Multnomah County’s endeavor in downtown Portland to test a potential foundation design for a new, seismically resilient Burnside Bridge has proven successful, officials said Friday.
County crews drilled a 10-foot-wide, 125-foot-deep hole in the earth near Tom McCall Waterfront Park and filled that pit with steel cages and concrete to model the foundations that will be used to support the new bridge. Officials announced in March that the bridge rebuild would be delayed until at least 2028 due to uncertainty in federal funding.
“This work was an important step before construction, to help engineers understand and verify how designs for the new Burnside Bridge foundations will interact with the soil,” the county said in a press release…