Division Street / SR 536 Bridge Planning Study

For this study, the City seeks to engage the services of a qualified consultant team to undertake all elements of leading, developing, and delivering a planning and feasibility study that will provide preliminary planning, goals, guidance, and focus for a future bridge project. The future bridge project will entail either providing full Active Transportation mobility and accessibly for all transportation modes at the location of the existing Division Street / State Route 536 Bridge over the Skagit River or provide alternative means to facilitate full Active Transportation mobility and accessibly for all transportation modes at a suitable, nearby location. The key goal for this study is to support planning for the long-term community transportation needs and the financial preparations required to deliver on one or more future capital improvement projects for the bridge’s long-term future. Ideally, this study will be used to either accelerate long-range planning and programming of a bridge project by WSDOT or provide the City the planning tools needed to consider a future City-led bridge project As part of this process, the study will include identification of reasonable alternatives for the existing conditions and the anticipated future land uses and transportation needs for the bridge. The consultant team will develop and lead an alternatives analysis to identify and characterize important planning and decision factors; and to provide momentum for eventual funding, permitting, and design processes. The consultant team will also develop, organize, and lead public involvement and key stakeholder engagement efforts to facilitate the input and use of public input into this planning and feasibility study. Engagement is anticipated to require multiple methods in order to effectively implement, particularly as multiple public and private agency and organization partners of the City are significantly affected by both current bridge conditions and future options, as well as the general public both within and outside of the City. Public outreach and engagement methods will need to incorporate measures for providing language accessibility meeting current State of Washington standards for Limited English Proficiency (LEP) members of the public. See Attachment A - Division Street Bridge Planning Study RFQ_FINAL for more information on project scope and basis for consultant selection.