West Seattle Bridge traffic alert: Stalled car

Thanks to Bradly for the heads-up on a stalled car in the eastbound center lane on The Bridge – one of the bridge cams was even pointed at it when we took the screengrab above. (For the latest version, refresh the page and look at the “Traffic and Weather” view of the bridge atop the right sidebar – also note that if you click the bridge visual, it’ll take you to the WSB Traffic page with more cameras, and if you click the temperature icon below it, it’ll take you to our experimental – more features to be added, as we check how well the current ones work – WSB Weather page.)

Leo September 9, 2011 (8:44 am)

I don’t understand why the police don’t move stalled cars off the road as quickly as possible. When I passed this stalled car, the officer was involved in a long conversation with the driver, meanwhile thousands of commuters are piled up on the bridge. The first priority should be to get traffic moving again, not to engage in protracted conversations.

bridge to somwhere September 9, 2011 (10:07 am)

@Leo: I agree. Police cars have a special high-rise bumper meant for pushing vehicles out of the way. The one problem is that this kind of pushing typically slightly damages the fragile plastic-covered bumpers of modern cars. This will cost the owner of the stalled car a few hundred or more dollars to fix. But, as you rightly point out, this particular stall causes thousands of cars to get backed-up, resulting in an additional 20 or so minutes of commuting for those thousands of drivers (myself included). So from a purely economic perspective, a few hundred in damages to a car’s bumper is a drop in the bucket compared to the money wasted by not moving the car off the road and letting thousands of West Seattleites get to work on time.
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The policy on the West Seattle Bridge and any freeway should be to first and foremost move any stalls out of the way of traffic for public safety and ease-of-commuting purposes.

bridge to somwhere September 9, 2011 (10:21 am)

by the way, here’s a picture of the special bumper on the front of an SPD patrol car: http://media.komonews.com/images/110810_spd_north_precinct.jpg

Neo-Realist September 9, 2011 (10:44 am)

Has there been a car stall every day this week? Traffic has been very queued up and slow all week long on Avalon Way and the Bridge! I didn’t notice the difference in my commute this morning.

WSB September 9, 2011 (11:09 am)

Yesterday, we got so many complaints that (as noted in a different comment thread) we asked SDOT if their traffic-control center had identified any particular cause of West Seattle agony. Their answer boiled down to: No. Maybe back to school. Some WSB’ers suggested the I-90 Rainier Ave. three-lane-blocking crash yesterday morning might have backed things up in this direction. – TR

WestSeattleDrew September 9, 2011 (11:00 am)

LEO… EXACTLY!!! Push the stalled car out of the way! I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen a stalled car on the bridge with a cop sitting behind it, waiting for a tow truck…. Damaged bumper, that’s too bad, that’s what you get for jamming up traffic.

bridge to somwhere September 9, 2011 (12:32 pm)

I would love to know if SPD has a policy about pushing stalled cars out of the way . . .

Driver September 10, 2011 (3:15 pm)

Unfortunately, I was the driver. I had asked the officer to push me with his car aware of their “special” bumpers and he refused, so we had to call a tow truck. Got it to the dealership and they told me the fuel pump failed. It just failed at the wrong place at the wrong time. Apologies to anyone I made late to school or work, I hate traffic jams as much as the next person.

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