Ross Hunter

Category: Transportation

  • Progress Update on the 520 Project

    The construction effort on 520 is about to move to the West side, after a long, long slog of a project. The last pontoons will be on the lake by November (if the creek don’t rise) and the details of the Eastside project will get finalized. The communication below is from Julie Meredith, the Program Administrator for the entire project (and one of my favorite engineers.)

    If you check out some of the links you’ll see that the part of the new bridge that connects to the existing 520 is mostly temporary. it’s a complicated dance to keep the project moving forward without totally disrupting

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  • Visiting Bertha (Many Photos)

    Visiting Bertha (Many Photos)

    One of the perks of the State Rep gig is that I get some cool tours. I’ve been inside pontoons on the 520 bridge, an aircraft carrier, Sound Transit tunnel construction, and last week the orifice the Bertha is creating. I took some photos that illustrate some aspects of the visit, though it’s hard to capture the sense of the project from a single walk-through.

    The entry to the tunnel
    The entry to the tunnel

    The entrance to the actual tunnel is a large pit that I believe will eventually form the floor of the lower level of the tunnel. Right where the red erector set-like construction is in the back the level drops down and you’re below the level of the driving surface.

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  • 520 Progress – New Status Report from Chief Engineer

    520 Progress – New Status Report from Chief Engineer

    The SR 520 program is making lots of progress this summer – with 46 pontoons now on Lake Washington and a new Eastside transit stop open for transit riders! Today we also celebrated a new construction milestone on the floating bridge—installation of the first transition span. More details below.

    Transition span installation on June 27Cool photo of transition span

    Today crews began installing the first of four transition spans for the new SR 520 floating bridge. This first span will connect the new floating bridge with the stationary east approach, south segmental bridge near Medina. This section of the transition span is composed of five steel girders, each 190 feet long, over seven feet tall, and weighing about 45 tons.

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  • Major 520 Work in June

    520 BridgeThe Eastside portion of the 520 project will reach a major milestone this summer – it’ll be mostly done by August/September. There will be punchlist work for some of the fall, but major disruptions should end. I know it’s been a bear of a project.

    Over the next few weeks you’ll see some major changes in traffic flow. I am sure it will be seriously aggravating. Closing the entire corridor for a year would have been worse. Letting it sink in a storm worse still.

    The attached email from the 520 project people details what you should expect over the next few weeks. It’ll be closed every weekend except June 16-18 to allow for the UW graduation.

    SR 520 construction notification_ Upcoming weekend closures and construction activities.

  • Follow-up from Telephone Town Hall – Foster Care and 520 Bridge Schedule

    Thanks for the 4000-5000 folks who listened to a segment of our telephone town hall last week. There were a lot of questions asked. If you have an extra hour and want to listen to the recording of the questions I answered here it is. I said I’d answer questions left on voicemail at the end, and we had the following two that we didn’t get to:

    520 – When will Construction End? (Ever?)

    According to the WSDOT website, the Eastside portion (405 to the lake in Medina) of the project will be finished in the summer of 2014. I think this means that “Cars will be able to drive on it, and most major construction will be done.” I expect there to be some finishing work afterwards, but the major construction should be finished.

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  • Sound Transit Eastlink Route Animation

    Sound Transit Eastlink Route Animation

    EastlinkI attended a Bellevue Downtown Association meeting last week where the following animation was presented, along with a great talk on what the downtown Bellevue light rail staion will look like. The animation takes about 12 minutes, but really allows you to see where the train will go and how it will integrate into both Bellevue and Redmond.

    Must-See TV!

  • Transportation

    Transportation

    I made some remarks at the Bellevue Rotary yesterday that seem to have been misinterpreted by some people, so I’m clarifying:

    Passing a transportation package this session is incredibly important for the Puget Sound region. I support a well-designed package.

    • Metro Cuts

      Starting in January King County Metro will start reducing service to make up for an expiring car tab fee the state authorized them to charge several years ago. You can see the proposed reductions here. The Eastside cuts will result in significantly increased congestion as commuters shift to single-occupancy cars.

    • Arial view of 520 bridge

      The 520 bridge project will stop planning for the next phase. They will lay off the design team, making it difficult to re-start the project, costing millions and adding years of delay. If no package is passed we will have a bridge that has 6 lanes all the way to Foster island, which turns out to not be all that helpful. The exit to Montlake will be dysfunctional and highly congested as buses and HOVs cross three lanes of traffic to get off and on. The vulnerable parts of the bridge will remain – the hollow pillars on the west approach to Montlake and the Portage Bay Viaduct, and could fail in an earthquake or by being struck by a barge. (This happened a few years ago and did serious damage to one of the pillars.)

    • The Seattle metro area has some of the worst congestion in the nation. In 2012 our area was the 4th worst in the nation, according to the Tom-Tom data company. (Link here.) This is a deterrent to businesses locating here, and fixing it has been a major ask of the Boeing Company, Microsoft, and a host of other major employers. As I’m sure you have figured out by now it’s also quite painful to live through.

    I support a large transportation investment package to improve this situation and will vote for a package that makes sense.

    However, I don’t support just ANY transportation package – it needs to be good for the central Puget Sound. (Other parts of the state care about the impact on their area, which makes putting together a package an incredibly difficult balancing act.) A good package will have a number of key elements: (more…)

  • Boeing, Special Sessions, Tax Policy, and Transportation

    I’m in Olympia today at the behest of Governor Inslee. He called us in to, in his words:

    “I am asking lawmakers to pass a package of legislation that will guarantee that the Boeing 777X and its carbon fiber wing are built in Washington state,” Inslee said at a press conference today where he was joined by a bipartisan group of legislators, Boeing’s Ray Conner, chief executive officer of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. In addition, Machinist union officials Tom Wroblewski, president, Mark Johnson, aerospace coordinator, and Rich Michalski, general vice president, joined the group.

    “If we can do this in the next seven days, we can be certain that Washington’s aerospace future will be as bright as its past,” said Inslee.

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  • I-90 tolling proposal public input opportunity

    Ancient (1979) toll booth on the 520 bridge
    Ancient (1979) toll booth on the 520 bridge – courtesy WSDOT

    I received the following memo from WSDOT this week. We are entering the phase of finalizing the funding plan for the Western landing for 520. One of the options is tolling I-90 to pay for the remaining $1.4 billion in work to be done.

    We currently have enough money in the budget to connect the 6-lane bridge to Montlake, but not go all the way to I-5, and the Westbound connection from Montlake to Foster Island is somewhat crippled. The decision to move forward with construction of the floating and Eastside portions has saved a tremendous amount of money over waiting, and has pushed the decision forward so that the bridge will actually get done.

    Leaving the 520 bridge in this partially-complete stage would be disastrous – the traffic congestion from the merge would be painful and we would not get the throughput we want. Seattle would not get the mitigation it wants.

    Tolling I-90 is not the desired option, but it’s our backup plan and we’re doing the study. The memo is about ways to have input, should you so desire. There is a meeting on Thursday October 10th you may be interested in as well.

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  • Get ready for westbound SR 520 closures on Thursday nights

    Bridge Closed SignUseful info from WSDOT. Construction closures are aggravating, but getting the bridge done more quickly saves money and gets the whole project done faster.

    Construction of the new West Connection Bridge is in full swing so please plan ahead for weekly closures of westbound SR 520. Crews will close all westbound lanes from 92nd Avenue NE to Montlake Boulevard beginning 11 p.m. Thursday to 5 a.m. Friday each week from Sept. 19 through Oct. 17. Before and after each full closure, a single westbound lane will be closed from 9-11 p.m. and from 5-6 a.m. During the closures crews will build foundations and columns on Lake Washington, just to the north of SR 520. Dates are subject to change. Check the new SR 520 Orange Page for updates.