West Seattle Bridge Closure – Impending Gridlock

“The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) develops, maintains and operates a transportation system that promotes the mobility of people….”

-- SDOT

https:\\sdotblog.seattle.gov/2020/03/24/alternate-routes-for-west-seattle-bridge-closure p. 5/5.

With the closure of the West Seattle Bridge, our primary route to and from Seattle -- West Marginal Way SW – is already becoming heavily congested. This is during the Governor’s Stay at Home order -- before the impending release of the 110,000 vehicles that crossed the West Seattle Bridge each day.

That direct bridge crossing is now a dream, with the trip around the West Marginal Way “horn”, from bridge end to bridge end, generally taking a minimum of 25 minutes.

So add an hour to your downtown commute.

Absent action by SDOT, West Marginal Way and Highland Park Way will degenerate inexorably into parking lots. As arterials become clogged, cars and trucks will begin squeezing through nearby neighborhoods, filling quiet family streets with the traffic overload.

Former State Supreme Court Justice and Senator Phil Talmadge has sounded a needed clarion call for SDOT and our elected officials to wake up and treat this as an emergency. (“C’mon people, the West Seattle bridge is an emergency, act like it”, The Seattle Times (6/15/20) at A14).

Acting promptly. City Structures Director Matt Donahue has advised the bridge task force that the bridge is fixable. (“The City asks whether West Seattle Bridge should be fixed”, The Seattle Times (6/18/20) at A7). Trying to wait out several years of planning while traffic jams build -- and people become irate -- won’t work.

One potential solution for engineering review is promptly undertaking repairs to the bridge, simultaneously dredging and building the immersed tube tunnel segments, and thereby limiting the public’s angst to the presumably shorter period of the repair.

Why not?

In the meantime . . . SDOT: where are the alternate routes that promote “mobility”?

For an overview of Stritmatter Kessler Koehler Moore coverage of other Highway Design issues, go to www.keithkesslerlaw.com and www.stritmatter.com.