SHINE — Hood Canal Bridge is open once again, but there’s still plenty of work to be done down the road.
State Department of Transportation officials are aiming for 2009 to replace the bridge’s eastern half, which will be the culmination to a $285 million project to improve the decrepit 41-year-old structure.
The project also includes a seismic retrofit of the bridge’s western half.
The bridge will remain open, but Transportation officials said some bridge widening work still has to be done on the structure’s west end.
“We will definitely not have the traffic impacts of the last 10 days,” said Lloyd Brown, Department of Transportation Olympic Region communications manager.
“There will be some nightly lane closures, but people will be able to get across.”
Aside from closing the bridge and replacing the 640-foot east-end approach span in Kitsap County over the past three days, a shorter span was rolled in on the Jefferson County side two weeks ago.
Anchor cables replaced
Also this summer, 16 of 18 east-half anchor cables on the floating bridge were replaced.
General Construction, a subcontractor for bridge contractor Kiewit-General Construction Co. of Poulsbo, did the work.
A broken cable was discovered Aug. 11, 2004, during routine maintenance inspections, which prompted this summer’s cable replacement project.
Bridge anchors and cables are critical to the alignment of the draw span, which resists the forces exerted on the floating structure during tides and storms.
For the bridge’s east-half replacement project, Transportation officials are focused on a construction site in the Port of Tacoma area to build replacement pontoons for the bridge.
That construction scenario, however, is not a done deal, Brown said. Negotiations must be conducted with potential contractors.
Funding in question
A funding source must also be secured, said Brown, before the project can be completed.
While the state’s approved 2005-07 transportation budget set aside about $160 million to repair the bridge, those funds depend partially on a recently implemented 9.5 cents per gallon gasoline tax increase, said Brown.
A measure going before voters Nov. 8 — Initiative 912 — could repeal the gas tax increase, leaving the bridge’s future funding in limbo.
Should voters approve the initiative, Transportation officials and state lawmakers will have to take another look at how the rest of the bridge project is funded.