Replacement alternatives for the Heron Street Bridge in Aberdeen were on display at a Department of Transportation open house Wednesday at the Rotary Log Pavilion, and about 150 residents showed up to weigh in on their most preferred option.

Dennis Engel, Department of Transportation Multimodal Planning Manager for the project, stood in front of a large board depicting the four designs under consideration. He discussed the options, timing of the project, each project’s potential impact on East Aberdeen traffic, and funding. Engel said the comments he’d heard were diverse to say the least.

“I had two gentlemen, both longtime locals, look at the options,” he said. “One chose the one 2-way bridge as his favorite; the other said that was the worst of the four options presented.”

The Department of Transportation has about $73 million for the bridge project. Two of the four options fit more or less in that budget and involve replacing the Heron Street Bridge alone. The two other options would replace both the Heron and Wishkah Street bridges with either two 1-way bridges or one 2-way bridge. Those options run between $117 million and $120 million.

Some, including Aberdeen Revitalization Movement Director Wil Russoul, said the one bridge alternative would create a difficult scenario if Aberdeen needed to be evacuated. Russoul has a background in emergency management.

Several people remarked they preferred the second option on the list, called the Heron Street Bridge option. This one has a price tag of $66 million to $76 million, more or less within the state’s budget, replaces only the Heron Street Bridge and has the least amount of permanent impact on existing businesses and roadways in the area.

Aberdeen City Councilman Jeff Cook posted the four alternatives on his Facebook page Thursday morning. Aberdeen Mayor Erik Larson commented that he preferred the Heron Street Bridge option because it impacts no current businesses and “provides the lowest disruption to future planned projects” such as the Gateway Center, East Aberdeen Mobility Project overpass and the North Shore Levee.

The one 2-way bridge design, with a projected cost of $117 million, would actually route Highway 12 south of the planned location of the Gateway Center. That design would also potentially impact seven existing businesses, would create a new road from the intersection of East Wishkah and South Kansas streets to the new bridge, and require realignment of East Heron and East Wishkah streets. It would also split Zelasko Park in half.

Mobility Project

Kris Koski, Aberdeen City Engineer, was at the open house with details on the planned East Aberdeen Mobility Project, which is tackling the problem of train traffic and car traffic in the area of Walmart and along the east entry into town. The traffic revision project would provide grade separation between vehicle and rail traffic between the Wishkah River and the east Aberdeen city limits, meaning trains and vehicles would travel at different elevations. It would consist of an overpass and a roundabout to lessen the frequent delays when long trains crawl through East Aberdeen, which happened Wednesday, snarling traffic heading to the open house.

Koski said work on the East Aberdeen Mobility Project has been delayed while the Department of Transportation decides on a final plan for Heron Street Bridge replacement.

The city had just begun moving forward with a preferred alternative decided upon in 2015. With the aid of $300,000 from the State Department of Transportation Rail Division secured by the Grays Harbor Council of Governments in late 2017, predesign and planning on the preferred option had just commenced when the state notified the city the Heron Street Bridge replacement was on its list of project priorities, said Koski.

With four options on the table, each with different impacts on surrounding streets and businesses, Koski said the city felt it would be irresponsible for the city to continue its pre-engineering phase until the specific bridge replacement option is chosen by the state. As Koski put it, the city doesn’t want to forge ahead with a plan that may not fit seamlessly into the new bridge design.

Koski said he’s hoping the Department of Transportation will announce the preferred alternative for public review in the next month or two. Once that alternative is announced, the East Aberdeen Mobility Project will resume.

“Depending on what the preferred alternative is for the bridge we will adapt to it,” said Koski. He said the city is targeting the winter of 2020 to draft an application for federal funding for final design and possibly construction funds as well.

Timing is important, partially because of the proposed potash storage and shipping facility at Terminal 3 at the Port of Grays Harbor.

“In the event that site is selected and the project moves forward, the clock would start ticking on the increase in rail traffic that would happen, and that would increase the importance of grade separation dramatically,” said Koski. “If they decide to proceed with that site there will be a couple of years to construct improvements before the trains would come, and East Aberdeen grade separation would move to the top of the list.”

As for which bridge option Koski preferred, he wasn’t comfortable making a choice until all the information about each alternative was known. He did, however, outline some of the important things to consider.

“We have to have low or minimized impact on property — one option showed an entire city block affected,” he said. “We want to minimize changes to traffic flow or access that are negative. We want to have pedestrian connections and vehicle traffic movement that allows local residents to get from one side of the river to the other, and at the same time allow for through traffic going to the beach or to Olympia.”

In other words, it has to let residents get where they live, tourists where they want to go, and products to where they are shipped and received. The highway “needs to do everything,” said Koski.

Public comment

Online comments will be accepted on the Heron Street Bridge alternatives through April 12 at surveymonkey.com/r/QSYRS9W. The Department of Transportation plans to narrow the alternatives based on comments from the public and stakeholders and will make its preferred selection and hold a public review of that selection in April and May.

Keep up with the Heron Street Bridge replacement project online at wsdot.wa.gov/projects/us12/heron-street-bridge/home.

DAN HAMMOCK | GRAYS HARBOR NEWS GROUP Dennis Engel with the Department of Transportation, right, discusses the four options for the replacement of the Heron Street Bridge with one of the 150 people who attended the open house Wednesday at the Rotary Log Pavilion.

DAN HAMMOCK | THE DAILY WORLD About 150 people attended the Department of Transportation Heron Street Bridge replacement open house at the Rotary Log Pavilion Wednesday. They were able to speak to Department of Transportation representatives about the four bridge replacement options and provide written comments.