West Seattle’s next major road project, the Fauntleroy Expressway seismic retrofit, is getting closer to construction. This involves the southwesternmost section of the West Seattle Bridge. Since our last update in January, the timetable moved further back into the year, but the city is now starting to make the rounds to get the word out, beginning with tomorrow night’s meeting of the Junction Neighborhood Organization. We had been working on an update, and here’s what we found out from SDOT: The project includes steel-column jacketing, reinforced-concrete “girder seat extensions,” reinforced-concrete footings, and bearing pads. It went out to bid in March; CA Carey Construction is the winning bidder, at $2,388,477, which SDOT says is more than $100,000 under their estimated cost. The money comes from the 2006 Bridging the Gap levy. There will be traffic effects, but the city says mostly during off-hours:

When construction begins traffic operations on the Fauntleroy Expressway will be unaffected during the day, especially during the a.m./p.m. rush hours. However, in order to make some of the necessary seismic improvements, we will close segments of the Fauntleroy Expressway and its on-/off-ramps periodically throughout the project. Those closures will occur during the night, early morning and weekend hours.

During closures:
* A minimum of one on-ramp and one off-ramp to and from the Fauntleroy Expressway/West Seattle Bridge will always remain open.
* The Delridge Way SW on- and off-ramps will be open.
* Signed detour routes will be posted and utilize existing arterials to minimize residential cut-through traffic.
* Uniformed police officers will be used, at times, to keep traffic moving.

“Significant construction activity” is expected to start in September and to last through the first quarter of 2012. You can find out more during the presentation at tomorrow night’s Junction Neighborhood Organization meeting (6:30 pm at Ginomai, southwest corner of 42nd/Genesee).