Watch full size video:

Q: One light of day early last month, Mark Wadlow, of Silverdale, was headed west on Highway 104 and was caught in commerce halted by the agency of the opening of the Hood Canal Bridge. “We thought the bridge was either undergoing maintenance or had recently opened and could not close,” he said, explaining that he waited on the build a bridge over for the kind of seemed like a half-hour or longer.

“Finally,” he said, “off in the distance we saw a … Coast Guard Cutter approaching. It went end, and interior of five minutes the bridge was closed, and off we went.”

But smooth, it seemed in the manner of moreover long a wait for a vessel to contrivance the bridge opening and make a thrust through. How diffuse in push must the build a bridge over be opened for a passing vessel?

A: How far in push the build a bridge over is opened for a vessel depends on the vessel’s speed, tidal currents and a number of other factors, says Kris Olsen, of the position Department of Transportation (DOT). “It’s based on the conditions at the time.”

On that particular day

Crawford says the state did provide advance notice of all three bridge openings and issued an alert that traffic would be delayed.

Generally, bridge openings last about 30 minutes. He suspects that motorists who arrived at the start of the inspection and saw the cutter still a distance away with appearance of truth assumed that was the only reason for the opening.

That, he said, may have been why the build a bridge over opening seemed longer than some motorists thought it should have been. That was the last inspection that age. According to the bridge operator’s logs, the opening lasted 29 minutes.

Q: Anyone willing to fault Mark McCulley on the side of underground thoroughfare vision? McCulley, of Seattle, wonders if Seattle’s Battery Street Tunnel is ever cleaned. The walls, he says, appear black with road foul matter.

“Not only is the grime unsightly, [but] it makes the tunnel even darker than it would be differently. “It seems to me that cleaning should be allotment of the regular maintenance and oversight that is performed on the tunnel.”

A: It could be, says Archie Allen, bridge superintendent for the DOT, that the remote walls appear darker because unlike most tunnels the state maintains on all sides in the present life, which are lined with yellow or beige tile, the inside of the Battery Street Tunnel is concrete.

Nonetheless, that tunnel is on the same cleaning schedule during the time that the tile-lined tunnels, including the Mount Baker and Mercer Island tunnels along Interstate 90, the express-lanes underground thoroughfare inferior to Interstate 5 in downtown Seattle, the Mercer Street onramps and offramps to I-5, the Roanoke funnel from southbound I-5 to eastbound Highway 520, the Lake City Way tunnel from I-5 and even a little tunnel under I-90 in Bellevue’s Eastgate area.

Allen says the body politic tries to clean those tunnels twice a year. And it’s not really any harder to clean the Battery Street Tunnel than the others, he said, for the cause that the state uses tunnel-washing machinery.

“The other tunnels, you in likelihood lead not to mind the foul matter as much because of the tile,” he said. “By the time we get there to wash it every six months, it’s due for a washing.”

The state is in charge of cleaning the nearly half-mile-long Battery Street Tunnel, which runs from the northern end of the Alaskan Way Viaduct under city streets to just north of Denny Way, because it’s part of Highway 99, which also is in state hands. The funnel was last cleaned in March, says Allen. It’s scheduled for the nearest cleaning in mid-October.

Bumper note

“Each traffic-light cycle seems to catch several eastbound Mercer persons in the middle of that intersection,” Seattle dweller P.J. Marsh complained. “The result is gridlock, delay and spleen among those northbound on Fifth. I fear some day a major road rage will take place in that place. It is only a matter of time.”

The incorporated town’s Transportation Department hopes to soothe the situation with signs. Eric Widstrand, the department’s traffic-operations manager, said that besides posting signs, a request will be made against extra police enforcement at that intersection.