Southbound Highway 529 bridge gets fixed tonight

Published 10:49 pm Monday, May 11, 2009

EVERETT — Anyone driving from Marysville to Everett on Highway 529 tonight might have to wait awhile for the drawbridge.

The southbound bridge over the Snohomish River is scheduled to be raised several times for repairs during the night.

Crews plan to raise and lower the Snohomish River Bridge repeatedly from 11:59 p.m. Tuesday to 4 a.m. Wednesday. Drivers can expect to wait 10 to 15 minutes each time the bridge is up, said Archie Allen, a bridge superintendent for the state Department of Transportation.

“Any backup that’s occurred, we’ll let that thin out,” he said.

Some of the shafts that help raise and lower the bridge have microscopic cracks in them, Allen said. The plan is to buff out the cracks, which do not go all the way through the shafts. The work is estimated to cost $15,000 to $20,000.

The southbound bridge was built in 1954 and this is the first time the shafts have had to be repaired, Allen said. Other parts of the bridge have been repaired and improved over the years. The northbound span was built in 1927, Allen said.

Some of the cracks, discovered in an inspection last fall, have been buffed out of the horizontal shafts while the bridge was down, Allen said. Others are exposed only when the shafts rotate and the bridge starts to lift, and those will be repaired tonight. The bridge has to be raised only a couple of feet to allow crews to get to the cracks.

The cracks don’t threaten driver safety, Allen said. The worst-case scenario is that the bridge could not be lifted.

“You’d have a bunch of upset tugboats,” he said.

Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439, sheets@heraldnet.com.