Beginning Friday night, Aug. 8, all lanes of state Route 520 across Lake Washington were shut down in both directions between Montlake Boulevard and 124th Avenue Northeast for a weekend-long construction closure. The westbound lanes of the highway were shut down at 11 p.m. tonight until 5 a.m. Friday Aug. 8 for concrete pours.

Contractor crews working for the Washington State Department of Transportation will use the closures to pour concrete as they put the finishing touches on the new West Connection Bridge. The structure will connect SR 520’s existing lanes in Seattle with the highway’s new, six-lane floating bridge when it opens in spring 2016. Eastside Transit and HOV Project crews will also be hard at work over the weekend as they place asphalt on new ramps and stripe the freshly paved lanes east of the existing floating bridge.

Full weekend closure of SR 520, Aug. 8 to 11

• Crews will close all lanes and ramps of SR 520 from Montlake Boulevard to 124th Avenue Northeast from 11 p.m. Friday, Aug. 8 to 5 a.m. Monday, Aug. 11.
• The 124th Avenue Northeast interchange will be closed for work on the SR 520 108th Avenue Northeast to West Lake Sammamish Parkway Paving Project.
• The closure includes the eastbound SR 520 exit to 124th Avenue Northeast and the 124th Avenue Northeast on-ramp to westbound SR 520.
• The northbound I-405 exit to eastbound SR 520 and the westbound SR 520 exits to both directions of I-405 will remain open throughout the weekend.
• Drivers crossing Lake Washington, including those headed to this weekend’s Mariners games or to Kirkland Summerfest, should plan to use alternate routes.

Construction of both the Eastside Transit and HOV Project and the West Connection Bridge will be complete later this year. WSDOT continues to focus on replacing the existing, structurally vulnerable floating bridge. Sixty of the new floating bridge’s 77 pontoons are now built, and more of them will be towed to Lake Washington from Aberdeen this month.