MERCER ISLAND, Wash -- WSDOT is calling it ‘one of the biggest highway construction closures of the summer’ and it is headed right toward Puget Sound drivers in July.
Starting at 10:00 p.m. Friday July 18th, crews will close all but a single lane of westbound I-90 just before Bellevue Way Southeast and those lanes will remain closed round-the-clock for seven days.
WSDOT needs to replace two 92-foot-long expansion joins deeply embedded in the East Channel Bridge.
“Removing and replacing these joints will be a significant task for our contractor, and simply too much work to complete with weekend closures,” said WSDOT Regional Administrator Lorena Eng. “There’s no getting around the fact that we are going to see traffic backups. But, we can’t wait any longer to replace these expansion joints, and risk that they will fail.”
The week-long closure will be split into two stages and here’s how WSDOT describes those two stages: