Seattle residents fume over spending $6 million on 2060 bridge undertaking

Some Seattle residents are seeing purple after metropolis officers spent practically $6 million planning a bridge undertaking that will not be wanted for one more 40 years. 

Kevin Broveleit, an actual property agent and co-founder of the West Seattle Bridge Now group, mentioned plans to construct a brand new construction ought to have been scrapped in 2020 after contractors had been in a position to stabilize the present bridge. As an alternative, town employed engineering agency HNTB and different contractors to place collectively views for a brand new construction. 

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"Any cash spent on designing a future bridge was wasted cash as a result of we don't know what we'll want in 40 years, particularly contemplating mild rail is at hand," Broveleit instructed the Seattle Occasions. 

The seven-lane West Seattle Bridge was in-built 1984. It was shut down in March 2020 after a number of cracks unfold shortly inside a two-week interval. The Seattle Division of Transportation mentioned the foundational cracks had been brought on by metal contained in the concrete stretched past its restrict.

The bridge's closure pressured prolonged detours, with some residents driving an hour out of their technique to get to their vacation spot. The bridge, which carried about 100,000 autos a day earlier than it was closed off, handed its remaining security test on Thursday and is scheduled to reopen on Sunday. Repairs value town $175 million, $38 million of which was paid in federal funding.

Whereas the reopening of the West Seattle Bridge is nice information for drivers, critics lament that the extra $6 million was wasted on wants 4 many years away and will have been spent addressing issues like potholes and refurbishing different components of the bridge. 

Heather Marx, an SDOT program director, mentioned she is not shedding sleep over the fee and defended the division's determination. 

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“I don’t apologize, and I don’t really feel dangerous about making these contingency plans,” she mentioned.

Marx added that SDOT spent $35 million on pedestrian security alerts and different points like repaving, the Seattle Occasions reported.