A bleak financial picture is prompting Portland officials to reconsider their support for a new 12-lane bridge spanning the Columbia River.

Portland Mayor Sam Adams on Friday suggested scaling back the size of the new bridge from 12 lanes to as few as six. Adams and Metro Council president David Bragdon noted that Oregon's legislature has been unconvinced of the value of the project.

"We're under the gun financially here," Bragdon said during a project sponsors meeting in Vancouver.

The sponsors council previously endorsed a 12-lane bridge.

"Given the financial realities we face, I think we need to change that to six to 10 (lanes)," Adams said.

The current twin spans have six lanes, but Adams said a replacement would eliminate the current drawbridges while also improving interchanges north and south of the Columbia River.

To pare back the cost of the project, engineers for the bistate crossing office outlined a series of adjustments, such as delaying or excising interchange improvements associated with the overall corridor improvement. The bridge itself will cost between $800 million and $900 million, with interchange improvements on the five miles from state Highway 500 and Portland's Columbia Boulevard accounting for the rest of the $3.2 billion price tag.

Engineers assumed the bridge will stay at 12 lanes. Other members of the sponsors council indicated they are reluctant to scale back the bridge width now.

The shaky financial picture prompted project sponsors to revisit another touchy issue Friday: bridge tolls.

Federal officials have been unbending in their expectation for a sizable local contribution to the project, including state funding and tolls. Crossing officials are considering a variety of tolling scenarios with costs ranging from $1 to $6 depending on the time of day. They're also considering the possibility of tolling both I-5 and Interstate 205.

Adams won't accept a new bridge across the Columbia River without tolls to control congestion on Interstate 5.

"If there are not tolls on this project, I don't see a project that I can support in the future," said Adams, who sees variable pricing as a way to reduce rush-hour traffic. "If all that congestion comes to north Portland, then I need to look at a much smaller bridge to support — like three lanes each way."

C-Tran board member Tim Leavitt, a Vancouver city councilman who serves on the project sponsors council with Vancouver Mayor Royce Pollard, has made his opposition to bridge tolls a centerpiece of his mayoral campaign.

In an interview afterward, Leavitt said he intends to press for the federal government to pick up the cost of the $3.2 billion project. "Tolls are still not on the table for me," he said. When pressed to say whether he'd rule out supporting a new bridge if a toll became unavoidable, Leavitt indicated he wouldn't go that far.

"I'm not an obstructionist," he said.

He added that he recently sent a letter to President Barack Obama, calling for an increased federal commitment to reducing a major pinch point on the West Coast's major north-south thoroughfare.

Pollard emphasized that, without a new crossing, burgeoning traffic congestion will choke the region's economy.

"We have to get beyond the politics of this whole thing and face reality," Pollard said in an interview afterwards. "It's naive to think we could build this bridge without tolls. We ought to be working together to get those tolls as low as possible."