By SUE RYAN
News staff writer
July 4, 2007

Plans unveiled last fall to start work on remodeling Exit 64 in 2008 have been pushed back one year.

The Oregon Department of Transportation had combined work on the easternmost Hood River exit from Interstate 84 with a bundle of bridge work projects throughout the Columbia Gorge.

For Hood River, the plan was to replace the Exit 64 Bridge and improve the interchange at the same time.

The project’s engineers, URS Corporation, had come up with three design alternatives presented at a public open house in November. Each alternative included closing Exit 63 access onto Interstate 84 from Second Street.

The City of Hood River objected to that scenario. City Manager Bob Francis said the idea of closing Exit 63 would hurt downtown Hood River and create more of a traffic snarl than already exists.

“That (proposal) to the city, without even speaking to us, was an unacceptable proposition,” Francis said. “With the amount of people who travel the bridge on a daily basis … with all that traffic feeding through one intersection, I felt they would just kill Hood River.”

Francis said he was dismayed that the planning had reached that stage without the city or other local government officials being consulted beforehand.

Steve Narkiewicz is the project manager for the Oregon Bridge Delivery Partners, which is overseeing the bridge design. Narkiewicz said the designs presented last fall were only preliminary and that stakeholder meetings with the county, city and port took place following those sessions. But he added that even last fall OBDP was not entirely satisfied going into the open house.

“We already knew at that point we needed to go back and ask URS to develop an alternative without a ramp closure,” Narkiewicz said.

He said part of the reason that URS Corporation designed the alternatives with the Exit 63 ramp closure was because of the bridge group’s mandate to keep four lanes of traffic open on the highway during construction.

Narkiewicz said they have asked the engineers to design new alternatives without ramp closures and also options that look at closing one lane of traffic on the freeway.

Because of the June 21 decision to re-design alternatives, the project will be pushed back an entire year. While the delay might only take 60 to 90 days to re-develop alternatives, the timing affects the typical summer construction season.

Agency spokesman Dave Thompson explained with ODOT’s bid let system, bids are generally granted in the spring. The bid let date is now for October 2008.

“So we would have to skip ahead a year,” Thompson said.

That would mean no fix in the works before 2009 for Exit 64. Both Hood River County and the Port of Hood River said the situation needs to be taken care of sooner rather than later.

“Obviously we would like to see it happen as quickly as possible and are disappointed with any delay,” said Dave Meriwether, county administrator. “The situation down there is not getting any better.”

Meriwether did say he was appreciative of the three-way stop that ODOT has since installed and believes it is helping with the backup issue on the interstate.

The Port of Hood River opened its four-lane toll plaza Friday morning, which is a factor that Executive Director Michael McElwee said should aid congestion in the area. He thinks that it is better to move more quickly at Exit 64 but that it is a complex project.

While the request would push the project back an additional year, Francis said the wait would be worth it to ensure it is done right.