West Seattle Bridge to reopen this weekend
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The long closure of the West Seattle Bridge is almost over.
Elected officials held a celebration on Harbor Island Friday ahead of Sunday’s scheduled reopening.
In an interview with KIRO 7, Heather Marx of the Seattle Department of Transportation raised the possibility the bridge might reopen earlier than announced.
She said the city is deliberately not releasing a specific time for reopening.
“First, if we can open a little early, we’re going to do that. Second, we really don’t want people to be queuing up to be the first person across the bridge because it creates a safety problem,” Marx said.
Asked if the bridge might open before Sunday, Marx said, “we will open up as soon as we are ready.”
Whenever it happens, the reopening will be a relief for West Seattle residents and business owners, who have endured long detours since March 2020.
“It’s like the moment you’ve been waiting for for two years,” said Chris Porter, who lives in West Seattle and owns A la Mode Pies.
“We used to have a line out the door every Friday and Saturday night because we’re just a hop, skip and a jump from Capitol Hill and Beacon Hill and a lot of those neighborhoods that love pie, and all that dried up (when the bridge closed),” he said.
Friday’s celebration included Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash), who told KIRO 7 earlier this week in Washington, D.C. about cobbling together federal money for the repairs.
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“We fought very hard, I think more than 50% of the funding comes from the federal government,” Cantwell said.
The West Seattle Bridge first opened in 1984, not that long ago for a bridge.
The bridge wasn’t considered a big concern until growing cracks were discovered in 2020 and then-mayor Jenny Durkan ordered it shut down for safety reasons.
“On this we had to listen to the engineers,” Durkan said, after she attended Friday’s reopening celebration.
Durkan eventually decided to repair the bridge instead of replace it.
