by Lizz Giordano

With the opening of the West Seattle Bridge on Sunday, Sept. 18, the Duwamish Valley is counting down the times to fewer autos passing by means of the neighborhood and regaining its streets for slower makes use of. 

The Seattle Division of Transportation closed the bridge in late March 2020 in the beginning of the pandemic and as stay-at-home orders had been introduced. As individuals started to hunker down, most neighborhood streets noticed much less visitors, however that wasn’t the case for the Duwamish Valley, the place the one public bridges on and off the peninsula had been situated. 

“We had the precise reverse. There was this enormous flood of actually harmful congestion that occurred in and round our neighborhoods, whether or not that’s Delridge or South Park or Georgetown, that the remainder of town didn’t see,” stated Erica Bush, who coleads Duwamish Valley Secure Streets, an area offshoot of Seattle Neighborhood Greenways.

“And it meant that we in these communities, which had been already impacted, had been then worse impacted throughout COVID, which was actually exhausting. And it was particularly exhausting on younger households,” Bush stated.

Bush, who lived in each Georgetown and Delridge in the course of the span of the closure, averted leaving or returning residence between the hours of two and eight p.m. On her bike, Bush’s important mode of transportation, the congested streets felt harmful. 

After common inspections of the bridge confirmed quickly rising cracks in the primary span, the Metropolis closed the bridge, in-built 1984, which had carried about 100,000 autos a day pre-pandemic. 

To mitigate the rerouting of 1000’s of automobiles, SDOT launched a sequence of updates referred to as Reconnect West Seattle. These initiatives included bettering and putting in sidewalks and crosswalks, and “House Zone” initiatives that aimed to create pedestrian-friendly neighborhood streets. 

Finally, the work didn’t nullify the large impression of the visitors, stated Bush; there was nonetheless an enormous variety of automobiles driving by means of residential communities. 

“I actually hope that folks aren’t too adjusted to the brand new route,” Bush added. “I’m fearful that there’s going to stay extra visitors in these neighborhoods.”

As extra autos had been routed south, elevated visitors introduced with it worse air high quality to Georgetown and South Park in comparison with the yr earlier than, in contrast to different areas of town that noticed enchancment to particulate air pollution, in accordance with a report by the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition. 

“Our air high quality didn’t enhance in any respect from the shortage of individuals going to work,” stated Robin Schwartz, a growth and group advocate for the group. 

In the course of the two-year-plus closure, Schwartz, who can also be a part of the South Park Neighborhood Affiliation, was in a position to pivot to working from residence. However the elevated cut-through visitors made the streets really feel unsafe for youths to be driving their bikes round, she stated. 

It was a tough scenario for SDOT, Schwartz added, however she felt the company was fairly in line with working with the neighborhoods to assist ease the ache of internet hosting West Seattle’s visitors. 

The bridge closure was actually troublesome for West Seattle, stated Heather Marx, SDOT’s program director for the undertaking, particularly piled on high of the pandemic.

SDOT pinpointed post-tensioning, the tightening of cables that run by means of the concrete bridge, as the reason for the cracks. When the bridge was constructed, stated Marx, the post-tensioning, whereas carried out in accordance with the requirements of the time, wasn’t sufficient. Requirements have since modified. 

To stabilize and restore the bridge, employees injected epoxy into the cracks, filling the gaps to guard the rebar inside. A carbon-fiber wrap was added to additional strengthen the concrete, and crews additionally put in a brand new monitoring system. Then, within the hole girders that make up the physique of the bridge, crews put in new post-tensioning cables that, when tightened, compressed the concrete collectively. A concrete strike delayed the opening by a few months. 

SDOT’s contractor spent the final weeks earlier than the opening load testing — strategically enjoying giant hundreds across the bridge and measuring how the bridge responds. SDOT expects this restore will protect the bridge for “the remainder of its helpful life” — one other 40 years.

Lizz Giordano is a contract multimedia journalist primarily based in Seattle’s Rainier Valley specializing in transit and housing. She will be reached on Twitter @lizzgior, and extra of her work will be discovered on her web site.

📸 Featured Picture: Development crew gathers on the West Seattle Bridge. (Picture: Tim Durkan, courtesy of SDOT Pictures underneath a Artistic Commons, CC BY-NC 2.0 license).

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