(Photo © J. Maus/BikePortland)
If riding across the Sellwood Bridge is part of your daily routine, you need to make other plans. The 1,100 foot long bridge is set to close from this Thursday January 17th – 24th while construction crews move it — yes, move it — to the north to make room for the new bridge. The old bridge will become the detour around ongoing construction.
Instead of building a new bridge to use until the new one is done in summer 2015, Multnomah County decided on the “Big Move” because it will save time (about one year) and money ($5-10 million), and it will have fewer environmental impacts.
Below is a drawing of the new and existing bridge alignments:
While the bridge is closed, your best bet as a bicycle detour is to use the Hawthorne or Ross Island bridges. The Hawthorne (3 1/2 miles north) has good connections to bikeways on both sides of the river — the Springwater on the east and the Willamette Greenway trail one the west.
For more about the “Big Move” see the project website.