Taking a look at the agenda that is on your screen here, we will begin with some opening statements from the council members, followed by a presentation from Director Zimbabwe that will take just about 40 minutes.
After that, we are going to be working on answering the questions you are sending in.
If you haven't done so already, you can do that via the form you've been sent in response to your RSVP.
And I should point out close to 3000 people RSVP to be involved in tonight's meeting.
Thank you very much for being a part of this so to make the q amp a part of this as efficient as possible.
I'm going to be working with the council staff, as the questions come in, I will ask as many questions as possible within our timeframe, and I'm hoping to cover a diverse array of issues there.
Please know that if your question is not answered directly tonight, it will be reviewed by council staff.
A big thanks to everyone for their patience and understanding, and especially your involvement in this important discussion.
Let's begin with council member Lisa Herbold, your district one representative.
Council member Herbold.
Unmute, unmute.
Sure enough, thank you.
So yes, thank you to everyone who's watching.
I'll make this short and sweet.
As Brian mentioned, we have about 3200 people who have registered.
This is really a testament to just how critical the West Seattle Bridge is to those of us who live in West Seattle.
There's an overwhelming desire of our community for updates and participation, and I'm really encouraged by the number of people who have contacted my office since March 23rd with their ideas for how to best address this crisis.
I pledge that my office will always work hard to get your updates early and I will work to ensure that SDOT considers your suggestions seriously.
Whether those are suggestions about traffic management needs along alternative routes, suggestions for new or expanded transit, repair and replacement ideas for the bridge, or your recommendations about process and oversight.
I want to thank SDOT for participating.
Also, many, many thanks to Councilmember Peterson.
He is the chair of the Transportation Utilities Committee.
I appreciate the attention that he is giving this issue.
And there will undoubtedly be many more questions that we have time to answer.
It's reported that there are over 300 questions that have already come in.
So I want you to know that we're compiling all the questions.
We'll be working to get you answers and we'll share them with everyone who's participating and the greater West Seattle community.
This is the first time that we've done an electronic town hall.
So if we have some hiccups, please be patient and bear that in mind.
Really appreciate it and ready to get this rolling.
All right, let's turn it over to Council Member Peterson, please.
Good evening, West Seattle.
My name's Alex Peterson.
I'm Chair of the City Council's Transportation Committee.
I pledge to work very closely with West Seattle Council Member Lisa Herbold.
We will be closely monitoring and encouraging SDOT's rapid assessment of the bridge and expedite plans for next steps.
We want to keep everyone safe and moving.
So I look forward to your questions tonight.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for that.
And let's move on to Director Zimbabwe, if you would begin your presentation.
Thank you.
Absolutely.
Thank you, Brian, and thanks everybody who is tuning in tonight.
I know that this is a new way of participating with us and we look forward to sharing what we've got in terms of updates and hearing from the community and then commit throughout this process to stay in regular communication and contact with The community, there's never a good time to close a bridge, but I briefly as I start want to thank everybody at S dot, who in the midst of a public health crisis continue to be at the forefront, enabling us to identify rapidly accelerating cracking on the West Seattle bridge.
and enabled us to make the difficult decision to close it on March 23. I also want to thank everybody who is tuning in and everybody who has been affected by this unanticipated closure.
And we at SDOT share your surprise and frustration.
Heather and I both are West Seattle residents ourselves, and we intimately understand what this closure means to both the people of West Seattle but also the people throughout the city who are affected by the closure of the West Seattle bridge.
And we also know that this is a time when many people throughout our community are struggling through this public health crisis and the economic challenges that we all face together as a community.
So please know that Mayor Durkan, myself, and our partners at all levels of government are and will continue to work together to identify the best possible path forward and mitigate the impacts of this closure throughout the community that we know is feeling it right now.
Just to talk a little bit about what we will present and we're going to walk through as much information as possible and try to answer your questions in advance and then be able to answer the questions as they come in.
We're going to talk a little bit about the background and what has changed in the last month since March 23rd, what the future of the bridge is, and then spend a little bit of time on what our traffic mitigation is to date and where we're going with that and then talk about our communication and outreach and how we'll continue to stay in touch with the broader community throughout this process.
So stepping back to the earliest days of the bridge, and many here know this history very well, but this bridge opened in 1984 it's a cast-in-place concrete and steel bridge.
So it's uniquely designed for our topography and geography.
This is a picture of it under construction, and you can see one of the old bridges in the background there, the new bridge being built, and then the lower bridge, the lower Spokane Street Bridge that we have today, was built after the high bridge was built.
It was originally built with and designed with three lanes in either direction, and was designed with the best methods and standards of the day.
It over the last 36 years it's evolved into really a critical part of our transportation infrastructure it carries close to 100,000 vehicles every day.
thousands and thousands of transit riders on a normal day.
Even during our public health crisis, where we've seen traffic around the city decline, we were still carrying substantial numbers of vehicles on a day-to-day basis.
So we recognize just how critical this is as a piece of transportation infrastructure in our city.
Since March 23rd, We want to, you know, when we made this difficult decision to close the bridge, due to the rapid growth and cracking along the center.
center span of the bridge.
We did that, and I'll walk through exactly what what led to that and some of the growth and cracks that happened very quickly.
We had to make that decision very quickly to preserve life safety of people throughout the city, both traveling on top of the bridge, but also those underneath.
And over our frequent inspections of the bridge, there had not been indications that this level of cracking was going on.
And some of the acceleration really came on very, very quickly.
Since we removed vehicular traffic from the bridge, we've still found that cracks continue to grow, but they are growing at a slower rate.
So that confirms our immediate removal of the vehicular load of the bridge was essential.
but we are not yet out of the woods completely.
And we have a better understanding of the stabilization timeline, but there's still some uncertainty that I'll walk through.
So I want to continue to reiterate that safety is our top priority and will guide us through this process going forward.
We continue to inspect the bridge daily, but also make sure that the bridge is safe for our crews to work.
Right now we're installing intelligent monitoring equipment on the bridge that will alert us to changes in real time and also help us understand the trajectory and how the bridge is continuing to evolve so we can understand the potential cracking scenarios and adequately prepare contingency plans.
So we are right now developing emergency response plans with our partners with our emergency response partners, including the police department.
Seattle Fire Department and the Coast Guard on if we ever get to the point of imminent failure, we can make sure we ensure public safety.
And I want to be very clear that right now we do not think that the bridge is at imminent risk of failure since we've taken the vehicular live load off of the bridge, but we are not yet out of the woods and we want to make sure that we are prepared for any eventuality here.
We'll come back to all the things that the community can do overall here but one of the key things that people can do is to sign up for alert Seattle.
Today and, and this is a good idea no matter if you're concerned about the West Seattle bridge or just concerned about.
what's going on in the community overall.
Signing up for Alert Seattle is a good idea in general and we'll come back to this at the very end about all the things that people can do to make sure that they stay informed about the long-term future of the bridge and any need for emergency response.
So as we start talking about the future of the bridge, I want to again also be clear that there's still a lot of uncertainty around the bridge and how we will return vehicular traffic and return it to our are being a critical transportation asset.
We don't yet know whether repair of the bridge is feasible from a technical or financial perspective.
But if repair is feasible, we think it can extend the life and provide up to at least another 10 years of additional use.
But this process of returning vehicular traffic to the bridge will take us some time.
And we don't anticipate traffic returning to the bridge during 2020 or 2021. Throughout the process, throughout our work on the bridge, we're committed to clear communication and transparency with the community.
And this town hall tonight is really just the beginning of that.
And we expect that we'll continue to provide updates and provide information as soon as we have it.
I want to talk through a little bit of the history that got us here and then where that takes us in the future and what took the community by surprise and honestly came up on SDOT very quickly as well and how we went from safe to failing in just days.
So we've inspected the West Seattle Bridge annually since 2013, and that's twice as frequently as required.
Since March 23 we've released all of the inspection reports that go back to 2013. During those inspection reports there wasn't an indication that there was the bridge was unsafe or that the bridge was that normal traffic would be affected by, by what we were seeing concrete bridges of this type crack.
That's a normal aspect of what they do as a structure.
It's really the type and the scale and the trajectory of those cracks and where they are that gives us pause.
And it was not until very, very recently that we had any indication that there would be an impact to normal use of the bridge.
So in mid-2019, we started a process of detailed modeling of the bridge structure called a live load rating.
And at the same time, we also did some preventative maintenance to inject the cracks that we had seen and we had seen growing very slowly since 2013 with an epoxy to protect the steel at the core of the bridge from the elements.
Working through 2019 and continuing the on-site inspections with our engineering consultants, we continued to monitor the bridge over the course of 2019. In late February 2020, our engineering consultants finished some work and continued modeling the growth of cracks and recommended that we begin planning to reduce lanes on the bridge within the calendar year so that we could complete repairs.
They had seen crack growth and this picture here shows what we had seen in the previous three months.
So the highlighted areas show the growth of cracks that we had seen in the three months leading up to early March, late February and early March.
A few weeks later, our consultant and SDOT went back on the bridge, re-inspected some of those cracks, and saw that cracks had grown substantially in just a few weeks.
Just in three weeks, they'd grown substantially.
So we went from a period of 2013 through early 2019, to the mid-2019, of very slow growth in cracks, not much change in the bridge itself.
and then some rapidly accelerating growth in cracks as we were inspecting it over the course of 2019. March 19th, our consultants notified us that the cracks had gotten a lot bigger and raised very big concerns about the stability of the structure.
We went back and inspected each day over the course of March, the weekend of March 20th to Monday, March 23rd.
We saw those cracks continue to grow very quickly and made the recommendation to close the bridge and we close the bridge that evening to traffic acting very quickly.
This picture shows just a little bit of, of where we had seen those that that growth in those last couple of weeks before we close the bridge.
On one of the walls, and we have about eight different walls where we've seen this type of cracking.
On one wall alone, we found that eight of those cracks had grown in total more than 12 feet.
And the longest crack had suddenly grown by more than four and a half feet.
And we saw those cracks creeping up the wall towards the deck of the bridge, towards the top of those girder walls.
And That was very concerning about the rate of growth with the live load of traffic on the bridge.
And we've said it in other venues, but the weight of the bridge itself, the bridge itself is about 80% of the load that it carries is the bridge itself.
And so we had to do very quickly whatever we could to remove as much load as possible.
And the way to do that was to remove vehicular traffic just to stabilize the bridge.
Since we have removed live load, the vehicular load from the bridge, we've seen those cracks continue to grow a little bit, but grow at a slower rate.
And we're very closely watching that, making sure that we don't get towards towards towards failure and so you know we think that this this accelerated growth in the last few weeks before we close the bridge was not a maintenance issue wasn't an issue with how we were maintaining the bridge but was something else that we're still trying to understand exactly what is going on with the bridge that that led to this rapid acceleration of cracks.
So transitioning from sort of where we are with the bridge to how we go forward, we're continuing that field inspection and installing the instrumentation that can help us understand what is happening in real time and putting those, putting very specific electronic instruments in very specific places where our design engineers can understand exactly what's changing with the bridge and inform how we can go about bringing back live load vehicular traffic to the bridge.
Immediately we're working on one critical issue with the bridge, which I'll talk about in a bit more detail which is a bearing on pure 18 and I'll talk a little bit more about exactly what that means and what we're doing.
We're also starting the process of repair design, and that will start with shoring, with stabilizing the bridge, and then moving into a repair, repairing the damage and making sure that the bridge is ready for vehicular load.
And we're still gathering information about how and exactly whether that is possible from a technical or financial perspective.
This summer, we expect to fix the issue on Pier 18 that I'll talk a little bit more about, and then begin ordering the materials that can lead to shoring.
And this shoring is going to be technically challenging and will require a long lead time on some of the materials that we'll need to do that.
We expect to start construction late fall and then complete that shoring work in early next year.
And that's where we would completely stabilize the bridge.
In parallel with all this, we are going to be doing designing the repair, understanding what exactly we would need to do with repair.
And then because we have a lot of uncertainty, we'll also be starting the process of understanding what it would look like to replace the bridge and be able to make a decision about whether repair or replacement is in the city's best interest, what the timelines would be, what the challenges and what the, what the cost comparisons would be of repair versus replacement.
We think of these things in phases.
The first phase is to slow or halt the bridge deterioration.
That started when we closed the bridge, removed vehicular live load, and then working really to stabilize the bridge itself.
No matter what happens, no matter what the long-term future is, this stabilization is absolutely essential to maintain public safety in the community.
One really key piece of that is what I talked about, Pier 18 and a lateral bearing.
And a bearing is something in a bridge that sits between the roadway of the bridge and the support piers and the columns that hold it up.
And this allows the bridge to move and absorb forces in response to traffic, in response to expansion and contraction of the concrete and the materials based on temperature changes and in response to normal changes in concrete.
We have a bearing that transfers lateral load, load along the bridge, that is compressed and bulging.
And that seems to be adding additional pressure and stress that affects the whole of the bridge.
And we've got a picture here on this slide that shows It's a little bit hard to see, but there's a bit of neoprene in between the two pieces of steel that is bulging and so is not absorbing the pressures in the way that it's supposed to, and that's creating additional stresses on the whole of the bridge.
Pier 18 is on the eastern side of the bridge, the West Seattle High Bridge, the critical piece of the structure is four sets of columns that support three different spans, and those go from west to east.
Pier 15 is on the west side, it's just east of West Marginal Way.
The center span between Pier 16 and 17 is what crosses the Duwamish Waterway.
And then Pier 17 to 18 is over the eastern side on Harbor Island.
So the first step is to unlock the bearing, fix this bearing issue on Pier 18. And that will remove some of the stress.
And we're in the process right now of procuring a contractor to perform these immediate repairs.
All right.
The next stage is, once we've unlocked this bearing, the next stage is shoring the bridge to continue to really stabilize it.
I talked about this a little bit, but this means adding some temporary structure to the bridge to preserve its integrity and enable us to do more extensive repairs.
And we need to make sure that the bridge is stable enough to enable that additional repair work.
We think that that will start later this year and we'll have some long lead time in terms of the materials and the methods of how to stabilize the bridge fully and make sure that we can do that safely.
The next stage after that is still a little bit uncertain, but then after after shoring, we would enter a period of bridge repair.
And there's a lot of there's some key elements of uncertainty that I want to discuss, which leads to some of where we are in terms of a timeline.
Right now, we don't know whether we can stabilize the bridge before further deterioration makes that infeasible.
We also don't know exactly how we will construct that shoring and repair and whether there are additional permitting requirements because the Duwamish is a critical navigation channel as well.
And if we have any impacts to that, we'll have to do additional We'll have to get additional permitting to be able to do both shoring and repair.
We don't know exactly what types of equipment or materials we'll need to fabricate both for that shoring and repair.
And this is work that we are in the middle of right now to help answer these questions.
And all of these will feed into our understanding of whether repair is feasible from a technical and financial perspective.
but we're still at the very early stages of this.
We're still at 0% design.
Each step as we go along this process will help us understand what is doable and what is feasible, how we will work on this.
We're also starting that process of understanding what replacement would look like and whether and how fast replacement could happen, how it would be built, what the potential opportunities and what the challenges would be associated with a replacement at the same time.
I'm going to turn it over now to Heather to talk a little bit about what we're doing in the current day around traffic mitigations, and then we'll come back to talk about how people can get involved, stay involved, and then open it up for questions and answers.
Thanks, Sam.
And I just want to reiterate that I, too, live in West Seattle, so this is this is personal for me as well.
Closing the West Seattle bridge because of the volume of traffic has a similar level of complexity to the recent viaduct closure, but with a lot fewer reroute choices and without anything like the planning timeline we had.
Right now, the low bridge, which is indicated on this slide with the blue line, is restricted to people who are driving emergency vehicles, freight trucks, and public transit.
We have the Seattle Police Department out there supporting that enforcement.
You can continue to use the pathway on the low bridge for walking and biking.
And of course, you can still access Harbor Island from the east side via the East Channel Bridge.
We've identified some detour routes and some alternative routes.
People who live in West Seattle and people who travel back and forth from West Seattle to South Park and Georgetown know their own secret routes and certainly encourage people to continue to use those.
One common one though is Highland Parkway.
And so we have installed a traffic signal there at the corner of Highland Parkway and Holden.
We've also improved and are continuing to improve the detour route signage that leads you to the First Avenue South Bridge.
Signals at the five-way intersection by the Chelan Cafe, so near the low bridge, those signals have been interconnected to the citywide system so that we can change the signal timing there in real time to respond to traffic conditions on the ground.
We're going to repave this intersection this weekend.
So that's going to be a lot smoother.
And as time goes on, we'll add some additional improvements to make that intersection work a lot better.
In addition to the five-way intersection, we'll be re-striping, adding signage, and smoothing alternative routes as time goes on.
We've identified a handful of medium-term measures and we're working on some long-term measures that may help smooth the way for traffic leaving West Seattle and coming into West Seattle.
We're working closely with transit because transit always has to be the best way to get places here in the city.
SDOT and Metro are working closely to keep buses moving in and out of West Seattle as quickly as possible.
As I mentioned before, people driving buses are among the folks who are allowed to use the low bridge.
Metro, as many of you may know, has reduced service in response to the public health crisis.
They've done that several times.
We're working closely with them to plan the service that they'll add back when the restrictions are lifted.
In addition, I do want to note that West Seattle buses that are on that low bridge are subject to bridge openings of that lower level bridge.
It's about 700 buses a day, normally 900 in sort of a pre and post COVID world.
We're also working together, speaking almost every day on data sharing and traffic monitoring.
And that work is going to help inform improvements that we may make along those routes to help reliability.
So part of the work that we're doing is represented by this meeting right now.
We want to work with the West Seattle community, the Georgetown community, the South Park community, surrounding neighborhoods, and businesses to help keep people informed, provide resources, and of course, answer questions.
We have several ways to get informed.
We can share email updates with subscribers.
please do visit SDOT's website and sign yourself up there.
We also post blogs, maps, and graphics on our website nearly every day.
And so that's a good source of information.
And of course, we continue to work with the media to share updates.
So please do pay attention there.
We're working with the Department of Neighborhoods and the Office of Economic Development so that we can reach the broader community throughout Seattle and the region, including the freight and maritime communities.
So whenever there's sort of a crisis, I really like to know what I can do right now to make things a little bit better.
The first thing that you can do right now is go to seattle.gov slash transportation slash West Seattle Bridge and click subscribe now.
There's a button and you'll be able to get email updates about the bridge.
You can also browse all the reroute maps and FAQs.
If you have questions, please send an email to 684-road at seattle.gov or call 686-684-road.
I think it's probably 206-684-road.
Also, you can go to alert.seattle.gov and sign up for Alert Seattle.
That's a critical way to help keep you informed, not just about the West Seattle Bridge, but about all sorts of emergencies that may happen.
We also need folks to start thinking about what happens as we slowly come out of this public health crisis.
Your ability to travel to and from West Seattle is going to be greatly diminished, particularly during peak hours.
So once we are back to business as usual or whatever that turns out to be, we simply cannot go on the way we have.
So please do think about ways that you can try something new, put to work your state, your working remotely skills that you've honed so greatly.
Think about buying a bicycle.
There are lots of options to get to and from West Seattle.
And for those who have those sorts of choices, please, please do consider them.
We encourage you and we want you to encourage others to follow those low bridge restrictions.
We need to make sure that that low bridge remains clear for emergency response, particularly during this public health crisis.
So as we move into questions, let me just jump back in and reiterate that We understand that this has been a major impact on on the community already and that it will continue to be as long as the bridge is closed to vehicular traffic.
The work that Heather talked about, the mitigations that we've put in place just in the last few weeks, we know are gonna continue to evolve especially as we get out of our public health crisis and as we get back towards normal.
We also really need this to be a community-wide effort to think about how we're getting in and out of West Seattle over the next period and really think creatively about how people are planning for their trips going forward as we continue to try to make those trips as smooth as possible.
And then just again, reiterated our commitment to continued communication, continued engagement and clear and transparent communication throughout this time period.
All right, I guess at this point we will jump in with some questions.
Thank you very much, Director Zimbabwe.
Thank you very much, Heather Marks, for your input there.
I should note that we've got some great viewership here and some great numbers, more than 3,300 people of RSVP to tonight's event.
That's some great involvement there, more than 600 questions submitted.
and 1,800 people are viewing this right now.
So thanks everybody for being involved.
I'm going to jump in and start asking some of these questions here and make sure I do that with a few clicks of the mouse.
Let's check this out.
So in a number of these situations, we have a question that has been asked by a number of different people.
I'm going to do my best to try to consolidate that into one question.
Here's one from Kate to start things off.
She asks, why not proceed immediately with demolition and rebuilding rather than shoring the bridge?
when best estimate for repair lifespan is 10 years?
Jeff had that question too, a number of other people.
If someone could please answer that one.
Sure.
So, you know, we're working to get the information we need to make that decision.
I would say that the cost of going immediately to replacement of the bridge is likely an order of magnitude larger than it would be to proceed with repairs.
And we don't yet know what the timeline of replacement would be either.
What we know right now is that we have to stabilize the bridge to maintain public safety.
And while we do that, we are also proceeding with those types of questions.
What exactly is entailed by repair?
What would replacement look like?
And what would the timelines and cost differentials be so that we can have that informed discussion?
Right now, our primary goal is to make sure that we are maintaining public safety and stabilizing the structure itself as we answer those types of questions.
All right, great.
And I'll let the council members chime in where they feel free to, but I'll just keep on firing away with these questions and we'll see what happens here.
Here's another one asked by a number of people.
Joel, Annie, Angela, Randall had similar questions here.
It goes like this.
Is there any plan for the city of Seattle to work with King County to increase water taxi service from West Seattle, and possibly even Vashon Island, and to find temporary dock space on the central waterfront to accommodate additional runs.
Can someone please tackle that one?
I would like to start, I think Estep might have some things to add, but I just want to assure viewers that as it relates specifically to expansion of the West Seattle Water Taxi, I've had some initial conversations about our interest in doing that with King County Council Member Joe McDermott, as it relates to the ideas around the Fauntleroy Ferry, whether or not that means taking some of that ferry traffic that comes from Bashan and Southworth and sending it downtown or some of the other ideas that I've heard from folks.
I've had some initial conversations with Senator Joe Nguyen at the state since the ferry system is a state system.
I've also had conversations with several port commissioners.
So beginning to talk with with elected officials across all the jurisdictions that make decisions about these sorts of things.
And to the extent that there are details to fill in the blanks here that SDOT could provide, I'd like that to be provided as well.
Thank you.
So I just want to note that we are working closely with King County Metro, both on wheeled transit rubber tire buses, as well as the water taxi.
And so we want to make sure that we have a full suite of transit options available, not just frequent service from the water taxi to downtown, but also ways to get to the water taxi from the rest of West Seattle.
Sam, I think, has been working with the ferries.
Yeah, I'll just say also that I've been on the phone with Washington State Ferries.
And really, throughout this process, it's Heather and I here today.
There's a whole team behind us at SDOT that's working on this every day.
And every other transportation agency that we've talked to throughout this process has been very willing to roll up their sleeves and figure out how they can help.
I don't think that any of us have all the answers just yet on these types of questions, but we're all we're all putting our best thinking forward and thinking about how to change what we do on a normal basis to try to get through this period.
There are a lot of constraints, as everybody will understand, to dock capacity at Coleman Dock right now, which is under construction, to slip capacity at other areas.
But nobody's saying no.
Nobody's not willing to think creatively about how to move forward together.
And it's been really remarkable over as we've tried to deal with this crisis, the willingness of our partners to also think creatively and try to move forward together.
Thank you very much for that another transit related question that I'll put your way, Krista had this question Jeff also chimed in in this way.
In the spirit of planning for a long-term solution, what are the chances of combining a new bridge and the light rail into one project?
Surely this could save the city and taxpayers money in the long run.
Thank you.
Any thoughts on this one?
Sure.
So this is another place where, you know, our partners aren't don't don't know all the answers yet, but nothing is off the table and it's a it's a great thought and we've gotten lots of great thoughts and ideas from the community already and have have initial discussions about those types of things.
You know, I think we're all also as transportation agencies.
Dealing with the the impacts to revenues and and the impacts on on everybody's transportation finances over in this period as well and.
Sound Transit's working on their environmental impact statement for the West Seattle to Ballard light rail extension.
That is, that's anticipated to the draft is intense anticipated to be next spring and the final environmental impact statement in 2022. Right now they're light rail construction schedule starts around 2025. As we think about what is expedient and what will take some time, I think those are the types of trade-offs that we'll have to weigh in terms of how quickly we get vehicular traffic back on the West Seattle Bridge, what our replacement timeline would look like, and we work together collaboratively to figure out the best possible solutions.
Thank you very much for that.
I'm gonna throw another question in.
Oh, I'm sorry, if you would, please Council Member Herbold.
I appreciate it.
I just wanna add that from some information that Council Member Peterson helped get today, it does look like if we want at this stage, Sound Transit to consider a multi-purpose bridge in their environmental impact statement, analysis.
This is something that we would need to make a request for an amendment, for an adjustment of the EIS, and that would be a decision that the Sound Transit Board would have to make.
So we're looking more into that as well, but also recognize the points that Directors Zimbabwe makes is if we go on the sort of the Sound Transit route, we may overall be able to save some costs because we're leveraging Sound Transit dollars, potentially federal dollars, but it's going to take more time if we're using the Sound Transit timeline for when rail is is supposed to be delivered.
Although it's possible that a bridge could become operational before rail starts moving.
Got it.
Okay, just want to make sure everyone chimed in there.
Thank you very much for that.
Moving back to our questions here a question from Patrick.
He says, I am a frontline physician taking care of coven 19 patients right now it is taking three times longer for my colleagues and I to get from West Seattle to downtown where we work, and this without even close to full traffic.
We are terrified of what will happen when everyone gets back to work and how it will impact patient care.
What are City Hall and SDOT solutions to help the 100,000 folks immediately get in and out of West Seattle while you are building a new bridge and repairing the old?
Some thoughts about this.
Well, that is a really good question, and especially in the current public health crisis that we're in.
If there's one thing we've learned, there are no unessential workers.
Everybody is working really hard and everybody from the folks at the grocery store to the folks at Harborview are critical.
We will continue to work closely with King County Metro to ensure that transit service is robust and available.
Right now, the low bridge, we really have to reserve for emergency vehicles as well as transit.
So if you're using transit, you're absolutely going to get to use that low bridge.
It's a difficult thing once we start deciding who is more important than others, it becomes a situation where that low bridge or where any detour route is going to be overwhelmed.
The challenge really is that if we loosen those restrictions, that no one will be able to use it.
The volume of traffic on the low bridge at the point of the traffic system failing is 20,000.
And that represents backups all the way to the junction and all the way to I-5.
So totally, totally sympathetic, absolutely sympathetic to the situation, but we need to make sure that those first responders can get in and out of West Seattle.
Got it.
Follow-up question on that.
A few people asked this idea.
Is there any way to open that lower bridge during off times, let's say 9 p.m.
to 5 a.m.
to more traffic?
We are very carefully watching the data.
And one of the things that we've observed is that when there aren't police officers on the ground enforcing the restrictions on the low bridge, people take advantage of that.
And it creates a really dangerous situation for folks who might need emergency health attention.
And so we really encourage people to not use the low bridge.
In terms of opening it up in off-peak times, we just don't know enough right now in terms of a data stream to allow us to make that sort of decision.
So we're continuing to pull data, continuing to watch those trends.
And if it looks like there's a situation where we could open up the low bridge to traffic during off-peak hours, we'll absolutely do that.
I will note though, that to the extent that we see too many cars during those off-peak hours, we would have to remove that privilege again.
And so it's also important to remember that there's just no good place.
There's no good mechanism to pull people over and check their credentials.
And candidly, I don't think we want to live in a situation where you have to show papers in order to travel.
So I think we're all just going to have to knuckle down together and support one another and do that by leaving that low bridge open for emergency response.
Got it.
Okay, thanks very much for that.
Another question coming in from Dick this one more of a structural question here he asks this.
Are any of the bridges designers and engineers who built this bridge available to consult on solving this problem.
So, Yeah, I mean, we're looking for for for advice in lots of different different places and one thing I didn't talk about here but we're, we're going to work and convene a technical advisory panel that can help us through this process and help, you know, give us the best and make sure we're.
going down the best possible technical routes.
The bridge was constructed and opened 36 years ago.
There are still some people around who worked on the bridge, and we'll seek out the best technical experts.
You know that this type of bridge is a, it was fairly time it was built.
But there's now another couple of decades of experience building this type of construction and so we're looking to to technical experts both within s dot within washed out.
You know, and then and then outside of the state and the region to help us help make sure that that we're making the best possible decisions.
One of the, our consultant team that has been working on this and helping us understand what's going on with the bridge brought in some modeling expertise from the University of Toronto.
that helped diagnose what was going on with this accelerated deterioration and map the cracks that were forming.
So we've already started that process of bringing in the technical expertise and making sure that we have the right skills to make good decisions for public health and safety, and then for bringing vehicular traffic back up on the bridge.
This is a complicated structure.
It's gonna be complicated to repair.
And it's something where we know we need to bring the best and the brightest to help us out.
Okay, thanks very much for that.
Another question with regard to traffic.
Tristan sent in this question.
Will the city be working with tech companies that have their own shuttles to increase routes or capacity?
Will these shuttles be allowed to run on the lower bridge alongside city buses?
Who can tackle this one?
I can give it a start just because I've also been taking these calls and emails on the same topic and I've had some conversations with some of these tech companies.
We know that, for instance, we reached out to Amazon.
And we know that they run several shuttles a day before the pandemic.
There were two routes, that Amazon route ran with four trips in the morning and four trips in the evening.
And so the idea of increasing that use of those shuttles, I think is a great one.
But I also do, share the question of whether or not SDOT would consider these shuttles transit since they're moving multiple people.
So thank you very much Council Member Herbold.
I imagine we're fielding some of the same calls.
So at this point we're being pretty rigid in who can use that low bridge and so we'll continue And we'll continue to talk with those larger companies.
And we've had that conversation with them at this point.
They seem to understand the position we're in in terms of reserving that low bridge.
We also need to be consistent about transit facilities.
So we don't want to enter additional confusion into the equation.
However, as I said, we're continuing to watch those volumes.
And particularly when we get into a post COVID world, the answers to those questions might be different.
Right now, we're limiting the access.
Got it.
Heather, can I follow up briefly on that?
Is there a certain period of time where you say, we need to measure this for a month and then we can make that decision about adding new loads on or how does that work?
Well, you know, Brian, it's really difficult right now because we don't have anything like normal volumes of traffic.
And one of the things we don't want to do is open up the low bridge to additional usage and then you know, in, you know, over the course of the rolling next couple of months, as, as people start to go back to work, we don't want to have to pull that back.
And so we need to pay attention to what the patterns are now, and we probably need to wait and see what happens when, you know, as, as things wind back up again.
We're not closing off, as Sam said earlier, we're not closing off any options.
But we also want to be cautious because we know that the world we're living in right now is not the one we will be living in.
True, true.
Thank you very much for that.
I want to make sure that I get to another question now with regard to traffic, this one coming in from a hotmail address here.
What is being done for bike routes in the case of the lower bridge being completely shut down?
Vehicular traffic and bike traffic should both be considered.
There are major known gaps in the Duwamish Trail, especially at the north end of West Marginal Way, just south of Spokane and Chelan.
A bike question here, who's gonna tackle this one?
Well, I do wanna note that you can ride your bike across the low bridge.
So you can do that right now.
In terms of plans for additional bike facilities and making improvements to the Duwamish Trail, these are some of the medium and longer term improvements that we intend to look at and examine whether or not there's something that we can do in the really short term or if it's something that's going to take a little bit longer.
Sam, did you want to add anything to that?
You're a cyclist.
Yeah, I mean, I think we recognize that there are some challenges getting between West Seattle and downtown, and those have been there.
I think we are looking, as Heather said, at where and how to make some of those improvements, both within crossing from West Seattle and then throughout the city to make sure walking and biking are viable options for folks.
I'll also just say, maybe going back to the previous question about how we make some of these decisions, Heather talked about how we've set up real-time monitoring and data collection on alternate routes too, and some of the detour routes.
So as we're looking at this as a system, and it's all gonna operate as a system, and this is as, you know, the stay home stay healthy orders are lifted and as parts of the economy come come back and Governor Inslee talked a lot about about this in the last couple days of exactly how that might start to roll out we can we can understand how that uh interplays with what we are seeing in terms of traffic volumes not just on the lower bridge where we've got a lot of concerns but about how uh how that's interplaying with all of the other alternative routes that that people might take and where we start to see pressures throughout the system, and how we look at at mitigating those so we know that this you know there were close to 100,000 people are 100,000 vehicles a day crossing the high bridge and.
simple math everybody can understand that that is that's that loss of capacity is going to be very substantial on on people and we're gonna need a lot of people to find a different way if everybody who was driving across the high bridge before as we get back towards normal is trying to drive on any of these These these alternative routes, trying to fit across the low bridge, we're going to have gridlock that affects everybody so we need to monitor the, the, all of the alternative routes, the conditions make improvements as we can.
We're also going to need to come together as a community and find alternative ways.
So we continue to look I know I know folks have have been reaching out to stop and reaching out to the council members.
We're very open to all of those ideas and looking at how do we find solutions together and how we think together creatively about getting through this period.
Got it Councilmember herbal.
As it relates specifically to some of the requests for investments to make bike traveling safer from West Seattle, there's a very large capital project that SDOT's been engaged in that I think many people know about on East Marginal Way.
The project is at about 60% design right now.
and we have a request in for some federal funding.
Pre-COVID-19, the scenario that we were looking at was beginning construction in 2021, but I'm getting a lot of questions to my office to see whether or not there are some interim measures that can be done now.
to make that route safer for for bike travelers.
So that's something that I will be having continuing conversations with SDOT to see what options there there may be.
All right, great.
Let's get back to some of the questions here.
Andrea put in this question and a few other people did as well, is putting a toll on the bridge to help pay for it an option?
You know, I think just like with transit, nothing is off the table at this point.
And we're looking at all sorts of creative solutions.
You know, tolls have a lot of pros and cons.
And I think we'd want to understand what those potential implications are and exactly what that means, both for the community and for, you know, for how we would fund replacement bridge or repairs or things like that.
Every solution is still potentially on the table, but no decisions like that have been made or even really discussed in any detail.
Got it.
Moving along.
get some more questions coming your way, a lot of them coming in more than 600. As a matter of fact, let me make sure I get to this next one.
Sorry, Councilmember herbal, if you would, please.
Thank you, Director Zimbabwe.
Yeah, I just wanted to add that I'm going to be meeting virtually with Congresswoman Pamela Jayapal on Friday to talk about federal funding options for for bridge work.
There is some opportunity within the next stimulus package for major infrastructure projects identified by cities.
So I'm going to be beginning those conversations on Friday and hope to share more soon.
Got it, okay.
Thanks very much for that.
An interesting question coming in from Donald.
I'm not sure who's best to answer this one, but here's what we have.
As a brand new homeowner in West Seattle, closed in late February prior to the bridge closing, meaning that's when he closed on his house, how will this bridge closer affect my home value?
Will we, residents, get property tax breaks or cuts?
Anyone wanna tackle that one?
Council Member Herbold, please.
I'll give it, I'll give it a shot.
Um, you know, that, that would really be a question for our King County assessor.
Um, the King County assessor is the, um, the government official, uh, who works, um, to do property tax assessments.
Um, and, um, generally those, those assessments, um, are, are done, uh, based on the value of, um, surrounding properties.
So, um, there may be an opportunity to make that request of the King County Assessor.
There's also a process by which individuals can challenge their assessment with the King County Assessor if they don't agree with the assessment.
But really the main way to lower your property taxes is to lower the assessment of your property.
Got it.
Okay, thank you much for tackling.
That's a difficult question I know that's going to be happening or worked on in many months ahead here.
A question coming in from Mary, another traffic question here.
She asks, what is the plan to manage the increase in traffic along Roxbury and Olson leading to the First Avenue South Bridge and along Michigan Avenue to I-5?
Well, I'll give that a shot.
As we've mentioned, it's really not an option for everyone who used to use their car to go to and from West Seattle to continue to do so.
Our current grid in West Seattle and on the other side of the Duwamish simply can't withstand that.
We can't move traffic that way.
And so that's why we ask people who live in West Seattle or who work in West Seattle or visit West Seattle frequently to really think through whether they can make some changes to lighten the load on the system.
We're gonna do what we can to make some spot improvements and to monitor speeding and monitor volumes, but there's no amount of speed cameras and no amount of spot improvements that are going to replace the high bridge.
And so we really invite people to take this time to ponder how they can make different kinds of choices in the way that they they make their travel to and through West Seattle.
Okay, thanks very much for that.
I got a question coming in from the West Seattle Chamber of Commerce.
Julia asks this.
As the chamber, we are hearing a lot of angst about the fact that we have no health care facilities here on the west side.
And with the bridge closure, we are now even further away from crucial care.
Do you have plans to bring hospitalization at some point?
A different question there.
Not quite sure who might be best on this one.
Who wants to give it a shot?
Council Member Herbold, please.
I can give it a shot.
The West Seattle Junction Association, the business improvement area for the junction, is actually working with a local health care provider to see whether or not there is interest in locating a small hospital in the junction.
And so that's an effort that I'm Working to try to lend a hand to.
And again, when there when there are more details to share.
I'm happy to share them.
Okay, well, and I could just add that this is exactly why we are restricting travel on the low bridge.
We are keenly aware of how few options there are to get across that Duwamish waterway.
And we're keenly aware of the need for health, you know, emergency health services during this public health emergency, but also all of the time.
And so that's why we are limiting the traffic on that low bridge so that emergency services can get across the bridge reliably.
Okay, thanks very much.
Also just say, you know, I think to this and to the question about property values and a lot of questions that people are thinking about, our commitment is to restore this vital transportation link as soon as possible.
And we're working tirelessly to do that.
We know that the period until we can do that is going to be a challenge for people, but we're also, we're working day in, day out to get traffic and buses and everything moving back across the bridge and make this vital transportation link.
So things like citing hospitals take time.
We know that people have made major investments in this community and our commitment to everybody is that we will continue to make the investments that we need to make to restore this vital transportation link.
Thank you everybody for input on that one, and oh sorry sorry I'm sorry I just want to note, there is, in fact, a hospital not too far to the south, that people might want to consider.
Highline and I have two boys.
I make trips to the emergency room.
They're great.
They're great.
Yeah, we always go to Highline.
So I just I do want to invite people into that possibility for for emergency health services.
Okay, thanks for that input.
And thanks everybody for sending in a number of questions, more than 900 of them right now.
We're going to tackle as many as we can in just about the next half hour here.
We have one coming in from Henry who asks this, this more of a planning question.
Why, if this was known about in 2013, was no plan developed and implemented to address this eventuality?
Notwithstanding the original timeframe, the more serious cracks have been observed regularly expanding since last year, and yet nothing was done.
Why?
So yeah, I'll take that.
And I think it's a good question.
And people are asking those types of questions.
And we totally understand that set of questions.
I think I look at it slightly differently.
And we identified that the bridge had some challenges in in 2013, and we were seeing cracks.
And we kept an eye on those very closely.
And they were progressing, but not quickly and not in an unanticipated way.
That changed, and that started to change last year.
And it changed very, very quickly.
And this is a complicated bridge.
it took some additional modeling of exactly what was going on exactly what was leading to the cracking that we saw at the same time as we were doing that monitoring and and inspecting more closely and doing some of the preventative maintenance and that's that epoxy injection that I talked about earlier those cracks accelerated in their growth and and we still don't know exactly what what led to that acceleration and growth but But it was in large part due to our diligence of inspecting and identifying challenges before they became, before they affected safety that we could make this difficult decision to remove vehicular load.
At the same time as we were seeing that emerge, we started the process of trying to understand what was going on exactly and what was, You know what we would need to do to repair it and and you know, again, just going back to some of the images that we showed this acceleration of cracks that we saw in just the three weeks before we close the bridge to traffic was very substantial and and you know it had taken.
multiple years, since 2013, to grow the same amount as we saw grow in three weeks.
So we understand that this happened very quickly.
It happened quickly for us at SDOT too, but it happened, we addressed it before it became a safety issue because we were already inspecting and monitoring the bridge.
It's a very difficult thing and it was certainly not a simple decision to close the bridge to traffic.
We understand the frustration that this causes, but I think it's because we were there monitoring and inspecting that we were able to catch it before it was too late.
And now we'll need to, to make the repairs that are necessary.
And, and, but again this is.
This has been.
It really seemed to change and accelerate very quickly.
And we've, we've.
try to be very transparent and released all those reports going back to 2013 that showed what we were seeing what we were doing.
And, and will continue to have that transparency, but this this growth and cracks happen very, very quickly.
Okay, thanks very much for that.
I'm gonna try to jump back into the questions here and Director Zimbabwe, this might be another one for you in terms of different partners you're reaching out to.
Christopher writes this, assuming West Seattle Bridge will be out of service for two plus years, has there been any discussion with the Army Corps of Engineers about building a temporary bridge over the Duwamish River?
I understand there are marine right of ways, perhaps there would be ways to mitigate the impact.
That's his question, what do you think?
Sure, so we've got very good collaboration with the marine community.
The Duwamish is a critical waterway.
It's a navigable waterway under the jurisdiction of the Coast Guard.
We have to maintain that waterway, and that's why we have the swing bridge, the lower bridge.
That's why it opens.
It has to respond within 10 minutes of anybody that's seeking to that needs passage on the waterway.
As we move forward with repair, with replacement ideas, we'll look at every possible avenue to accelerate the construction of the bridge.
In the last for decades since this bridge was designed and built.
There's been a lot of additional advancements in bridge technology and modeling capability and analysis.
And we'll look at every one of those possibilities and look for ways to ease roadway traffic and also maintain marine traffic as well.
Got it.
Thanks very much.
I'll throw in a question here from Hillary, but I'm not sure if anyone should answer this one.
She writes, I live in North Admiral.
Am I allowed to lasso two sea lions and water ski across Elliott Bay to get to my job in Belltown?
I'll answer that one, Hillary.
It's no, but thank you very much for a terrific question there.
I wanted to open it up question from carry this one coming in.
Can some of the rapid ride see buses continue on to Ballard, as they did in the past, a bus question there which I know is the purview of King County Metro but can someone try to tackle this question please.
Yeah, I mean I think again we're open to every every possibility and we're working with Metro on that right now.
You know there's a ability to transfer between C and D lines on Third Avenue.
Both are, and the reason why they were split in two was to, to.
uh make those as reliable both of those legs as reliable as as possible um and connect the sea into south lake union and and we understand that that you know that affects some people's uh bus commutes but um really with both of those operating at very high frequencies that transfer on third avenue and normal conditions is um is is pretty pretty easy uh and and but we're we're very open to uh ideas with King County Metro on how to maintain reliable operations for everybody that's riding the bus.
Got it.
Thanks very much.
I wanted to make sure we got to another question here.
This is another traffic related question coming in from Tilly, who asks, is there anything that can be done about drivers who use residential streets as a shortcut around detours, specifically, something to address drivers who drive at an unsafe speed for the conditions there are a number of different detours around.
I know this is an issue for a lot of neighborhoods, anyone want to tackle this one.
You know, that is a perennial question that is real at all times.
We just really encourage drivers to remember that when you're driving through a neighborhood, which you probably shouldn't do unless it's your neighborhood, you need to be very cautious, very slow, and recognize that people live there.
There are children who play on neighborhood streets.
And we just need everybody to come together and really think about the whole community as you're making decisions about how you're traveling to and through West Seattle.
This isn't a question of your appointment being more important than somebody else's.
life.
And so we, one of the things that we're doing right now is we are installing the lower speed zone signs, the 25 mile per hour speed zone signs along all the detour routes.
I just, it was, they were installing one right here at the corner near my house.
And we hope that people will observe those for the arterials.
The residential streets, These are exactly that.
They are places where people live, just like the residential street that the driver who's driving through them lives on.
And so this is just a time when we as a community really need to come together and remember that you need to drive through these neighborhoods like you live there, not like you're just passing through.
Fair enough.
Thanks very much for that.
A couple well we have time for about 18 minutes worth more of questions here so thanks very much for sending them in a challenging one coming in from Mike who asks this.
Do you know, or do you believe that the bridge can currently withstand a moderate five to six magnitude earthquake i'm not sure who can look at that one but challenging question from Mike.
So earthquake risk is always a risk here.
The issues that we've seen are, you know, some of them could be exacerbated by an earthquake.
Some of them are different types of issues related to the structure of the bridge.
It's always been, we live in an earthquake zone and we take the seismic safety of our bridges very seriously.
In the current condition that the bridge is in, we're concerned about its stability under normal times and also in the event of an earthquake, and that's why we're also working on the emergency contingency plans.
of if the bridge does head towards failure before we're able to stabilize it.
So, you know, it's a very good question.
Again, I'll go back to Alert Seattle.
Make sure that you sign up for that, for the bridge, but also just for general awareness of emergencies like earthquakes in the community that you know, where you might need to be prepared and be able to respond.
So we're concerned about the condition of the bridge.
It's not in imminent risk of failure right now, but we're keeping a very close eye on making the contingency plans necessary in case it does head that way.
Thank you very much, Director Zimbabwe.
I wonder if I might be able to follow up with you.
A few other people have written in to ask about the stability of the First Avenue South Bridge, for example.
Getting a lot more traffic now, certainly will when the COVID crisis starts to lift.
Any concerns about the strength stability of that bridge moving forward here?
That's a very new bridge overall.
There's a little bit of maintenance work that I think will happen on that bridge over the course of this year that WSDOT's going to be doing, replacing, I believe, some of the grates on top of the bridge deck.
I think they'll be doing that work at night, minimizing traffic impacts.
But the condition of that bridge is pretty sound, given its more recent construction.
Thank you very much for that.
I'll jump back to another question here.
Another traffic-related question.
Lila writes in this, will ships be halted from 7 to 9 a.m.
and 3 to 6 p.m.
on weekdays?
So the lower bridge does not need to be opened during commute times.
Some thoughts about this for Lila.
So that's a really good question, Lila, and we wish we had a little bit more control, but the Duwamish Waterway is a navigable waterway of the United States, and so it is under the jurisdiction of the Army Corps of Engineers, as well as the Coast Guard.
The terms of the permit that SDOT has with the Coast Guard mandate that we open any time that marine traffic would like to transit.
The Coast Guard is a good partner to us and they have recently published a local notice to mariners asking asking mariners to not ask for those openings during commute times.
And we've had pretty good luck with that, that goodwill effort.
It is difficult when we have to rely on the low bridge or the South Park Bridge or the First Avenue South Bridge, because all of them are movable bridges and all of them must open for marine traffic.
Got it.
Okay, thank you.
Please, yeah, go ahead, Council Member.
I do understand that we have put in the request that there's a sort of voluntary agreement to minimize openings, but it's my understanding that we have also put in a request for something a little stronger.
Heather, can you talk about that?
And can you remind me, didn't we have something, again, a little stronger in place during the squeeze as it relates to the bridge opening?
So we did have something a little stronger during the squeeze.
That was a three-week period.
It was a little bit of a different situation.
Also, the requests to open that bridge are really controlled by tides.
And I want to note for everybody's benefit that that traffic that goes in and out of the Duwamish isn't, you know, primarily pleasure boats.
There's a lot of traffic that takes critical supplies to Alaska and things that folks in Alaska need for their normal, you know, everyday lives.
And so I understand the inconvenience.
We have asked the Coast Guard for more stringent closure, but we need to do some significant outreach to the marine community in the area.
It's called a deviation request.
And so we need to do that outreach with the maritime community.
Candidly, right now, we're working with the maritime community primarily on emergency response plans.
And so that traffic request is next in the queue.
Got it.
OK, I'm going to jump back to another question that was echoed by a few different people.
Dan asked this, are you going to set up a bike to car parking area on the far side of the lower bridge for West Seattle residents?
Sort of this park and ride concept.
A few other people have asked about this, too, setting up some sort of situation like that.
Can someone jump on that question, please?
Well, there is a space underneath the just past the high rise underneath that Expressway viaduct structure.
It's not easy to get to if you're driving east.
And so we actually have been investigating ways that we could make that accessible from the east.
But I would also like to note that for most of West Seattle, our transit service is really pretty good.
And so I'd like to invite people into the possibility that they could catch the bus a little closer to their house and then go ahead and take the bus across the low bridge.
Okay, thanks very much for that.
I'm looking for some other questions here and thanks so much for sending these in, folks.
Again, more than 900 questions coming in here, so I'm going to make sure I get to as many as I can that are coming through.
Here's another one that I've seen from a few different people talking about some of the options that are in place right now on the south part of West Seattle Getting into White Center here, Jillian asks this question.
Can Roxbury be restriped to be four lane from 35th to Olson Way and create designated HOV lanes throughout?
An interesting idea there, trying to work on some of those detour routes.
Can someone answer Jillian's question, please?
I think we're open to all sorts of those those types of ideas we're not closing off ideas.
At this point, we encourage people to send us in those those kind of creative ideas as we think about how to how to manage things we've done made a lot of improvements across the city.
that are really targeted at making sure our transportation system is safe and doing those types of separating out turns, making sure that we're reaching our Vision Zero goals of eliminating traffic fatalities across the city.
Given this period, we don't want to walk back on those commitments to safety that we've made.
But, and we really want to make sure we're looking for ways to, you know, modify traffic patterns and, you know, mitigate where we can while also maintaining our commitment to safety across the city.
Okay, thanks very much for that.
I wanted to get in another question here this morning.
Oh yeah, please, if you would, Councilmember Thank you.
Just want to mention that Roxbury is one of the streets that I hear most about from constituents needing some help and just want to let folks know that an exercise that I'm working on.
internally in our office, along with some great District 1 volunteers who are helping out, is to take all of these, as Director Zimbabwe says, creative ideas that are really focused on making sure that the traffic moves more smoothly and more safely on the detour routes.
And my hope is, is once we have those mapped, that we can break the peninsula into sections and organize with with s dot um some sort of find it fix it type tours of those sections of the of the detour routes where people have specific suggestions to make it work better um so just just want to let folks know how i'm using the information that you're sending me good to know thanks very much for that this one another um
Slightly emergency transit-related question, I guess you'd call it.
Andy sends this one in.
My family and I live in Alki.
My wife is pregnant and due in September.
Our healthcare provider is on First Hill, and we plan to use Swedish like we did with our first.
When she goes into labor, am I expected to drive my laboring wife over the First Avenue bridge?
What if something more urgent arises and we need to quickly get to the hospital?
Am I expected to call an ambulance if I want to avoid a very out-of-the-way route and likely gridlock?
Can someone answer Andy's specific question there?
Andy, I cannot imagine that the police who are maintaining that enforcement would ask you to take your laboring wife across the First Avenue South Bridge instead.
We're trying to be very specific and very exclusive when we talk about the low bridge.
But of course, if there's an emergency and calling an ambulance isn't an option, then sure.
But an emergency doesn't include you're late for an appointment.
For those regularly scheduled things, you need to plan the time that it's going to take.
And it's going to take a lot of time, I confess.
But no, if your wife is in labor, please do feel free to use the low bridge.
All right.
Heard it from Heather.
Thank you very much for that input there.
Another question coming in from Ryan talking about the damage that has happened to the bridge.
He asks this, any thoughts on whether the piling work by the port at Terminal 5 is what caused the expansion of the cracks?
Tough question from Ryan.
Can someone try to answer that one, please?
Yeah, so it's a good question and one we've heard before.
We don't think so.
And mostly, the piling work was going on last fall.
I think people probably felt the impact of that a little bit or heard the impact of that.
We didn't see damage to other structures or anything else.
That would, that would show any kind of comparable impact from from that we don't think that so we don't, we don't think that that is what was what was leading to it.
You know that this is a bit more information that we're still hoping to gather and understand what's been happening and changing with the bridge but we don't think that that is, is that was the proximate cause of this and the really the vibrations of that.
likely would have attenuated by the time they got to where the West Seattle Bridge foundations are.
Council Member Herbold.
Thank you.
I just want to add that I have asked both Port Commissioners and SDOT to talk about the Port's plans to resume pile driving very soon.
And given that we have this concern around the stability of the West Seattle Bridge, I want to make sure that we are really doing our due diligence about the impact of pile driving, not just before and whether or not it led to where we're at now, but the potential impact of pile driving now when we have so many concerns about the vulnerability about the stability of the bridge.
Thank you.
Got it.
Thanks.
We've got just under five minutes left here, so I'm going to try to sneak in one question.
This one is one of those big picture questions that maybe, Director Zimbabwe, you could start with here.
Alex asks this, what is a ballpark time range for how long it would take to replace the bridge if that turned out to be the only option?
I know it's a big question, but any thoughts on this one for Alex?
Sure.
And, you know, Alex I probably fall asleep to that question every day and think about it when I wake up in the morning as well.
The truth is, we just don't know enough information yet to know what that timeline would look like.
And we're going to be working both from a structural perspective, from a financial perspective, from a traffic management and coordination with other transportation agencies to bring those types of those questions back to the community and bring answers as well.
And we understand that that's a that's a frustrating answer to hear right now.
You know, certainly there are there are examples of bridges that have been built or rebuilt very quickly.
A lot of those are, you know, slightly different situations.
We don't know yet if we were to rebuild, whether we could rebuild, we could reuse the foundations and the columns that we've got, whether we would have to go back and restart at the foundations, exactly what the permitting needs are around the the navigation channel, just even how we would build the high bridge.
I encourage people to go out and sometime when the low bridge opens, you can see that the low bridge opens very, very close to the columns of the high bridge.
And so just getting in there to build that high bridge both doing repairs, doing shoring, rebuilding it, has a lot of complexity.
And we're going to be working to answer those types of questions as we really understand a bit more and dig in and understand both how it would be built, what we would need to do on the shoring, on the repair, on reconstruction, and make sure that we make the best, most informed questions, so most informed answers to those types of questions.
So it's a great question.
It's one that all 3,000 people who are watching tonight probably are asking, and it's one that we are constantly working on as an agency to try to come back and bring clear, coherent answers to the community.
So you're not alone in asking that question.
It's a great one, and we hope to answer that as soon as we can.
And important to point out here we have had more than 1000 questions submitted here so clearly a lot of interest in this we have just about a minute left in our transmission here and we thank you very much for joining us once again.
I wanted to make sure that I let people know that the questions that have not been answered tonight.
Council staff is working on reviewing those so important to point that piece out.
I should also point out you can stay informed about the future of this project by subscribing a few different ways as dots newsletter is one way to do it.
Also, you can go to Seattle gov. slash transportation slash West Seattle Bridge subscribe there too.
If you have some questions specifically about the West Seattle Bridge 684 dash road at seattle.gov again with so many people getting involved here tonight.
I know there will be continued conversations about this.
You can also stay informed about the future of this project by subscribing to the emails that are sent out by Council Member Herbold, I know Council Member Peterson too, working on this on the Transportation Committee as well.
So I just wanted to say thanks to everybody who joined us here this evening to take part in this virtual town hall.
It's been great to be with you, great to hear these questions, great to have so much involvement in this.
Just wanted to make sure I extended a big thanks to Council Member Herbold and Council Member Peterson, also Heather Marks and Director Zimbabwe, appreciate your input as well.
All right.
All right.
Thanks, everyone.
And thanks.
And good night.
Have a good night, everybody.