Maintain and improve the Marion and Center Street bridges

(Updated March, 2015)

 

Why do the Marion and Center Street bridges need to be maintained?

The Marion and Center Street bridges across the Willamette River in downtown Salem have served the community very well for many decades. They are built at the narrowest point of the Willamette River floodplain in our area. The floodplain widens out to the north and to the south of downtown Salem, making the location of these bridges the best and most cost-effective.

 

In 2012 the Oregon Department of Transportation published a bridge condition report. In that report the Marion Street bridge is rated as "structurally deficient" and in need of repair. The Center Street bridge was assessed as being in "fair" condition and also in need of repair. In addition to this, we know that the bridges are at risk from a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake with a magnitude of as much as 9.0. Researchers at Oregon State University believe there is a 1 in 3 chance of this earthquake occurring in the next 50 years. The last one occurred on January 26th, 1700, and the geologic record shows that many of these earthquakes have occurred at intervals of about 300 years.

 

In 2014 State Bridge Engineer Bruce Johnson confirmed that both bridges are expected to "collapse" in the next Cascadia earthquake. ODOT has developed a plan to retrofit all of the highway bridges it owns in the state, but it has assigned the lowest priority to the Marion and Center Street Bridges. So under this plan our bridges would not receive a retrofit until 30 to 40 years from now. Maybe too late!

 

Why do the Marion and Center Street bridges need to be improved?

Aside from the urgent need for seismic retrofitting, Salem's two Willamette River bridges need to be improved. They provide a vital transportation link for east-west commuters, truck traffic, and through traffic. Currently the capacity of the two bridges can be exceeded for about an hour during the morning and afternoon commuting times. Traffic backups do occur on both ends of the bridges.

 

In order to relieve this problem a Bridgehead Engineering Study was commissioned by the Salem City Council in 1998. The study came up with a number of proposals to improve the ends of the bridges, the source of the congestion problems. For example, the study recommended a free-flowing ramp off the Center Street bridge to Front Street so that north bound traffic coming from the west does not have to stop when exiting the bridge, as is now the case.

 

There was also a recommendation for another ramp off the Marion Street bridge to a new road that was going to be built parallel to Wallace Road along the edge of Wallace Marine Park. Unfortunately, most of the projects recommended in the Bridgehead Engineering Study were never built. Were they to be built, we believe the capacity of the two existing bridges could be increased and peak hour congestion problems could be alleviated, if not largely eliminated, for many decades to come.

 

What about building a third bridge as proposed by the Salem River Crossing Oversight Team?

Since 2006, an intergovernmental project called the Salem River Crossing has been planning a new bridge across the Willamette. In 2014, the Salem River Crossing Oversight team, made up of elected officials from Salem, Keizer, Marion and Polk Counties, along with representatives from the Oregon Department of Transportation, the Federal Highway Administration, and Salem-Keizer Transit, selected a "preferred alternative" for a highway and bridge that would connect the Salem Parkway in North Salem to Highway 22 in West Salem, crossing the river at the current location of Pine and Hickory Streets in North Salem.

 

The project consultants estimate the cost to build this project will be approximately $430 million, and the funding will have to mostly come from local citizens. A funding plan approved by the Oversight Team in December, 2014, calls for tolling the Marion and Center Street bridges, imposing a local gas tax and vehicle registration surcharge in Polk and Marion counties, and raising property taxes in Salem to fund the project. This planning project has already spent approximately $7 million in nine years of planning and may spend up to $10 million (including staff time) before completing an Environmental Impact Statement and Record of Decision in late 2016.

 

Building a third bridge is a bad idea for many reasons. First of all, there is no evidence that the bridges we have, with the improvements discussed above, will lack the capacity needed in the future. Proponents of a third bridge assume that population growth inevitably causes traffic to increase. However, the experience of the past couple of decades refutes this. In fact traffic on the existing bridges has been essentially flat for the past two decades despite significant population growth in West Salem.

 

Further, building a third bridge will do harm to downtown businesses by creating a bypass around Salem that will benefit retail businesses in Keizer and Woodburn. Building a third bridge will encourage more suburban sprawl on the fringes of Salem that we can no longer afford to subsidize with our tax dollars. Building a third bridge will displace 45 residences and 25 businesses in North and West Salem and destroy the peace and tranquility of Wallace Marine Park.

 

Building a third bridge does not solve the peak hour congestion problem in downtown Salem and West Salem since commuters will not drive a mile north out of their way to avoid the congestion. Finally, the cost of a third bridge is simply not affordable to Salem residents. Little or no state and federal funding will be available for the project, so the cost will be on us. Salem residents will not want to pay tolls or see their taxes raised by hundreds of dollars a year for a project that delivers so little benefit for the vast majority of people.

 

What should we do instead?

First, we should stop wasting money on the Salem River Crossing planning project. It has spent about $7 million of discretionary regional transportation dollars to date, mostly to pay an expensive out-of-state consulting firm. Then we should immediately work with the Oregon Department of Transportation to find the funds for needed maintenance on the Center and Marion Street Bridges and to seismically reinforce at least one of the bridges to survive a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake.

 

We should also find the funds to make improvements to the ends of the bridges along the lines recommended in the 1998 Bridgehead Engineering Study. If we do these things we can solve our downtown peak hour congestion problems and we can be assured that West Salem will not be cut off from the rest of the city in the event of a major earthquake.