High Costs Lead Seattle to Scale Back Earthquake Work on Bridges

The West Coast, nervously awaiting the catastrophic earthquake dubbed the "Big One," has spent years investing in improved earthquake safety and retrofitting infrastructure to withstand seismic destruction. Seattle promised to improve 16 of its bridges with modern earthquake safety mechanisms, but, after realizing it underestimated costs by hundreds of millions of dollars, the city is scaling back the work to only 11 bridges.

After reevaluating proposed costs for the bridge projects, the city realized it had vastly underestimated project costs and had received less than a tenth of the $37 million in federal grants and outside funding that they hoped would go toward seismic retrofitting. The expenses for the projected bridge work grew exponentially as engineers began analyzing the bridge foundations and surrounding soils. Improvements to the First Avenue South bridge, for example, jumped from $4 million to over $250 million, creating a huge gap in funding.

To move forward, the Seattle Department of Transportation plans to remove the most expensive bridges from its immediate plan and execute the work on others. The agency is drafting a new plan to address all of the city's bridges, slated to be ready by 2023.