A Complete History of the Interstate Bridge Replacement, Years 1–47

VANCOUVER — Readers regularly ask this desk when the Interstate Bridge will be replaced. The question misunderstands the project, which is not a bridge but a civic practice, like choir. What follows is the definitive layperson’s history of the Interstate Bridge Replacement, compiled from public documents, public meetings, and one desk’s unbroken attendance at both.

The early years: a bridge is noticed

The existing I-5 spans date to 1917 and 1958, a fact every subsequent document cites the way a family retells its founding grievance. In the beginning, engineers observed that the bridge was old, that it lifts for river traffic, and that it sits in an earthquake zone on wooden pilings. These observations have since been confirmed approximately nine hundred times, at cost.

The first era of planning

The region’s first modern replacement effort produced studies, renderings, and a name. It established the project’s enduring rhythm: a period of vision, a period of comment, a period of revised vision responsive to comment, and a period of quiet. Veterans of this era are identifiable at public meetings by their thousand-yard calm.

The Columbia River Crossing years

The Columbia River Crossing consumed roughly a decade and about $200 million in planning before collapsing in 2014 without moving a shovel. Autopsies variously blamed light rail, tolls, bridge height, and the two states’ relationship, which counselors would describe as “committed but avoidant.” The CRC’s documents survive and are cited by the current program the way one cites a late relative — fondly, and without accepting their conclusions.

The current program

The Interstate Bridge Replacement Program relaunched the effort in 2019 with new branding and inherited paperwork. Milestones since include a Coast Guard-approved bridge height, a cost estimate that reached $14.4 billion before the two governors proposed doing less of it, and, most recently, federal clearance to begin “construction-related activities” — a phrase this desk has framed and hung above its filing cabinet.

Answers to common questions

When will the new I-5 bridge actually be built?

The program’s published schedule contemplates construction within this decade. Prior programs’ published schedules contemplated construction within their decades. The bridge, now in Year 47 of replacement, remains available for comment and declines.

How much will the Interstate Bridge Replacement cost?

Current core estimates run in the several-billions, with the full vision previously estimated at $14.4 billion — a figure large enough that both governors, upon seeing it, proposed a phased approach, which is government for “we saw the figure.”

Why does it take so long to replace a bridge?

Two states, two transit agencies, eight local governments, federal partners, a river, a mountain range’s worth of paperwork, and a public that — per our own survey — holds unanimous, mutually exclusive opinions. The wonder is not the delay. The wonder is the optimism.

This timeline is maintained by the Bridge Watch desk and will be updated in Year 48, and Year 49, and so on.