TRAFFIC ALERT UPDATE: West Marginal Way reopens, 13 hours after crash (updated Tuesday)

2:54 PM: 13 hours after a crash brought down power lines, closing West Marginal Way SW just north of Highland Park Way, the street is finally reopening. The live SDOT camera has shown southbound traffic coming through, and it’s showing crews removing the “street closed” signage on the northbound side. That should alleviate traffic backups that had been growing on other routes – such as the low bridge – because of the closure.

3:06 PM: The last signs were removed and the last SDOT truck just left, so it’s fully open both ways.

9:44 PM: We asked police if the car whose driver started all this had turned out to be stolen. Not as far as they can tell, SPD says tonight – they asked King County Sheriff’s Deputies to try a “knock and talk” at the car owner’s residence but deputies couldn’t get past a locked gate. To date, apparently it hasn’t been reported stolen, so they’re concluding it wasn’t.

TUESDAY MORNING UPDATE: We asked City Light spokesperson Jenn Strang whether there was something unusual about the repairs that took so long. Her reply: “This incident on West Marginal Way involved telecommunications wires/pole not electrical equipment.”

GF June 16, 2025 (6:44 pm)

I had to detour due to this closure. I headed up East Marginal way to cross the lower bridge any holy mackerel. The T5 semi truck log jam was huge. I finally went all the way to Holgate and thru Beacon Hill to the upper bridge which was a dangerous mess of semi trucks and small cars trying to align themselves to the correct lane. What is the magic to knowing when the T5 terminal semi truck backup will essentially make it impossible to get to West Seattle?

bolo June 16, 2025 (9:02 pm)

Seems like lately port traffic (and the resulting container trucks) has been correlating to tariff shenanigans.
- Brian June 16, 2025 (9:41 pm)
  
  I ask this with all sincerity and without malice, but how could you possibly correlate any of that?
  - bolo June 17, 2025 (12:46 pm)
    
    By personal experience. As a bicycle commuter, I frequently ride along the edges of the port, well attuned to port truck traffic patterns. After recent high tariffs were imposed, port truck traffic diminished noticeably. After tariff loopholes have started being introduced port traffic is increasing again.

WS Person June 16, 2025 (8:49 pm)

Well, as bitter a pill as it is to swallow, (we) have all bought houses in an area with basically 2 roads into it. And in the past ~10 years, the city has pushed high density with zero response to increasing infrastructure to support it. As such if anything disturbs the balance W.S. is F’d