November 9th, 2007 @ 1:00 am by Cliffe | Sorted Past Post
Voters
soundly rejected Proposition 1 at the polls on Tuesday, leaving the fate of the aging 520 Bridge’s replacement
up in the air. We all know this bridge too well. I do, for certain. It was the bane of my existence for 3 years travelling to work everyday in downtown Bellevue (now replaced by a new personal bane — the I-90 bridge). Back in 1963 when it opened, it was known as the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge (and The Governor Albert D. Rosellini Bridge since 1988). The structure, which was a toll-bridge up until 1979, was built to carry 65,000 vehicles but today carries over 115,000 vehicles a day. This bottleneck, along with the risk of collapse via earthquake, is leading politicians to move on a replacement. Will it be 40 more years before we can all agree on a new solution? All you fellow Lake Washington commuters, feel free to leave a horror story or two in the comments. Here are two vintage postcard views of the bridge, most likely from the 1960’s. Speaking of downtown Bellevue, check it out — no skyscrapers. Click on the images for a larger view.
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Front: Evergreen Point Bridge.
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Back: Evergreen Point Bridge, the second Lake Washington Bridge, is the longest floating span in the world (over-all length 5.93 miles, floating section 7,578 ft.). It shortens the distance considerably from Seattle to Bellevue and Kirkland. The road over the bridge also leads to Stevens Pass in the Cascade Mountains, seen against the sky, and points East.
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Front: Evergreen Point Bridge — Lake Washington.
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Back: Evergreen Point Bridge, the second Lake Washington Bridge, is the longest floating span in the world (over-all length 5.93 miles, floating section 7,578 ft.). It shortens the distance considerably from Seattle to Bellevue and Kirkland. In the forefront: boats entering Lake Washington ship canal. On the right: part of the University of Washington Arboretum.
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November 9th, 2007 @ 1:08 pm
Too bad they didn’t keep it a toll bridge–imagine how much money they would have saved up by now, even with a relatively low toll!
I barely remember crossing the bridge when there was still a toll. I was five and living on the eastside in 1979 so my memory is pretty hazy, but it was so novel in this area to have a toll road that it stuck in my mind.
This site is great, by the way. Keep up the good work!
November 9th, 2007 @ 1:25 pm
Very nice postcard — much better than the archive photos I’ve seen from that time.
November 9th, 2007 @ 3:13 pm
The 520 bridge is a horror story. I used to work at Microsoft from 1997 to 1999 and then again from 2001 to 2002, and man, was that commute a waste of time. Who ever thought two lanes in each direction with no shoulders was a good idea? And then there are the ramps to nowhere…..
November 9th, 2007 @ 3:59 pm
Speaking of the ramps to nowhere, the actually appear to go somewhere in the first post card picture (the closest ramp in the picture). If I am not mistaken from my 520 commuting days, isn’t the closest ramp in the picture now partially missing and incomplete? [Would connect Aborteum directly to Montlake Blvd]Anybody know the history of what happened to the ramp? Was it removed for some reason?
November 9th, 2007 @ 4:24 pm
This HistoryLink article has some information on the ramps to nowhere:
http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=690
“On the west side, the ramps were built in the Arboretum to connect SR 520 with a planned R. H. Thomson Expressway generally following Empire Way (now Martin Luther King Jr. Way) through the Central Area. After citizen protests, Seattle canceled the expressway in 1971, but the “ramps to nowhwere” still stand.”
November 9th, 2007 @ 10:45 pm
R.H. Thomson was an interesting fellow — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_H._Thomson — responsible for leveling Denny Hill and regrading Jackson Hill as well, he also started bringing in drinking water from the Cedar River…
November 10th, 2007 @ 10:28 am
I second Holly’s comments. Those are beautiful photos. But, I have to ask not being a Seattle native, who in their right mind would cancel an expressway and leave the ramps basically hanging on and then they are crazy enough to have a bridge with no shoulder? Sounds like a traffic nightmare especially if your car stops in the middle of the bridge and there is no where to go.
November 11th, 2007 @ 2:10 pm
Well, in their defence, the bridge was built before the expressway was started and canceled, so the two are unrelated
As for not taking the ramps down, I suppose they felt they couldn’t justify the expense. And maybe, just maybe, they thought there might be a use for them someday (other than providing people a place from which to go diving?)
November 11th, 2007 @ 6:43 pm
LOL! Good one, Ben. I hadn’t thought of that.
November 13th, 2007 @ 1:55 pm
I can tell you a bit about the RH Thomsen Expressway that was never built from the Montlake perspective. I live in Montlake and have become quite fascinated with my neighborhood’s history. Let’s just say my neighbors have very long memories.
The story is that after SR 520 was put in, there was going to be a freeway that would have been where MLK Way is now, cut through the Arboretum, into Laurelhurst, and then back around to Lake Union. Many people in the freeway’s proposed path threw quite a stink, particularly those in Montlake. You see, SR 520 caused a lot of property damage in my neighborhood, and people were understandably frightened about having another freeway in their backyard (literally).
Some houses along 26th Avenue E were bought up and left abandoned to a) make way for the freeway; and b) drive down property values on that side of the neighborhood. After the project was cancelled, that area became a nice little playground (for those local — it’s the greenbelt that goes north from 26th and Lynn).
This was really the incident that galvanized my neighbors into a rather powerful political force. It’s taken a different shape today in that the current generation is a bit more proactive (two of my neighbors are behind the Pacific Interchange option for the new 520 bridge — if it ever gets built).