A shorter version of this article originally appeared on City Observatory and is republished with permission. Head to their site to read it in full, and read our past coverage of the Interstate Bridge Replacement project between Oregon and Washington here and here.
The new estimate for the cost of the Interstate Bridge Replacement project has more than doubled to $13.6 billion. The cost is expected to range between $12.2 billion and $17.7 billion. The new estimate is 130% higher than the previous (2022) estimate. City Observatory obtained this estimate from previously unreleased documents it obtained via a public records request.
If IBR chooses to build a moveable span bridge because the Coast Guard will not vacate its earlier decision requiring a 178′ navigation clearance, the total cost of the project would be an estimated $14.6 billion, and could range as high as $19 billion.
IBR’s previous estimate, made in 2022, was that the project would cost about $6 billion (with a cost range from $5 to $7.5 billion).
We now know why IBR has delayed more than two years releasing new cost estimates: it is apparent that there is essentially no way Oregon and Washington could finance the bridge. The new cost estimates create a financial hole ranging from $5 billion to as much as $14 billion. This vast new liability likely dooms this project.
These huge cost increases come at a particularly bad time for Oregon and Washington. Oregon failed to pass a transportation package during the regular session of the 2025 Legislature, and the band-aid measure it enacted in a special session generated 200,000 signatures for referral, prompting Governor Tina Kotek to call for its repeal, which will lead to big ODOT budget cuts and layoffs. Meanwhile, Washington Governor Bob Ferguson is proposing issuing $3 billion in debt to finance an operation and maintenance backlog. Neither state has the needed billions to finance this project, as they scramble to maintain current services.
Along the way, IBR officials and consultants have billed close to $300 million for their work on a project which is now clearly not affordable. And new cost estimates have added a further $1.2 billion for staff and consultant work to the 2022 estimate, with these “non-construction” costs rising six times faster than construction costs.
IBR officials continued to keep rising project costs a secret, even as the Oregon and Washington legislatures wrestled with major transportation finance bill. IBR officials had these new estimates in hand, even as they testified to a bi-state committee overseeing the project in September and December of 2025.
IBR’s New Cost Estimate: From $7.5 billion to $17.7 Billion (or more)
City Observatory obtained documents on the cost estimate from a public records request. These documents have not been previously publicly released.
In an August 26, 2025 email from Alex Mannion to John Messina, contains two attached an Excel spreadsheets entitled “IBR Program Estimate Fixed Span – 8.15.2025.xlsx,” and “IBR Program Estimate Moveable Span – 8.15.2025.xlsx.” These spreadsheets provides costing for the Interstate Bridge Project, broken out into 29 different construction packages; there are two separate tabs, with extensive detail, for each of the 29 packages that describe the basis of the estimate. The summary of all these estimates is provided in two tables.
One table shows that range of cost estimates, the most likely cost (labeled “Opinion of Probable Cost”) and a high (+30%) and a low (-10 percent) estimate. This table shows the “Base Costs” – less any explicit adjustments for identified risk factors, the “Draft 2025 CEVP 2025$” (that estimate adjusted for the specific risks that IBR analyzed, expressed in current (2025) dollars, and the “Year of Expenditure” cost estimate – that 2025 figure adjusted for inflation between 2025 and the year in which expenditures would actually be expected to occur.
This table shows that the expected cost of the fixed span version project, in year of expenditure (YOE) dollars would be $13.6 billion, and would likely range between $12.2 billion and $17.7 billion.
A second table compares this new 2025 fixed span estimate with the previous (2022) estimate. These figures are entirely in “year of expenditure” dollars, i.e. directly comparable to the last row on the table above. It is broken down by major category of expenditure (CN – construction, Non-CN – chiefly professional services, and ROW – Right of Way). These three categories make up the “base cost” estimate, which is then adjusted for the impact of identified risks.
The total expected cost of the project, in year of expenditure dollars, has more than doubled, from $5.9 billion in 2022, to $13.6 billion in 2025. The difference (delta) is an increase of nearly $7.7 billion.
What this means is that the estimator’s “most likely” estimate of project costs today $13.6 billion, is more $6 billion more than their 2022 estimate of the “highest” possible cost ($7.5 billion). The project’s expected maximum cost of $17.7 billion is now more than $10 billion more than the 2022 estimate of maximum cost.
Staff and consultant costs are the fastest increasing component of the new estimate
Overall, the total cost of the fixed span design has more than doubled, from about $6 billion to about $13.6 billion. But estimated construction costs have increased more slowly than overall costs. Construction costs are predicted to rise by about 68 percent over the earlier estimate. “Non-construction” costs – which are chiefly the costs for engineering consultants and staff time–are predicted to increase six times faster than actual construction costs, by 406 percent, compared to just 68 percent for construction. Higher non-construction costs constitute a $1.2 billion increase in total project costs.
The report confirms that the $1.2 billion increase is for staff and consultant expense and in part reflects the long duration of the project, which is now expected to continue for nearly 20 years, to 2045.
Work on the Interstate Bridge project is done overwhelmingly by consultants. A study of state highway procurement published by the Brookings Institution in 2024 concluded that reliance on consultants drives up costs, because consultants lack experience and have misaligned incentives.
. . . there is broad agreement that state DOTs have become more understaffed and that reliance on consultants drives up costs. Survey respondents attribute a lack of details in project plans to both a lack of time or experience of DOT engineers and the use of consultants. When there is not enough specificity in the plans the risk to the contractor increases, increasing bids. Moreover, whenever the scope of a project changes this initiates a costly and time-consuming renegotiation process. Survey respondents agree that such changes are a major contributor to costs. . . A lack of capacity at the DOT can hurt the quality of project plans, either from under-staffing in-house or from outsourcing to consultants with limited institutional knowledge and misaligned incentives.
Zachary Liscow, Will Nober and Cailin Slattery, Procurement and Infrastructure, July 11, 2024, Brookings Institution. (Emphasis added)
“Misaligned incentives” means that consultants have different incentives than the state agency hiring them. Consultants make more when the project is larger, takes longer, and is more expensive–all things that drive up costs. This is the classic “principal-agent” problem, and by delegating nearly the entire process of profit-motivated consultants, and failing to diligently and expertly supervise them, it is little surprise that the costs of this project has exploded.
Costs could go even higher
As alarmingly high as these new cost estimates are, the cost of the IBR may be even higher.
This is the third in the series of cost estimates for the IBR; each successive cost estimate has exceeded the supposed maximum of the range of the previous set of estimates. The 2020 estimate said the maximum cost would be $4.8 billion – the 2022 estimate said the most likely cost would be $6.0 billion, and the maximum cost would be $7.5 billion; as noted this new estimate says most likely cost is well outside the range of the previous estimate (at $13.6 billion) and could reach $17.7 billion. Based on this pattern one would not be surprised to find a 2028 estimate predicting a cost of $20 billion or more.
As we’ve frequently noted at City Observatory, the Oregon Department of Transportation has a two decade long track record of dramatically underestimating project costs and routinely experiencing 100 percent cost overruns.
Even the new estimates may be too low. In preparing these estimates, project staff were instructed to use the low end of unit costs (for inputs like concrete and steel) in preparing their estimates, which as the report notes, is not standard practice.
The fact that IBR cost estimates have been hidden or delayed for more than two years gives one little confidence in the process. In January 2024, City Observatory warned that the price of the Interstate Bridge Project could reach $9 billion. The Interstate Bridge Project has repeatedly delayed releasing a new cost estimate. As we wrote last month:
The truth is that IBR project officials have a very, very good idea of the range of probable costs of both the fixed span and movable span options. The IBR has had a team of staff and consultants working on cost issues for years: this is an ongoing part of project planning, and not an episodic effort that only happens after one or two external bureaucratic hurdles are crossed. IBR, as their outgoing project director has said, is building “basically the same project” as the old Columbia River Crossing, and virtually none of the major features of the project have changed in the past three years.
It’s also important to keep in mind that the cost estimate is not a single precise dollar amount; rather it is a wide range. The current estimate (produced three years ago) has a mid-point of $6 billion, with a range of costs running from $5 billion to $7.5 billion). It beggars belief that a project that has spent $273 million on consultants over the past seven years doesn’t have a pretty good idea within a billion dollars or so of what the current estimated cost of this project is (with an allowance for the added cost of a movable span option). The reality here is not that IBR doesn’t know about how much this will cost, it is that they really don’t want anybody else to know how much it will cost.
