Charting a path forward after the unexpected closure of the highly used West Seattle Bridge

In March, as the dis­ease caused by the nov­el coro­n­avirus (SARS-CoV­‑2) was rapid­ly mush­room­ing into an unprece­dent­ed pub­lic health emer­gency, Seat­tle trans­porta­tion offi­cials made the mon­u­men­tal deci­sion to close the West Seat­tle Bridge due to expo­nen­tial­ly-increas­ing crack growth under the structure.

Pri­or to its clo­sure and the drop in traf­fic result­ing from Gov­er­nor Inslee’s stay home, stay healthy orders, the bridge was the sin­gle busiest road with­in Seat­tle city lim­its, car­ry­ing over 90,000 cars dai­ly in 2019 — 19% more traf­fic than the next-busiest road. Here’s where things stand now:

• The West Seat­tle Bridge will be closed indef­i­nite­ly. If it ever reopens (and that’s far from guar­an­teed), it will not open before 2022. Even if reopened with rein­force­ments, it will last at most for anoth­er decade.
• The “low­er” Spokane Street bridge is still open, but only to tran­sit, freight, and emer­gency vehi­cles. Keep­ing this link open is imper­a­tive for first-respon­ders and crit­i­cal ser­vices in West Seattle.

Res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hoods and non-arte­r­i­al roads are not designed to car­ry the bridge’s load, and nei­ther is the 1st Ave South Bridge, which car­ries SR 99 to George­town. The bridge is a sig­nif­i­cant choke point for dri­vers dur­ing rush hour.

West Seat­tle needs to be con­nect­ed to the rest of the region. Doing so in a sus­tain­able, equi­table, effi­cient, and time­ly man­ner is the dif­fi­cult task ahead.

Let’s exam­ine some of the options city and region­al lead­ers have to choose from, and what fac­tors they should take into con­sid­er­a­tion when mak­ing a decision.

The Duwamish Water­way is the defin­ing geo­graph­i­cal fea­ture sep­a­rat­ing West Seat­tle from the rest of the city. The wide and heav­i­ly-indus­tri­al­ized estu­ary is the key point for Seat­tle’s ship­ping industry.

To com­pli­cate mat­ters, access to the Duwamish for ship­ping is sub­ject to fed­er­al reg­u­la­tions. Believe it or not, ves­sels has the right of way at cross­ings like the 1st Ave S Bridge, mak­ing them sub­ject to fre­quent off-peak open­ings. Chang­ing the bridge open­ing reg­u­la­tions would require an act of Con­gress. To pro­tect unin­ter­rupt­ed traf­fic, the old bridge rose high enough above the Duwamish.

While The Urban­ist pre­sent­ed a case for not rebuild­ing the express­way, it may not be fea­si­ble to leave West Seat­tle with no auto­mo­bile cross­ing north of the 1st Ave S Bridge. As the arti­cle con­cedes, the city does not con­tem­plate tear­ing the bridge down with­out replac­ing it. It is extreme­ly like­ly that there will be a new bridge and that it will be designed to car­ry cars.

That does­n’t mean a replace­ment must be as large and car-friend­ly as the old bridge, sev­en lanes wide and one hun­dred and forty feet tall.

To the con­trary: there is a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty to re-ori­ent West Seat­tle from scratch to become more tran­sit-friend­ly. Com­bin­ing the new road bridge with a struc­ture that car­ries light rail as well is an option being explored by Sound Tran­sit and the Seat­tle Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (SDOT).

The ben­e­fits seem evi­dent: both Sound Tran­sit and SDOT could save mon­ey with a mul­ti­modal facil­i­ty. How­ev­er, Sound Tran­sit projects must­n’t be rushed, and com­bin­ing two projects will, and should, take more time.

West Seat­tle Link design won’t be done until at least 2025 (unless it is sped up), and con­struc­tion is not antic­i­pat­ed to be com­plet­ed until 2030. The life­cy­cle of a Sound Tran­sit Link exten­sion is method­i­cal and reliant upon pub­lic outreach.

Rushed infra­struc­ture invest­ments can hurt our com­mu­ni­ties in the long-run.

We are still liv­ing with the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of the con­struc­tion of Inter­state 5 through the heart of Seat­tle. Near­ly 4,500 parcels were cleared with­in city lim­its to build the high­way, which per­ma­nent­ly divid­ed and destroyed his­toric work­ing-class neigh­bor­hoods. This con­crete canyon remains a fix­ture of Seat­tle today.

First Hill res­i­dents were not pleased then by I‑5’s con­struc­tion, and his­to­ry has proved them right. To rec­ti­fy past mis­takes, it might cost $250 mil­lion now to put a lid over I‑5 down­town, a project that NPI strong­ly supports.

West Seat­tle res­i­dents do not want to be with­out a solu­tion. Yet since best-case rein­force­ments to the bridge might expire by the ear­ly 2030s, per­haps a dual-pur­pose bridge, tall enough to clear the Duwamish Water­way but not as tall as the old span, might be the most effi­cient way forward.

After Gov­er­nor Inslee’s stay-at-home orders are relaxed, more com­muters can be expect­ed to ven­ture to down­town and beyond. A good por­tion of those should turn to tran­sit to avoid snarled traf­fic on detours.

The low­er bridge has remained open to tran­sit, bicy­cles, and pedes­tri­ans dur­ing the shut­down, allow­ing nine hun­dred bus­es dai­ly (dur­ing nor­mal times) to eas­i­ly reach SODO with­out traf­fic. This rem­e­dy isn’t per­fect — the low­er bridge is also sub­ject to bridge open­ings. But it is bet­ter than the full detour.

Talk of improv­ing bus con­nec­tions between West Seat­tle to the water taxi between Seacrest Park and Seat­tle has also sur­faced. These were tri­aled last year dur­ing the replace­ment of the Alaskan Way Viaduct, with great suc­cess.

Some West Seat­tle res­i­dents have even pro­posed to adopt “inverse park-and-rides”, where res­i­dents could leave a car at a lot in SODO and use tran­sit to get to their vehi­cles each day. SDOT has been recep­tive to cit­i­zen input but has not yet iden­ti­fied any planned cours­es of action.

There has been talk of Wash­ing­ton State Fer­ries re-rout­ing the Fauntleroy/Southworth and Fauntleroy/Vashon sail­ings to Col­man Dock.

Yet the dock is under­go­ing exten­sive ren­o­va­tion. The dock has two slips now and will have three by 2023; accom­mo­dat­ing four fer­ry routes there will always be dif­fi­cult. More real­is­ti­cal­ly, the King Coun­ty Water Taxi prob­a­bly will have trips and routes added. These pas­sen­ger-only boats have a lot more flex­i­bil­i­ty than the pas­sen­ger-car fer­ries that must dock at Col­man or Fauntleroy.

Cur­rent­ly, the water taxi runs a hand­ful of trips dur­ing rush-hour from Col­man Dock to Seacrest Park and Vashon.

Accord­ing to Seat­tle City Coun­cilmem­ber Lisa Her­bold (West Seat­tle’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive), con­ver­sa­tions with the coun­ty and state gov­ern­ments regard­ing increased water taxi ser­vice and fer­ry re-rout­ing has begun.

The loss of such a crit­i­cal facil­i­ty sim­ply can­not be rec­ti­fied overnight.

Telecom­mut­ing, already wide­spread due to the ongo­ing pan­dem­ic, will have to become more of a per­ma­nent solu­tion for peo­ple in West Seattle.

And invest­ments must be made in West Seat­tle to reduce demand for trav­el out­side the area for essen­tial services.

West Seat­tle does not have a full-size med­ical cen­ter, mak­ing it even more impor­tant to keep the low­er bridge open to essen­tial services.

Ulti­mate­ly, it will be weeks or months before any sig­nif­i­cant deci­sions on the bridge’s future will be made. As dis­cus­sions advance, we will be lend­ing our sup­port to a tran­sit-ori­ent­ed replace­ment for the West Seat­tle Bridge.