So you’re on the road headed to Seattle. You’re looking forward to picking up a relative at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, attending a meeting or some other event or just enjoying a day in the big city.
Then, you realize you didn’t check to see if the Hood Canal Bridge is open to traffic.
That can be important. Since the bridge re-opened with a new east half this summer, testing and work on the west half has disrupted vehicle traffic on a constantly changing schedule or simply without an announced schedule.
Not knowing what’s ahead can mean arriving very late, since closures can block traffic from 40 minutes to 90 minutes, depending upon the time of day and other factors.
Scheduled closures are listed online at www.hoodcanalbridge.com.
You also can sign up to get text message traffic alerts on your cell phone. To start the process select “e-mail updates” at the top right-hand corner of the www.hoodcanalbridge.com home page.
By telephone
Butif you can’t check online and haven’t set up text message alerts — if you are relying upon dialing a phone number for updates — here are your options.
• You can dial 5-1-1. At the first prompt, say “traffic.”
At the second prompt, say “104” — the number of the state highway that crosses the Hood Canal Bridge.
• You can dial the toll-free number for Hood Canal Bridge information. The number is 1-800-419-9085.
Both numbers will tell you only if the bridge is open to vehicle traffic right at that moment. They are updated continually, said Kelly Stowe, state Department of Transportation spokeswoman.
Neither of the two phone numbers provide advance information about closures scheduled for testing, nighttime closures or closures to allow the drawspan to open for marine traffic.
The bridge — which has average daily traffic of 15,000 on weekdays and 20,000 on weekends — can closed because of:
• Scheduled daytime ballast testing.
• Marine vessel traffic.
• Nighttime work, with closures of up to 90 minutes between the hours of 10 p.m. to 4 a.m.
• High winds, traffic wrecks, construction or other reasons.
Scheduled daytime closures can be known in advance through checking the Hood Canal Bridge Web site — once again, that’s www.hoodcanalbridge.com — or the Peninsula Daily News.
No advance notice
The state Department of Transportation does not give advance notice — on its Web site or anywhere else — of Hood Canal Bridge closures for marine traffic.
That policy is dictated by the federal Department of Homeland Security, Stowe said.
“Most of the [marine] openings for the Hood Canal Bridge are for Navy ships,” she said.
She also said that Transportation gives no advance notice of marine vessel drawspan openings for the state’s other moveable bridges.
“Pre-notification is only given for closures to vehicular traffic due to construction or maintenance” or testing, she said.
Marine closures generally are for 30 minutes, the Web site says, but backed-up traffic may stretch each closure to 40 minutes or one hour.
Stowe said that a check of Transportation records showed an average of one marine vessel drawspan opening per day on the Hood Canal Bridge.
Nighttime work, which can close the bridge for up to 90 minutes, has been canceled this week but will resume on Monday.
The eastern half of the bridge was replaced in a nearly $500 million project that closed the bridge for several weeks in May and June.
Scheduled testing
The scheduled daytime drawspan openings since then have been to allow the testing of the ballast — rock and seawater, now, but eventually just rock — in pontoons of the floating bridge to ensure that both the new east side and the west side retrofit work together, Transportation engineers have said.
The scheduled daytime closures are timed to coincide with slack tides and are announced on the Web site.
This ballast testing was originally expected to be finished by December. Transportation announced last week that the daytime closures for ballast testing will continue through mid-January.
After daytime testing and nighttime work is finished, new tests begin.
The drawspan must open and close 20 times without any malfunction. Even if 19 tests are perfect, if the last one fails, then the contractor must start over, Transportation said.
If everything goes as planned, the tests will take about eight to 10 hours, as they did on the east half.
Once those tests are finished, Kiewit-General’s work on the bridge will be complete.
In addition to updates at www.hoodcanalbridge.com, Transportation also updates its construction report every Friday afternoon and lists test opening dates and times at www.wsdot.wa.gov/Regions/Olympic/Construction.