TODAY: West Seattle Bridge Community Task Force’s first meeting

=(May photo courtesy Kevin Freitas, originally published on Twitter)

As we’ve mentioned several times, the new West Seattle Community Bridge Task Force has its first meeting at 1 pm today. From SDOT, here’s how to watch/comment:

This first meeting will be an opportunity for panelists to meet each other, establish some basic ground rules, and get a broad overview of efforts on the bridge, on the ground, and in the community. Then, next week, the Task Force will dive more substantively into the issues at hand.

Please use (updated link) this link to listen and watch the meeting.

Once the meeting begins, we will be provide a link to a comment/question form for members of the public and media. SDOT staff will be monitoring these comments throughout the meeting and will share them with the moderator and co-chairs as needed, and to all Task Force members following the meeting.

Here’s the agenda, which includes dates and topics for the next two meetings.

Steve June 10, 2020 (10:48 am)

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to listen in today, but the Task Force needs to focus attention on the need for a sense of urgency in reopening the West Seattle Bridge. The existence of the committee itself is a bad sign that we are headed into a typical Seattle morass of slow decision-making and delayed reopening of this vital link to our homes. SDOT needs to be laser-focused on safely reopening the bridge as fast as possible. The backups getting onto the 1st Ave S bridge have been increasingly frustrating and King County isn’t even to Phase II of reopening yet.

Jort June 10, 2020 (12:23 pm)

What do you think might be the quickest timeline? Let’s just be dangerously reckless and say it could open in one year (spoiler: it won’t be open in one year, but let’s say so just for funsies). That is still one full year of a literally unsolvable dystopian hellscape of car congestion! One full year! And, of course, it’s obviously going to be much more than a year! Here’s the thing: you can stamp your feet and SCREAM at the top of your lungs to hurry up hurry up HURRY UP, but there will still be an unsolvable traffic issue for the 100,000 cars who used to use the bridge each day. If the city is going to act with “urgency” on something, they should urgently prioritize alternative transportation enhancements, like additional transit and free e-bikes for every West Seattle citizen. That is an actual, tangible and feasible mitigation that is limited only by political courage and cost, instead of the inflexible laws of geometry. Those laws, by the way, mean car drivers will be in traffic, and there’s literally nothing they will be able to do about it, period, unless the bridge happens to be repaired and rebuilt. I strongly recommend that you begin your personal mental adaptations to your inevitable compulsory transition to transit and cycling now, and you will save yourself a great deal of frustration in the months to come.
- Chemist June 10, 2020 (10:32 pm)
  
  The city should offer Jump and Lime $250 for each e-bike (that is currently about to be scrapped) and then rent them to West Seattle residents for a low annual membership fee. $250 x 10,000 ebikes would be a pittance compared to what this bridge is going to cost.
- Steve June 11, 2020 (7:28 am)
  
  Jort:1) Why are you so willing to accept the city’s timeline when there are examples that show construction can be expedited if the leaders are committed to moving quickly. The St. Anthony Falls bridge being the prime example.2) Why are you so willing to accept the city’s timelines when SDOT has known about the damage for years and let it run until nearly imminent catastrophic failure? If they have moved on the issue 3 or 4 years ago they might have been able to devise repairs with minimal disruptions to traffic flow. The state of crisis we we are in right now is of the city’s making.3) Why are you so willing to accept the city’s timelines when they diddled around for years debating what to do while the Alaska Way viaduct was crumbling out from under us?4) Compulsory transition to transit? Do you work for the city?Mitigation is needed and I’m willing to do my part in the interim, but our city bureaucracy cultivates a state of stasis in the various departments and it will require vigilant pressure to get them to move as quickly as they can.
bill June 10, 2020 (1:58 pm)

The committee is an understandable response to the crybaby foot stampers who are indignant the city does not have a backup bridge in storage. The eminent professional members of the committee will give SDOT protection from the inevitable accusations of incompetence leveled by folks who couldn’t build a house of cards. Including community members and representatives “keeps your enemies close” and might perhaps reduce the amount of time wasting second-guessing political interference we can expect given what we have seen to date. As for the tunnel, remember the monorail, when we got swept off our feet by a romantic vision peddled by a bunch of non-professionals lead by a bus driver who were certain they could make the job easy.
Jon Wright June 10, 2020 (2:40 pm)

Maybe if we post more comments expressing our outrage the situation will be resolved sooner!
ZD June 10, 2020 (2:47 pm)

I listened in to the call. How do you define “sense of urgency?” They said they expect the task force itself to be a long process. “A year or more” just for the task force. Heather Marx of SDOT said the earliest they might have traffic on a temporarily repaired bridge is 2022 or a replaced bridge by 2026. Other emergency bridge closures/collapses like the I-35 Bridge in Minneapolis, I-5 Skagit River, or the Genoa, Italy collapse had temporary repairs within weeks and full replacements in about 18 months. That seems like a sense of urgency. Aiming for 2022 for what should have happened within weeks or 2026 for what should happen in about 18 months (from closure, not from today), doesn’t really seem like there’s a sense of urgency.
- Dave June 16, 2020 (5:21 pm)
  
  Totally agree with you on the “lack of sense urgency” . Unfortunately, Heather Marx has worked in either King County or SDOT government for the past 20 years in various positions. I am sure, like most of our government workers and city officials she lacks this necessary “urgency” gene.

Mark June 10, 2020 (11:09 am)

This would work. Euro38m / kilometer https://www.maritimejournal.com/news101/marine-civils/marine-civils/contract-awarded-for-building-scheldt-tunnel

Sheila G June 10, 2020 (12:17 pm)

Thanks for the link, very interesting project.
Also John June 10, 2020 (12:18 pm)

@Mark…… This is being discussed. There is a Zoom presentation on a precast submerged tunnel today at 7 pm…..and again the next two Wednesdays at 7 pm. Search here on WSB for the information.

John June 10, 2020 (12:10 pm)

Thanks for the referral MARK. It is an impressive tunnel, but as noted even at this time with the designs selected and the contract awarded, “The first preparatory work on this project will start in the autumn of this year and the actual construction work for the tunnel itself will begin after the summer of 2021. No final completion date for the tunnel has been given”I hazard to imagine the outcry of West Seattleites if presented with such a timeline. Our bridge replacement is far more involved and the tunnel proponents have failed to fully address some daunting challenges for all parts the tunnel project beyond the romantic under the river seemingly simple solution.The Stranger’s Charles Mudede weighed in somewhat surprisingly with a different perspective on June 9 with-“Cry, My Beloved West Seattle: There is now talk about building a tunnel? Under what-what? It will be like a tunnel that doesn’t exist between Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington? The fact that the competent transportation reporter Mike Lindblom is giving such a harebrained proposal the time of day in the Seattle Times says three words to the isolated residents of West Seattle: You are f—-d.” (Editing of last word by me.)

Jort June 10, 2020 (1:12 pm)
- Charles is speaking truth to people who don’t want to or can’t accept hearing it. Frankly, the debate about tunnel, repair, replace, light rail on the bridge … all that … is cute and entertaining and people REALLY seem to have latched on to these things. People are arguing about a construction project that is years and years away from completion. That’s all good and well, but the dystopian hellscape traffic nightmare is still going to happen no matter what, and I guess people can spend their 90 minute car commutes arguing about tunnel vs. bridge instead of something productive like demanding better alternative transportation options. Additional buses and free e-bikes do not take lengthy engineering studies and design processes, nor countless focus groups, they just take political courage and a commitment from politicians to tell citizens some hard truths. Here is the hard truth that people, for whatever reason, are not internalizing: your easy car commute is totally and completely and irredeemably SCREWED for many years to come, and there is literally nothing to argue about with this. There is literally nothing that any government agency can do to make that car commute go back to anything close to normal for people — FOR YEARS. The sooner people accept this, and the sooner that our dumb government leaders start communicating this, the better it will be in the long run for everybody’s mental health. Dangling news about the “consideration” of a submersed tube tunnel is flatly stupid. Tunnel or bridge? It doesn’t matter. Your car commute, from this day forward for years to come, will be awful.
- Anne June 10, 2020 (2:10 pm)
  
  Keep ranting Jort-—for our family- if it takes 90min in a car -so be it.Bus-until it’s actually a viable option-(get us where we need to go-without endless transfers) & there is a vaccine for COVID-or bike-is not going to be an option. Guessing that no matter how much you rant on – it won’t be for many others either. Will things go back to normal-no-will commute be hell until a new /fixed bridge is in place -oh most definitely.
ITT Fan June 10, 2020 (1:31 pm)

JOHN, I agree, it IS an impressive tunnel. Romantic? I don’t know about that, but they are modern and forward thinking. Immersed Tube Tunnels are an excellent consideration for cost, value, safety and ability to move vehicles, light rail and pedestrians/bikes in complex situations. Yes, there are challenges with connections and grade, but we will face these same challenges with a new bridge. What parts of the tunnel project have not been addressed?
Mike Lindblom June 10, 2020 (1:42 pm)

Thank you John. We described the immersed tunnel concept in yesterday’s newspaper not to endorse that, but because I receive frequent reader questions from West Seattle residents. It’s newsworthy that SDOT, hearing similar feedback, has chosen to make a tunnel eligible for study, rather than alienate people at the starting gate. I remain dubious (and have said so at seattletimes.com) about the immersed tunnel because of very tight, steep portal required west of the river, that likely won’t link well to existing infrastructure. We’ll publish in-depth (so to speak) reporting on alternatives, but first I need to finish a couple more urgent bridge-related articles.
- ACG June 10, 2020 (2:33 pm)
  
  Thanks, Mike, for reporting on this issue and the articles you write in the Seattle Times. We appreciate the work you do (and WSB, also, of course!)

John June 10, 2020 (1:38 pm)

“This would work,”
Antwerp started their river crossing project in the 1990s. It took them until 2005 to sort out the bridge vs tunnel issue and adopt the tunnel.
It has taken from 2005 until 2020 to complete the design and award the contract.
At his point the preparatory work is commencing with the actual construction not until 2021!
Beyond that 2021 construction start is no set completion date!
Will such a program really work for us impatient desperate West Seattleites?
Our existing perilous bridge needs to be stabilized and carefully removed, not so in Antwerp.
Our engineering, elevation and existing infrastructure far exceed those of Antwerp.
Our legendary, and deservedly so, reputation for dithering in debate to indecision is what we proudly call The Process.
Reading Antwerp’s history of their bridge project indicates they are no slouches when it comes to dithering political infrastructure decisions, but I will still put my money on our community.
And, how I wish I am wrong!

bill June 10, 2020 (2:03 pm)

Jort for West Seattle Tough-Love Dad!

Jams June 10, 2020 (3:33 pm)

I second this nomination.

Carole June 10, 2020 (2:44 pm)

The 31 mile Chunnel crossing the English Channel was built in 6 years.

VBD June 10, 2020 (4:15 pm)

Remember that there are 2 waterways and an island under the existing bridge, and not much room on either side to descend nearly 100′ under the water surface. There will need to be trenches dug for over 1000′ to allow for the ramps that provide a path for the road to descend. Then all the existing elevated roadways will need to be lowered to the surface, then toward the trenches. I find it really hard to believe all that would be faster and cheaper than just leaving everything but the center span in place, and just rebuilding it.

Rachelle June 11, 2020 (7:35 am)

I haven’t heard talk about using the Vashon ferry terminal here in WS and redirecting it downtown. I imagine we could also send Vashon ferry goers directly downtown (which many of them drive through West Seattle for anyway). Is this not feasible? Seems like it could be a pretty decent solution for decompressing at least some of the car traffic and public transportation?