Region’s latest pedestrian bridge taking shape in Shoreline

Drivers keep asking me what is being built on the west side of I-5, just north of the 145th overpass.

It’s an imposing, rounded structure that towers over traffic. It looks like a bridge, and that’s exactly what it is. The 258-foot-long bridge will connect the west side of I-5 directly to the new 145th light rail station on the east side of the freeway.

It’s being built in place, along the freeway, and will be moved into position later this year.

“With the new bridge, we’ll essentially be opening up 75 more acres of walkshed to the new light rail station,” the City of Shoreline’s Eric Bratton said. “People who maybe would have had to walk a mile and a half or more now have a much shorter distance in order to walk to transit.”

And that’s the goal with the new bridge, connecting the growing community to transit.

“It’s much safer,” Bratton said. “It’ll be a much easier, more pleasant walk across to get to transit. It’s a great win-win for everybody.”

Crews will shut down all of I-5 for one night to put the bridge in place

There will be some pain to put this new bridge in place. The contractor is going to have to shut down both directions of I-5 for one full night.

“Come late October, early November, they’re gonna wheel the bridge out in the middle of I-5 after we’ve closed I-5,” Bratton said. “They’ll have two cranes on either side. They’ll pick it up, and they’ll just plop it down into place.”

Shoreline is working with the Washington State Department of Transportation to figure out the best weekend to do the work, likely a weekend without Seahawks and Huskies home games. The work will be done from late Saturday to early Sunday.

“Starting Saturday night around 9 o’clock, we’ll start closing the lanes down,” Bratton said. “By midnight, all of I-5 will be closed. They’ll put the bridge in place, and then by 5 o’clock, we’ll start opening lanes up. And by 6 o’clock, it’ll be fully open with a new bridge across I-5.”

But that’s not the end of construction.

“It will take several more months of work before it can open,” Bratton said. “Once we put the bridge up, we still have to pour the concrete deck, and we’re still going to have to put up the finishing touches. There’s a small other bridge that we have to build from the west side to the new bridge. So altogether, that’ll probably take another five months.”

Target date is spring of 2027.

A combination of state and federal dollars will fund the $40 million project.

This is the second pedestrian bridge built over I-5 to help connect people to light rail. Seattle built a similar, though larger, bridge directly to the Northgate Station. It opened in 2021.

Chris Sullivan is a traffic reporter for KIRO Newsradio. Read more of his stories here. Follow KIRO Newsradio traffic on X.

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