Report on new I-5 Bridge environment impact released

The effort to replace the century-old Interstate 5 Bridge reached a key milestone Friday with the release of the final report on the project’s environmental and community impacts.

The 944-page report responds to about 9,100 public comments and includes technical studies that show the impacts of replacing the current I-5 Bridge, extending light rail trains from Portland to Vancouver, adding an express bus shoulder lane, improving bicycling and pedestrian access, and modifying seven highway interchanges within a 5-mile corridor that stretches from Victory Boulevard in North Portland to state Highway 500 in Vancouver.

The final impact statement also includes the Interstate Bridge Replacement Program’s preferred design elements:

• A single-level, fixed-span bridge as opposed to a proposed double-decker configuration.
• One auxiliary lane in each direction on the new bridge spans, described in the report as a way to “reduce overall environmental impacts while improving transportation operations and safety.”
• Ramps at C Street in Vancouver. Program leaders said in the report that although removing the ramps from the design came with cost savings and reduced visual impacts, they felt it was important to build the C Street ramps to help reduce traffic impacts in Vancouver.
• Up to five Park & Ride facilities to accommodate a combined 1,270 vehicles.

The program’s preferred design calls for a centered I-5 alignment that would spare a few downtown Vancouver properties, including low-income residential housing at the historic Normandy Apartments.

A previously considered “westward shift” option “would notably increase acquisition resulting in the displacement of an additional three businesses with approximately 140 employees and 33 residential units,” program leaders said in an online overview.

Shifting the highway to the west would reduce impacts to the Vancouver National Historic Reserve, program leaders said, but also require the removal of the Normandy Apartments building.

“While some public comments noted the reduced impacts to the Historic District from the westward shift design option, others raised concerns about its effects on safety, congestion and increased residential and business displacements,” the online overview said.

The bridge replacement program’s preferred I-5 highway alignment in Vancouver still will require property acquisitions but does not include the multifamily housing displacements.