BY DAVID SONNICHSEN
Bridging the Future
I-5 bridge projects will have parkland impact.
I
f interest in a new I- 5 Willamette River
bridge increases as fast as its cost esti-
mates, the massive project won’t suffer
from a lack of citizen involvement. An oppor-
tunity for public testimony will come during
a joint hearing of the Eugene, Springfield and
Lane County planning commissions at 5:30
pm June 3 in the Springfield council cham-
bers. Councils from both cities will take up
the issue later in June.
During a mid-March presentation by
Oregon Department of Transportation
(ODOT) Manager Dean Fuller, the pricetag
on a temporary bridge with a 10-year lifespan
was $12 million. The new permanent bridge,
to be built in the existing I-5 corridor, was
going to cost $58 million. But by the time
Fuller spoke to the full Citizen Planning
Committee for the Whilamut Natural Area
(WNA) of Alton Baker Park on April 16, the
price of the temporary bridge was up to $30
million, and the permanent structure had
risen to $70 million.
Springfield’s Willamalane Park and
Recreation district and the city of Eugene’s
Parks and Open Space division will be com-
pensated by ODOT for use of their parkland,
although the true cost to the WNA of the
bridge and its northern extension may be im-
possible to set in dollar figures.
Alton Baker is the Central Park of the
Eugene-Springfield metro region, and the
8 MAY 22, 2003
park’s WNA is its most unique feature: Very
few urban areas anywhere in the world offer
centrally located parkland managed for natu-
ral values. The WNA’s 237 acres link two
cities, are dedicated to passive recreation, and
recognize the Kalapuya people, first human
residents of the Willamette Valley.
ODOT is poised to bid a contract for the
temporary bridge, and hopes to have the com-
land will be restored. “It’s not the old ODOT
that used to crunch through houses and stuff
like that. We don’t expect to use something
and tear it apart and not make it better,”
Fuller, the ODOT project manager, said in
April.
But this is what park users can expect for
at least the next year while the temporary
bridge goes up:
• Periodic closures to one of the most
heavily used bicycle-pedestrian corridors in
the region, as it passes beneath I-5 along the
north bank of the Willamette River. (The
The new permanent bridge, like its decayed predecessor,
is designed to fail sometime after mid-century.
pleted structure carrying traffic by September
2004. They’ve been granted the $30 million
by the Oregon Transportation Commission.
If they can convince Springfield and Eugene
officials in June to allow Willamette
Greenway exceptions, the plan is to wedge
the temporary span into a narrow space just
east of the existing corridor. A new quarter-
mile loaf of fill will carry bridge traffic north
of the river. Everything in its path — cedars,
cottonwoods, maples, larkspur and bleeding-
heart — will be cut, buried or moved. Herons
in a nearby rookery are sure to be disturbed
by the noise of piles being driven, fill being
dumped and lighting for night work.
ODOT’s plans specify that when the per-
manent bridge is completed, which might not
be until 2011 or later, the temporary span and
fill will be removed, and Willamalane’s park-
route under the freeway through the canoe
canal slot will also be affected, because that
bridge is scheduled for a similar two-phase
rebuild.)
• Establishment of an extensive heavy
equipment staging area north of the
Knickerbocker bridge and west of the exist-
ing I-5 causeway. Runners using the WNA’s
Prefontaine trail could be forced to abandon
the 1.5 mile prairie loop, or wait for flaggers
to usher them through a moving field of trac-
tors and cranes.
• Resiting of one of the Whilamut’s
Talking Stones — the Li-Yuu (“Prairie”)
stone — formerly located on the edge of the
proposed staging area. (The 11 Talking
Stones will be dedicated on May 31 in the
park.)
• Further deterioration of the undulating
road across the prairie due to heavy equip-
ment being hauled to the worksite from an
entrance off Leo Harris parkway near Autzen
Stadium.
After completion of the temporary bridge,
which ODOT is fast-tracking to end detour-
ing heavy trucks all the way to central
Oregon, the park could experience as many
as five years of relative calm while the per-
manent bridge is debated, designed and built.
A more thorough round of public hearings
and environmental assessments are legally
mandated for this process.
So let’s say the permanent bridge is built on
schedule, and everything is done eight years
from now. The temporary span and fill are
gone. We can finally breathe a sigh of relief.
Except that 50 years later it’s scheduled to
happen again. The new permanent bridge,
like its decayed predecessor, is designed to
fail sometime after mid-century. Assuming
our government is still fueled by oil and the
politics of internal combustion, can we, or
our descendants, look forward to a third “per-
manent” bridge?
Fuller isn’t so sure. “I’m an optimist,” he
said recently. “I think maybe by then we’ll all
be flying around in vehicles above the
ground, like the Jetsons.”
But isn’t that what pundits in 1950 told us
would be happening now?
ew
David Sonnichsen is chair of the Citizen Planning
Committee for the Whilamut Natural Area of Alton Baker
Park. The bi-city committee’s five Springfield members
are appointed by the Willamalane board, and its 10
Eugene members are appointed by the mayor and
confirmed by the City Council.