Most of CRC's cost estimates in line with national averages
When the Metro Council considers its land use review of the Columbia River Crossing project this Thursday, some mighty big numbers are likely to come up.
A $3.6 billion project. A project that's spent $130 million without so much as hoisting a piece of rebar. Parking spots that cost more to construct than the cars parked in them.
The numbers are breathtaking. But beyond the Portland region's sticker shock is a hard reality: Mega-projects like the Columbia River Crossing are almost always expensive.
Missing from much of the coverage of Columbia River Crossing sticker shock is perspective – is the Columbia River Crossing's cost as exorbitant as it's being made out to be?
Here's a look at a few of the higher-profile cost issues revolving around the Columbia River Crossing.
More than $130 million spent so far, "without lifting a shovel"
So said the Oregonian on July 9 in a story splashed across the front page. It went on to highlight some alleged instances of cost overruns and poor contract management as the project, as the paper said, spends $60,000 a day.
Metro's role
The Metro Council has two key sign-offs remaining on the Columbia River Crossing project; the council is scheduled to vote on them both on Aug. 11.
The first is the Land Use Final Order, approving the zoning changes needed to get the project off the ground. The other is to authorize Metro Council President Tom Hughes to approve the Final Environmental Impact Statement on behalf of Metro.
The Metro Council will hold a public hearing before voting on whether to approve the LUFO and FEIS; that hearing is scheduled to start at 2 p.m. at the Metro Regional Center.
How can that $130 million number be compared to other projects?
The analysis started by looking at some other mega-projects around the country, to see how much they spent on pre-construction activities: environmental review, engineering, design, public involvement, project management and other work that's done before the metaphorical shovel is lifted.
It turns out that these projects generally cost at least $200 million to move forward.
To our north, we found that the Washington Department of Transportation has spent $263 million on a replacement project for the Highway 520 bridge across Lake Washington. That number was confirmed by an Aug. 5 Seattle Times article about the project receiving a final federal green-light to move forward – 14 years after the debate over a replacement project began.
Across town, Seattle's Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement project spent $207 million on program management, environmental studies and preliminary engineering. Preliminary work has only recently begun for that project.
This isn't limited to the Pacific Northwest. Near Washington, D.C., the Capital Beltway's Woodrow Wilson Bridge was completed in 2008. According to a spokesman for the project, planners spent $299 million on preliminary work, including environmental review, studies, engineering and other pre-construction costs.
Scott Ashford, a civil engineering professor at Oregon State University, said pre-construction costs on projects can easily start at 10 percent, and rise as high as 20 percent for complex projects.
"If you're just building a project in the middle of a field it might be less, where if you're trying to shoehorn in new interchanges and a bridge where there's already stuff built, it's going to be more," Ashford said.
Even smaller projects have sizable pre-construction costs. Multnomah County is expecting to spend about $9 million on pre-construction work on the $300 million Sellwood Bridge replacement project.
So where does that leave the CRC?
Project spokeswoman Anne Pressentin said the project expects to spend another $60 to $90 million before construction can begin, a number, she cautioned, that is subject to refinement.
The additional $60-90 million will include completion of environmental review, advanced highway and transit design and preparation of the construction contracts.
That would put the pre-engineering costs of the project at $190 million to $220 million, right in the ballpark of other mega-projects. The $130 million figure is massive. It's also completely normal for a project of this size.
$54,000 free parking spaces in downtown Vancouver
Imagine parking for free in a parking spot that cost taxpayers twice what people pay for a nice new car. That's the reality of the Columbia River Crossing project's parking garages, which are projected to cost at least $158 million – not including land acquisition for the facilities.
The garages are planned to have 2,890 parking spaces, and are designed to help support transit ridership on the MAX Yellow Line extension into Washington. The commuters the garages are expected to draw will help support the ridership numbers required to generate federal support for the transit portion of the project.
Pressentin, the CRC spokeswoman, said the cost estimates are on the higher end, projected out to year-of-construction dollars and including contingency costs.
They're still enormously expensive.
Twenty-five miles southeast, near the Clackamas Town Center, the parking garage at the end of the MAX Green Line cost $16 million, and included 800 parking spaces, at a cost of about $20,000 per space. In Washington County, TriMet's 627-space Sunset Transit Center garage, built in 1998, cost an inflation-adjusted $28,000 per spot.
Pressentin said the range of costs also includes allowances for mixed-use development on the ground floor and architectural treatments. She said the garages' costs are comparable to other projects once the mixed-use elements are removed; for example, she said, construction of the upper floors of the two garages range from $20,800 to $27,000 per space.
But in Hillsboro, the recently-opened Intermodal Transit Facility includes classrooms for Portland Community College, lockers and showers for bicycle commuters and 794 parking spaces. It opened one year ago, at a cost of $16 million – about $20,150 per spot.
That wasn't just for the upper floors of the project, that's the cost of the entire garage, including the classroom, office and bike station space on the ground floor.
Again, the Columbia River Crossing's parking garages are forecast to cost, on the whole, $54,000 per space, a cost that could go up to $60,900 per spot if the project's high-end construction costs are met.
The cost estimates for the parking garages are shocking, and figure to be even more shocking when the costs of land acquisition are factored in.
A $3.6 billion mega-project
Of course, no price tag is bigger than that of the entire package – an estimated $3.2 to $3.6 billion in year-of-construction dollars to build a new bridge, light rail to Clark County and freeway reconstruction on either side of the Columbia River.
The costs have been broken down before on the Metro Newsfeed – $900 million for the bridge, $1 billion to re-build Interstate 5 in Oregon, $766 million to re-build it in Washington, $750 million to extend MAX into downtown Vancouver and $81 million to demolish the century-old northbound drawbridge and its 53-year-old southbound twin.
So how much are other transportation departments, cities, states and counties spending on bridge projects?
Let's start in British Columbia, where the Trans Canada Highway's Port Mann Bridge is being rebuilt. Like the Interstate Bridge, the Port Mann Bridge is congested, crosses a major river and is the key freight link for Vancouver.
And much like the Columbia River Crossing, the Port Mann Bridge replacement is derided as a sprawl-inducing, backwards-facing project. Unlike the Columbia River Crossing, however, the Port Mann Bridge includes no transit lines.
Its projected cost is $2.4 billion in Canadian dollars, slightly more in U.S. dollars.
Another 140 miles south are two projects we've already talked about – the Highway 520 bridge replacement on Lake Washington and the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement in downtown Seattle. Neither include light rail, although the six-lane 520 bridge will include bus rapid transit lanes.
The floating bridge is projected to cost $4.6 billion. The four-lane Highway 99 tunnel, to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct through downtown Seattle, is forecast to cost $2 billion.
Projects don't come cheaper outside the Pacific Northwest. The Woodrow Wilson Bridge across the Potomac River, mentioned above, cost $2.52 billion by the time it opened in 2008.
And perhaps the most high-profile bridge project in the country, the east span replacement of the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge, is forecast to cost $5.5 billion. That 2-mile span, also 10 lanes, is scheduled to open in 2013, nine years after construction began.
Bridges aren't the only expensive projects. Utah is spending $2.6 billion to rebuild Interstate 15 through Provo and its suburbs. Phoenix-area voters have approved $9 billion in sales taxes to further extend that city's sprawling freeway network.
Of course, some have argued the numbers are low. Economist Joe Cortright has said the project will cost closer to $10 billion if the Oregon Department of Transportation has to widen Interstate 5 through the Rose Quarter. But that's far from a certainty.
As expensive as $3.6 billion seems, it appears to be consistent with the cost of modern transportation projects.