This bridge over the Columbia River was always meant to carry streetcar tracks from Portland to Vancouver—it was specifically engineered to carry the extra weight of the cars—but the actual process was anything but easy.

The original plans for the bridge called for double-track all the way along the Union Avenue approach from Columbia Boulevard to the bridge, but the Portland Railway, Light & Power Company considered this to be too expensive to build. At the time, unregulated jitney cars were taking a lot of business away from streetcars and the very future of the company was in doubt as they hemorrhaged money. Reports estimated jitney-related losses at over $1000 (or 20,000 five-cent fares) every day for the previous two years, and the company’s share prices were plummeting. Faced with this uncertain future, the company wanted to spend as little money as possible to make their connection to the bridge and asked the Columbia River Interstate Bridge Commission if they could simply use their existing Vancouver line right-of-way as a short-term measure. The Commission reluctantly agreed. This “temporary” connection remained in use until the end of streetcar service over the bridge in 1940.

Matters weren’t any easier on the Vancouver side of the bridge. Seeking another economical solution, PRL&P asked for a franchise from the City of Vancouver where their track would have simply looped around their electrical substation directly adjacent to the bridge. This loop would have required only about 100 feet of right-of-way acquisition on First Street; PRL&P owned the rest of the property required. However, the Vancouver City Council insisted on a connection with the local streetcar lines of the North Coast Power Company at Third and Main streets. Both streetcar companies cried poor (the Vancouver traction concern was in an even more parlous financial state than PRL&P) and an impasse formed. The city refused to grant a franchise without a connection between the two systems, and both companies refused to pay for the track work needed to make it happen.

Finally, with the opening of the bridge just two months away, the bridge commission stepped in and allocated funds from the bridge bonds to pay for construction of half of the streetcar loop from the bridge to Third and Main. PRL&P paid for the rest of the construction at a cost that was now acceptable to them. The whole deal was almost certainly illegal, tenuously redefining the streets affected as “bridge approaches” and bypassing the requirement for competitive bids for such work, but everyone seemed to turn a blind eye as it got them the result that they were after.

Streetcar service was inaugurated over the bridge on its opening day, February 14, 1917, but the Vancouver loop wasn’t put into full service until April when new dual-gauge switches were installed. It is worth noting that the track over the bridge had a common-user clause: any streetcar company was permitted to cross the river and the track on the bridge was dual-gauge to handle such situations. As it happened, the standard-gauge Vancouver system never crossed the bridge into Portland, much to the ire of local residents who had been led to believe that it would happen.

Streetcars stopped running over the bridge on September 2, 1940 and the Vancouver line was completely abandoned six days later when the summer season at the Jantzen Beach amusement park ended. It is said that streetcar track is still embedded under the road surface of the original 1917 bridge, though I have not come across any supporting evidence for this myself.

Lines Served

• Vancouver (1888–1940)

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