Braun opposes light rail on bridge without voters’ say

Light rail promises to be a wedge issue in the hotly contested race for Washington’s 3rd Congressional District.

State Senate Minority Leader John Braun, R-Centralia, one of eight candidates challenging Democratic incumbent Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, recently came out against a long-standing plan to bring light rail from Portland to Vancouver on a new Interstate 5 Bridge.

In an April 29 op-ed for The Center Square, a right-leaning news site, Braun argued the Interstate Bridge Replacement Program should add more car lanes to the replacement bridge spans and delay light rail transit until Clark County voters have a say in the matter.

“The people who will be taxed for light rail need to say ‘yes,’ and their rights must be respected,” wrote Braun and his co-author, state Sen. Jeff Wilson, R-Longview. “We can make the bridge ‘light rail ready,’ but who says the trains need to roll from day one? … Until the people of Clark County say yes to light rail, let’s not force it on them.”

His op-ed came a little more than two weeks after the Vancouver City Council unanimously approved a resolution asking the bridge replacement project to extend TriMet’s MAX to a stop near Evergreen Boulevard in downtown Vancouver, where it would connect with C-Tran’s bus system. C-Tran officials were set to vote on a similar resolution Tuesday evening.

The resolutions are a response to bridge project leaders’ March 17 announcement that rising costs will force a phased approach to construction and delay light rail’s planned extension to Evergreen Boulevard. Project administrators said the cost escalations are due to schedule delays, tariffs and a 58 percent increase in labor and material costs.

The bridge project is now expected to cost $14.4 billion. It has $6.6 billion in committed and expected funding, including a prospective $1 billion Federal Transit Administration grant that requires the project include high-capacity transit like light rail or a dedicated bus rapid transit system.

Operating and maintaining light rail and express buses coming across the replacement bridge will cost about $10.3 million a year in 2035 dollars, project leaders told local officials in 2025. Oregon taxpayers would foot more than half that bill, they said, while Washington would cover a little more than $4.12 million a year. Fares paid by riders are expected to pay for around 10 percent of the costs.

C-Tran officials have not yet said how they will fund the future operations and maintenance costs, but the solution could include sales tax revenues, which account for around 85 percent of C-Tran’s overall funding. And about 80 percent of that is collected within Vancouver city limits and the surrounding urban area.

“This is a bridge project, not a light rail project,” Braun and Wilson wrote in their op-ed. “And the only way this works is if we put light rail on hold until it makes sense for everyone — most importantly, the people of Clark County who would be taxed for light rail operations, and who have voted against it three straight times.”

On Nov. 6, 2012, 56.6 percent of Clark County voters rejected a 0.01 percent sales tax increase to fund a light rail extension over the bridge and pay for operations and maintenance costs connected to C-Tran’s bus rapid transit project on Fourth Plain Boulevard. (The Fourth Plain Vine launched in 2017, even without that funding, and quickly became the transit agency’s most popular route with more than 1 million boardings a year.)

In response to a Nov. 5, 2013, advisory measure, 68.3 percent of voters agreed the Clark County Board of Commissioners (now the Clark County Council) should oppose any light rail project that did not first get voter support.

Braun and Wilson referenced this vote in their op-ed, but bridge replacement leaders have said the 2013 advisory vote only applied to the Clark County Board of Commissioners, not to the bistate bridge replacement program.

“The National Environmental Policy Act process does not require voting as a form of public involvement,” according to the program.

The bridge replacement bridge plan approved in 2022 by the cities of Vancouver and Portland, C-Tran, TriMet, the ports of Portland and Vancouver and regional planning agencies in Washington and Oregon includes a mix of TriMet light rail trains and C-Tran express buses.

Perez has helped the Interstate Bridge Replacement Program secure $2 billion in funding. In January, she called on the U.S. Coast Guard to approve the program’s preferred fixed-span bridge configuration instead of requiring another moveable span, often referred to as I-5’s only stoplight.

“Unfortunately, the design process is managed by a number of non-federal agencies I do not directly negotiate with, but I’ve been consistent in my twin positions: that the best bridge is the bridge that gets built and working families did not ask for bells and whistles in the design process,” Perez said in a statement emailed Monday.

Perez also said she encourages efforts “to control costs and faithfully represent the interests of the entire community.”

Another of Perez’s primary election challengers, Vancouver Democrat Brent Hennrich, called the I-5 Bridge replacement a top priority.

“I want to make sure I do everything I can to get additional funding. The state and local lawmakers and (U.S. Sens.) Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray have been working on this for 15 years,” Hennrich said during a May 2 question-and-answer session at the Vancouver Community Library.

Hennrich said he would avoid any last-minute changes to the bridge project that could cause more construction delays. Vancouver Mayor Anne McEnerny-Ogle warned in 2025 that project delays tack nearly $1 million a day onto the total cost.

“I want to make sure that I’m helping local lawmakers, to give them the funding needed to get that necessary infrastructure project going and completed,” Hennrich said. “I’m trying to know my place on this project and not meddle with it.”

Braun’s campaign manager said he was unavailable to comment.