TRAFFIC/TRANSIT TODAY: Frosty Thursday

(East-facing camera on the West Seattle Bridge; see other cams on the WSB Traffic page)
As forecast, it’s cold! Give yourself extra time, whatever your mode of transport – for scraping, or walking safely to the bus stop, or … On the bridge late last night, we saw the telltale stripes left behind by the de-icing crew, so the city has done its prep work. As noted on Twitter:

SDOT treated bridges, viaducts and known icy spots in Seattle with salt brine overnight to fight ice.

— seattledot (@seattledot) November 21, 2013

METRO CONCERN? If you have questions about the potential Metro cuts, this morning in The Junction, from now until around 9:30, a Metro outreach team is scheduled to be tabling – as announced here.

WEEKEND CLOSURE: Now that it’s Thursday, it’s time for another reminder – utility work related to the construction project in the heart of The Junction will close SW Alaska between California and 42nd much of the weekend. We asked Metro whether they would have a reroute alert; short answer, no – longer answer, “Reroutes are very minor/short around the block w/no significant impact to service & no missed stops. No reroutes will be posted & no alerts are scheduled to be sent.”

7:12 AM UPDATE: A crash is reported on the eastbound bridge, according to the online 911 log. Over the radio, crews report it’s on the 35th ramp to the bridge but “is pretty minor.” However, the camera shows a lane blocked – at least temporarily:

7:25 AM UPDATE: The fire engine has left the scene, though police are still there. Watch out, though, for a black Mercedes SUV reported (via police radio) to be driving recklessly north on Fauntleroy past Juneau – passing other cars, fast, via the center turn lane.

7:34 AM UPDATE: As you can see in the “live” camera image above, merging traffic onto the eastbound bridge at 35th/Fauntleroy is back to “normal” again – the crash is all clear.

7:42 AM UPDATE: If you’re heading north of downtown, be forewarned that police and fire are now responding to a crash “mid-span” on the Aurora Bridge. Details on that when we get it. *Update – it involves a spill that will have to be cleaned up and it sounds like northbound traffic is being diverted. Closest camera:

Police are saying they’ll have one lane open south, one north.

Tanej November 21, 2013 (7:16 am)

Crash is on eastbound Fauntleroy, immediately east of 35th Ave. Fire, police here. The merge lane from northbound 35th to eastbound Fauntleroy is blocked.

NicMarie November 21, 2013 (7:29 am)

Traffic on 35th from Alaska to Avalon and it looks like to the bridge is very slow, my 55 turns right on Avalon and we’re chugging along fine now.

WSB November 21, 2013 (7:36 am)

The crash has just completely cleared (see camera view above – it had been blocking the ramp on the lower right of the screen) so here’s hoping any residual backup will clear before long too.

Jtm November 21, 2013 (7:59 am)

Lower bridge closed two days in a row during peak traffic is ridiculous.

Joe Szilagyi November 21, 2013 (8:12 am)

Avalon bus lane is crawling. Freeway entrance looks to be crawling as well from the view down here.

Enough November 21, 2013 (8:15 am)

Wonder if that’s it’s backed up to atleast Oregon on Fauntleroy.

jack November 21, 2013 (8:27 am)

So where do you get these traffic camera feeds? They aren’t on the WSDOT site and I would love to be able to check out the traffic on the bridge.
thanks

WSB November 21, 2013 (8:43 am)

We have them on our traffic page – as linked in the line below the view – https://westseattleblog.com/west-seattle-cams
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But the reason you won’t find them on the WSDOT site is that they are not state cameras, they are city cameras. Here’s the list:
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http://www.seattle.gov/trafficcams

coffee November 21, 2013 (8:40 am)

The east bound condition of the resurfaced bridge is horrible. 2 new big potholes. Appears that the resurfacing job was very poor quality.

Anonymous November 21, 2013 (9:02 am)

Is there anything we can do about the lower bridge opening during rush hour? Today’s traffic was a nightmare!

schwaggy November 21, 2013 (9:20 am)

Re: lower bridge opening. Sure, call the Coast Guard and ask politely. I’m sure they’ll stop opening the bridge in the morning. I also have a nice property to sell you on Mars.

pupsarebest November 21, 2013 (9:36 am)

I am angry to hear about the lower bridge being closed during peak, rush-hour traffic, and I don’t even have to deal with the hellish commute!
Where is the common sense???
WHY should thousands of drivers be thrown into gridlock by the passage of one or two water-vessels?
There should be set hours of operation for the lower bridge, then boats and drivers could adjust their schedules/behavior accordingly.

KBear November 21, 2013 (9:52 am)

Bridge openings are regulated by federal law, which mandates that marine traffic takes precedence over vehicular traffic. The Coast Guard sometimes makes accommodations for peak hours, and has for other Seattle bridges, but it’s unlikely they would make a change for the Spokane Street bridge, since it serves basically the same route as the wider, fixed-span West Seattle Bridge.

G November 21, 2013 (10:07 am)

SLOW DOWN PEOPLE! Try decaf, or take a few breaths into a paper bag.

My god, you’re making LA drivers look like saints.

Joe Szilagyi November 21, 2013 (10:10 am)

The US Federal government controls water ways, and in this scenario the Coast Guard makes choices. The reason is tides, for ships to come in safely on the Duwamish. Peak high tide today was 7:47 AM. Next peak is 6:13 PM for Seattle.
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The only way to circumvent this would be if we went to Federal authorities above the Coast Guard, which would mean coming through (presumably) Congressional or Senate avenues, or talking to the Port, to see about possible scheduling mitigation. It would be a huge financial and political can of worms, though, because you then get boats in the bay forced to idle and wait, causing 12-14 hour delays for the businesses, and causing them to then idle for the NEXT tidal cycle coming BACK out of the Duwamish. You’ve now inserted a 24 hour delay into their operations, which is there the financial and political backlash would come in.
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One possible way around it would be to see if something could be arranged to stagger shipments around tides that aren’t in that 6am-9am window, which may work if it would only cause moderate delays on a handful of shipments every few weeks.
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Here is a tide table: http://usharbors.com/monthly-tides/Washington-Puget%20Sound/Seattle
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You might remember that tides are roughly 12 hour opposites. So tomorrow for high tide it’s 820am/7pm; on Monday next week it will be 1030am/1024pm. Wednesday, December 4th it will roughly be back to 7am.
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It’s really only the commute TO downtown that’s most significantly impacted by this, as the lower backups spill into on-ramp access for us coming out of West Seattle.
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Something else for the West Seattle Transportation Coalition’s to-do list, I imagine: http://www.westseattletc.org

Joe Szilagyi November 21, 2013 (10:11 am)

Tracy, I just thought of this–maybe on days when high tides line up with the 6am-9am window, a traffic advisory for the Bridge?

WSB November 21, 2013 (10:22 am)

Joe – if that were truly quantifiable, I would be happy to. Otherwise, I would hate to have people think that because it’s not a high-tide day, they’re ok, and then get there and boom! the bridge opens for some reason. Meantime, for anyone seeking background on what’s been done/said to date, this relatively short story from 2010 involves what happened then AND in the last few grafs, links to what happened before. https://westseattleblog.com/2010/04/restrict-low-bridge-openings-at-rush-hour-new-voluntary-plan/ I’m the LAST person to suggest NOT trying again (eventually something might break through!) – but just sharing that for anyone who wants to know how in the world we are in what appears to be a ridiculous situation from the NON-marine-traffic standpoint. – TR

Robert November 21, 2013 (10:21 am)

But isn’t it an open secret that using the low bridge is a “cheat” some of us use (my family included) to get around all the merge issues with the high bridge? I doubt when the low bridge was planned did the designers think it would be used by the average WS commuter during AM rush. My “holy grail” is to have an additional reversible lane for the high bridge for morning rush and a fly over-ramp to NB 99 instead of that 1950’s era 270 degree onramp we have to use now. Anyone got $100 Million to spare?

Joe Szilagyi November 21, 2013 (10:27 am)

@TR I guess it’s time for the WSTC to dig into logs of how often it’s been opened and when. Compare that to tide charts, and… :)
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I’ve already floated this off to our interim board, it’s something we’ve talked about in the past but hadn’t come up with a good way to approach it. I think I did (or hope so) this morning on the bus.

Sea November 21, 2013 (12:19 pm)

A big High Five to all the entitled SOV operators out there who “need” to drive every day. Just remember: You aren’t in traffic, you are traffic.

enough November 21, 2013 (12:24 pm)

I am thankful for the de-icing the city has done on the bridge the last few days.

Kam November 21, 2013 (3:55 pm)

Does anyone know what the construction on 35th AVE is about?

WSB November 21, 2013 (4:39 pm)

I went over to look. It’s Infrasource, which works on the natural-gas pipe system on behalf of Puget Sound Energy. They’ve been doing maintenance/repair work all over the area for months now.

Anonymous November 21, 2013 (4:13 pm)

@sea, just so you know, I actually carpool with two other people to work every morning, so I’m sorry if you were assuming all of us complaining are SOV’s.

East Coast Cynic November 21, 2013 (4:38 pm)

Sea, You can’t totally blame the SOV operators if they live in West Seattle–If one works beyond downtown, the car is relatively quicker than mass transit since we don’t have direct bus lines or light rail going to places like snohomish county or the eastside; transit connections to different bus lines to and from WS are considerably too time consuming for some working people. For a variety of reasons, not everybody can work downtown. The Seattle area has transit infrastructure that is arguably obsolete for the increased commuter numbers on our roads and buses we’ve seen over the past 15-20 years.