This is the current bridge. As you can see it's a drawbridge and has essentially reached the end of its functional life span. I got stuck on the bridge one night when the lift span was up for 30 minutes. Everybody was out of their cars and talking. It was kind of funny but seriously, there are no merge lanes at the on-ramps on the north and south ends so merging traffic causes huge back-ups. The 5 mile stretch from I-405 to the Interstate Bridge will sometimes take upwards of 30 minutes in bad traffic.
This is the article from the KATU website:
Bicycles, pedestrians and light rail get their own lanes in an agreed-upon design for a new Interstate 5 bridge over the Columbia River between Portland and Vancouver.
The bridge will have six lanes in each direction, but not in the usual configuration.
Six of those lanes will go all the way from Vancouver to north Portland.
The other six lanes are called “add-drop lanes” and will help traffic merge, enter and exit the highway.
The proposed bridge itself will be twice as wide as the current twin span, which was initially built in 1917. A matching sister span was added in the 1950s, doubling capacity.
During rush hours, the bridge is a traffic bottleneck. Accidents or bridge lifts to allow boats to pass can bring traffic to a halt.
The decision came Friday during a meeting of the “project sponsors council,” which is made up of mayors of Portland, Vancouver, and various other state and local transit and transportation agencies.
It is the final decision on the amount of lanes for the bridge, which has been moving through the planning stages for many months.
However, there are a lot more decisions to be made on other specific features and design issues.
One feature agreed on is that it will be a toll-supported span and will likely use electronic toll collection rather than booths and currency collection.
The earliest construction could start is 2010.