TRAFFIC/TRANSIT TODAY: Tuesday watch

(SDOT MAP with travel times/video links; is the ‘low bridge’ closed? LOOK HERE)

6:48 AM: Welcome to another rainy morning. No incidents currently reported in/from West Seattle, but watch for the usual extra-water spots, because some particularly intense rain cells were part of what moved through in the past few hours.

ADVANCE ALERT: If you drive I-5 north of downtown in the very early morning, here’s an alert from City Light about intermittent stops/slowdowns while they do power-line work next week.

6:56 AM: Just in from SDOT, trouble on the eastbound bridge: “Collision on West Seattle Bridge EB partially blocking the right lane. Use caution, expect delays.” It’s currently on the top-left camera.

7:04 AM: Good news – that was cleared quickly.

Chris March 14, 2017 (7:41 am)

Left lane of Admiral is taking 10 minutes just to get to the bridge.

lots of people making the illegal left at Luna Park

Jay P Wallace March 14, 2017 (8:46 am)

Can we get some police to mind the bus lanes on Avalon. And the Luna park turn. Please
- KBear March 14, 2017 (9:37 am)
  
  Apparently not. When I complained about that, it took SPD several months to respond to my email, and I have still never seen any enforcement on Avalon. Others have complained, too. My guess is that because there’s not a simple way for them to do it (like on the West Seattle Bridge), they don’t even bother to try. The real solution would be to put a physical barrier in the median to block the illegal turns (maybe it could have a small break for bicycles), and reconfigure the lane situation. Perhaps they could allow right turns from the center lane, so people wouldn’t need to drive in the bus lane.
  - sb2780 March 14, 2017 (9:58 am)
    
    The problem is, the only time this is an issue is on a day like today when all feeders are backed up. I understand that the bus lane should not be blocked, but the alternative is that the the through lane of Avalon is then blocked, and people would be trying to either feed into the small right turn lane–blocking buses anyway, or turning right from the center lane. Trying to get out of West Seattle in the morning is a special kind of hell.
    - KBear March 14, 2017 (10:11 am)
      
      Right, but times like today are exactly when the bus lane is most needed. It is silly to have a bus lane that can’t be used when it’s needed most.
Dave March 14, 2017 (10:34 am)

Supposedly this left turn problem will be fixed when the next neighborhood project starts. I have emails from DOT that state this left turn is illegal except for bikes. Been a problem for years.

Keith March 14, 2017 (9:12 am)

Admiral, Yancy, Andover and the bridge above are all at standstill at 9:00. New crash?

motormike March 14, 2017 (9:38 am)

East bound West Seattle bridge is unusually bad at 9:37

WSB March 14, 2017 (9:54 am)

No crashes or stalls listed anywhere that would cause this. There are Twitter references to Amazon having a meeting at KeyArena, but that shouldn’t clog the entire system (and according to one Instagram photo, everybody appears to be there).
Robert March 14, 2017 (10:09 am)

Backed up over the crest of the bridge at 10:08. Ridiculous.

I have maybe one more year in me before I move somewhere much smaller.
- Dave March 14, 2017 (10:37 am)
  
  I agree, never used to be this bad. The city’s idea for a fix to density in WS is to add an express bus and a few more water taxi sailings. What a joke.
sw March 14, 2017 (10:47 am)

I think this is still residual from the early am blocking incident. People adjusted their usual commute strategy, which throws the whole thing off. I went through the mess at 8am, and once over the high rise of the bridge, traffic opened up completely. Much of the backup was due to lane-changers at the Spokane/Delridge merge point.

That said, if Amazon has a company meeting at The Key this morning, that would certainly cause more traffic than usual on 99. Seems like that lane was backed up further than normal. Would have been nice to have some notification in the media of an event that would disrupt regional traffic patterns. Need to hold businesses accountable for this.
- WSB March 14, 2017 (11:00 am)
  
  SDOT still sends out its weekly “here are things that might affect traffic” roundup, and we usually link to them in the morning traffic watch so that people are forewarned, at least if they are downtown etc. events with thousands of people involved. But for some reason the company all-hands meetings that happen at venues like this – Amazon, Microsoft – don’t make it into those roundups. SDOT’s most-recent one ran through last weekend, and they did not have any alerts about this. I happened to see one unofficial mention go by on Twitter fairly late this morning or else I wouldn’t have heard about it …
  - Sue H March 14, 2017 (4:50 pm)
    
    I got one today that said “KeyArena private event: Bus staging on streets surrounding Seattle Center and in South Lake Union from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. About 3,000 people are expected to attend.” — which was totally not helpful as it arrived at 1:19pm.
    - newnative March 14, 2017 (5:00 pm)
      
      That is hilarious. I didn’t even get that. I get vague alerts for “civic events” that I can’t figure out and never seem to affect the bus commute.
    - WSB March 14, 2017 (5:39 pm)
      
      It’s in the weekly advisory I mentioned … but indeed, it wasn’t published until 1:15 pm today, leading off with the event that started six hours earlier.

Kelly March 14, 2017 (10:04 am)

At 9:00 AM, Andover was backed up around the gym to the base of Yancy hill; Avalon was backed up to the Pet Hospital; Gennessee was backed up to the base of the hill and the bridge appeared to be a parking lot. Going to re-attempt a trip soon. When the traffic is even a little bit bad at Delridge/Andover, the trucks leaving Nucor get totally blocked in.

Mr E March 14, 2017 (10:10 am)

If SoundTransit would be so kind as to create an Express bus from West Seattle to Eastgate, that would be great. I would love to be one less single-driver car in the greater Seattle area yelling at other drivers to: use their turn signals; adhere to the traffic laws; and get off their damn smartphones.