Narrator says:

Time and a daily pounding by traffic are catching up with the South Park bridge.  This quarter mile long drawbridge over the Duwamish river, that serves King County, the city of Seattle and the city of Tukwila is in the final phase of its usable life.Some 20-to-24 thousand vehicles cross this bridge everyday.  The county has been keeping the bridge operational with numerous repairs, But they are a band aide approach that can't address the bridges biggest and most fatal flaws.

Tim Lane/King County Bridge engineer says:

It's got a number of problems, probably the most serious one is the structure itself is moving, so that's the main piers that support the bascule spans, the spans that move, are moving and its been a problem ever since the original construction when they drove the piling back in 1930, they drove it about 10 feet short of what most people call hard pan, the good soil.  And because of this, the piers are somewhat floating in liquefiable soils so they tilt and the problem with tilting bridges is this part of the bridge moves, so that slight movements on the main pier results in large movements out at the tip.  If you can imagine when the bridge goes up and down a slight movement here is magnified out at the tip, so what this means is that we have trouble with operation, we've had to work on the tips of the moveable spans four times in seven years which is much, much more frequent than in the past, so we see a trend developing.  The other problem is the piling that's been driven short and is in liquefiable soils is very vulnerable to seismic activity, we had a consultant do a study and they found that if we have another quake like the Nisqually in 2001 it is very likely the bridge would be out of operation and damaged beyond repair.  They state the possibility of such a quake in the next ten years is 33 percent, which is alarmingly high for a structure.

The other problem is the concrete itself, the concrete is self destructing and this is real evident at the splash zone where the water touches the piers.  Its because of a chemical imbalance in the concrete and that allows the components of the concrete to separate, that is it allows the aggregate to separate from the cement paste and it's working its way in bit by bit and there is no fix for it, it actually has to do with the makeup of the cement in the concrete.  So those are the main problems, we have outdated electronics back to 1930, when things go wrong we can't find parts, we have to salvage parts or come up with some way to fix it and those are probably the biggest problems with the bridge.

Narrator says:

The bridges problems are no surprise, the county has been monitoring them for some time.  And there are several solutions being considered.

Tim Lane bridge engineer says:

At this point we're putting a lot of band aides on the bridge, trying to keep it going.  We've started this multi year EIS project where we study a long term replacement.  The bridge is 74 years old now, we're looking at a long term replacement with a life of 75 years or more.  And so we're studying five alternatives.  One would be do nothing, which would assume that at some point we would have to tear the bridge down, which would eliminate the crossing there.  The second alternative is to rehabilitate the bridge that is out there. Although that is in the past year pretty unlikely because of the magnitude of the repairs that would have to be done and getting the bridge up to today's seismic code would involve a huge amount of work and is not looking very practical.  The third alternative is what we call a fixed span, which we call our mid level and has a 65 foot clearance over the river.  The fourth alternative is a high level fixed span with a 100 foot clearance and a higher structure over the river.  And finally the fifth is a new bascule bridge or new draw bridge.  All of these alternatives would be immediately downriver of the current bridge, with the exception of the rehab which is to fix the bridge we have right now. 

The price range for the bridge replacements range from 71 million to 90 million with 90 million being the new bascule bridge, the highest priced alternative.

Narrator says:

The lifespan of any newly built or rehabilitated version of the bridge is expected to be 75 years, and it would take an estimated three years to complete any of the proposed versions. The South Park community however doesn't agree entirely with all the options.  Charlie Cunniff serves on the South Park Bridge Community Advisory Group.

Charlie Cunniff/ South Park Bridge Community Advisory Group says:

We've had a lot of discussions in this neighborhood on what would happen if we didn't have a bridge, if the bridge fell down or if the option to replace the bridge came to a no build option.  And it would be dramatic.  This bridge forms a main artery in and out of the neighborhood for much of the traffic that supplies the commercial, industrial and residential district.  The bridge is also a large identity to the community itself, so there's an identity issue, you'd be taking away an identity which is crucial to the spirit of the community but moreover you'd be taking away one of the arteries that carries the economic blood into the neighborhood.  The commercial district, we have a burgeoning commercial district in downtown South Park, we have more businesses that have opened there, more stores and more restaurants that are open but those businesses and restaurants are dependent on the traffic that comes into and out of the neighborhood over that bridge.  If that bridge were cut off 14th Ave becomes a dead in street and as a dead end street the traffic that comes in and out to support those businesses just will go away.

 The two most dramatic of options are the high level and the mid level bridge, neither would be an opening bridge.  Putting in a mid level bridge will have an effect on the downtown south park business district.  It won't destroy it per say, but there's a vibrant stretch of the downtown south park industrial district that is essentially from Cloverdale to Dallas on the north side of 14th Ave.  a mid level bridge takes that out, and moreover the midlevel bridge will not allow passage of tall ships through this corridor.  The taller boats, particularly the ones that are being made by Delta Marine and the ones Delta Marine plans on making, won't be able to pass under that bridge.  That is big because Delta Marine is currently the largest employer in the area outside of Boeing.  

So the mid level bridge has some complications.  A high level bridge essentially wipes out downtown South Park because all of those businesses along Cloverdale street become severely impacted, they won't be able to be used.  It will be like living under the bridge.  You'll be like living under the Third Ave. L.

So this community is highly opposed to a high level fixed bridge, we have opposition to the mid level bridge because that would take out Delta Marine.  A high level bridge Delta's still here, but the neighborhood is basically destroyed.

 We know there's an issue of, there's Tukwila, Seattle, King County. It is this turmoil area where nobody really owns it yet everybody owns it.  Everybody has part of it but nobody's taking ownership.  We really need to move this forward so that the neighborhood can come back to life.

Narrator says:

There's no denying the loss of the bridge would impact the community and the amount of traffic using surrounding arterials and the First Ave South bridge.

Tim Lane/bridge engineer says:

The next major river crossing, down river or north of the south park bridge is the First Ave South Bridge, which is down here.  This chart shows the traffic conditions, this is the morning commute which is a busy time on the first south bridge and these arrows represent the traffic que's or the cars lined up waiting at the signal.  As you can see right now the morning que's extend all the way to the bridge itself over the river and the Michigan off ramp also has a large backup.  If the South Park bridge was to be removed under the no action alternative, these que's would be a lot longer because the bridge currently serves between 20-and -24 thousand vehicles per day and a lot of them would travel over the First South bridge.

Narrator says:

The biggest challenge to funding any of the bridge options is coming up with the money.

Linda Dougherty/ King County Road Services Division Manager says:

I think there are a lot of folks who use the First Ave bridge everyday and may not be aware that this South Park bridge exists but in fact this bridge carries a huge number of vehicles everyday, about 24 thousand and if the bridge has to be closed eventually, and if we can't get funding to replace it I expect by the end of this decade we will have to close this bridge.  All of those trips the freight trips, which means more trucks, all of the commute trips, just some of the local circulation trips will all be dumped onto the First Ave South bridge and our planners know from modeling the impacts of the traffic to moving all those 24-thousand trips to the First Ave South Bridge that then becomes another clogged arterial where people are going to have to wait through several more cycles of traffic signals before they are able to get across the bridge.  So here we're facing, we've talked a lot about having to add capacity over in east King County because of the growing population, here we are in the western part of the county where we have a lot of older infrastructure and we've taken it for granted for many years, we will actually be losing capacity seriously from this entire corridor which will effect SR509 seriously as well, so this is really a serious regional impact to the transportation system if we cannot solve this funding problem.

The county has actually had quite a long financial commitment to the bridge we've been trying to work with our adjacent cities, including Seattle and Tukwila and the county has actually had in its roads capitol budget for a number of years a funding commitment of about 12 million dollars for construction of a new bridge. And Tukwila by an inter-local agreement a couple of years ago has given three million dollars to the county for construction. The problem is we have a large funding gap between what the county is able to provide in terms of local funding and the cost of what any of the options might be. Right now we're in the EIS review process and development of the alternative replacement structures might be and the cost right now for any of the replacement structures is anywhere between 71 million to 90 million.  The 90 million being replacing the existing moveable span with another moveable span.  And so you can see from the dollar figures the counties 12 million is a little bit over one tenth of the funding and so it's clear we need to have funding partners, not only locally but with the federal government who has a bridge replacement account that they give grants to and the county has been very effective over the years at getting grants from the federal government but we're also going to be very dependent on some other source of funds other than just the federal government.  They'll contribute a substantial amount but we're going to need a considerable amount of money, probably 50 million or more from the local region.  So one of our sources of funding that we worked on real hard over the last year and a half was trying to have the Regional Transportation Improvement District board agree to have the South Park bridge included in the list of projects we call RTID funding, so we're still working on that funding although the RTID funding proposal has been delayed now until 2005. 

Narrator says:

The final environmental impact statement and recommendations on what to do about the South Park bridge are also expected to be available in 2005.

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