Work remains to be finished on 223rd underpass

Officials say project won’t be done until April

By Shannon Wells

The Gresham Outlook, Nov 18, 2009, Updated Nov 18, 2009 (4 Reader comments)

Jim Clark / The Outlook

Now that a new, wider railroad bridge, left, has been installed above 223rd Avenue in Fairview, Union Pacific railroad crews are preparing to shift tracks from the original bridge at right, which was constructed in 1916. That project is scheduled to be completed by mid- January at the latest. The old bridge will remain intact for about a month until it's determined the new gravel bedding is stable enough to support train traffic.

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A widened and renovated railroad underpass on 223rd Avenue in Fairview likely won’t see traffic flowing again until spring 2010.

Delays in relocating Union Pacific railroad tracks to a newly constructed bridge effectively scuttle an earlier projection that vehicular traffic would move through the passage by the end of the year. Multnomah County transportation officials now predict the project will be completed by late April, says Brian Vincent, Multnomah County engineer with the Land Use and Transportation Division.

“The original plan was at the end of the year, we’d not necessarily put a ribbon on the project, but that the underpass would be open to traffic,” he says. “That’s not gonna happen.”

Although hesitant to blame any one entity, Vincent speculates that contractor Rodarte Construction of Auburn, Wash., and railroad officials could have more tightly coordinated their respective duties.

“I can’t point to any one thing,” he says. “If I had to cite something, it’s probably imperfect coordination between the contractor and the railroad. For everything to flow perfectly, the contractor probably should have approached the work a little differently.”

A message left with Rodarte Construction on Nov. 17 was not returned by Outlook press time.

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