Bend City Council makes key decision on future of planned iconic bike-pedestrian bridge
Spencer Sacks
(Update: Full Story with quotes from Bend City Engineering Director, Ryan Oster and added video)
BEND, Ore. (KTVZ News) — The Bend City Council voted unanimously late wednesday afternoon on a new shared bike and pedestrian bridge design.
During its bi-weekly work session, the council discussed a variety of projects in the midtown crossing area.
One of which is the Hawthorne Bridge connecting the east and west sides of Highway 97, ideally making it safer for pedestrians to cross.
The council has now selected a new design planners believe will alleviate money concerns, and be within the city’s budget.
KTVZ News spoke with Ryan Oster, the city’s engineering director, to learn more.
“We’ve added a couple of years worth of escalation into things such as material cost and labor costs. so as projected right now, we think we’re within budget to start constructing in ’27 or ’28,” he said.
This new design, known as a Truss Bridge type, received rave reviews from the council.
While there are concerns of where the money comes from, the city got major grants from the state and federal governments, totaling close to $30 million.
Oster added, “Just want to emphasize, because I think there’s a lot of people that might not quite fully understand, that very, very little of the funding for this is actually coming from local sources. There’s very little coming from the voter passed, GO (general obligation) bond. We used that couple million dollars in seed money to acquire the state and federal grant money. So it’s a wonderful investment for the community and requires very little money from from the ratepayers here in the city.”
While there’s still a long way to go, city officials said they are excited about the prospects of what could become a landmark piece of Bend. City officials will be meeting again in the near future to finalize the specific bridge design.