Be prepared for this Kenmore bridge replacement
Jan 26, 2017, 6:44 AM | Updated: 8:50 am
Kenmore has big plans for one of the more significant commuter routes in the area, and that includes replacing an old bridge over the Sammamish River. This bridge replacement project is expected to cause delays.
A lot of people use routes such as Simonds Road or Juanita Way to head north out of Juanita and Kirkland and connect to Highway 522 in Kenmore. But to get to Highway 522, they have to cross the Sammamish River.
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“It’s a regionally significant corridor,” said Kris Overleese, Kenmore’s public works director. “We have about 26,000 cars a day that cross the river,” Overleese said. “And that’s a lot of traffic.”
Time has taken its toll on the bridge. Now one of the bridge spans over the Sammamish River needs to be replaced.
“It is structurally deficient … it needs to be replaced,” Overleese said. “It actually has a load restriction right now. We did that to keep it from getting pounded more. We got quite a bit of traffic on it, so we want to keep the heavy trucks off of it; to make its life last as long as we need to until we can replace it.”
Kenmore bridge project
There are two bridges currently over the river and each one handles a different direction of traffic. Only the southbound span is being replaced.
“The original bridge was built in the 1930s, and that’s the southbound one so that’s the old one we are working to replace,” Overleese said. “Another one was added later for the northbound traffic, that’s the east bridge. It’s newer and doesn’t need to be replaced at this time.”
Kenmore is hosting an open house on the project at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Kenmore City Hall. Design work is underway, but the plan is to make the new Kenmore bridge much wider to accommodate bicyclists and pedestrians while keeping two lanes of traffic.
Construction is set to begin in 2019 and should take about two years. Overleese says they plan to keep those southbound lanes of the bridge open during construction and demolition.
“We can start building the new bridge on the outside of the old one,” Overleese said. “We will build the outside first, move the two lanes of cars onto the new piece, and demo the old bridge and build up in the middle.”
So, basically, drivers will be using what will become the pedestrian and bike path as the new middle section is completed.
“It will be challenging, it will be difficult,” Overleese said. “I will plant the seed right now that even though we will do our best to keep traffic moving, there will be impacts.”
Kenmore has about $21 million dedicated to this project, most of it coming from federal transportation grants. The rest of the funding will come from the Legislature and Puget Sound Regional Council.
Tell Chris about a Chokepoint or ask a traffic question @kirortraffic via Twitter.
