35 Replies to "TRAFFIC/TRANSIT: Thursday watch, second week of West Seattle Bridge closure"

• James Riley April 2, 2020 (8:34 am)

  

  • WSB April 2, 2020 (9:05 am)

    OK, that’s the photo of the day already. Today?

    • James Riley April 2, 2020 (12:37 pm)

      Taken yesterday, there’s an  active Great Blue Heron rookery south of the  bridge  so the birds are   pretty numerous and when not in the trees looking for a place to perch.

      • WSB April 2, 2020 (12:38 pm)

        Thank you!

  • Janelle April 2, 2020 (12:29 pm)

    Hello heron :)

    Thanks for sharing your cool pic James

• Mj April 2, 2020 (8:58 am)

  SDoT needs to make the WB through right turn lane at Highland Park Way at West Marginal Way right turn only and at the 5 way intersection at the north end of WMW eliminate the very low volume EB to NB left turn so the WB can get more green time, during concurrent EB and WB flow the WB to SB left turn would need to be made permissive not protected.  These improvements should be easy and not costly to implement

  • rpo April 2, 2020 (11:05 am)

    I couldn’t agree more. Only half a dozen cars are making the turn during each green. 

• sgs April 2, 2020 (10:21 am)

  Next time you ride your bike over the lower bridge, stop  (safely) and look up.  Those cracks are nerve wrenching.

  • WSB April 2, 2020 (11:10 am)

    And they have NOT stopped growing, we learned in a short conversation with SDOT (story soon).

    • sam-c April 2, 2020 (12:07 pm)

      Yikes !    

    • Janelle April 2, 2020 (12:34 pm)

      Yikes… thanks for keeping us updated

• wendell April 2, 2020 (10:34 am)

  The five way intersection under the bridge should’ve been made into a roundabout years ago IMHO.

  • chemist April 2, 2020 (11:40 am)

    If traffic through there were only cars, sure.  Unfortunately, I’m not sure they could implement a roundabout that would cover things like double-length trucks.

  • Richard April 2, 2020 (12:10 pm)

    Translation for those from the east coast … a rotary.  ;-)

• WS Transit Rider April 2, 2020 (11:19 am)

  WSB, no one is following the order. People need to stop being selfish and obey the law. Police enforcement should be mandated for the lower level bridge in my opinion.

  • WSB April 2, 2020 (11:32 am)

    We also asked about that in today’s conversation. They’re working on it. Absolute shame that police resources will have to be dedicated because people can’t be bothered to honor the request.

    • Janelle April 2, 2020 (1:13 pm)

      Yeah, it’s really disappointing if some are disregarding the restrictions.

      I’ve been disappointed with recent comments from some medical workers expressing a feeling of entitlement to using the lower bridge during this time.  I’m surprised they don’t understand the need for the restriction, to ensure emergency vehicles, including ambulances can quickly respond and transport patients to hospitals. Do they not understand that allowing medical workers to commute via the low bridge could cause congestion, and interfere with the transport of essential vehicles?  It’s not a matter of sensitivity or who is most deserving, it’s not like people wouldn’t want you to be able to, it’s a matter of necessity and practicality. 

      For those that don’t understand why freight and busses are allowed on the low bridge… for one thing, it’s essential that goods can continue to be delivered to our community, and that busses can continue to operate on a schedule.  I would also think it’s about balancing some traffic.  Imagine if in addition to all WS drivers, all busses and freight were also taking those alternate routes… 

      With regard to someones comment on another post with the idea for a couple of exceptions, I do wonder if a couple of exceptions would make sense… perhaps for medical and city personnel who are called to urgently respond to a situation related to the pandemic.  Not medical workers heading to their regular work shifts which they can plan for, but those who are paged with an urgent need and have to quickly get somewhere unexpectedly.

      I think people should have some reasonable flexibility in their thinking about this but understand 99.9 % of us in most situations should not be using the low bridge, period. Please be respectful to your community!

      • flimflam April 2, 2020 (3:59 pm)

        good post. in these times of “essential employees” some are more essential than others i guess.

      • UWScofflaw April 2, 2020 (8:20 pm)

        I am one of the scofflaws using the low bridge in the morning, not due to any sense of entitlement or ego or self-righteousness, but because I am an essential employee at the UW Medical Center and I need to be at the Medical Center, not on West Marginal Way.  I complied for the first few days but realized that spending an extra 30-45 minutes driving around was lost time we cannot afford right now.  We have about a month until commuters return and we need to use this time to make a plan for how I and my WS colleagues can get to Harborview, UWMC, Virginia Mason, Swedish and Northwest.  This epidemic will be with us for months and our essential workers must be able to use the low bridge.  I urge the mayor and city council to work with our hospital leadership to determine how we can carve out this exception.  Whether it be placards or police citations, let’s figure out this simple policy.  If pizza drivers and cement trucks can use our low bridge, our nurses physicians and scientists should as well.    

        • Janelle April 3, 2020 (8:11 am)

          Thank you for you’re good essential work durring this time.

          I agree that ideas need to be explored to help ensure essential workers can get to their jobs from WS. What if there were some water taxi sailings, between WS and downtown, at certain times of the day, specifically for medical workers at the hospitals you’ve mentioned, and shuttle busses that picked up on the other side that drove workers to these locations?  Is that something that might be workable for you?

          Just trying to think of ideas that may at least work for some, since for now, they’ve determined that the low bridge should have minimal traffic on it.

          Maybe they will reconsider this and open it up to more traffic. Perhaps they are just minimizing traffic for now while they continue to monitor the high bridge cracking and try to figure out where that’s headed. 

          I trust that they are considering all of the factors, and doing the best they can to find good solutions and implement changes that will help. I hope people respect the restrictions that are put in place, from a higher perspective than any of us have as individuals, and exist for reasons we may or may not fully understand.

  • Stickerbush April 2, 2020 (12:33 pm)

    How do you know that the cars you see on the lower bridge don’t belong to people that work on Harbor Island?

    • Question Authority April 2, 2020 (2:34 pm)

      Every business on Harbor Island can be accessed without driving over the Low Bridge by using East and West roadways.

• GT1 April 2, 2020 (11:57 am)

  Just looked at the WAYZ app to go north, it says to use lower bridge.   Google Drive shows south bridge and Michigan St or 99 as only routes

  • Matt P April 2, 2020 (2:10 pm)

    Waze also reroutes through neighborhoods frequently whereas google maps will only do so as a last resort.

• Blad Goins April 2, 2020 (12:02 pm)

  Seattle peeps and Neighborhood Honk your car horn starting tonight at 7pm every day. Spread the word…… ♥️♥️♥️♥️ light up of Life and for all those people working on the hospital 

  • Steve April 2, 2020 (1:35 pm)

    Please don’t honk unless there is an emergency on the road. It can be very terrifying for people walking/biking past. Even for drivers, it can be alarming.

  • LG April 2, 2020 (2:00 pm)

    There is already an 8:00 noise making, why add another?

• Richard April 2, 2020 (12:15 pm)

  Want to hear about selfishness?  I walked into Safeway the other day & the woman in front of me grabbed no less than ten … 10 … Clorox wipes at the store entry.  I just stood there, waiting my turn, was going to say something but just felt this feeling of incredulous … I mean, really?  And by her appearance (mother/wife/mid-30s) you’d never have thought.  I can now die saying that I have seen it all.

  • LG April 2, 2020 (2:04 pm)

    Well, you are assuming intentions. Did you ask her if she was using all 10 containers? What if she was picking up for several or more individuals? You don’t know what the situation is.

    • Maria April 2, 2020 (2:32 pm)

      LG – I believe Richard was talking about the individual wipes for the carts, not containers. Those wipes are provided for immediate use, and would be counter to its purpose to hand them out to people around her.

• GF April 2, 2020 (2:00 pm)

  That 5 way intersection needs to be made safer for bike commuters. With the closure of the upper bridge we will see a huge surge in bike commuters competing to cross the street with the cars – most of who are distracted trying to figure out if they can cheat or not by going across the low bridge or if they need to continue south on marginal way.  I worry that it is an accident waiting to happen.

  • tsurly April 2, 2020 (2:58 pm)

    There is nothing unsafe about that intersection as long as you wait for your respective green light. Both portions of that intersection where bikes regularly cross have boxes that allow you to get in front of cars, therefore controlling the tempo when the light changes. The only bike-related close calls I have seen in that intersections have been caused by cyclists who chose to cross during a red.

• Mj April 2, 2020 (3:37 pm)

  JanelleThe low level bridge has capacity to serve more just transit, delivery trucks and emergency vehicles.  It makes sense to utilize this capacity and frankly the logical user group are doctors, RN’s and other highly trained medical personell.  These people are on the front lines and work long hours.  The alternative routes have limited capacity and allowing highly trained medical personell to use the low level bridge that has the capacity to serve this group helps everyone by reducing demand on the alternative routes.I am not a highly trained medical person and the benefit for me and other non medical personell is some reduced demand on the alternative routes.

  • Question Authority April 2, 2020 (6:02 pm)

    What about the employee’s of the City who provide the water, drainage and power to those hospitals, because without their service those hospitals would not function.  

• Janelle April 2, 2020 (7:27 pm)

  Mj, thanks for sharing your perspective, but I think we’ll just have to disagree on this one.

  Do you work for SDOT or for the city in a position that would afford you this expertise? How is it that you know better than the department of transportation how much traffic the low bridge can handle while also allowing the necessary access for emergency vehicles? Do you know the numbers of how many medical professionals work in WS, and how many may be commuting by car, and what kind of traffic loads they may cause? Have you done this analysis? I’m sure there are many considerations we aren’t even aware of.

  Also, have you considered SDOT and our leaders may be trying to limit the overall traffic on the low bridge to mitigate the number of possible deaths if the high bridge were to unexpectedly collapse onto the low bridge?

  I say let’s not irresponsibly encourage more people to take the low bridge when we may not have all of the information or expertise to make this call.

Sorry, comment time is over.