The Tualatin City Council held a work session on May 25, 2026, featuring two major presentations: an update on the Tualatin-Sherwood Road/Railroad Crossing project and a review of the city's 2026 priorities. The meeting also included a council round table where members reported on recent activities. No formal votes were taken, but council direction was provided on next steps.
Railroad Crossing Project Update
City Council 2026 Priorities Update
Good afternoon. So I'm Mike McCarthy. Work for the city as the city engineer. Abby McFedridge, engineering associate. All right. Well, we're providing an update on what's been happening since our last meeting. And let's see if there's user error on this. Alright. So our plan this evening is to just provide a recap on just where we're at with the project. Yeah, and how we've incorporated what we heard at our last discussion. We've been working on the existing conditions and really documenting what's there. It's an important step for going after other funding sources. And we'll talk a little bit about some of the key constraints that are shaping some of the different alternatives of what might be feasible. And we'll talk about a design charret that's coming up on June 2nd. I think it's from 5 to 7 p.m. And probably hear that again. And that's we'll be inviting input from anybody who'd want to come and give us input about it. And then talking about our next steps with the project. Can we move the pictures out of the way? The images. All right. So the area is centered around the intersection of Twalton Sherwood Road with Boones Ferry Road and the railroad crossing. Shaded in yellow is particularly the area we're looking at. The intersections with numbers on them are our traffic study intersections. That's where we've gotten traffic counts into looking at traffic operations as part of it so far. And I think we're all pretty familiar with the issues, traffic congestion, safety, walkability, noise, everything else there. At our previous discussion on March 9th, our consultant Kittle Sin Associus was here presenting their viability analysis of some of the different types of options. And they recommended not progressing basically with either option that would either raise or lower the railroad. Lowering the railroads basically no-go because it gets right into floodplain issues. Raising the railroad was too expensive. And we'd essentially have to build a new railroad for them to operate on temporarily while we build the raised structure. And then having to get it high enough to get over the road, then meet the station, then get down and under the rail crossing wasn't going to work. Timeline, we're likely looking at a minimum of 10 years before any construction would happen if one of the bigger construction options is chosen. Some of the uh surface level improvements could be done sooner than that. And it was back then it was decided to continue evaluating taking the road over the rail. So potentially a bridge of Toalton Sherwood Road going over the railroad and Boone's Ferry Road. And then to also look at some of the options that could make some smaller improvements but staying at grade, so keeping a grade crossing. For what if we just did nothing and left it as is. And to let you know what's coming up and what the public will be seeing as part of that. Some of the land uses in the area, somewhat developed, but a lot of properties that I think have pretty good potential for redevelopment and where improvements could be made. And a lot of the study areas in our core opportunity reinvestment plan area. Environmental conditions, the light blue is our what's called the 100 year floodplain, or about a 1% chance of flooding in that area. The kind of lighter beige or tan color is more like what they call the 500 year floodplain, where there's a 0.2% chance of flooding happening. And our project is right on the borderline, so flooding is definitely a consideration. The kind of striped areas are floodways, which is where water is flowing down creeks or in the river. Reviewing the functional classification of the roadways, the major arterials, and rail facilities, and what we have where and the west station to the north, the crossings. Volumes of trains running on this. And it's been harder than expected to get data from the railroad about how often they're running freight trains and when they're happening. We know the Vest West Train runs five trains in each direction during the morning and evening peak hours. We know freight trains are coming through pretty regularly, sometimes quite long.