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Driving to the Tacoma side? If you’re planning to do it after July 16, make sure to have some change in your pocket or your debit/credit card ready. After five years of construction (which followed years of years of planning, opposition, litigation, moans and raves), the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge is about to open. Which means drivers traveling eastward will have to pay a toll. And if you’re among drivers who would like to pay as little a toll as possible, the Washington State Department of Transportation advises you to sign up for its electronic toll collection system (and then you’re “Good to Go!”).
Commuters who sign up for a Good to Go! account and pay the toll via a transponder (attached to the windshield and scanned automatically, with the money deducted from a preset account), will pay an initial toll rate of $1.75. vs. $3 for drivers who choose the old-fashion cash or plastic method and have to drive through a toll plaza.
By mid-June, the bridge structure was completed and connected on both sides, and the finishing touches like painting and asphalting were being applied.
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A view of the bridge at sunrise sometime
during the 5-year construction period |
Once open, on the anticipated date of July 16, the second Tacoma Narrows Bridge will become the first one in the state to be tolled in decades. With a total span of 2,800 feet, it will also be the longest suspension bridge built in the country since 1964, when the 4,260-foot Verrazano Narrows Bridge was built on Lower New York Bay. But don’t expect a huge celebration to commemorate the occasion. The opening day celebration will be much lower key than the first two, and significantly less elaborate than initially envisioned by the WSDOT: Following outcry about the fact that the price tag of a ceremony, in the hundreds of thousands of dollars potentially, would be tacked onto the toll repayment, the agency moved planning efforts in-house, leaving out an event planning company and ideas for parades and other entertainment.
The July 15 ceremony will, instead, include speeches by the governor and other political notables, and an opportunity for the public to stroll on the bridge, cut commemorative ribbons (actual construction tape imprinted with the date and the name), and snap some photographs. MultiCare Health System is organizing a 5K race to kick off the morning. Between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., passport stations will be set up throughout the bridge so walkers can get stamps on commemorative cards.
“We want it to be about the community it serves, and the workers who built the bridge,” said Victoria Tobin, a WSDOT employee who is overseeing the opening day celebration. “We will open it to the public so they can enjoy the sights and sounds in an area where they normally wouldn’t walk.” About a dozen of the workers will be involved in the official ribbon cutting ceremony, which, along with the speeches, is scheduled to start around 1:30 p.m. No vendors will be present, and limited facilities will be available. Shuttles will run celebrants from special parking locations to as close to the bridge on both sides as buses can get and have a turning radius.
Once the bridge is cleared after 3 p.m., workers will move fast to reroute the traffic correctly, and later that evening the bridge is anticipated to open to vehicles, starting off an expected 30-year toll-paying period.
After the first year, the toll rates will be evaluated, with traffic and revenue data to be collected to see how projections are keeping up, according to Janet Matkin, a WSDOT spokeswoman.
She said that the Good to Go! program was making good progress so far. The goal was to sign up 25,000 accounts by bridge opening day, and by mid-June, 21,000 were in place, at a pace of about 400 new accounts per day. More than 45,000 transponders have been handed out, with each account having a limit of six transponders (up to six cars can share the same account; after that transponders cost $10.65; however, commercial accounts had different limits).
As may be expected in the era of the Internet, about 65 percent of customers have been signing up online, and having the transponders mailed to them. A visit to the Gig Harbor Good to Go! customer service office in June made it obvious why: The line was stretching outside, though Matkin said the wait hasn’t been too long thus far. She cautioned that the closer to bridge opening day, the longer the line would become, and the longer it would take for the transponders to arrive via mail for online subscribers. There are additional incentives to sign up early: WSDOT has been holding monthly drawings for free gas and a year’s worth of tolls (for a person commuting five times a week, that’s about $400 worth of savings). The drawings, held on the 15th of the month (which means sign up by the 14th to be entered), will last until September.
“We are strongly encouraging everyone to install their transponders now. We’re not seeing a lot of vehicles with them in their windows,” Matkin said. The transponder readers have been turned on in June, which means commuters can log into their account and see the activity. No actual fees will be charged until the bridge opens but the trips are being recorded. “This is a trial period to make sure everything’s working OK,” Matkin said.
A total of three Good to Go! lanes and six toll booth lanes will be in operation but all the toll lanes will filter into the same lane on the bridge. Once the bridge opens, retrofitting work will start on the old one. But unlike initial plans that called for closing of three lanes, only one or two lanes at a time will be closed. The new bridge will stay eastbound, so the closures will affect only westbound traffic.
“Our goal is to complete the retrofit as quickly as possible,” Matkin said, adding that it will take several months but potentially less than the nine months originally anticipated.
Commuters should be aware of one more thing: This is no longer the age of privacy. Records of the Good to Go! trips will be kept for eight and a half years, and will be released, as required, to law enforcement officials as well as lawyers in civil cases through court orders. Which could mean employers, spouses and other interested parties who need to know your commuting habits will be able to find out what you were up to (provided a judge agrees). Cameras will also record each eastbound vehicle with a series of 24 snapshots, and while those images will be erased once the computer is satisfied that the account has enough funds for the toll, the actual crossing data will be stored. |
