IBR is once again delaying releasing a new cost estimate for the Interstate Bridge Project. It’s an ominous sign that the cost is going to be much, much higher.
IBR leaders have known since January of 2024 that costs were going to be even higher–but repeatedly they’ve delayed releasing a new estimate.
In April, IBR project director Greg Johnson announced that there would be yet another delay, until at least September 2025– in telling the Oregon and Washington Legislatures and the public how much the IBR project will cost.
The IBR cost estimate, which jumped from a maximum of $4.8 billion in 2020 to as much as $7.5 billion in 2022, has grown increasingly stale.
Expect the total cost of the project to exceed $9 billion.
Meanwhile, Washington state has upped the amount of debt it can issue for the project to $2.5 billion, and the federal government now seems hostile to making an hoped for contribution of $1 billion for light rail transit.
A Chronology of delayed cost estimates for the IBR
In January, 2024, the Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) project acknowledged that costs were rising, and that a new estimate would be done in about six months. IBR Director Greg Johnson says “costs are going up. We are going to be reissuing an overall program estimate probably later this summer.”
That didn’t happen.
At the June 13, 2024 Community Advisory Committee meeting, project director Greg Johnson confirmed the IBR’s cost was going up again, but that it would now be summer of 2025 before they would reveal the actual price tag:
. . . it will probably be around this time next year that we will have that final process completed with a more rigorous and up to date number for overall construction costs.
So that estimate would be due in about a month.
That isn’t going to happen either.
On April 21, 2025, Johnson told the project’s community advisory groups that it wouldn’t be until September that a new estimate would be forthcoming.
We are in the process of starting another cost validation process, cost estimating validation process, CEVP, and those things are keeping some of our folks up at night to try and understand what the tariff picture will look like, what it will mean for the price of steel. There are so many variables. Once you start pulling at certain threads, you can unravel a whole blanket, basically, because there are so many things that you have to consider. So our team is getting all of that preliminary information so we can start putting a new estimate together. We’re hoping by the end of summer, right around September, that we will have new pricing that takes into account all of the variability of tariffs, escalation that we see, that we’ve seen over the last two or three years since we last did an estimate. So we’re looking at it, we’re looking at it closely, and trying to pick what is the right index that can be used to accurately project these costs are going to be.
Greg Johnson, April 21, 2025, IBR Community Advisory Group/Executive Advisory Group
What’s particularly alarming is that Johnson says that they are only now, in April of 2025, going to “start putting a new estimate together.” This is more than 16 months AFTER Johnson told Oregon Public Broadcasting that IBR was working on a new estimate, and that it would be higher.
Oh, and that isn’t going to happen either.
It appears that the shelf life of Johnson’s “right around September” deadline was less than two weeks. At the May 8, 2025 Oregon Transportation Commission, Ray Mabey, the IBR’s Assistant Director, said that the new cost estimate would take even longer, i.e. until the late 2025.
It’s a very, very bad sign that the IBR staff have repeatedly delayed releasing this news about higher project costs. Get ready for a new and much higher cost estimate, when it finally does come out. As we predicted more than a year ago, the new number is likely to top $9 billion.
More Danger Signs
There are other signs that the news will be bad. Without explanation, the Washington Legislature bumped the total amount of bonding it would allow for its share of the IBR budget to $2.5 billion. Except for one Representative, John Ley, the Washington Legislature apparently didn’t think to ask how much the total project would cost, or how it would be paid for, before autorizing a huge increase in debt.
Meanwhile, the Oregon Legislature is wrestling with its own transportation package and despite a multi-billion dollar shortfall, there’s been absolutely no mention of the rising cost of the I-5 bridge or how it will be paid for. ODOT’s financial plan for its Urban Mobility Strategy simply leaves out the cost and financing of the Interstate Bridge Project–the state’s largest single transportation project:
Big changes in Washington, DC seem likely to be a further risk to the project: Oregon and Washington haven’t even applied for the $1 billion they expect the federal government to pay towards the cost of light rail, and the Trump Administration has signaled its animosity to transit projects generally, and to blue states in particular.
ODOT and WSDOT are playing the classic Robert Moses game of driving stakes, selling bonds, and delaying the bad news about cost increases. Once the IBR project is started, once the bonds are sold, the two states will have no choice but to come up with however much money is needed to complete the project. It won’t matter how much money tolling provides, or whether the federal government comes up with a $1 billion contribution for the light rail portion of the project: Oregon and Washington will be on the hook. As far as the state DOTs—and their high priced consultants—are concerned, this isn’t a bug, its a feature.
Correction (2 June 2025|15:34): This commentary revised to reflect Washington State Representative John Ley’s questions about IBR costs raised during the 2025 Washington legislative debate on SB 1958.