“Signs of our time on Capitol Hill Seattle” (Image: Kate Clark via Flickr)
Expect a traffic pinch starting Saturday as work crews begin an emergency repair project to repair pavement on E Olive Way just west of Broadway. The work is slated to continue “into the work week” which we assume means Monday even though, sigh, CHS also works on the weekends.
Paving crews from the Seattle Department of Transportation will close a lane on Olive Way just west of Broadway for an emergency repair to the pavement beginning Saturday, Jan. 24 at 8 a.m. During the weekend the street will be restricted to one lane shared by both directions of traffic 24 hours a day. Police officers and traffic flaggers will assist drivers through the area.
SDOT crews will continue to work at this location into the work week, leaving one lane open in each direction, as they excavate and replace 12 concrete panels in the roadway.
Driving is imperative for my job, I’ve lived on Capitol Hill my entire life and like everyone else pay significant taxes for city services.
The main corridors on north Capitol Hill are a driving nightmare condition wise. Huge potholes (I regularly report and are haphazardly repaired ) uneven choppy and distorted concrete slabs, bus ruts in asphalt and poorly marked crosswalks (for the rest of my days i spend walking).
It makes driving dangerous and I’ve had to replace three pairs of struts on my 220k mile Honda.
I can suggest a great public works project that will benefit everyone…
Resurface East John/Thomas/ olive way from E Madison to I-5, I’m sure the bus drivers and passengers will benefit, too!
I was shocked when I saw a section of Mercer between 13th and 14th being repaired (looks like a tree root had slowly created a ridge in the pavement, no big deal for years now) while many of the Hills streets suffer from massive potholes that are poorly repaired.
There are so many sections of arterials that have sunk and go unfixed. The slabs on John towards 12th. The long narrow gouge on Denny towards Melrose. All the divots on E Olive Way. Just to name a few…
that gouge on Denny is the WORST! Melrose Avenue is also doing that. It’s either a groundwater issue or a water line issue causing the dirt to wash away, but it’s a sink hole waiting to happen.
Recently, a stretch of 10th Ave E between Republican and Mercer was excavated and repaved. To my eye anyway, there was NO apparent problem there. Meanwhile, obvious problem spots go unrepaired. I have to wonder how SDOT goes about prioritizing their paving work.
“Emergency repair” equates to lack of planning and deferred maintenance, often costing many times over what maintenance would have been. Way to be such good stewards of our tax dollars there SDOT!
They don’t have funding to keep up with scheduled maintenance, so all they can do is to perform emergency repairs here and there.
It’s already started Friday, January 23rd. The spot is where the KC Metro bus stop was set up. The work is likely due to the constant wear and tear caused by buses stopping there.
All the complaints about pavement not being up to par is nothing new and unless the city gets somehow flush with money it’s likely to be more of the same. Then again, some streets that have been repaved ten years ago are starting to look like cråp too. It’s a constant job that likely will never end.
We did and do have a source of money for this work. It’s called “Bridging the Gap” and was supposed to fund a lot more paving projects until a big chunk of it got sucked into South Lake Union for the Mercer St Corridor work.