The Murrow Bridge is the second-longest floating bridge in the world, at 6,620ft (2,020m) (the longest is the Governor Albert D. Rosellini Bridge–Evergreen Point, a few miles north on the same lake). The original Murrow Bridge opened in 1940, and was named the Lake Washington Floating Bridge. It was renamed the Lacey V. Murrow bridge in 1967.[1] The original bridge closed in 1989;[2][3] the current bridge opened in 1993.[4]
Along with the east portals of the Mount Baker Ridge Tunnel, the bridge is an official City of Seattle landmark and a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.[5][6] While the bridge originally had an opening span at the center of the bridge to allow a horizontal opening of 202 feet (62m) for major waterborne traffic, the only boat passages currently are elevated fixed spans at the termini with 29 feet (8.8m) of vertical clearance.[7]
History
Construction of the bridge; photo taken one year after start of construction.
The bridge was the brainchild of engineer Homer Hadley, who had made the first proposal in 1921.[8] The bridge came about after intensive lobbying, particularly by George Lightfoot, who came to be called the "father of the bridge." Lightfoot began campaigning for the bridge in 1930, enlisting the support of Miller Freeman.[9][10][11] Construction began January 1, 1939 and was completed in 1940.[12] The construction cost for the project, including approaches, was approximately $9 million. It was partially financed by a bond issue of $4.184 million.[7] Opened July 2, 1940, the bridge carried US 10 (later decommissioned and renamed Interstate 90). Tolls were removed in 1949.[13] The bridge sank in a storm on November 25, 1990 during refurbishment and repair.[14] The current bridge was built in 1993. The eponymous Lacey V. Murrow (1904–1966) was the second director of the Washington State Highway Department and a highly decorated U.S. Air Force officer who served as a bomber pilot in World War II, rising to the rank of brigadier general.[15][16][17]A 1925 graduate of Washington State College in Pullman, he was the oldest brother of CBS commentator Edward R. Murrow.[17]
The original bridge was built under a 1+1⁄2-year contract awarded to the Puget Sound Bridge and Dredging Company in the amount of $3.254 million.[18] It included a movable span that could be retracted into a pocket in the center of the fixed span to permit large boats to pass. This design resulted in a roadway bulge that required vehicles to swerve twice across polished steel joints as they passed the bulge. A reversible lane system, indicated by lighted overhead lane control signals with arrow and 'X' signs, compounded the hazard by putting one lane of traffic on the "wrong" side of the bulge during morning and evening rush hours in an effort to alleviate traffic into or out of Seattle. There were many serious collisions on the bridge. The problems grew worse as the traffic load increased over the years and far outstripped the designed capacity. Renovation or replacement became essential and a parallel bridge, the Homer M. Hadley Memorial Bridge, was completed in 1989, and named for Hadley in 1993.
With the opening of the new bridge, the 49-year-old Murrow Bridge closed on June 23, 1989, for renovation that was projected to take three years.[19][20][21]
On November 25, 1990, while under re-construction, the original bridge sank because of a series of human errors and decisions. The process started because the bridge needed resurfacing and was to be widened by means of cantilevered additions in order to meet the necessary lane-width specifications of the Interstate Highway System. The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) decided to use hydrodemolition (high-pressure water) to remove unwanted material (the sidewalks on the bridge deck). Water from this hydrodemolition was considered contaminated under environmental law and could not be allowed to flow into Lake Washington.[22] Engineers then analyzed the pontoons of the bridge, and realized that they were over-engineered and the water could be stored temporarily in the pontoons. The watertight doors for the pontoons were therefore removed.
A large storm on November 22–24 (the Thanksgiving holiday weekend),[23] filled some of the pontoons with rain and lake water. On Saturday, November 24, workers noticed that the bridge was about to sink, and started pumping out some of the pontoons; on Sunday, November 25, a 2,790-foot (850m) section of the bridge sank, dumping the contaminated water into the lake along with tons of bridge material. It sank when one pontoon filled and dragged the rest down, because they were cabled together and there was no way to separate the sections under load. No one was hurt or killed, since the bridge was closed for renovation and the sinking took some time.[2][3] All of the sinking was captured on film and shown on live TV. The cost of the disaster was $69 million in damages. A dozen anchoring cables for the new Hadley bridge were severed,[19][24] and it was closed for a short time afterward.[25] Westbound traffic was allowed on Tuesday,[26] and eastbound traffic was resumed in early December.[27]
The disaster delayed the bridge's reopening by 14 months, to September 12, 1993.[4][28]
Precedents and lessons learned
WSDOT had lost another floating bridge, the Hood Canal Bridge, in February 1979 under similar circumstances. It is now known that the other major floating bridge in Washington, the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge, was under-engineered for local environmental conditions; that 1963 bridge was replaced with a new floating spanin 2016.[29]
↑ Lange, G. (1999). Lake Washington Floating Bridge is dedicated on July 2, 1940. Washington State Department of Transportation. http://www.historylink.org/File/682
↑ Witcher, T.R. (September 2018). "Success in Seattle: The Lacey V. Murrow Memorial Bridge and Mount Baker Ridge Tunnel". Civil Engineering. American Society of Civil Engineers. pp.44–47.
1 2 Tudor Engineering Company for Washington State Highway Commission Department of Highways. Legislative Reconnaissance and Feasibility Report "Lake Washington Bridge Crossings, Parallel Evergreen Point Bridge, North Lake Bridge. December 1968.
↑ Donald O. Dusenberry, et al. (Feb. 1995). "Failure of Lacey V. Murrow floating bridge, Seattle, Washington." Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities, v. 9, n. 1, p 4-23.
Mercer Island is a city in King County, Washington, United States, located on an island of the same name in the southern portion of Lake Washington. Mercer Island is in the Seattle metropolitan area, with Seattle to its west and Bellevue to its east.
Lake Washington is a large freshwater lake adjacent to the city of Seattle. It is the largest lake in King County and the second largest natural lake in the state of Washington, after Lake Chelan. It borders the cities of Seattle on the west, Bellevue and Kirkland on the east, Renton on the south and Kenmore on the north, and encloses Mercer Island. The lake is fed by the Sammamish River at its north end and the Cedar River at its south.
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The Evergreen Point Floating Bridge, officially the Governor Albert D. Rosellini Bridge, and commonly called the SR 520 Bridge or 520 Bridge, was a floating bridge in the U.S. state of Washington that carried State Route 520 across Lake Washington, connecting Medina with the Montlake/Union Bay district of Seattle.
The Eastside of the King County, Washington area in the United States is a collective term for the suburbs of Seattle located on the east side of Lake Washington.
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The Washington State Department of Transportation is a governmental agency that constructs, maintains, and regulates the use of transportation infrastructure in the U.S. state of Washington. Established in 1905, it is led by a secretary and overseen by the governor. WSDOT is responsible for more than 20,000 lane-miles of roadway, nearly 3,000 vehicular bridges and 524 other structures. This infrastructure includes rail lines, state highways, state ferries and state airports.
Lake Washington Floating Bridge may refer to the following crossings of Lake Washington between Seattle and its eastern suburbs:
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The Mount Baker Tunnel or Mount Baker Ridge Tunnel carries Interstate 90 under the Mount Baker neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. It is actually a group of three tubes that carry eight lanes of freeway traffic, plus a separate path for bicycles and pedestrians. The original tubes are twin tunnel bores completed in 1940 and rehabilitated in 1993. The new Mount Baker Tunnel was built north of the original tunnels and opened in June 1989. The tunnel has a double-decked roadway with the bicycle/pedestrian path above the traffic lanes.
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Interstate 90 (I-90), designated as the American Veterans Memorial Highway, is a transcontinental Interstate Highway that runs from Seattle, Washington, to Boston, Massachusetts. It crosses Washington state from west to east, traveling 298 miles (480 km) from Seattle across the Cascade Mountains and into Eastern Washington, reaching the Idaho state line east of Spokane. I-90 intersects several of the state's other major highways, including I-5 in Seattle, I-82 and U.S. Route 97 (US 97) near Ellensburg, and US 395 and US 2 in Spokane.
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I-90, eastbound lanes
