(Image from SDOT cam late this afternoon)

As noted in our coverage of last week’s West Seattle Bridge Community Task Force meeting, SDOT has to do low-bridge testing related to its upcoming work. Last week, they didn’t have the dates set, but said it would be a series of Sundays. Now, SDOT has announced the dates and times:

On some Sundays in December and January, we will briefly close the Spokane St Swing Bridge (low bridge) for three times a day to people driving, taking transit, walking, and biking. These closures could last up to 30 minutes each, which is about twice as long as the bridge is closed to traffic when it swings open for a vessel.

In 2022, we are performing important rehabilitation upgrades to the low bridge to ensure that it remains in safe and usable condition. We will use these short-term closures to measure important deflection data for the low bridge to ensure that future construction scaffolding will be safe to use while we complete this rehabilitation work.

We are aligning these short closures to happen during off-peak periods and when there are lulls in traffic to minimize impacts to the community, including transit, freight, and other approved low bridge users.

The scheduled closure times are the same each day: during lulls in traffic around 9 AM, around 1 PM, and around 5 PM. The planned dates for these closures are:

Sunday, December 19
Sunday, January 9
Sunday, January 16
Sunday, January 23
Sunday, January 30

People driving who are authorized to use the low bridge will need to take the signed detour routes during these closures, take the trip at a different time, or wait up to 30 minutes when the bridge will reopen.

People biking, walking, or rolling on the low bridge path can wait up to 30 minutes for the bridge path to reopen or they can continue south to use the 1st Ave S Bridge path.

The low-bridge work is detailed here.