The West Seattle Bridge is now open! My remarks at the #WestSeattleBridge reopening event ⬇️ 1/
2/ West Seattle is a unique & historic part of our city. It’s also a connector to a global economy. Overnight, the shutdown caused 6 miles+ of detours through the congested First Avenue South bridge, adding 30 minutes to what would be a 15 minute commute to downtown.
3/ And more than 84,000 drivers, and 25,000 bus riders had to find a new way to work. So come this Sunday the nightmare of this congestion is coming to an end.
4/ I heard from a registered nurse and a lifelong Seattle resident, she was worried about whether she and her neighbors would be able to get to the emergency room if they were needed.
5/ I heard from a partner of a Delridge resident who said he struggled to get his daughter to preschool before getting to their own job as a middle school teacher.
6/ The sudden bridge closure added so much commute time that they were concerned about whether they could keep their jobs in that capacity. We heard from people on Vashon Island & Southworth about how hard it was to get to their jobs and get to their medical appointments.
7/ So without the bridge drivers lost their direct route and they had to really jam through the freight traffic of East Marginal Way. Not only did that slow down commuters – it also slowed down our freight & freight capacity.
8/ West Seattle residents felt the worst of the pain, but it also slowed down a supply chain that was critical to moving goods in the Northwest. We wanted to make sure that @USDOT knew how important the West Seattle Bridge was to our residents & to our economy.
@USDOT 9/ Not only did we ask Secretary Pete Buttigieg for help, but we convened meetings with the Deputy Secretary Polly Trottenberg to tour the bridge and the East Marginal Way corridor.
@USDOT 10/ Through all of that we held meetings with Mayor Durkan and her team and Washington DOT to make sure that the federal government saw how critical this project was to the West Seattle residents and to that national supply chain.
11/ Working directly with their leadership & Secretary Buttigieg, we looked for funds that were critical. Senator Murray, Representative Jayapal, Representative Smith & I authored a letter saying that we wanted some the INFRA grant dollars.
12/ These are freight funds that were specifically for corridors that had to move a lot of freight. So we got $11 million dollars from that. Not only did that help us on the upper bridge, it helped us on the lower bridge which also had problems.
13/ That allowed the city to string 46 miles and 92 tons of steel and cable to compress and reinforce the bridge structure which was so important.
14/ The project also received money from the Local Bridge grant program $12 million, a Highway Infrastructure Grant program of $7.5 million, & the Surface Transportation program contributed $6.9 million.
15/ So in total, a big chunk, $37 million came from the Federal Government, to say yes, we understand how important West Seattle is to the city of Seattle and to the economy of Washington State.
16/ Overall, this corridor carries goods to international markets from 13 states supporting 20,000 jobs and generating $8.7 billion in business output. A fully functioning West Seattle Bridge is critically important to our nation's economy.
17/ I want to thank all our federal partners, and thank the City of Seattle, and to thank everybody involved in the Department of Transportation, locally and nationally.
18/ Sunday is going to be a day that hundreds of Puget Sound residents have been waiting for. I'm so glad we're going to be giving it to them.
19/ When the bridge shut down two years ago, it turned West Seattle into an accidental island. It cut us off from a key part of our city, a key part of our history, and a key part of our tradition. And finally, that will be reunited.🎉
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