Multnomah County updates cost, design and funding gap for Earthquake Ready Burnside Bridge

At a Multnomah County Board of Commissioners briefing, county transportation staff updated commissioners on the Earthquake Ready Burnside Bridge project and said the project’s updated cost range is $1.6 billion to $1.8 billion, leaving a funding gap of about $860 million to $1 billion.

The project team told the board the increase from an earlier published estimate of about $895 million (from 2022) reflects more detailed design, rising material and labor costs, schedule changes and national market pressures. Staff also said a value-engineering process yielded about $160 million in savings while preserving project equity goals and minority/small-business contracting commitments.

John Hendrickson, transportation division director and county engineer, said the estimate covers all project phases — right-of-way, design, utilities and construction — and includes a 30% contingency and escalation to the midpoint of construction. “We had an estimated a cost of $895,000,000 which we published in 2022,” Hendrickson said, and staff now report an updated range of $1.6 to $1,800,000,000.

Emily Milich, engineering services manager, described the project team’s value-engineering work. “We generated over a 160 different value engineering ideas. Of those ideas, 24 of them we…