Some Seattle residents are seeing red after city officials spent nearly $6 million planning a bridge project that won’t be needed for another 40 years.
Kevin Broveleit, a real estate agent and co-founder of the West Seattle Bridge Now group, said plans to build a new structure should have been scrapped in 2020 after contractors were able to stabilize the current bridge. Instead, the city hired engineering firm HNTB and other contractors to put together perspectives for a new structure.
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“Any money spent on designing a future bridge was wasted money because we have no idea what we’ll need in 40 years, especially considering light rail is at hand,” Broveleit told the Seattle Times.
The seven-lane West Seattle Bridge was built in 1984. It was shut down in March 2020 after multiple cracks spread quickly within a two-week period. The Seattle Department of Transportation said the foundational cracks were caused by steel inside the concrete stretched beyond its limit.
The bridge’s closure forced lengthy detours, with some residents driving an hour out of their way to get to their destination. The bridge, which carried about 100,000 vehicles a day before it was closed off, passed its final safety check on Thursday and is scheduled to reopen on Sunday. Repairs cost the city $175 million, $38 million of which was paid in federal funding.
While the reopening of the West Seattle Bridge is good news for drivers, critics lament that the additional $6 million was wasted on needs four decades away and should have been spent addressing problems like potholes and refurbishing other parts of the bridge.
Heather Marx, an SDOT program director, said she isn’t losing sleep over the payment and defended the department’s decision.
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“I don’t apologize, and I don’t feel bad about making these contingency plans,” she said.
Marx added that SDOT spent $35 million on pedestrian safety signals and other issues like repaving, the Seattle Times reported.
