SPOKANE STREET VIADUCT: No closures scheduled until after Labor Day

As promised, we checked in with Spokane Street Viaduct resurfacing project spokesperson Dr. Matthew Howard to see about this week’s closure schedule. Short answer: No closures. Long version:

I’ve confirmed with the project team that no work will be going on this week or weekend (August 26 – September 2, 2024). … The reason we aren’t performing work is due to small chances of rain in the forecast for today and tomorrow. We can’t chance the moisture getting into the overlay or ground-down viaduct at the moment, especially after such a wet weekend. The deck would need to dry for 24 hours with dry weather before we’d be able to confidently perform work. After that, the holiday travel restrictions for Labor Day weekend for WSDOT make it not worthwhile to get back out there, lest we not be as productive with the work. I’ll have an updated schedule for next week by end of this week, hopefully.

We’re also still awaiting an update sometime soon on overall progress and timeline update. It’s been four weeks since the project’s first lane closures; at that time, the work was expected to continue into early October, but the August rain has gotten in the way of some planned closures.

WSRob August 26, 2024 (3:15 pm)

Nope. The truth is they have no labor to work this week as vacations are going on and with no penalty in the contract for delays, they just made up that entire weather line. I work in construction. I know exactly what they just said here.

Elton August 26, 2024 (5:24 pm)

Are you saying that the rain has no impact on this project? Based on what? I’m pretty sure they’d have to pay crazy high overtime to have a crew work on a holiday weekend, and it would be very disruptive to people going into a back-to-school week (and in/out of a holiday weekend) so it makes a lot of logical sense IMHO to not schedule work this weekend.

Jason August 26, 2024 (3:55 pm)

Zero proof of this WSRob…. let’s not make claims we can’t prove, eh? Not all construction jobs equal either.

brizone August 26, 2024 (6:16 pm)

As annoying as this definitely is, it scans that the polymer won’t bond properly if there’s moisture on the concrete. Not a typical construction project.

KT August 26, 2024 (8:15 pm)

One might wonder why you wait until the last month of summer to start a project like this that is scheduled to go into early October and is so dependent on perfectly dry weather to complete?

SB August 27, 2024 (6:23 am)

Maybe because this is typically the driest time of the year for our region?
- Bronson August 27, 2024 (3:08 pm)
  
  That would actually be July (followed closely by August), which I imagine is what KT is trying to point out.

Sorry, comment time is over.