The Steel Bridge is a through truss, double-deck vertical-lift bridge across the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, United States, opened in 1912. Its lower deck carries railroad and bicycle/pedestrian traffic, while the upper deck carries road traffic, and light rail (MAX), making the bridge one of the most multimodal in the world. It is the only double-deck bridge with independent lifts in the world and the second oldest vertical-lift bridge in North America, after the nearby Hawthorne Bridge. The bridge links the Rose Quarter and Lloyd District in the east to Old Town Chinatown neighborhood in the west.
The Hawthorne Bridge is a truss bridge with a vertical lift that spans the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, joining Hawthorne Boulevard and Madison Street. It is the oldest vertical-lift bridge in operation in the United States and the oldest highway bridge in Portland. It is also the busiest bicycle and transit bridge in Oregon, with over 8,000 cyclists and 800 TriMet buses daily. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in November 2012.
The Oregon Electric Railway (OE) was an interurban railroad line in the U.S. state of Oregon that linked Portland to Eugene.
The Willamette Shore Trolley is a heritage railroad or heritage streetcar that operates along the west bank of the Willamette River between Portland and Lake Oswego in the U.S. state of Oregon. The right-of-way is owned by a group of local-area governments who purchased it in 1988 in order to preserve it for potential future rail transit. Streetcar excursion service began operating on a trial basis in 1987, lasting about three months, and regular operation on a long-term basis began in 1990. The Oregon Electric Railway Historical Society has been the line's operator since 1995.
The BNSF Railway Bridge 5.1, also known as the St. Johns Railroad Bridge or the Willamette River Railroad Bridge, is a through truss railway bridge with a vertical lift that spans the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, United States. Built by the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway (SP&S) and completed in 1908, it was originally a swing-span bridge, and its swing-span section was the longest in the world at the time. However, 81 years later the main span was converted from a swing-type to a vertical-lift type, in order to widen the navigation channel. The lift span is one of the highest and longest in the world. The bridge consists of five sections, with the two sections closest to the bank on each side fixed.
A trestle bridge is a bridge composed of a number of short spans supported by closely spaced frames. A trestle is a rigid frame used as a support, historically a tripod used to support a stool or a pair of isosceles triangles joined at their apices by a plank or beam such as the support structure for a trestle table. Each supporting frame is a bent. A trestle differs from a viaduct in that viaducts have towers that support much longer spans and typically have a higher elevation.
Like transportation in the rest of the United States, the primary mode of local transportation in Portland, Oregon is the automobile. Metro, the metropolitan area's regional government, has a regional master plan in which transit-oriented development plays a major role. This approach, part of the new urbanism, promotes mixed-use and high-density development around light rail stops and transit centers, and the investment of the metropolitan area's share of federal tax dollars into multiple modes of transportation. In the United States, this focus is atypical in an era when automobile use led many areas to neglect their core cities in favor of development along interstate highways, in suburbs, and satellite cities.
Portland is "an international pioneer in transit orientated developments."
The Portland and Western Railroad is a 516-mile (830 km) Class II railroad serving the U.S. state of Oregon, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of shortline and regional railroad holding company Genesee & Wyoming Inc. The PNWR includes a subsidiary, the Willamette and Pacific Railroad.
Burlington Northern Railroad Bridge 9.6 or BNSF Railway Bridge 9.6, also known as the Columbia River Railroad Bridge, is through truss railway bridge across the Columbia River, between Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington, owned and operated by BNSF Railway. Built by the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway (SP&S) and completed in 1908, it was the first bridge of any kind to be built across the lower Columbia River, preceding the first road bridge, the nearby Interstate Bridge, by a little more than eight years.
Rail transportation is an important element of the transportation network in the U.S. state of Oregon. Rail transportation has existed in Oregon in some form since 1855, and the state was a pioneer in development of electric railway systems. While the automobile has displaced many uses of rail in the state, rail remains a key means of moving passengers and freight, both within the state and to points beyond its borders.
The Wilsonville railroad bridge is a steel truss bridge that crosses the Willamette River at Wilsonville, Oregon, United States. This 1,220-foot (370 m) long structure was finished in 1975 to replace a 1907 bridge at the same location and carries rail traffic for the Portland and Western Railroad. The original bridge was built to carry the Oregon Electric Railway across the river near the Boones Ferry.
The Union Street Railroad Bridge is a vertical lift, Pratt through truss bridge that spans the Willamette River in Salem, Oregon, United States, built in 1912–13. It was last used by trains in the early 1990s and was sold for one dollar in 2003 to the City of Salem, which converted it to bicycle and pedestrian use in 2008–2009. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2006.
Tilikum Crossing, Bridge of the People is a cable-stayed bridge across the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, United States. It was designed by TriMet, the Portland metropolitan area's regional transit authority, for its MAX Orange Line light rail passenger trains. The bridge also serves city buses and the Portland Streetcar, as well as bicycles, pedestrians, and emergency vehicles. Private cars and trucks are not permitted on the bridge. It is the first major bridge in the U.S. that was designed to allow access to transit vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians but not cars.
The Willamette River is a 187-mile (301 km) tributary of the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Oregon. The upper tributaries of the Willamette originate in mountains south and southeast of the twin cities of Eugene and Springfield. Formed by the confluence of the Middle Fork Willamette River and Coast Fork Willamette River near Springfield, the main stem meanders generally north from source to mouth. The river's two most significant course deviations occur at Newberg, where the stream turns sharply east, and about 18 miles (29 km) downriver from Newberg, where it turns north again. Near its mouth, the river splits into two channels that flow around Sauvie Island. The main channel enters the Columbia about 101 miles (163 km) from the larger stream's mouth on the Pacific Ocean, and the smaller Multnomah Channel enters the Columbia about 14.5 miles (23.3 km) further downstream near St. Helens in Columbia County.
The Oregon Slough Railroad Bridge, also known as the BNSF Railway Bridge 8.8, is a swing-span, through truss bridge in Portland, Oregon, United States. Currently owned and operated by BNSF Railway, it crosses an anabranch of the Columbia River known as North Portland Harbor and historically as the Oregon Slough. The bridge's northern end is on Hayden Island, which, along with Tomahawk Island, forms the north shore of the channel. Completed in 1908, the two-track bridge is one of only two swing bridges surviving in Portland, which once had several bridges of that type, both for road and rail traffic. The only other remaining swing bridge in the Portland area is another rail-only bridge on the same line, BNSF's nearby Bridge 9.6, spanning the Columbia River.
The transportation system of Oregon is a cooperation of complex systems of infrastructure.
Waddell & Harrington was an American engineering company that designed bridges from 1907 to 1915. It was formed in 1907 as a partnership of John Alexander Low Waddell (1854–1938) and John Lyle Harrington (1868–1942) and was based in Kansas City, Missouri, but had offices in Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, British Columbia. The company designed more than 30 vertical-lift bridges for highways and railroads.
The Beaverton and Willsburg Railroad was a railway company in the state of Oregon in the United States. The Southern Pacific established the Beaverton and Willsburg Railroad in 1906 to construct a new cutoff in the vicinity of Portland, Oregon, to run between Beaverton and Milwaukie. The line was completed in 1910 and the company merged into the Southern Pacific in 1916. The cutoff, composed of two separate line segments, remains in use today.
The Milwaukie branch is a railway line in Clackamas County, Oregon, in the United States. It connects the Union Pacific Railroad's Brooklyn Subdivision and Newberg branch. It was originally built in 1910 by the Beaverton and Willsburg Railroad, a subsidiary of the Southern Pacific Transportation Company. The Portland and Western Railroad operates the line.
