47 hours till Freeway Fright, 20 hours till Admiral Agony

| Freeway Fright '07 | Transportation | Utilities

The latest on the major road projects that are rolling our way like a semi-truck with burned-out brakes:

FREEWAY FRIGHT ’07, aka the I-5 northbound lane closures: We know it’s going to be crunchy but gosh, the handwringing we’ve heard on tv lately … you would think our peninsula is going to be scooped up and flung into the middle of the Pacific, with all this hue and cry over People In West Seattle Won’t Be Able To Go Anywhere. Oh well, maybe it means a few more square feet of sand on Alki for the locals if the weather ever gets nice again. Back to the traffic: WSDOT has launched this very handy new page with specifics about What Exactly Is Happening Right This Minute, schedule changes if any, relevant cameras, and current traffic troubles. We’ll have it linked prominently here on our site every morning along with specifics on what us WSers need to know before heading out (more on that tomorrow).

ADMIRAL AGONY ’07, as in, the paving that will close Admiral Way for two nights between Olga and 41st starting tomorrow night, 7 pm-6 am. This city press release has the bare-bones basics about detours and so forth; the city e-mail update we posted back on Monday has even more information, including the warning for neighbors about possible vibrations from construction equipment.

wundrgrrrl August 9, 2007 (8:48 am)

Aaaah, the silver lining would indeed be that we regain Alki if only for a little while :)

RobertSeattle August 9, 2007 (8:58 am)

I sent you an email about this as well, but West Seattle Herald is reporting that the city is going to put a STREET LIGHT at Spokane Viaduct and 4th!!!

http://www.westseattleherald.com/articles/2007/08/08/news/local_news/news03.txt

RobertSeattle August 9, 2007 (9:38 am)

Mayor (on KIRO Thursday AM) keeps referring to it as the “closing of northbound I-5” – it isn’t closing, it just has a reduced number of available lanes.

WSB August 9, 2007 (9:49 am)

regarding the Spokane Viaduct light — we are trying to get this clarified with official sources — we cannot find verification of that anywhere else online and what we had heard was that it is not the actual elevated portion of Spokane Street, also known as the eastern stretch of the West Seattle Bridge, formerly the West Seattle Freeway, that will be altered, but instead the surface portion of Spokane Street where left turns will be allowed onto northbound 4th. We have not personally traveled the elevated portion lately so if there are already signs of construction or if the temporary light is already up, that would be news to us. We will let you know what we hear.

RobertSeattle August 9, 2007 (10:32 am)

WBS,

Thanks – sounds like a bad idea to me.

John M August 9, 2007 (11:21 am)

Personally, I think that whole turn to 4th from the viaduct should be eliminated. It causes a quick slowdown for fast moving traffic. Besides, 4th is accessible via street level Spokane St from both the freeway and Beacon Hill. I do have this motto of “…but they didn’t ask me”

WSB August 9, 2007 (3:24 pm)

If anyone reading this thread hasn’t seen it higher on the page … WSDOT did confirm, it’s not the elevated section of Spokane Street where left-turns will be enabled onto 4th (heading eastbound, turning northbound), it’s the surface level. Whew.