland has joined this effort by committing to $12 million a year for several years. All of these commitments which have been assembled to date have permitted Multnomah County to show the needed funding matches to the federal government to apply for a share from that source.

But, in recent weeks, the city has been attaching a condition to its part of the funding: That the new bridge be built with streetcar rails embedded in its surface.

That’s it — rails on the bridge, and no rails beyond it.

The reason, city officials explained in a public meeting with the SMILE Land Use and Transportation Committees, at SMILE Station in Sellwood on October 19th, is that it would be very costly and disruptive to retrofit the bridge with these rails at a later date, and it could be decided later on that a streetcar over the bridge is a good idea for the neighborhood.

Such a streetcar could provide access between Sellwood and the streetcar between Lake Oswego and Portland at the west end of the bridge, and to the Tacoma MAX station on the east.

Sellwood-Westmoreland neighborhood officials and residents have been concerned that such rails on the bridge could be the “camel’s nose under the tent”, by which a streetcar line could then appear on Tacoma, and/or high density zoning could be imposed along Tacoma Street, contrary to the city-accepted Tacoma Main Street Plan, or the current needs and wishes of those in the neighborhood.

At that October 19th meeting, the city officials in attendance — who numbered five — were quick to respond with strong assurances that the city’s condition for funding was simply prudent forethought — to incorporate a feature into the bridge that could be desired later — and to do it at a time when doing so would be relatively inexpensive.

Catherine Ciarlo, transportation expert on the Mayor’s staff, stated, “nobody’s going to cram a streetcar down a neighborhood’s throat. We have neighborhoods clamoring for one. If this neighborhood later decides it wants one, then [with the rails on the bridge] the facilities and the process will be there”.

And Patrick Sweeney, Senior Planner for the Portland Department of Transportation, added, “neighborhood issues will be heard, not glossed over, in future streetcar planning — [making that process] a ‘neighborhood safety net’.”

Although it appears that there are relatively few residents in the Sellwood-Westmoreland neighborhood openly stating outright opposition to the idea of having a streetcar in the neighborhood, and some clearly like the idea — with over 30,000 vehicles a day commuting on the Tacoma Street alignment over the Sellwood Bridge, many of which originate in Clackamas County or Washington County, it is also clear there are misgivings about the effect that streetcars in Tacoma Street’s traffic lanes would have on congestion.

Barbara Barber, Chair of the SMILE Transportation Committee, asked the officials present at the meeting, “how do you run 30,000 cars every day on a street with a streetcar and not have them spill out into the neighborhood, and cause havoc?”

The city officials attempted to make clear that the idea of putting streetcar tracks on the bridge as it is being rebuilt is simply a contingency, and there might never be a practical reason to need any tracks beyond the bridge.

Nonetheless the dialogue with the neighborhood at the meeting kept returning to issues relating to having a streetcar on Tacoma Street in the future. It was obvious that there was some distrust of the promises by the city that the neighborhood would have to ASK for a streetcar if it ever were to get one — and that the various related issues would be fully resolved, in that case, before proceeding.

Catherine Ciarlo promised that there would be “lots more visits to hold dialogue” about the matter. And the meeting ended with the statement by Tom Armstrong of the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability that “it’s up to you guys; if you don’t want a streetcar, we’re not coming”.

Nonetheless, the city is still tying its financial support of the Sellwood Bridge replacement to adding those “contingency” rails to the surface of the bridge.

Multnomah County has not favored this idea so far, inasmuch as adding the rails would increase the cost of building the bridge by some two million dollars — but, as the city pointed out, that is a very small fraction of the cost of building the new bridge, and it would be far more expensive to add them after the bridge is built and in use.

THE BEE will continue to keep you informed on this and other issues related to gathering together the funding and resources to actually rebuild the Sellwood Bridge. In the meantime, the bridge remains safe for drivers to use, as long as they do not cross the bridge in vehicles exceeding the posted weight limit.

And, if you would like to look deeper into city plans for future zoning, as well as other matters relevant to the Portland of the future, you are urged to attend a “Portland Plan Workshop” on Saturday, December 5th, at Mt. Scott Community Center, 5530 S.E. 72nd Avenue. It is the nearest workshop to Inner Southeast planned by the city at this time.