The Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (WSDOT) has devised a plan to make Inter­state 5 between Mount Ver­non and Burling­ton pass­able again by mid-June, Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee announced this afternoon.

State bridge engi­neers have been work­ing fever­ish­ly to fig­ure out how the bridge that car­ries Inter­state 5 over the Skag­it Riv­er might be repaired. The state’s goal is to tem­porar­i­ly replace the span that failed while a per­ma­nent replace­ment is built.

WSDOT released this image show­ing what the tem­po­rary span will look like:

Skag­it Riv­er Bridge visu­al­iza­tion (Image: WSDOT)

Fur­ther details were pro­vid­ed by Inslee’s press office on behalf of WSDOT.

The tem­po­rary four-lane bridge will car­ry I‑5 traf­fic over the Skag­it Riv­er at a reduced speed and capac­i­ty. The bridge will con­sist of two, 24-foot wide struc­tures to replace the col­lapsed sec­tion of the bridge. These struc­tures will be pre-built and trucked to the site to allow for accel­er­at­ed instal­la­tion. The remain­ing south­ern sec­tion has been exam­ined and will not need to be replaced.

“The plan min­i­mizes the clo­sure time and keeps clear access to pop­u­lar Skag­it Coun­ty retail busi­ness and des­ti­na­tions includ­ing the Ana­cortes fer­ry ter­mi­nal,” said Inslee. “I’m proud of all the work done by the Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion and all our local and fed­er­al part­ners that result­ed in this inno­v­a­tive plan.”

If the remain­ing inspec­tions of the bridge struc­ture find no addi­tion­al dam­age, the tem­po­rary bridge could be in place with­in weeks.

Once debris has been removed, fur­ther under­wa­ter struc­tur­al exam­i­na­tions will deter­mine if addi­tion­al repairs are need­ed before installing the tem­po­rary span.

Crews will imme­di­ate­ly start work on the per­ma­nent bridge when the tem­po­rary span is put in place.

Crews will put tem­po­rary piers into the riv­er to sup­port a plat­form adja­cent to the col­lapsed span where the new sec­tion will be built. Once com­plete, the tem­po­rary span will be removed and the new per­ma­nent span will be moved into place. WSDOT hopes to have the per­ma­nent bridge open to traf­fic in ear­ly fall.

By per­ma­nent replace­ment, WSDOT does­n’t mean a brand new bridge engi­neered to mod­ern stan­dards, but rather a replace­ment span to take the place of the chunk of bridge that fell into the Skag­it Riv­er on Thursday.

Appar­ent­ly a brand new bridge is not being con­sid­ered because it would cost more. We ques­tion whether this is an appro­pri­ate long-term view.

The Skag­it Riv­er bridge is “func­tion­al­ly obso­lete”, and, as we saw on Thurs­day, very vul­ner­a­ble to fail­ure. Thurs­day’s inci­dent was not the first time that bridge and oth­er bridges have been struck by over­height vehi­cles, as WSDOT has admitted.

Why, then, should­n’t we use this as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to replace the whole struc­ture? WSDOT should put the tem­po­rary span in place and then start work on a whole new bridge to replace the entire Skag­it Riv­er cross­ing. One that won’t have a sin­gle point of fail­ure any­where. Our mot­to should be “Safe­ty First”.

We are spend­ing big bucks to replace, not retro­fit, the Alaskan Way Viaduct and Ever­green Point Float­ing Bridge (SR 520 over Lake Wash­ing­ton) because it’s not worth it to try to extend the life of those struc­tures any fur­ther. We should take the same approach with the I‑5 Skag­it Riv­er Bridge.

Now would be a good time to take anoth­er frac­ture-crit­i­cal bridge off of our list of func­tion­al­ly obso­lete cross­ings. If we don’t do this now, we are only post­pon­ing the day when we have to replace the whole thing.

Why not put the $15 mil­lion the state is plan­ning to spend on the “per­ma­nent” span towards a new and safe bridge? (Nine­ty per­cent of that $15 mil­lion is going to be pro­vid­ed by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, inci­den­tal­ly, accord­ing to Inslee’s release).

Cer­tain­ly it would cost more upfront to build a whole new bridge now. But by mak­ing such an invest­ment, we can save mon­ey down the road. Our reluc­tance to invest — our will­ing­ness to dither, pro­cras­ti­nate, put off — is what has got­ten us in the lousy posi­tion of hav­ing so much of our infra­struc­ture in a decrepit condition.