The Oregon Department of Transportation has decided to reduce the scope of a major safety project planned for Highway 26 on Mount Hood after the first round of bids came in way over budget.

The original $25 million plan was:

•  to build a concrete median barrier along a 2.3 mile section of U.S. 26 from east of Kiwanis Camp Road to east of the Mirror Lake Trailhead;
• to extend passing lanes for westbound travelers by an additional 1400 feet on each end;
• to blast rock from cliffs 120 feet high to widen the highway and make room for the new median;
• and to install fences to keep falling rocks out of the road. 

ODOT began accepting bids from contractors on November 21 but soon “found the bids to substantially exceed the funding available for the project,” according to a release sent out at 2:54 pm on December 17.

According to ODOT spokeswoman Kimberly Dinwiddie, the five bids that came in were all well over 10 percent above the engineers’ estimate.

The department now plans to adjust the project and reopen bidding in the spring of 2014. This will push the start date from April 2014 to the summer of 2014, or later.

Assuming ODOT finds a contractor able to meet the budget, the project is expected to last for three years or more, with workers on the job April through October, and substantial delays. As in hour-long delays, three days a week, between 5:30 and 7 pm. One lane would be closed during construction, and thousands of trucks would be driving around the mountain hauling rock and debris to dump sites.

But it could have been worse. Believe it or not, the original plan was to do the blasting starting at 7 am, just as the hordes of racers, campers, freeskiers and snowboarders who flock to Mount Hood in summer are starting to head up the mountain to get their shred on at Timberline. That would have been a fiasco.

As it is, the project is still likely to happen, albeit in some slightly less ambitious form. “Our engineers are working on how to address the safety needs along U.S. 26 while scaling back the scope of the project,” said Dinwiddie. “We don’t know what that looks like right now but plan to have the answer in mid-January.”

Last modified: December 18, 2013