Seattle's Draw Bridges

March 23, 2025 1:37 AM

Seattle has nine movable bridges: six road drawbridges (Ballard, Fremont, University, Montlake, First Ave South, South Park), one road swing bridge (Spokane Street Swing Bridge) and two train drawbridges. Seattle Times: Life in the tower: Who controls Seattle’s drawbridges? (archive). Seattle DOT: How do the Fremont and Ballard Bridge Openings work in Seattle?

Ballard Bridge: HistoryLink, Wikipedia. Opening. Drone view.
Fremont Bridge: HistoryLink, Wikipedia. Opening.
University Bridge: HistoryLink. Wikipedia. Opening. Timelapse.
Montlake Bridge: HistoryLink. Wikipedia. Opening.
Spokane Street Swing Bridge: Wikipedia. Opening. Removing a damaged hydraulic turn cylinder inside the Spokane St Swing Bridge.
First Ave S. Bridge: Wikipedia. Opening.
South Park Bridge: HistoryLink. Wikipedia. Opening. Opening from the inside.
Salmon Bay Rail Bridge: Wikipedia. Opening. 737 fuselages crossing bridge.
Duwamish River Rail Bridge: Drone video.

Bonus: The boat captain who hit the West Seattle Bridge in 1978 possibly being turned into donated hamburger meat.

posted by ShooBoo (34 comments total)

The boat captain who crashed into and disabled the West Seattle bridge inspired an unsanctioned public monument in 2020 (“Patron saint of the broken bridge”), which has a history of its own.
posted by baseballpajamas at 7:02 AM on March 23 [3 favorites]

That Ballard Bridge opening protocol [press this red button and everything works like a clock] is what you'd expect in 2025. On the other side of the country the 1906 Susquehanna swing-bridge on the Amtrak NE corridor requires a team of 30 to crank that baby open by hand. It only happens about once a month, though.
posted by BobTheScientist at 7:07 AM on March 23 [2 favorites]

For a while a regular fb feature from a buddy of mine was a pic or video of him shaking his fist at being stuck waiting for the Fremont, Ballard, or University bridge, usually during rush hour (as mentioned in one of the videos, marine traffic always has right-of-way, which causes no end of vocal consternation from local commuters). I hardly ever have to cross those bridges, so even more rarely get stopped by them.

Big fan of civil engineering projects like this (see also the Hiram Chittenden "Ballard" Locks, just down the street from the Ballard Bridge) so thanks for this! Years ago the Port of Seattle was offering public tours of their facilities, and the wife and I got to see behind the scenes operations at SeaTac Airport and a couple of their shipping terminals - fun and informative, if you're into that kind of thing. No idea if they still do those.
posted by Pedantzilla at 7:52 AM on March 23 [2 favorites]

Speaking of Seattle things that open, check out this Ballard Locks time-lapse.
posted by fiercekitten at 7:54 AM on March 23 [4 favorites]

Can confirm that Ballard Bridge traffic gets very bad when risen; moreso true during rush hours, when boats often are given priority, despite the impacts of doing so. It is also terribly dangerous for cyclists — especially those southbound — who should divert to cross at Fremont, if at all possible.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:55 AM on March 23

I'm just glad the 520 bridge isn't a drawbridge anymore. I somehow always managed to be in the front of the line when it was going to open for boats, such a pain.
posted by potrzebie at 8:16 AM on March 23 [1 favorite]

The epochs of my life in Seattle can be identified by which bridges I regularly crossed. With our lakes, rivers, and channels, many people* have to cross a bridge as part of their routine.


* I wrote “pretty much everyone” at first, but that got me wondering what percentage of Seattlites cross bridges as part of a commute. And do we count bridges over land, like Jose Rizal? Is a regular overpass a bridge?
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 8:52 AM on March 23 [1 favorite]

Can confirm that Ballard Bridge traffic gets very bad when risen; moreso true during rush hours, when boats often are given priority, despite the impacts of doing so.

I've experienced the bad traffic when the bridges open, but the bridges are not supposed to open during rush hours (under "Opening Schedule"):
Seattle's Ship Canal Bridges - University, Fremont, and Ballard Bridges - have restrictions in place during the morning and afternoon peak commute to help keep street traffic moving during busy hours. These 3 bridges stay closed to marine traffic on weekdays, from 7-9 AM and from 4-6 PM, except for federal holidays but Indigenous Peoples' Day and for any vessel of 1,000 gross tons or over.
(And a 1,000 gross tons ship is large, not often seen in the Lake Washington Ship Canal. Here's one for sale for $200k)
posted by ShooBoo at 9:11 AM on March 23 [1 favorite]

(And a 1,000 gross tons ship is large, not often seen in the Lake Washington Ship Canal.
It happens more often at Ballard than Fremont or Montlake, but there are some large dry docks in Lake Union that work on big ships.

I have managed to photo a sailboat getting stuck under the Fremont. They were freaking out trying to figure out how to contact the drawbridge operator, but ended up bending their mast enough to get free. Probably not on purpose.
posted by funkaspuck at 9:42 AM on March 23 [2 favorites]

Can confirm biking Ballard Bridge is not desirable. In my short years here I have crossed all of these. The West Seattle/Spokane Street is a regular part of my life, living in West Seattle. When that thing is out of commission for any length of time, it really impacts my cycling and pretty much prevents me from bike commuting, which I otherwise do 2-3x a week.

The geography of Seattle is super crazy, and I always encourage people to spend time looking at maps of the city.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 9:53 AM on March 23 [1 favorite]

I love the charm of having our bridges, and the maritime nature of Seattle to need them. Pain in the ass when you are running late and the Ballard Bridge is up. And yes, biking, or walking for that matter, over it is scary as foretold.

Dont think I've gone over any of the others in a long time, other than the First Ave S. bridge, on the way to or from the airport. Can't remember the last time it was open.

But coming from the midwest to Seattle back in the mid-eighties, I will never forget coming into town, driving over Lake Washington on the I-90 bridge, and realizing I was not in Kansas anymore. Love the bridges.

And let's give some love to the Hood Canal Bridge Which I think is just a spinny bridge, haven't been across in a while.
posted by Windopaene at 9:59 AM on March 23 [1 favorite]

It's in the Wikipedia article but I feel like it's worth highlighting the Fremont/University Bridge Artist in Residency program. I wish someone had a web page capturing all of the residencies (yeah, that could be me, solve the problems you see) but it's fun searching around and seeing what's out there. And it's a cool program; every time I drive over the Fremont Bridge I imagine art happening inside that little tower.
posted by Bryant at 10:12 AM on March 23 [2 favorites]

Decades ago my brother & I were discussing dream jobs & we both decided on bridge tender.

My role model here is Murray Morgan, who tended the 11th Street Bridge for much of the 50s, during which time he wrote most of his most famous book, Skid Road, & ended up getting the bridge named in his honor.
posted by warburtonave at 10:44 AM on March 23 [1 favorite]

So, so, so many times stopped on my bike waiting for the University bridge to open while commuting back from the U-district to Capitol Hill.

Just rode across it twice yesterday for the first time since getting t-boned by a car January last year. Made a rather ambitious—considering my physical condition—circuit of the north section of the Lake Washington Loop, so got to ride across the 520 bridge too.   Last year on this date I was just moving from wheelchair to walker, so I'm not complaining at how it wiped me out to ride 30-odd miles and tackle a few too many hills.

But coming from the midwest to Seattle back in the mid-eighties, I will never forget coming into town, driving over Lake Washington on the I-90 bridge, and realizing I was not in Kansas anymore. Love the bridges.

Oh man, yes!  I still vividly recall my entry into Seattle in August of 2001.  Crossing the I-90 bridge, seeing the tunnel punched through the hills covered in trees and houses, it was like entering some fairy-tale walled city.  Knew at that moment I'd made the right choice to move here, and have loved it ever since.  One of my first 'longer' rides this year after rebuilding the bike was from Capitol Hill over to the I-90 bicycle tunnel and overlook.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 11:00 AM on March 23 [7 favorites]

Oh boy, ShooBoo, you've allowed me to revive a popular Ballard joke of its time.

What did Rolf Neslund say when he ran his ship into the West Seattle Bridge?

Oh, no! My vife's gonna kill me fer sure!

Also, non-Seattle peeps, because Ballard was founded as a neighborhood with a population of people of Norweigian and Swedish ancestry. Kings and Crown Princes of Norway have visited Ballard any number of times.

And, although I can't find a relevant article at the moment a woman was once trapped during the opening of the Fremont Bridge by the passage of the vacation live aboard yacht of John Wayne, which was a converted WW II era minesweeper. The woman survived by leaning on one of the bridge stanchions during its opening.

Wayne conveniently shot his cop thriller McQ in Seattle. He did a scene in Harborview hospital when I was working there and came through the cafeteria line. Dude was 6'6" and in make up -- he stood out in line. I had a girlfriend in the 80s who knew him from her father's sports fishing franchise at Westport. He called her little lady -- just like in the movies.
posted by y2karl at 11:55 AM on March 23 [3 favorites]

> fun and informative, if you're into that kind of thing. No idea if they still do those.

They certainly do. The Port Of Seattle typically does four of these things a year: SeaTac Airport, the Duwamish Waterway (which includes the container port area), the Lake Washington Ship Canal (including Fisherman's Terminal and the Ballard and Fremont bridges) and one other I can't remember right now. I was on the Duwamish and Ship Canal tours last summer. Fun and very educational.
posted by lhauser at 12:38 PM on March 23 [1 favorite]

The woman survived by leaning on one of the bridge stanchions during its opening.

I always wanted to try that! I know it would just be a hassle for the bridge tender to come out and yell at me, so I won't, but it's good to know it's been done.

(The Fremont Bridge has a truss with vertical and diagonal I-beams standing next to the sidewalk. If you stand with your back to a vertical beam, facing the center of the bridge (important), as it lifts up it will recline you gently back, safely contained by the I-beam crossbar edges, all comfy. Sadly not advised.)
posted by away for regrooving at 1:14 PM on March 23

Wayne conveniently shot his cop thriller McQ in Seattle.

y2karl: I have a 9.5-year-old post, Explore Seattle Through the Cinematic Car Chase, with McQ including a link to the video with the car chase through Seattle, and comments by you.
posted by ShooBoo at 1:36 PM on March 23 [2 favorites]

I used to live in Fremont, and was just going through the list wondering which of these road bridges I have not been stuck in line waiting for them to close; maybe the South Park bridge is the only one, not being a regular visitor to West Seattle.

Re: 520: I was only a few cars behind the poor woman who was killed when the 520 bridge unexpectedly popped open in December of 1989. The practical problem with that for me was it happened at something like 9:30 in the morning and I was supposed to be at work downtown at 9, so my excuse rang a bit hollow when calling in. (Not as bad as being injured or dying, of course. Very eerie standing out there where you should never be standing and staring at a several-feet-high steel wall which very suddenly popped out of nowhere.)
posted by maxwelton at 2:21 PM on March 23 [2 favorites]

The woman survived by leaning on one of the bridge stanchions during its opening.

I always wanted to try that!

Ya ya, just don't, can go very wrong

BOSTON —
An East Boston woman walking across a Boston drawbridge was crushed to death Tuesday after an operator raising the bridge for a boat to pass heard her screams and lowered it, accidentally trapping her between the two plates, investigators said.
posted by sammyo at 3:00 PM on March 23

y2karl: I have a 9.5-year-old post, Explore Seattle Through the Cinematic Car Chase, with McQ including a link to the video with the car chase through Seattle, and comments by you.

*sigh* so much fun to see me saying the same thing then as now. But, one the other hand, nice to know I am one degree of Kevin Bacon in more ways than one.

And by the way, that diner named the Oriental Express on 4th ave South, that was assembled from 3 or 4 railroad coaches? One of the cars was specially built for FDR when he barnstormed cross country by rail for reelection.
posted by y2karl at 3:43 PM on March 23 [1 favorite]

Also, when I lived on Summit Ave E, I often took long walks via the Denny Street overpass to walk along Westlake around Lake Union to Discovery Park and wander around there before they tore down most of the old base buildings. I'd walk down to cross via the Ballard locks & catch a bus home. One time I discovered a paddock containing five or six Seattle Police Department horses and spent an hour pulling up long clumps of headed grass which I held by the roots and fed to the horses while they chomped them down. The Navy still has a row of mansions with killer views on the hillcrest looking west. Officers quarters.
They have a glassed-in stairwell on south end of the walk across the locks where one can view salmon migrating in the fish ladder there.

One time I crossed the locks, there was a huge blue heron sunning itself on a rail of a lock gate just out of anyone's reach with its head under its right wing, popping it back out to eye passersby every so often when they were noisy. It was so chill.

Sheri Flennikin of Trots and Bonnie fame grew up the daughter of an admiral in a house that overlooked the Navy docks on Interbay below. She still lives a few blocks away in Magnolia. I ran into her once at Walt Crowley's funeral. I swear to God, that woman has one foot in the catch basin of the Fountain of Youth. She just never ages.
posted by y2karl at 4:25 PM on March 23 [5 favorites]

I recently had the opportunity to take a sailboat through the Ballard Locks and under several of these Seattle bridges, including an opening of the Fremont Bridge, courtesy of the Renton Sailing Center. RSC is a sailing club that maintains a small fleet of sailboats, including several large keelboats and about a dozen smaller sailing dinghies, at the south end of Lake Washington. They occasionally sail or motor the larger boats out to Puget Sound for cruising or for drydock maintenance, which requires traversing all the bridges and the locks, and you can volunteer to crew on one of these voyages.

The club has a large group of experienced sailors and they teach sailing courses in the spring and summer. The club maintains a small dock at the Gene Coulon Memorial Park at the south end of Lake Washington.
posted by LURK at 4:32 PM on March 23 [3 favorites]

Oddly, today is the 5th anniversary of the closing of the new West Seattle Bridge, which isn't a drawbridge because they built it very high so it wouldn't get stuck like it did after Neslund borked it. (That is still my favorite story to tell friends and direct them to the history. I still don't understand why there's not a movie about it.) It was closed for two and a half years, and made life in West Seattle pretty hellish. You couldn't use the "low bridge" (what everyone calls the Swinging Bridge) during the day without meeting special requirements.

I remember reading the micronews site linked above and just this feeling of utter despair ran through me, and then a few hours later, our governor issued the first COVID stay at home order. I felt like I'd suddenly descended into some kind of dystopian novel. For two and a half years, I had to drive south, then east, then north again, just to get to the First Avenue South bridge, which was always fucking closed when I got there. Since I used to live in Burien, I was well aware of how terrible that bridge is, and just having to use it all the time made me so depressed. It was especially horrible when it was in the high 80s or 90s F, and you'd just sit there baking while some rich asshole took his fucking sailboat through. And since I was reliant on my car most of the time (it was a very very rare chance to take a bus or the water taxi and I had no access to public transport without also driving somewhere anyway because they'd killed my local route years before), I was always stuck at that goddamn bridge.

When it reopened finally, my friend and I decided to just go somewhere off peninsula for dinner simply so we could use the bridge. We felt delirious and were sticking our hands out the windows and yelling "brrriiiiiiiidge!!!" And thank god we have it, because it's impossible for me to get where I need to go now for cancer treatment without fucking driving, which I hate, but that's Seattle. Yeah, during the shutdown, you could get a special sticker for lifesaving treatment so you could use the swing bridge, but that didn't start till months later, and no one knew what the hell was going on. I knew so many neighbors who moved away during that time.

It's funny, though, I've lived near almost all the bridges on that list. But I would never willingly put myself near 520 again, after that poor woman maxwelton mentioned above (as well as the other people terribly injured in that disaster). That thing haunted me for years and I will go out of my way to avoid ever using 520 again.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 4:35 PM on March 23 [1 favorite]

what percentage of Seattlites cross bridges as part of a commute

I have set up my life so that I only need to leave my little rectangle a few times a year.

The boundaries:
North: ship canal
South: I-90
West: I-5
East: Lake Washington

I love my rectangle.
posted by Jacqueline at 5:27 PM on March 23 [4 favorites]

Nice. As a lifetime Seattle resident you can count me among those who have been delayed innumerable times by bridge ups. Nice thing is it's one of those unanswerable excuses. You're ten minutes late? "The bridge... every time, right?"

For a short time I was peeved by the idea that a boat would arrogate itself (or rather its captain would) over the dozens or hundreds of people that would be inconvenienced by its crossing. But I let that go. It helps make the city what it has always been: weird and unfriendly to cars. (Still less friendly to bikes in many ways of course.)
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 7:44 PM on March 23 [1 favorite]

Jacqueline, I spent 54% of my life in that rectangle. It's a good rectangle! Now I'm in a different one, but I still miss it.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 11:11 PM on March 23 [1 favorite]

I will go out of my way to avoid ever using 520 again.

Good news!   You can't.  That bridge no longer exists.

I can attest the new one is quite nice, having commuted across it on bike for over a year during the pandemic.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 4:54 AM on March 24

Takes the whole state, but Connecticut bridges have joined the chat.

If you go to the Eli Whitney Museum summer camp, you may get to build a working model of one of these.

This is a great post, OP. Thanks everyone for making the whole thread good too.
posted by drowsy at 8:13 AM on March 24

This is a great history of how the locks came to be, with a fascinating glimpse into alternative paths they considered.
posted by funkaspuck at 8:53 AM on March 24 [1 favorite]

Queuing up for the Fremont bridge with other bicyclists can be quite fun. There's enough space to get off the sidewalk and into the street, where you can noodle around until the gate comes up, at which time you and your fellow pedal enthusiasts can whoosh ahead of the car traffic.
posted by .holmes at 11:33 AM on March 24

If you're a movable bridge enthusiast, come to Chicago. There are 37 of them here! I love going downtown when they raise them to let the boats in and out of the lake twice a year. We even got a museum dedicated to it!
posted by indianbadger1 at 1:12 PM on March 24 [1 favorite]

lhauser, I can't find any evidence of these tours on the Port of Seattle site... would you happen to have a good starting point for a search? I've always wanted to do that.
posted by ChrisR at 1:56 PM on March 24

ChrisR: I’ve done the Port’s tours of the Duwamish and Fisherman’s Terminal, but I can’t find any current information. IIRC they’re only like once a year maybe coinciding with the Duwamish River Festival(?). This old link has an RSVP email address that you might send a Hail Mary inquiry to. The Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition also has a tour but I haven’t done that one.

The annual Fisherman’s Terminal festival also offers free ship canal tours on the Virginia V steam ferry—-go for the tour and stay for the festival’s unrivaled salmon bake dinner.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 2:30 PM on March 24 [1 favorite]