West Seattle traffic reminder: Southbound Viaduct/99 closures

If you don’t drive in the late-night/early-morning hours, you won’t notice, but the state just issued another reminder of these partial Viaduct/99 closures the next two nights (mentioned in THIS WEEK’S CLOSURES atop the TOP STORIES list on the WSB sidebar):

Crews working for the Washington State Department of Transportation will close the southbound State Route 99 Alaskan Way Viaduct for the next two nights to continue work to reinforce both decks of a two-block section of the viaduct between South Washington and Columbia streets in Pioneer Square.

Protecting this section of the viaduct is important because crews will drive the tunnel boring machine beneath it in late 2013.

Closure details:

· Tuesday, April 10 – the morning of Thursday, April 12 – Southbound SR 99 between the West Seattle Bridge and the Battery Street Tunnel will close nightly from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. The Elliott Avenue and Columbia Street on-ramps to southbound SR 99 will also close.

Both nights, there’s ALSO a city-project closure, as also forewarned earlier – the eastbound Spokane Street Viaduct, same hours. If you are expecting to drive at that time, do read the entire city alert, because some surface/ramp changes might affect you even if the major bridge shutdown doesn’t.

old timer April 10, 2012 (8:56 am)

Regarding the Spokane St. viaduct project:
In a mailer from SDOT yesterday, we learn that on 4/12,
all eastbound traffic will be moved to the new structure to join the westbound traffic.
The lanes’ width will go to 10′ to accommodate 4 lanes , and the speed limit will drop to 25mph.
What joy.
Since most West Seattle cars do not have speedometers that register below 45, we may be in for interesting commutes.

WSB April 10, 2012 (9:23 am)

Oldtimer, just to be clear, the language is that it MIGHT happen as soon as Thursday. We have been reporting on this for two-plus months and it also was in our report last Friday about this week’s closures and changes:
.
https://westseattleblog.com/2012/04/west-seattle-traffic-alerts-bridge-99-closures-after-this-weekend
.
At one point, the shift was going to cut traffic to one lane/two lanes, and then SDOT found a way to get all four lanes onto the new side, albeit as you identify in something of a crunch – here’s our story from early February:
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https://westseattleblog.com/2012/02/road-relief-sdot-cancels-spokane-st-viaduct-lane-reduction-plan
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(And if anybody didn’t get the mailer and wants to see it – https://westseattleblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/southspokanemailer.pdf ..)
.
TR

ILoveWestSeattle April 10, 2012 (9:25 am)

It’s all good! “Late Summer” is just around the corner!
(Late Autumn, too, thank heaven, cuz that’s most likely when this project will actually be completed.)

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