The L8 is not so late anymore since an eastbound traffic lane was converted to a bus lane in August. On Tuesday, September 8th, Fix the L8 is organizing another race against Metro’s bus Route 8 along Denny Way. Unlike the previous event, the group is expecting to lose as the buses bypass traffic via newly-painted eastbound bus lanes.
“Across multiple decades and several mayors, it’s been obvious that a bus lane is needed on Denny Way, and it only took a few months of Mayor Wilson’s leadership to get one” said Fix The L8 co-leader Jason Li. “This will transform the lives of the thousands of daily Route 8 riders while attracting countless more as it goes from being slower than hopscotching to being irresistibly good.”
Other traffic improvements, including closure of the Yale Street slip lane, have also helped speed up the bus. Although transit projects are often mired in years of design and debate, it’s abundantly clear that concerted effort and leadership can shorten this work to mere months. In this case, Mayor Katie Wilson requested accelerated design and construction of the transit prioritization project as her first executive order in January of this year. The improvements were announced in April and the project completed at the end of August.
Riders were quick to notice a vast improvement:
Despite the international media coverage focused on the impact this bus lane would have on drivers, travel times between Queen Anne Ave to Virginia St for cars has remained consistent. The chart below shows the estimated eastbound travel time for a car along the 1.1 mile segment of Denny way at the top of every hour since early July. The stripped blue section is the after the Yale St slip lane was closed in early August. The bus lanes were installed between August 21-23. Explore the full chart here.
The rematch race will begin at 5pm next Tuesday. Anyone interested is encouraged to RSVP to the event, here. The race will be followed by a celebratory gathering at The Pine Box in Capitol Hill.
Bus Plushie
The Fix the L8 campaign is also taking preorders of a tremendously-cute, limited-edition Route 8 plushie with first shipments expected to arrive in early October. The bus plushie (a busie!) is endorsed by STB as a perfect gift for the upcoming holiday season.
Order yours here! Proceeds go toward future campaigns for transit and street safety improvements.
This is an open thread.
Of course there is no significant difference in car travel time on Denny Way. The traffic bottleneck is the I-5 onramp. Any change you make before that bottlenck (as long as it has a throughput higher than the bottleneck) will not affect the final throughput of the bottleneck. It’s a zero-sum game for vehicles headed to the freeway, but it was a huge opportunity for buses. I think the only real loser here would be non-buses headed to Capitol Hill.
My impression is that it’s better for Capitol Hill-bound drivers too because Denny isn’t filled with cars waiting to get on I-5. There still is one lane for them (the left lane), but now there’s a lot less weaving and merging and chaos..
Yeah, that makes sense. Whenever you have an exit like that there is chaos. No one knows when they should move into that lane. It isn’t a zipper merge situation since people in the left lane might be heading straight. So they wait a long time and try and cut over at the last minute. Those that moved over early are punished (it takes longer for them to get there). You are either a jerk or a sucker. It may take longer for some drivers but overall it is just a better situation now.
“The traffic bottleneck is the I-5 onramp.”
The bottleneck stretched several blocks west on Denny Way, and both cars and buses were stuck in it. I haven’t seen it since the renovation so I don’t know how backed up the car lanes are now, whether it’s longer or shorter or the same.
This happens at many freeway entrances. It’s the biggest source of traffic jams not caused by maintenance or collisions. The primary reason for the 44’s unreliability is the congestion at the 45th I-5 entrances.
It’s so incredible to have the 8 be both fast and reliable. I work a few blocks away and often go up to Capitol Hill after work. Previously, I’d walk all the way to 3rd to get a bus to transfer to the G or I’d walk 10 minutes to Westlake (plus a longer walk to my destination). Now that I can rely on the 8, it’s an easy 10 or 15 minutes on the bus to 15th.
It makes such a big difference to have a mayor who will prioritize transit riders, and I can confirm there has be no sign of a traffic meltdown (outside the normal traffic meltdowns in Seattle). Will local media own up to the ways in which their fearmongering was completely unjustified? I doubt it, but it sure feels good to be vindicated.
No, local meda will somehow blame Wilson for not doing it sooner, or completely drop the subject as if the lane has been there for years.
Some will point out that Fix the L8 will lose (1) because they want to; and (2) because they are running uphill this time.
Nah, they are not paying that much attention nor that clever.
Some will just print the press release with a reporter’s name on it, while the editorial department switches to concern trolling over how long she took, while annoyed that they lost some ROW and fear the possibility of taxes going up on the rich and down for the poor.
I’m planning on racing the 8. I don’t run anymore but I walk very fast. I also jaywalk from time to time. I will compete against the 8 and give it a fair fight. I’m not taking a dive. Bring it, new 8, bring it!
They were running uphill last time too…
Most were walking, dancing, hopscotching, etc. One drove a child’s toy car. They still beat the bus.
I liked the one that said something like car-free Mayor spends millions to speed up the bus route she uses.
“City Mayor spends millions to improve city she lives in”
“City mayor spends millions to improve city she was elected to improve and are her constituents”
Now that cheap paint has proven to fix a bus route, this could give political leverage to do it on more streets. The problem with Seattle traditionally has been that it won’t build transit-priority lanes, or it only does it for a block here and there or short segments rather than long segments, or it promises to improve a corridor for transit but then it throws in a cycletrack and there goes the space for robust transit-priority lanes. Wilson has turned it around with one early deliverable. Maybe she’ll do more streets like that, and get the city to approve it. Maybe future mayors will also be more willing to.
Excellent point. Hopefully this leads to a lot more red paint in the city.
It would be interesting to know whether the improvement is due to the bus lane, or whether the same improvement could have happened without the bus lane just by closing access to I-5 from Denny.
SDOT says temporary closures of the Yale slip lane resulted in slight improvements in traffic flow around that intersection. I think the congestion between 5th Ave and Westlake is much more general, so the bus lane is absolutely critical there.
Maybe I just missed the memo or maybe it wasn’t well-publicized, but it seems SDOT added a westbound lane between Stewart and Boren, which opens the door for two-way bus lanes along most of Denny, even heading up into Capitol Hill.
I expect a pretty big surge in ridership from this improvement. I and surely others have long avoided the L8 and will likely switch back to it 🙂
I think frequency is also an issue here. A walk from SLU to Seattle Center sometimes take less than the time spent on waiting for bus even if it is on time.
Now with good bus lane, I think it should run more frequent off-peak as well.
Yeah the LQA to Madison Valley corridor could easily support sub 10 minute headways. I think it would be great if the 11 could get redirected to LQA and overlap the 8
So this was the most painfully obvious spot for a bus lane….
Where else should we put red paint?
Good question. I want them throughout the city but I don’t have a list of which are most critical or feasible. Three other unreliable routes are the 131, 132, and 62. There’s a 4th Ave S improvement project that’s supposed to give more bus priority for the move of the busway routes to 4th if ST closes the busway. There’s been a question of whether the bus-lane improvements have been watered down. So the city could accelerate that project and pay more attention to transit there. But that’s a large investment, and the current issue is for corridors that can be quickly and inexpensively improved with red paint. So what are the first corridors to recommend?
From personal experience, I can attest that the 62 is in dire need of an east bound que jump from Ravenna Ave. to 25th Ave. and an opposite smaller west bound Que jump from 28th Ave. to 25th Ave.
The area of around Roosevelt from 18th to Ravenna Blvd. Needs bus lanes in both directions, but this is impossible with 65th only measuring ~40ft wide. Because of this I think the best solution would be a center running reversible bus lanes. Running westbound in the morning and eastbound in the afternoon.
Also the whole corridor needs a big stop cutting adjustment, at least down to a stop every 3-4 blocks. (Their short blocks)
A bus would have to keep changing lanes to get between the bus stops and the center lane. It would never be able to use the center lane.
I’m willing to bet it would still be faster even with the merging. There would also only be two stops in the center lane zone. If the lane were revised to not include the area with the under I-5 stop as the road could probably be widened here due to the land permanently being occupied by the P&R.
(That’s probably a smarter plan, but I wouldn’t super surprised if it was studied and found that that wouldn’t work)
When buses get out of the travel lane to stop, they have to wait to get back into the lane. This slows down travel time significantly. Buses still get out of the travel lane to stop in most cases but the distance seems to be shorter now. In-lane stops on Dexter Avenue were a way to fix this, so that cars wait behind the bus rather than the bus waiting to get into the lane. If a bus has to cross the entire travel lane to get from the center lane to a stop and vice-versa, then the wait would probably be even longer.
The only other alternative I can think of is to turn 66th Ave. into a bus way with signal priority across Roosevelt, 12th and fifteenth. from 15th to Oswego, with the eastern side of Ravenna blvd. Also converted into a busway. With the bike lanes being moved into the median park. but this seems a bit too far fetched
Actually, now that I think about it, connecting a new 66 st busway to Weedin pl. which has had very low vehicle traffic ever since its connection to 65th was severed in 2016, might be a pretty good solution. This wouldn’t be much of a detour for the 45 or 62. Either.
It would be so much simpler to just have the 62 go on the pathway they wanted to send it way back when: https://web.archive.org/web/20200415091817/https://kingcounty.gov/~/media/depts/transportation/metro/programs-projects/link-connections/north-link/route-info/en/route062.pdf. You could backfill service north of 65th via the 79.
I mean Jackson Street comes to mind, the issue there is that doing transit priority will probably mean a full replacement project to align buses and the streetcar.
But my pick is 3rd Avenue in Belltown as well as the stretch of 3rd between Yesler and Main (Southbound). Lack of priority in Belltown is obnoxious and would benefit a huge number of routes, while the two blocks of 3rd between Yesler and 2nd Extension is just a no-brainer. Related, we could also make all part-time bus lanes full-time (including all of 3rd Ave).
My other thought is James, but haven’t put much thought into that
Yeah, I think Jackson would make the top ten list. Looking at the list below it does.
Jackson really needs a realignment for the streetcar and buses to share platforms and wire anyway. Something akin to how Amsterdam does their center running trams would work wonders. It’s sort of crazy that such a system wasn’t designed when fhs went in the first place
Why spend 4 years / $100mil realigning streetcar infra when you could just pave the tracks, slap some red paint, buy 6 replacement buses and actually have a faster bus by shortcutting up yesler terrace?
Jackson has some low hanging fruit. The time restricted bus lane (westbound Rainier to 12th) should be a full time BAT lane. The time restricted parking lane (eastbound 8th to 12th) should at least be a full time lane, ideally a BAT lane.
Honestly Jackson should just have right side BAT lanes from 4th to Rainier. It’s too bad the streetcar is on the inside lane but there’s 4 buses on Jackson for every 1 streetcar
“Why spend 4 years / $100mil realigning streetcar infra when you could just pave the tracks”
You can’t “just pave the tracks”, you have to convince politicians to eliminate the streetcar. If you wait for that to succeed, you’re more likely to end up with no improvements at all.
SDOT reported a few other streets here https://publicola.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/EO-Denny-Implementation-Memo-04_17_2026_Final.pdf
as directed by Mayor’s EO
Biggest one is 45th near U Village
Thanks for the link. Now I wonder about the ” Move Seattle Levy, 2024 Transportation Levy projects, or individual transit spot improvement projects” that didn’t make that list.
I think these are particularly egregious:
– 2nd/4th: 24/7 BAT lanes
– 3rd and Prefontaine between CID and Pioneer Square
– 3rd through Belltown (at least BAT lanes…)
And a non-exhaustive list:
– D: 24/7 BAT lanes on 15th, BAT lanes on Mercer west of 1st
– C: 24/7 BAT lanes on Blanchard/Lenora, 3rd through Blanchard, BAT lanes through Alaska/Avalon
– E: Extend BAT lanes across Aurora Bridge (also helps the 5, 28)
– 7: Jackson (also helps the 14, 36, 106)
– 72: LCW from 92nd to 145th (also helps the 61, 77)
– 67: U Bridge, Roosevelt/11th up to 45th (also helps the 31/32, J)
– 3/4: James near I-5. Also 9th should be transit/ambulance only
I think those would all be quite impactful. The lowest political lift might be to convert all time-restricted BAT lanes to 24/7
Metro could probably produce a report on this. They could perhaps rank the routes based on potential speedups rejected by SDOT under previous mayors, multiplied by the estimated ridership if the route is sped up.
One common thread all of the slowest routes seem to have is that they are passing by freeway interchanges. So it might just be worthwhile to put a bus lane by every one of those.
15th St NW/Elliot Ave. It has much heavier vehicular traffic than other candidates.
It has three lanes per direction while both ends (Ballard Bridge/Denny Way) don’t have the matching capacity, so there is no point to preserve the kind of capacity. Usually, a corridor is more dangerous when it has over-built capacity, which I think is the case for Elliot Ave. The congestion seen on Elliot Ave isn’t because there isn’t enough lane but because of the bottleneck on each end (Ballard Bridge – Denny Way). The third lane on each direct only serves as parking lot.
And the existing BAT lane works very well for 24/33. They bypasses hundreds of car in the morning, but it doesn’t help D Line enough because of the missing pieces and D Line turns to Mercer right in the middle of Elliot Ave.
With all the buses being fully tracked by location and time to the second, it’s possible to know where congestion is impacting bus travel average speeds. It’s possible for any time of day and even every bus run!
So I’d rather Metro first work from a travel time data analysis to see where the predictably slow spots are — and then ask drivers why they are slow. It could easily be from traffic congestion — but it could be for other reasons too like a busy sidewalk or a high number of wheelchair boardings. Delays often involve multiple factors.
I think we could make educated guesses where more red paint is needed, but there’s now data available to guide these decisions better.
We no longer live in the dark ages of transit analytics. We even have continuous monitoring rather than anecdotal sampling.
So I feel like Metro should be producing a system congestion report based on analysis. We expect medical science to recommend treatments based on analytics like blood tests and x-rays, and that should be true for transit speed and reliability treatments too.
The stop at the bottom of 3rd Ave s at main was completely rebuilt last year. Rhe ride is smoother for sure but the bises still all pile up at the bottom of the hill. The signal covers many different crossing options so a signal cycle takes seemingly forever.
On 3rd in belltown, they put in all 4hise new stop signs to calm traffic but apparently forgot the bus has to make all 5hise stops to.what I see as a rider on 3rd is my bus jammed up behind a ton of other coaches rather than cars or commercial traffic..lots of emergency vehicles on 3rd too.
Yeah those few all-way stops are more annoying than cars. There aren’t too many cars on that part of 3rd Ave.
I agree. It is a bizarre. That is a major transit corridor. It should have traffic lights and the lights should favor Third. To be fair, the one advantage of a stop sign (for a bus) is the ability to turn left. But that really only applies to Cedar (and the 4). Vine and Clay should have traffic lights like the rest of Third. Better yet, make Cedar one-way heading southwest between 2nd and 3rd. Drivers heading northeast (from the waterfront) would have to turn on 2nd. That way the 4 bus (coming from the Seattle Center) would have no problem turning left onto 3rd (there would be no oncoming traffic). At that point you could get rid of all of the stop signs and replace them with stop lights.
Oh, and the BAT lanes should be extended to Denny. Get rid of the (general purpose) right turn from Denny to Third. Then just continue the transit mall (both directions) to Denny.
Putting in the turnstiles will be a huge negative for the poorest people who have to fare dodge because they cannot afford a fare. I see more people talking about “funding” and “recovery” before talking about access or impact on individuals. Fares already make up a small minority of transit funding, so why does anybody see a turnstile as a win? Anyone with a comfortable income already pays their fares anyways, but loose enforcement is an equitable decision that simply expands access at no extra cost.
If you put in a fare gate, homeless people aren’t going to start buying tickets. They’re just going to take the bus and get to the same place anyways (but it’ll take longer). If that’s ideal in your head, take a look in the mirror.
And orca lift is highly restrictive for who it lets into its program (*not to mention, it still costs money to use!) and most people who can’t afford to pay for transit prefer to fare dodge.
This change is just driving poor people off the link to no benefit. But yeah, I guess “safety incidents” will go down.
Fare evasion is “equitable” in the same sense that it’s “equitable” to skip paying your car tabs
ORCA cards are already provided for free for people who qualify for certain benefits. The STM also includes funding toward free ORCA cards
While the fare system is not the topic of this post (and I remain a skeptic of fare gates) please indulge a little chatter about Katie Wilson’s record of accomplishments before she was elected mayor.
She led the campaign to get the county council to create the ORCA LIFT card, and later the Subsidized Annual Pass (free fare for a year for adults who qualify) serving on two multi-month green-ribbon panels just to get ORCA LIFT rolled out.
Thank-you Fantastic Mayor!
Enforce fares on buses too.
That is a good idea. We could be like San Fransisco and go with proof-of-payment across the board. Like San Fransisco, boarding is faster. You would want to add payment kiosks in more place. Right now they are found (I think) only on RapidRide stops. They would be great in transit centers, like Northgate. It is kind of crazy how everyone gets off the train (having paid already) and then gets out their ORCA card and taps again.
The big issue is cost. You would need a lot more fare enforcers.
Oh, and this reminds me of another issue. The fare system needs to be reformed. Right now you are required to tap on both Link and Metro. This is silly. Imagine someone taking a bus then the train. They pay for the bus. They ride the train and are still within the time window. Tapping for Link doesn’t really do anything. But it is required because the agencies share revenue based on it. This is stupid. They can just do sampling and share the money that way. Again, it is silly for riders to have to tap again just because they transferred.
Tapping assures that you are withing the 2 hours window. I think, at least it used to, extend your transfer window. It used to be as long as you kept tapping within 2 hours of the last time you could ride all day and not pay an additional fare. If it still works that way then tapping off extends your window from the end of your trip rather than the beginning.
It restarts the 2-hour window if you pay a surcharge to a higher fare.
Regardless, ST, Metro, and CT should agree that “paying the wrong agency” should not lead to formal warnings and fines. Failure to pay at all (if required to do so) is what fare enforcers should be looking for. Take pictures of those refusing to show ID.
Agency-specific fare media don’t count, since the rider would be expected to pay twice with no transfer credit.
I’m torn over whether Metro should go cashless now, since accepting cash means handing out paper receipts, and Metro ought no have to create something to replace paper transfers.
I just don’t understand why KC Metro buses are so far behind Nashville TN in payment technology. I was there years ago and you could pay cash or credit on boarding and got an RFI paper ticket that worked for transfers and as change. That is to say if you paid cash and over payed then you got “credit” that could be used for your next payment; so no time lost to the driver having to make change and the rider didn’t just lose whatever they overpaid. It was brilliant. Of course Nashville is a hi-tech center compared to backwater Seattle ;-)
This is another reason why people are dubious about the suggested cost savings. Not only do people doubt the numbers but some riders (who don’t pay) will simply stop using Link. A lot of these people will either stop riding the train or get an ORCA card that allows them to ride for free. It would be similar to youth fares. Right now these young folks just jump on the bus or train. So instead they tap. Does ST (or Metro) get more money? No.
When I got out of Beacon Hill Station Thursday, and got to the crosswalk, I made peace with the cars. Since I did not see my bus coming, I waited for the queue of cars to clear in both directions, which took less time than a standard light cycle back when there were standard stop lights there, mere weeks ago.
Then I pressed the beg button (which now acts as a pedestrian assertiveness button instead), and the flashy crosswalk lots commenced!
After I turned around at the first bus shelter, there was a double rainbow! After I took a few pictures, my 60 pulled up. Carma?
.
The previous administration did all the expensive stuff on that block. The Wilson administration installed the pedestrian priority flashy crosswalk lights that enable pedestrians to catch their bus without running across the street against the light cycle (which no longer exists, since the intersection lights that should never have been there were removed). The latter improvement did more for transit rider safety and respected the value of our time more than the fancy street reconstruction.
Thank-you Fantastic Mayor!
No mention in a weekly roundup that apparently the 2 line has killed a cou0le thousand fish in Lake Washington??
The southern resident orcas kill 190,000-260,000 salmon each year https://media.fisheries.noaa.gov/dam-migration/srkw-salmon-sources-factsheet.pdf
What an obtuse response.
It’s interesting to me that the EIS did not catch this. Or maybe it did and was buried in it. Does anyone who looked at it recall?
Given that they apparently have a ton of sacrificial anodes in the water, I would guess that they certainly understood that they were going to induce a lot of stray current. I don’t think more anodes will fix it – they protect the bridge, not the fish. They’re going to have to figure out how to induce (or leak) less current in the water.
This is a pretty common problem in marinas, and any boat docked in salt water needs to have zincs (sacrificial anodes) on the hull. In bad cases it can kill humans as well as fish: https://www.nfpa.org/news-blogs-and-articles/blogs/2022/05/23/navigating-electrical-safety-through-marina-waters
So no, this is not something that can be ignored.
It’s hard to include stories in the Roundup which hadn’t come out yet.
But, the comments are a great place to share links to new stories for discussion!
It’s weird. It is a good story in the classic “man bites dog” kinda way. But I don’t think it is important from an ecological standpoint. To quote the article:
An estimated 2,000 fish, mostly nonnative species, have died near the bridge.
Fish eat fish. I’m sure some fish (including native ones) will eat these dead fish. Yum!
I think the dead fish are going to create more of a problem than a food source. They will decay and result in more algae and other toxins in the water.
While some of the articles seem to suggest that the fish are being electrocuted I find that impossible to believe. There is almost no current and the fish don’t have a path to ground that could create a current flow through them. If this was happening there would have been a bunch of dead people during Seafair.
The anodes are sacrificial which basically means they dissolve in the water. The metal (zinc?) or impurities in the anodes could be a problem. Impurities in the anodes would explain why this hasn’t been seen in other implementations of this system around the world. Hmm, why were they the low bidder?
One other thing. ST claims they’ve “fixed it” without knowing what “it” is by raising the anodes so they aren’t touching the bottom of the Lake. No explanation given; no surprise since they don’t know what the heck is killing the fish… might not even be related to ST.
Another possible explanation is the EMI (electromagnetic interference) generated by the trains. It’s often claimed but not decisively proven that living next to high tension power lines is bad for your health. This is the first time an electrified rail system has been put across a floating bridge. If you listen to AM radio you’ll have noticed the strong interference when you get close to Link tracks. The electric motors on the trains generate electrical noise in addition to the overhead wire.
It seems far more likely to me that the toxic runoff from the road portion is killing fish rather than electric currents in the water from Link.
In order to electrocute something, you have to have a voltage potential from one end to the other. The entire lake and the bridge sit at ground voltage.
Toxic chemicals from tires have long been identified as killing fish and other marine life. It’s just considered part of the expense to society of having roads.
One example of many summaries:
https://assessments.epa.gov/risk/document/&deid=361070
Wrong. This looks like a localized fish kill. Toxic runoff is dispersed throughout the ecosystem. What are the voltages and currents involved in light rail? Assuming it’s AC, you have to be creating a magnetic field around the lines. The intensity of this field would decrease with the square of the distance. My engineering guess is that they are leaking current to ground. And no, the water is not the ground! It is the conductor. In the boating world, it is a serious rookie mistake to ground to the hull rather than the battery in DC systems. And as the article I linked points out, for AC systems even small ground faults are a big hazard. That is why it says that GFI receptacles must be much more sensitive than normal.
How would the water exist at a voltage difference from ground?
The water is a conductor to ground.
In the boating world, the point is to reduce corrosion, which isn’t enough voltage or current to kill anything.
That assumption is wrong. For a variety of reasons virtually all overhead wire rail systems including ST use DC. The reported fish kill is localized (is it really?) but that doesn’t mean it’s the trains or ST. Other areas of the Lake have been prone to localized fish kills; often localized toxic algae blooms. What has WSDOT been doing as far as maintenance? Have they flushed or washed chemicals into the lake? Are the species that are predominantly being killed off throughout the lake or localized to this area? If so, why? Bottom line, we don’t know why the fish died. We do know we have drought conditions and that leads to higher than normal water temperatures. And that affects the oxygen level of the water.
“For a variety of reasons virtually all overhead wire rail systems including ST use DC.”
That depends on the system.
Most lower voltage urban rail systems and shorter distance trains use DC, including ST. Some longer distance lines use(d) 3,000 volts DC.
Once you get higher than 3,000 volts, DC is rare, and they switch to AC.
There is an AC component to DC systems now, as the 3 phase DC to AC electronic motor drives can introduce electronic noise if it’s not dealt with.
However, all of this has been known quantities for decades. While the floating bridge part of the project is innovative, there’s nothing new about a 1,500 volt DC railroad over a bridge over water made from any of the materials used. Protecting against induced current has known solutions, and since the bridge, water under the bridge, and metal parts should all be at ground voltage, there should be no stray currents in the water.
The problem areas with the induced currents are items that would otherwise be isolated. Eg: metal handrails on the bridge, overhead wire supports, lamp posts, etc can all have induced current in them from either electronic noise or AC power lines feeding the bridge lights, etc if they are not tied to ground. This is because the concrete is nominally an insulator. The hazard this would present are to people / creatures on the bridge that touch something with an induced voltage on it and ground at the same time.
The solution is to ground all metal objects.
Since the water and creatures in the water should all be connected to ground, it’s difficult for me to picture a scenario in which some piece of metal in the water has an induced static charge such as this, as the water isn’t pure enough to insulate the metal to such a degree for it to be a hazard.
Indeed, the whole reason for the zinc electrodes is because they expect the water to be a conductor, and otherwise corrode metal on the bridge.
And if the water isn’t conductive enough to serve as a ground for whatever piece of metal has this induced current, then it shouldn’t be conductive enough to electrocute fish if the come into contact with this theoretical metal object. The fish is still insulated from being a conductor to ground be many feet of water.
It’d have to be a really bizarre set of circumstances to zap the fish, but then again it’s a bizarre set of circumstances that would lead to an open roof hatch on a train in service, or bolts not cut off the rail fasteners causing a train to have the wires yanked off, or…
I was at the Des Moines marina today, and the gates to the pay piers have signs saying there may be electrical leaks on the pier, and not to go into the water because it may be high voltage.
This would be caused by a wiring fault, as described here:
https://www.fluke.com/en-us/learn/blog/electrical/beyond-the-basics-electrical-problems-at-a-boat-dock
Any electrical device on the bridge could have such a fault.
In the case of Link, there have definitely been some odd electrical faults on the 2 Line, so I suppose it’s probably not outside the realm of possibility.
In the Fluke article linked to above it says, “grounded dock components or the bottom of a lake.” ST’s “fix” was to raise the anodes so they are not touching the bottom of the lake. It seems like if there is leakage current from the anodes this would make things worse as the current then has to use the water as a conductor to ground. Fresh water is a poor conductor of electricity so the electric field would spread out from the anode rather than taking a direct path to ground (the muck at the bottom of the lake).
The question arises, are these anodes there to protect somehow against leakage current or to protect iron alloys components of the bridge? I assume the bridge has always had sacrificial anodes to protect cables, joints, etc. Also, the bridge has always had an electrical supply for lighting, tensioning cables, bilge pumps, etc. Any fault in one of these systems could create a shock hazard.
Sacrificial Anodes
I 5hinkbthevtimes is now reporting that some of the dead fish are Chinook salmon…