In her newsletter to constituents District 1 City Councilmember Lisa Herbold provides information on a series of studies regarding the West Seattle Bridg. Hebold writes:

"The Seattle City Council has commissioned six studies of the West Seattle Bridge corridor, called for in the West Seattle Bridge/Duwamish Waterway Corridor Whitepaper prepared for former Councilmember Tom Rasmussen in 2015, to improve safety, incident management, and traffic flow on the West Seattle Bridge and the lower bridge.

This study covers the area from the West Seattle Bridge and Spokane Street Viaduct to I-5 (including the lower roadways). Four studies were funded in 2015, sponsored by Rasmussen. I secured funding for the remaining two in 2016.

These four studies have recommendations to:

• manage the daily unpredictable disruptions on the lower roadway
• reduce crashes on the upper bridge
• reduce incident clearance times to restore normal traffic.

Recommendations include improvements for managing congestion on lower Spokane Street, such as real-time information on swing-bridge openings, a Terminal 5 gate queue management agreement, an active traffic management system, and constructing refuge pullouts. Cost estimates are listed at the end, on page 24. I’ll be looking for ways to work with SDOT to implement these recommendations.

The report recommended against a median gate to allow emergency vehicles to make U turns, or for emergency/fire lane striping. The studies are linked here.