We were on the dock at Terminal 5 in northeast West Seattle this morning for those brief streamed speeches that in essence declared T-5’s half-billion-dollar modernization project is finally pretty much complete (as summarized here). No ribbon-cutting, no applauding crowd. Just a simple media invite – with us and a TV photojournalist showing up – and a short event on the windswept dock. It was a two-part announcement – one, that they’ve expanded the amount of plugs for refrigerated containers, and will now be able to accommodate more than 1,500. That means an expanded capacity for the food that Washington exports so much of – like apples. One speaker, a sales rep, talked about visiting a remote Mexican town where his family has roots, and discovering a Washington Red Delicious apple in a tiny store – there thanks to the sort of shipments T-5 can handle.
But the really big news was what’s in our photo above, the new gate complex, with a larger truck-queueing area that is supposed to bring an end to those backups that spill out onto the low bridge, surface Spokane Street, sometimes even the east end of the high bridge.
The doubled queue space isn’t the only component of this $14 million upgrade – Seattle Port Commission president Ryan Calkins (the first speaker in the video) touched on the “weigh in motion” technology that means trucks don’t even have to stop to get weighed.
They keep moving, traffic off the dock keeps moving. There are now 12 lanes, plus a restroom for drivers (who do have to stop, obviously, to avail themselves of that) … all part of the final touches in a project that dates back more than a decade, and was envisioned back in 2014 as less than half the eventual cost.
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