RAMP REPAIR UPDATE: Still on schedule, says state; past reports forwarded, says city

(WSB photo, Wednesday)

Six days after that hole forced the Washington State Department of Transportation to close its ramp connecting the eastbound West Seattle Bridge to northbound State Highway 99, here’s the latest:

As reported over the weekend, crews poured concrete on Saturday, and now it’s curing. WSDOT spokesperson James Poling explained why the schedule remains the same as announced last week (which would reopen the ramp by this Saturday): “The concrete curing process requires our offsite materials lab breaking test concrete cylinders from the pour at certain time benchmarks (24 hours after pour, 48 hours after pour, etc.). Once a test cylinder reaches a strength to safely reopen traffic, the bridge ramp will reopen. The timetable remains the same at this time as our crews await a test cylinder to pass that strength benchmark.”

Meantime, since there was initially much public confusion over who’s accountable for the ramp, and some commenters said they had filed ramp-pothole reports with the city, we asked the Seattle Department of Transportation if they’d received such reports about the state-owned ramp and what happened to them. Spokesperson Ethan Bergerson replied, “When the public reports a pothole which is outside the city limits or not on SDOT’s right-of-way, it will be routed to the correct transportation agency. Over the past few months, we notified WSDOT of several public reports of potholes in this location.” We’ll follow up on that, as WSDOT had said previously they weren’t aware of the hole – at least at the magnitude that forced last Tuesday’s closure.

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