I-5 closures and Montlake construction returns to Seattle Sept. 10, with home sports games

SEATTLE - Drivers should brace themselves for another busy weekend of traffic delays!

As a couple of home sports teams take the field, the Washington State Department of Transportation will hit the pavement for a full weekend of road projects through downtown Seattle and the Montlake area from Sept. 10 to September 13 in the early morning.

Revive I-5 is back for the third weekend this Summer. All southbound I-5 traffic will funnel through the collector-distributor at I-90 from 10 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Monday as crew replaces expansion joints.

In addition, the I-5 Express Lanes will also close from 9 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Monday while crews replace 26 broken concrete panels.

“Some of these expansion joints are original from when the freeway was built 50 years ago,” said Tom Pearce, of WSDOT Communications. “They are wearing out, we’ve had problems with them breaking, and then all of the sudden we’d have to go out in rush hour to do an expansion joint repair,” said Pearce.

Pearce says by replacing the expansion joints during a weekend, people can plan ahead and be prepared.

The Seattle Sounders host Minnesota United at 2 p.m. Saturday at Lumen Field and the Seattle Mariners play the Diamondbacks Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday afternoon at T-Mobile Park.

With the collector-distributor handling all the traffic through downtown, WSDOT says people can still get to the stadiums but will need to budget extra time to travel. When the games are over, the ramps from I-90 to southbound I-5 will be open for people to get home.

“When we did this work back in June, people did tend to do a good job at using alternatives, like using transit, alternate routes, and carpool lanes. We did see backups, but they could’ve been a lot worse,” Pearce said.

According to WSDOT, crews saw 4.5 miles of backups on I-5 during the last Revive I-5 list.

That’s not it!

Drivers in Seattle’s Montlake neighborhood will need to prepare for their own delays. The Montlake Bridge will close to vehicle traffic from 11 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Monday for the first of five scheduled weekend closures. The bridge will still be open to pedestrians and bicycle traffic but will be maintained on one side of the bridge only, at least for the first weekend.

“With the closure, we expect to see added traffic on surface streets, especially on routes to and from I-5. We really need people to watch their speed and drive carefully out there,” said Joseph Calabro of WSDOT Communications.

Crews will also close Montlake Boulevard between Lake Washington Boulevard and the Montlake Bridge from Friday night to Monday Morning, for paving on the new Montlake Lid and electrical work. Most ramps to and from SR 520 in the Montlake area will be closed.

Husky fans—don’t worry—WSDOT says they will not work during UW Football weekends.