How did drivers fair the first day of major Highway 99 road closures?
Jan 19, 2016, 10:43 PM | Updated: May 7, 2016, 10:46 pm
Seattle drivers experienced the first day of major construction work on Highway 99 on Tuesday. If you take that route into South Lake Union, you will see seven weeks of around-the-clock lane closures.
Highway 99 is down one lane in each direction from the Aurora Bridge to Mercer Street. The inside lanes are going away for about four or five weeks. Only two lanes will be open.
On Tuesday morning, KIRO Radio traffic reporter Chris Sullivan noted, “after the first morning commute, we saw drivers backed up in the southbound direction of Highway 99 to about 45th, roughly a mile. It could be worse.”
Tell us what slows you down each day
These closures were supposed to happen last spring, but Dave Sowers with the Washington State Department of Transportation says they realized it was going to cause too much of a disruption.
“There are no competing games, there are less events at the Seattle Center,” Sowers said. “It just made sense.”
What are crews doing in the median? They have closed the lanes to build four concrete supports for signs that will eventually give travel conditions in the future Seattle tunnel.
The biggest impact of this closure will likely be on buses. Metro carries more than 30,000 passengers on that corridor every day. Metro plans to have other buses on standby, if some buses get caught in construction congestion.
This is the last major closure on Aurora related to the new tunnel, though the tunnel itself is a few years behind schedule. Governor Jay Inslee recently weighed in on a sinkhole related to the tunnel, saying he was “very disappointed” and ordered Seattle Tunnel Partners to suspend work until the contractor can prove work on the tunnel is safe.
