Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are those of the author alone and may not reflect the editorial position of ClarkCountyToday.com
Clark County residents are watching two very different “bridge” projects grow at the same time. One is the Interstate Bridge Replacement across the Columbia River. The other is Vancouver’s Bridge Shelter, intended to help move people from homelessness toward permanent housing. The missions are entirely different and the financial scales are not comparable, but place their timelines side by side and a familiar government pattern begins to emerge: the longer the project continues, the larger the scope becomes, the cost rises, more funding sources are added and more governments become part of the commitment.
The Interstate Bridge Replacement is the obvious giant. Its predecessor, the Columbia River Crossing, was once discussed in the neighborhood of $3 billion to $3.5 billion. When the current Interstate Bridge Replacement effort was revived, its 2022 estimate had grown to roughly $5 billion to $7.5 billion. Today, the official estimate for the full five-mile program is $13.5 billion to $15.2 billion, with about $14.4 billion being used for financial planning.
Program officials have legitimate explanations for much of that increase, including inflation, higher labor and material costs, additional design work, risk, delays and a longer construction schedule. The current project is also more than simply replacing two old bridge spans. It includes interchanges, light rail into Vancouver, pedestrian and bicycle facilities and other corridor improvements. Some or all of those may be worthwhile, but the lesson for taxpayers remains the same: time is expensive. The full program that once carried a completion target around 2034 now has a horizon reaching toward 2045, and every additional year brings more management, engineering, inflation and financial uncertainty.
Now look at Vancouver’s other bridge. After declaring homelessness an emergency in 2023, Vancouver moved forward with what is now called the Bridge Shelter. The city currently plans a facility with up to 120 beds, at an estimated cost of approximately $22 million for property acquisition and construction. First-year operating and management costs are projected at about $6.5 million and are expected to increase with inflation.
Vancouver expects the shelter to operate for at least ten years. Using that first-year operating figure without inflation, acquisition, construction and ten years of operations approach roughly $87 million. That is not an official ten-year city budget forecast, but it illustrates the scale of the obligation taxpayers are entering into.
The shelter also does not stand alone. Vancouver already operates Safe Stay communities, Safe Park, HART, Community Court and other homelessness-response programs. Police, firefighters, Public Works employees and cleanup crews remain involved in responding to the street-level consequences of homelessness. In other words, the new program does not necessarily replace the old programs. It is added to them.
Clark County is being pulled further into both projects
The Interstate Bridge is a Washington-Oregon transportation project led by WSDOT and ODOT. Vancouver has nevertheless been one of its strongest local supporters, while Clark County residents will live with the transportation, tolling and economic consequences for decades. Clark County government has considerably less control over the project than the two state transportation agencies, but county residents will still be paying attention to the final design, the final cost and the eventual toll burden.
The Bridge Shelter began much more clearly as a Vancouver project, but Clark County is now being drawn into that effort as well. The county has committed approximately $4.85 million toward the shelter through opioid-abatement funds and Mental Health Sales Tax money. A portion of the shelter capacity will also be available to eligible Clark County residents outside Vancouver.
Now another step is appearing. The Sept. 14 Vancouver City Council agenda contains a proposal to accept another $564,000 grant from the Ed and Dollie Lynch Fund, through the Community Foundation for Southwest Washington, to expand Vancouver’s HART outreach services into Clark County. That follows approximately $1.9 million previously provided by the Lynch Fund to expand HART staffing.
The latest grant is interesting not simply because of the amount. It is interesting because of the direction. A homelessness-response operation developed by Vancouver is expanding beyond Vancouver, and a city program is becoming more regional. Regional cooperation may be sensible because homelessness does not stop at a city boundary any more than traffic stops at the Columbia River, but taxpayers should recognize the larger pattern: projects expand, programs expand, funding sources expand and government partnerships expand. Each expansion creates another continuing responsibility.
Past cost and future obligation belong on the same page
Government usually presents a project by explaining what it will accomplish. What the public rarely sees as clearly is the full timeline from initial estimate to current cost to future obligation. That timeline matters because the financial impact of government decisions often becomes much larger than the original project announcement suggests.
For the Interstate Bridge, the numbers have moved from roughly $3 billion-plus in the earlier era to a current full-program planning figure of about $14.4 billion, with the completion horizon stretching toward 2045. For the Bridge Shelter, a response to a homelessness emergency has become a roughly $22 million capital project with millions of dollars in annual operating expenses and an expected life of at least a decade.
Meanwhile, the surrounding homelessness system continues. Vancouver reported that HART, police and Public Works conducted 48 camp cleanups and removed more than 400 tons of solid waste from public property in 2024. That does not mean the homelessness programs have accomplished nothing. People have moved from Safe Stays into housing and supportive care, Community Court has produced graduates and HART has connected people with services who otherwise may not have received help.
Those successes matter, but so does the larger measurement. As government investment grows, the public should eventually be able to see something else becoming smaller. For transportation, that should ultimately mean a completed project, improved reliability and an end to decades of planning and escalation. For homelessness, success should eventually mean fewer people living outside, fewer camps, fewer cleanups, fewer emergency interventions and less need for an ever-expanding specialized response system.
That is a much harder standard than counting grants, programs, employees or ribbon cuttings, but it is the standard that ultimately tells taxpayers whether their investment produced the intended result.
Two projects, two very different missions — but the same question for Clark County taxpayers: how much bigger do they get before the problems themselves get smaller?
Clark County is increasingly connected to both bridges, whether through transportation impacts, shelter funding, HART expansion or the long-term costs that follow. Both projects may ultimately deliver real benefits. The Interstate Bridge may provide the safer, earthquake-resistant crossing this region needs, and the Bridge Shelter may help many people move from the street into stable housing.
But success should not be measured by how large a project becomes or how much government can spend on it. It should be measured by eventually reaching the other side.
Two bridges. Two very different missions. One common lesson: time does not simply pass — it adds cost, scope and responsibility, and Clark County taxpayers are increasingly being asked to come along for the ride.
Peter Bracchi
Vancouver
