REOPENED: After 3 weeks, West Seattle low bridge open again to street/path traffic

12:03 PM: Three weeks after closing to street and path traffic because of mechanical trouble, the West Seattle low bridge is about to reopen. Joseph sent that photo showing workers removing fencing from the east side of the low bridge a little while ago; we had moments earlier asked SDOT for a status update; they’ve just confirmed that reopening is imminent:

Seattle Department of Transportation has completed emergency repairs to the Spokane St Swing Bridge (low bridge), and the bridge will reopen this afternoon (Friday, January 13). Crews have already begun removing fencing and traffic control equipment around the bridge, and expect to finish removing signs and barricades by 2 p.m.

Since removing a leaky turn cylinder last Sunday night, they’ve been testing bridge opening/closing without that cylinder, which they warn will mean that opening for maritime traffic will take longer. SDOT has more info here, including the plan for the road sections that had been converted to temporary bike lanes (in short, 1st Ave. S. will be removed, W. Marginal will not); meantime, watch the low-bridge camera for reopening:

2:05 PM: Not reopened yet per live video feed.

2:25 PM: Just reopened.

Dd January 13, 2023 (12:09 pm)

Yay!

AK January 13, 2023 (12:38 pm)

Great news! And hopefully it will be fully operational on all cylinders before too long.

Sarge January 13, 2023 (12:52 pm)

Nice work, SDOT crew!

West Seattle Mad Sci Guy January 13, 2023 (2:50 pm)

Do they have a projected timing on how long to fix the cylinder under repair? Also how long will the closure be when they need to reinstall and test it?

SLN January 13, 2023 (3:44 pm)

Well I’ll be! I had my money on the closure lasting three months, so fabulous work from SDOT in getting the bridge back open and operational. A success story by all accounts! :D

bolo January 13, 2023 (5:39 pm)

New SDOT director Greg Spotts starts out his tenure with a shiny gold star in the happy face column! Hopefully many more to come…

Roms January 13, 2023 (6:32 pm)

Well, that change in leadership at SDOT proved successful so far. If we could get a similar change at Parks, that’d be great. I’ll be happy to get back on my bicycle and avoid the bus dramas happening these days, rain permitting.

bill January 14, 2023 (1:57 pm)

Oh come on! The low bridge machinery failing is a minuscule problem compared to the high bridge nearly collapsing.
- Roms January 14, 2023 (7:00 pm)
  
  The high bridge was not at risk of collapsing. Notice how they never evacuated the areas around the bridge that would have been impacted had it collapsed? They listed them in some documentation, but that’s it. That said, they did the right thing to block the access when they discovered the widening cracks and until the bridge was reinforced. The rest was just a string of missed opportunities/complete lack of leadership/complete lack of sense of emergency. Let it be known that the process used to fix the bridge is nothing new and (unfortunately…) has been used on many bridges across the world. It could have been so much faster. So much.

wetone January 14, 2023 (9:29 am)

From picture above it looks like SDOT is outsourcing work related to traffic control setup. Curious if this is cost savings or SDOT doesn’t have the personal for work load. It is nice to see bridge opened again, hopefully the patchwork holds till hydraulic cylinder is fixed.

Sorry, comment time is over.