This week the Metro Council takes up the issue of authorizing President Tom Hughes to sign the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the Columbia River Crossing project. They’ll discuss this at a work session on Tuesday and Council meeting on Thursday. This is Metro’s last major sign off on the project.

Last week we mentioned that the Columbia River Crossing had lowered its cost estimate. Our correspondent Joe Cortright read the fine print on the document involved (the Cost Estimate Validation Report – PDF, 1M) and found a few interesting tidbits: Why do they put this out on a Friday afternoon, the slowest news period of…

Keeping you up-to-date on the latest goings on with the Columbia River Crossing: 1) The project team has issued a press release indicating they’ve shaved $100M from the cost estimated based on design refinements. The cost estimate is now $3.5B rather than $3.6B. I feel so much better… 2) Congressman Earl Blumenauer signed on to…

One of the ‘promises’ of the Columbia River Crossing project is that it would not cannibalize funding for other projects in the region. The idea was that this was a “project of national significance” and Congress would provide dedicated funding for the Federal component above and beyond our usual allocation. But as we noted when…

The Columbia River Crossing project today announced the receipt of two grants (one through ODOT, the other through WashDOT) totaling $5M: CRC received the award available under the Interstate Maintenance Discretionary (IMD) Program with a $2 million grant to the Washington State Department of Transportation and a $3 million grant to the Oregon Department of…