The Maple Street Bridge and T.J. Meenach Drive may be closed at the same time this summer, leaving drivers facing detours

Upcoming closures and lane reductions on the Maple Street Bridge over the Spokane River may end up overlapping for weeks with construction that has closed T.J. Meenach Drive, potentially making for longer detours for commuters.

T.J. Meenach Drive has been closed since March 13 as part of the final phase of the Cochran Basin stormwater project, and is currently not slated to reopen until Sept. 15. While the T.J. Meenach Bridge remains open, detours along Pettet Drive to access the bridge have disrupted commutes from the North Side to Spokane Falls Community College and Government Way.

Meanwhile, replacement of the Maple Street Bridge‘s concrete surface is currently slated to start anywhere from late August to sometime in September, delayed from an original projected start time of Aug. 1. For most of the project, which is expected to last roughly two months, one lane will be open in either direction, though the bridge will have to close completely during work on its southern end.

“It’s going to be very rare that it is completely closed, and it will probably only be for a few days at a time,” said city Public Works spokeswoman Kirstin Davis.

Lane reductions and occasional full closure of the city’s second-busiest bridge, with around 45,000 trips daily, are likely to have the most impact to commuters during this year’s construction season.

“That will be the biggest impact to the traveling public, and so we’ll want to give plenty of notice when we get to that,” said Public Works Director Marlene Feist in an April interview.

The city’s busiest Spokane River crossing, according to 2019 numbers, is the Division Street bridge.

It’s still possible that the start of construction on the Maple Street Bridge will be delayed until after work on T.J. Meenach is completed, Davis said. When construction overlaps, she argued that detours onto one of the city’s other bridges won’t be particularly complicated – at least not any more so than when only the Maple Street Bridge is closed.

“We don’t really expect that this will be as much of a challenge as people think, because you have the other main arterials,” Davis said. “To us, this overlap is relatively minimal.”

A number of factors contributed to the potential dual road closures, Davis added.

“There’s things in the process that are out of our control, whether it’s supply chain issues or procedural things that agencies need to do that don’t meet the same timeline, that sort of thing,” she said.

Potential effects on commuters have to be weighed against completing work on the roads as quickly as possible, Davis added. Delaying work on the Maple Street Bridge until next year would likely create more significant problems, due to plans to restore the bridge decks on the Washington Street and Stevens Street bridges in 2024.

“It’s just part of the challenge of living with a beautiful centerpiece,” Davis said, pointing outside of City Hall toward the nearby Spokane River.