Edgewater Bridge opening beset by another delay

Published 2:00 pm Monday, December 22, 2025

EVERETT — The long-awaited opening date of a bridge connecting Everett to Mukilteo has been pushed back again, the city’s public works department announced Monday.

The Edgewater Bridge is now expected to open in April 2026, the city said. It had previously hoped to open the bridge in the first quarter of 2026.

In a project update, the city cited a number of reasons for the additional delay. The first was from working on the steep slopes with soft soils, which the public works department said were subject to destabilization.

In October, the city wrote, an atmospheric river overflowed storm drains in an area west of the bridge, causing “a torrent of rainwater” to flow down the slope, damaging significant project infrastructure. The area has also seen other instances of sliding soil since May, the city wrote.

Other reasons for the delay included a breakdown of two of the contractor’s cranes, the discovery and removal of abandoned materials containing asbestos, multiple delays of state inspections and continued efforts to stabilize slopes on the Everett side, the update read.

The contractor made numerous efforts to recover the time lost by working on drainage, slope stability and retaining walls simultaneously, the city wrote.

It’s the latest in a number of setbacks for the project, which will rebuild a critical connection between Everett and Mukilteo. The city initially looked at it as a 2022 project, but it was delayed to summer 2023. An error in the bidding process delayed it again, pushing the closure date to the end of October 2024.

Everett expected the closure to last about a year. But in May, the city announced it had to delay the reopening to early 2026 after difficulties installing steel piling used to create a temporary work bridge, needed to complete the permanent one. While installing the steel piling, the process was slowed by unexpected underground obstructions, including old timber and concrete left behind from a previous bridge structure.

The closure has left residents who live near the bridge facing long detours.

The previous Edgewater Bridge, built in 1946, saw about 6,000 vehicles cross it every day. But it needed replacing. City reports found that it was vulnerable to failure in the event of a major earthquake, and its narrow lanes and sidewalks made it obsolete. The new bridge will have 12-foot lanes in each direction, 6.5-foot sidewalks on each side and 5-foot bike lanes.

The city has still made significant progress on the bridge, it wrote in the project update Monday. All 18 girders — the main horizontal beams that will support the bridge deck and the traffic that travels over it — have now been placed. The bridge’s two abutments, parts of the bridge that support both its superstructure and the roadway embankment, have also been poured, the city wrote.

Will Geschke: 425-339-3443; william.geschke@heraldnet.com; X: @willgeschke.