Bondo? Epoxy paint?

That bridge crosses the Seattle fault, doesn't it? One side anchored on the west side of the fault and another on the east? Wonder if it's being pulled apart.

Will we be getting another column about how the city shouldn't pay for local bridges?
https://www.thestranger.com/news/2019/02/27/39309044/should-we-help-this-island-of-rich-people

Fuck Magnolia!

Obviously the trolly troll sock puppy isn't from here.

@7 quackcent I think you meant.

Fuck West Seattle too, let them ride to work on the backs of repeatedly consenting organic free-stream salmon!

oh wait sorry, Magnolia's median family income is 108k, while West Seattle is only 90k. I rescind my @7 fuck, as West Seattle is below the arbitrary threshold for good people money and Magnolia is above. Fuck only Magnolia.

Except also fuck all the neighborhoods running east from NE Capitol hill even harder, what with their 160k+ median incomes, the bunch of filthy fucking richest in the city hipster adjacent evil doers. I say we build them a bridge and then tear it down.

Strange times when the spam for herbal diabetes remedies is the most sensible comment on this article.

@12 &13: LOL! I needed some laughs today...Thanks!

What happened was that the engineers realized that they could no longer be sure that the bridge would not fail. They could not responsibly assure the public that the bridge and the shipping channel would remain passable, and that lives would not be lost. That's why they closed the bridge.

The fact that the cracks were growing so rapidly, and that their rate of growth seemed to be rapidly increasing probably mean there was a possibility of catastrophic failure. That is, that large parts of the bridge might fall down and wind up in the water. That's why they had to close the bridge right away.

According to the SDOT briefing, which I watched, this was all based on what they saw Monday morning. The information they had Friday indicated that they needed to close the bridge down to two lanes as soon as they could make the needed plans for that. The new information they got Monday indicated that they could not allow regular traffic on the bridge at all.

Yes, it's a mess. But no one's dead. Traffic can still cross on the Spokane Street Bridge. Shipping can still pass through the channel. None of these thing might be true if the bridge had remained open.

Note: As of this posting. Sentence 3 of the opening paragraph still incorrectly states: "SDOT did not alert the Seattle City Council to this until three days after this realization."

Seattle was too busy building $10 million bike lanes to waste time on bridge upkeep.

@17 it's also the hidden cost of doing transit cheap. Bus Mass Transit is always thrown around as a better way to spend transportation dollars, but seems to not take into account that running 25 ton busses day in and day out on the same roads tears the infrastructure to pieces. Seattle DOT has been replacing Avalon street which the C line shredded. Now that wear and tear has taken out the crucial Bus Only lanes on the bridge too.

Next time build it using carbon fiber concrete like actual First World Countries do, instead of the current Third World techniques used here.