The short bus lane on 99 is useless all it does is defeat Seattle’s progressive goals of pollution reduction and mass transit promotion with theoretically concurrent traffic reduction. With a bus lane on 99, EVERYTHING slows down, including the buses, because of the pointless merge to the short bus lane. The proof is in the pudding – when there was no bus lane on 99, traffic flowed freely across the bridge and onto 99. Add to that the fact that the bus lane merge on 99 creates such intense backups on the West Seattle bridge, that it negates the theoretical purpose of the 99 bus lane. All of your virtue signaling doesn’t change the fact that the bus is simply not an option for many bridge users, for a multitude of reasons you don’t need me to lay out for you. Adding two notes – more explanation on the repair work is here next public update will be during the Community Task Force meeting on December 9th.

Much of the rest of the $45 million dollar repairs will subsequently be happening beneath and inside the bridge.Īs we reported in our coverage of this morning’s briefing, the city and contractor Kraemer North America agreed to a “substantial completion” date of the end of June, and SDOT says completion of work would be followed by up to two weeks of testing before reopening the bridge to traffic. These workers are with Rampart Hydro Services, a Pennsylvania-based company that describes itself as “the world’s leading hydrodemolition firm.” Their work will be done before the platforms go up next month (we’ve asked SDOT for a more specific date).

SDOT has been saying that the first work would include hydroblasting attachment points for the work platforms, and that’s what was happening this afternoon.īefore the actual blasting, workers were measuring and marking: A little over one hour after today’s “final repairs have begun” briefing about the West Seattle Bridge ( WSB coverage here), SDOT allowed media crews onto the bridge to photograph the work.

Helvetica neue black ext