(NEW INFO FOR MONDAY NIGHT 12/12 – Closure will start 10:30 pm because of football.)

New information this afternoon in a road project we’ve been tracking for months: The earthquake-safety upgrade of the Fauntleroy Expressway section of the southwest end of the West Seattle Bridge. The city has just announced the dates/times when it will be closed so the contractor can lift sections of the bridge to install seismic-safety features. From SDOT:

The first closures of the Fauntleroy Expressway are scheduled to occur December 12, 13 & 14. Each night the Fauntleroy Expressway will be closed at 9:00 p.m. and reopened the next morning at 5:00 a.m. These closures mark the beginning of a series of night and early morning closures that will take place through June of 2012.

In numerous community-group briefings we’ve covered leading up to this, the detour plan has generated some questions. Here’s the one-sheet explaining it all. The project actually has been under way for a few months, but the first phase has mostly involved reinforcing columns under the bridge, and has not involved traffic effects. Meantime, SDOT says it’ll announce additional closure dates as they are set; project consultant Josh Stepherson had said at community meetings that once the contractor goes through the first round of bridge-lifting, they’ll have a better idea of how the subsequent ones will go.