Millions in repairs required for Seattle’s historic drawbridges

With the city already facing a $ 72 million bill to clean up the epic headache known as the West Seattle Bridge, Seattle transportation officials announced earlier this week that three of the city’s centenary bascule bridges along with one newer moving bridge also in dire need of maintenance at a cost of $ 7.8 million.

The total of four steel-covered, double-leaf drawbridges in Seattle are hard-working and symbolic, if not patient, infrastructural workhorses that connect the districts bisected by the Lake Washington Ship Canal and at the same time enable maritime traffic between the freshwater lake and the inland sea that the Isthmian City flanked. According to the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) quoted by the Seattle Times, the city’s drawbridges are raised and lowered together more than 14,000 times a year, with the ship canal bridges much more active farther apart, especially the Fremont Bridge than others.

The Fremont Bridge spans 502 feet across the Fremont Cut (the Lake Washington Ship Canal is actually a series of canals known locally as Cuts and other bodies of water) and was the first to open in 1917 by Seattle’s four ship canals- Drawbridges and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. It is also one of three bridges identified by SDOT as requiring immediate maintenance, along with the Salard Bay-spanning Ballard Bridge (also 1917) and the University Bridge (1919) that crosses Portage Bay near the University of Washington. (The towers of the Fremont bridges and the university have recently served as artist studios). The city’s fourth historic draw canal bridge, the Montlake Bridge (1925), has not been classified as in need of work.

In addition to the trio of aging canal lift bridges, the list includes Spokane Street Bridge (1991), a hydraulically powered double-leaf concrete swing bridge also known as the West Seattle Low-Rise Bridge. After significant cracks were discovered in the busy West Seattle High Rise Bridge in March 2020, leading to its immediate (and ongoing) closure, access to its lower counterpart was restricted for a few months before general traffic resumed.

The projects that need to be carried out to ensure that the bridges can continue to open and close safely include, but are not limited to: new traffic gates and emergency power generators, repairs to asphalt slabs, updated control systems for drive motors, improvements to operator safety, and work on the control tower sewage system.

The list of urgent repair needs, some of which have a higher priority than others, was drawn up by SDOT at the request of Seattle City Councilor Alex Pedersen, who chairs the council’s Transportation and Utilities Committee. As the Times noted, the council has largely avoided investing significant funds in overdue efforts to maintain the bridge and instead decided to allocate money to “other transportation and security work.”

After the costly and extremely disruptive debacle / closure of the West Seattle Bridge, which Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan described as a “surprise crisis” before declaring the situation a civil emergency last July, it appeared that all eyes were on the drawbridges Directed by Seattle. Pedersen believes the city urgently needs repairs to the oldest and most vulnerable in the city.

“The least they can do is replace the aging components that keep our moving bridges from failing,” Pedersen told the Times. “The cost of replacing these critical parts is only $ 8 million, and I think it’s a wise investment to make sure we don’t have another bridge out of service.”

There are a total of 124 bridges in Seattle, including the famous floating pontoon bridges that carry traffic across Lake Washington. According to an audit conducted last year, the city should spend $ 34 million each year on bridge repairs, upgrades, regular maintenance, etc. For the past decade, the city has spent only $ 6.6 annually on bridge-related fixes. However, according to the Times, the number has already increased to $ 9.5 million for 2021.

Pedersen has proposed allocating a portion of the city’s $ 230 million pandemic aid to repair and modernize battered (and potentially unsafe) bridges in Seattle.