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It’s just been announced that the Burnside Bridge will be shut down for five years for earthquake-proof rebuilding. WTF? It only took two years to build it from scratch back in 1926. Why do all road construction projects in the Portland area seem to drag on forever? —Matt S.
Oh, that Portland area! Why does it seem to ruin everything it touches? When I first moved to Portland, I was a young guy with a full head of hair who thought the word “prostate” meant “face down on the ground.”* Now look at me! I don’t know what you people have been putting in the water out here, but I’ve had enough.
Just kidding! (Like I would ever drink water.) I present this somewhat facetious argument to show how easy it is to conclude that a universal problem is local in origin. Long construction times are similar. Unless you’re a long-haul trucker, the examples that spring to mind will be local ones, ergo slow construction must be a Portland problem.
Console yourself; I can assert with confidence that there are few laments more universal to the human condition than “Why does road construction take so long?” (Google it if you don’t believe me.)
Why? Infrastructure construction is a complicated process with many moving parts and conflicting regulatory regimes. For example, the feds forbid working in the Willamette when endangered salmon are running. It’s hard to imagine that fact making things go quicker. A thousand similar rules begin to show what officials are up against.
Keeping the right-of-way usable often contributes to long construction times, a bullet the Burnside project partially dodges by closing the bridge to auto traffic during construction. Even so, river traffic will still need to get through. So will the Union Pacific rail traffic that passes under the bridge right alongside I-5. One doubts this will always happen at convenient times.
Finally, there’s the fundamental challenge of building a far-reaching project in the heart of a functioning modern city. Do you know where you can drill a 200-foot hole in the bottom of the Willamette without hitting any important cables, pipelines or tunnels? Rebuilding a bridge requires working around live, functioning infrastructure in a way that building one in 1926 didn’t. It’s one thing to reupholster the church van; it’s another to do it while it’s full of teenagers being driven to an out-of-state retreat—without Pastor Dan’s special Thermos.
The builders have my sympathy.
*Yes, I know. That’s the joke.
Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.