Tolling on SR 520’s Evergreen Point Floating Bridge to begin on December 29th

Tolling on the heav­i­ly-trav­eled Ever­green Point Float­ing Bridge, which car­ries State Route 520 across Lake Wash­ing­ton, is final­ly set to begin for real lat­er this month after months of delays, the Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion announced this morn­ing, mak­ing good on a promise to set a start date.

“Tolling is help­ing Wash­ing­ton move for­ward with crit­i­cal trans­porta­tion invest­ments and will finance ongo­ing and future work to replace the vul­ner­a­ble SR 520 float­ing bridge and cor­ri­dor ‚” said Wash­ing­ton Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Paula Ham­mond in a news release. “SR 520 toll rev­enue will pro­vide $1 bil­lion to fund pon­toon con­struc­tion in Grays Har­bor, and float­ing bridge con­struc­tion and improve­ments on the East­side, which already are under way. Start­ing tolling before the new bridge is built is keep­ing financ­ing costs down.”

Effec­tive 5 AM on Decem­ber 29th, 2011, a toll will be charged to cross from Ever­green Point to Seat­tle’s Mont­lake neigh­bor­hood (or vice ver­sa). Tolls will be vari­able, mean­ing that the rate will depend on when the trip is made. The high­est toll will be charged dur­ing rush hour (7–9 AM in the morn­ing, 3 PM to 6 PM in the evening). Dri­vers with Good to Go! pass­es will pay $1.50 less for each cross­ing, which adds up to con­sid­er­able sav­ings over time.

(If you don’t have a Good to Go! pass, learn more about get­ting one).

Tolls will be col­lect­ed elec­tron­i­cal­ly using cam­eras and scan­ners mount­ed in the bridge’s east truss. The scan­ners will read Good to Go! pass­es and auto­mat­i­cal­ly deduct the cor­rect toll, while the cam­eras will pho­to­graph license plates so the state can send bills to the reg­is­tered own­er of the vehicle.

There won’t be any toll booths.

Tolls will be col­lect­ed on the exist­ing bridge for the remain­der of its life, to help pay for the new bridge, which is sup­posed to open in 2014.

The state antic­i­pates that some motorists who cur­rent­ly use SR 520 on a reg­u­lar basis will begin using Inter­state 90 to avoid the toll. That would make I‑90 across Lake Wash­ing­ton more con­gest­ed. But it may lessen rush hour back­ups on SR 520, result­ing in a smoother com­mute for those who choose to pay the bridge toll.