Stewart Street nightmare looming for Seattle commuters
Jul 28, 2016, 6:48 AM | Updated: 9:08 am
The last time Seattle City Light shut down a portion of Stewart Street in downtown Seattle it backed up I-5 for miles. And it’s about to happen again.
Seattle City Light shut down two lanes of Stewart Street in March so it could build underground vaults. It turned I-5 southbound and the express lanes into a parking lot because the work was near the off-ramps. Now, it’s time to re-pave Stewart, and Seattle City Light’s Scott Thomsen said those backups could return.
Starting Aug. 1, one lane of Stewart is going to be closed between Minor and 6th Avenues from 6-10 a.m., right in the middle of the morning commute.
“There will be times where the lane that is closed is not going to be the curb lane,” Thomsen said. “There will be times when you will have a split lane where, as you’re coming down Stewart, some of the traffic is going to go to the left of the closed lane and some of it is going to go the right of the closed lane.”
But seriously? Smack dab in the middle of the morning commute the city is going to close down a lane just off the freeway off-ramp?
I asked Thomsen why not wait until after the morning commute to shut the lanes down.
“Short-term gains versus long-term losses,” he answered. “What you’re trading there is the ability to have a little less pain today, but I take that little bit of less pain for a much longer period of time.”
In March, the city’s advice to drivers was to avoid the Stewart exit. Not really a helpful solution, considering the backups on I-5 were miles long. Drivers did clue in eventually, looking for and finding alternate routes, but that closure lasted just over a week. This closure is scheduled to last three months.
