This past weekend they closed the SR520 Evergreen Point Floating Bridge for yearly maintenance. Although it's inconvenient to lose our easy route into Seattle, the closure provides us with a full two-day respite from traffic noise. We're far enough away from the highway that the traffic noise isn't bothersome, but there's a dull roar that you don't typically notice until it's gone. And it was gone all weekend ... so much so that the cat acted strange for two days.
WSDOT took advantage of the closure for a "quieter pavement" project. They closed down a longer stretch of 520 than is typical for the bridge closure and resurfaced half a mile of road.
They put down two kinds of "quiet pavement". The first is rubberized asphalt which has recycled tire bits added to it. The second, known as "polymer-modified" asphalt has cellulose fibers added to it. They also put down a stretch of regular asphalt as a control section. Road noise will be monitored along with wear & tear to see which will perform well in our environment. Some results are available already from a similar project installed on I-5 last summer.
Bridge closure weekend is a great time to take a walk in our neighborhood to enjoy a very peaceful time outside. Late Saturday morning we headed straight for 520 to see the resurfacing work ... because we're geeks. The crew had made amazing progress already, as we went over the pedestrian bridge we could see that they had already resurfaced much of the road going eastward. Lucky timing for us, they were working on the stretch of 520 that borders right along the pathway so we got right up next to the machinery in action.
The Wilder Construction crew didn't mind that we were observing closely and taking photos. Observers from the WSDOT were on the sidelines, including a photographer. A Wilder crewmember came over to ask if we had any questions so we talked to him for a few minutes about what was going on and what the machines did. The machinery was a bit noisy but the smell was surprisingly tolerable. It was nowhere near as bad as those roofing and parking lot projects that send a noxious hot tar smell out for miles.
We eventually walked to the car overpass to take a look at the bridge. The span was up as part of the maintenance work but we were too far away to observe any activity.
Here's the WSDOT's cost comparison of different road surfaces from the 2006 I-5 project:
Monday morning we drove on the new surfaces for the first time. So quiet. But you don't realize exactly how quiet it is until you hit the old pavement again and suddenly you are bombarded with road noise. It's a striking difference.
From within the house it's quieter too. It's not as quiet as when there is no traffic at all, but there's a marked improvement. It's a little more peaceful.
