Evergreen Point Floating Bridge

They got it bad here too. I’m talking about the congested traffic in comparison to California’s gridlock on all toll bridges. However, I did see they have it slightly better here and I’m not exactly sure why. I just didn’t find myself stuck in one place for too long.
There aren’t any toll booths. A bill is sent directly to you via postal mail. That definitely controls the traffic much better and very thankful for it.
Driving thru the bridge during a storm was a bit nerve wrecking. With the waves crashing and the possibility of hydroplaning crazy thoughts ran through my mind. Took the chance anyway and didn’t want to take an alternative route. Not a local, but can say I love this bridge for the ease of access between Seattle and Belevue.

It’s a bridge. I’ve never had problems with it. It brings me from point A (Redmond) to point B (Seattle/​UW) just fine.
It does have a toll. I usually pay about $ 4 for a round trip.
People can be slow, but it’s easy to merge around them.
Nice view of the waters. It’s fun to see people wakeboarding.

I pay about $ 6 a day to drive myself to work… That’s the definition of insanity.
I hate the tolls (or just the high price), the traffic, and waiting for boats that provide nothing to anything except for the people on the boats.
But, just like I imagine prison would do, sitting on the bridge with no survivable escape has taught me much about patience and I now have trivia cards in my car.
The more you know…

520, You are terrible. You have 2 lanes, you charge people to sit in traffic, and the only time it’s actually fun to drive on you is before 6am and after 8pm… I wish you were better.

The other day I was thinking to myself:
Self, should I cross the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge?
Then I took out my phone to consult my trusty Unilocal reviews to see what other people thought of this bridge. What an epiphany!
There were 40 reviews for this bridge! Amazing! I need to start consulting Unilocal for infrastructure more often! Let’s see, maybe I should look at Unilocal before I drive on I-​5 or the Viaduct. It might have fallen down and Unilocal surely would let me know with an all caps «CLOSED». Thanks for letting me know about those pesky tolls on this bridge, very informative. And that it floats! Wow.

Womp, womp, womp.
The bridge of epic failures. I’m hopeful that when the new one is done I can bump this review up to 5 stars but for now… epic proportions of failure. First of all, the toll increases on what feels like a biweekly basis. I get paying for a bridge that has to be rebuilt, but come on! You run out of money so you feel justified in jacking up the price to just cross the thing?! Fine.
But let’s talk about the other things that suck right now. The lanes are ridiculously tiny which is easy enough to cause accidents that seem to happen pretty frequently. The speed limit is only 50, so people feel either compelled to drive 80 or 40, which causes more of a nightmare than if there was a consistent speed that didn’t change from before the bridge to exactly where the bridge starts.
The boat traffic sucks as well. I understand that boats have to get through, and yes it’s nice that they schedule times, I will give the benefit of the doubt on that because I’ve lived in cities where there is absolutely no warning but about 10 minutes.
I just can’t wait for this thing to be completely destroyed and rebuilt. I just hope they actually listen and understand to what would make the commute easier for the east and west siders that commute for work. Even those by public transportation.

I like the bridge a lot more since the tolling!
Much of the riffraff is now gone. You know, the ones doing the speed limit in their beat-​up corollas.
Less cops. Since there are less people taking the bridge, the revenue pool has shrunk.

It gets me where I need to go. If I didn’t live so darn close to it I would take I-​90. But it is just the easiest way to get to Seattle. I love when the toll is off like when I was driving back at 3 a.m. on New Year’s Day! Five stars for the Bald Eagle on the light pole. LOVE!!! Oh, and the amazing views on a sunny day seriously cannot be beat. Makes me so proud to call Seattle my home! We are blessed by our surroundings!

Oh Five-​Twenty
You and I,
We’re at odds at times
Given how over capacity you are
On some days, a commute across can be as little as twenty minutes
But on others, it can be as great as over ninety-​minutes
It makes me wish of a better transportation
To avoid the ninety-​minute commute
Upon windy and rainy days
You often give your riders free car washes
Causing the driver to be startled for mere seconds
In those mere seconds
Of driver indecisiveness, and inaction
Additional worrisome and stress can follow
While the premium tolls that you place
On the drivers that sit and wait
Upon your aging grace
To fund the upgrades and successor
Though many would find
Expending more time
Visiting your sisters Murrow and Hadley
Would be a more affordable
I appreciate that you’re my gateway
To explore the great cultures of Seattle
To pursue my interests
To further advanced my retirement
But alas I fear
That your upgrades won’t be ready
By the agreed date
While you say twenty-​sixteen is the rebirth
I do ponder if the Seattle Process
Will hinder the opening date
I would surmise that I must wait and see
To twenty-​sixteen I look forward
To see if I have a new gateway to use
To continue my exploration of culture and history

Even though this bridge is annoying:
1. Tolls
2. Small lanes
3. Slow drivers
4. People that don’t know how to merge (COME ON!!!)
5. People can’t predict traffic movement patterns and clog up the lanes
6. Accidents that block the bridge’s main artery
7. Closing for boat traffic (unless I happen to be on one of the boats)
Driving over this bridge is beautiful! I always enjoy watching the sunset through my drive, or how chunky the water is in comparison to the other side.

This bridge and the entire SR-​520 bring out the absolute worst in me because it is, without fail, the biggest, double-​crossing whorebag known to mankind from here to the Mexico border. Let me tell you some unmistakable traits of a resentful hag, one who clearly hates humanity, like this bridge.
She breaks your balls. Charge $ 1.70, the going rate with a Good2Go pass, to cross this broken, forever in construction piece of shit on a late Sunday night. I get as excited about it as I would if I were given a dirty sock filled with putrid sweat that is then left to drip dry into my mouth.
She’s high maintenance. When she’s not demanding funds to maintain her lifestyle filled with snake skin pumps and youth serum scraped from underneath the scrotum of a flying pig, she’s unavailable to be used for about an entire week out of every month.
She can’t fucking hang. No matter what day or time it is, whenever there are any sign of cars merging onto 520, this shit gets backed up to her neck on both ends for hours on end. This can either be a deterrent for SR-​520 or it could be legitimate encouragement to off yourself.
She’s a liar. One day she says she’s fine, the next day she’s broken and dysfunctional. You can never tell with hags of this unstable variety.
She’s just a bitch. She’s able to extract faith from her loyal commuters while there isn’t one resounding moral decency in her makeup. While she sits on her throne with a princess complex, she regards everyone else who keeps her afloat as important as castrated paupers.
Please suck on every centimeter of my unapologetic toe.

520 & Me: A Memoir
As I begin this, I’m sitting on the Metro route 243 bus (see my review:
) crossing the 520 bridge and I can’t help but wonder how much time in aggregate I’ve spent on this bridge.
On a daily basis.
Over decades.
Certainly it’s beyond hours and into days, weeks, months?
Wow, what a wasted life.
My co-​dependent relationship with the 520 started in 1984 when I was living in N. Seattle and dating a Bellevue girl while working at a crappy restaurant in Bell Square. (Anyone remember Jungle Jims?) Back in the day, the 7,578-foot bridge was a cake to drive. Traffic flowed at the posted speed and often the span could be crossed within 2 minutes. Daily I would make the drive, sometimes twice daily, and I was none the wiser of the aggravation that damn bridge would bestow on me some day.
That aggravation would come years later, after completing college, in September 1998 when I accepted a job on the east side and began the daily sludge in a single occupancy vehicle (SOV) across the bridge now swollen with Microsoft traffic. The two minute drive was now on permanent display at the Museum of History and Industry (
), replaced with a commute that could last upwards of a half hour or more, especially if you count the run-​up to the bridge itself. Should there be an accident or stall (ooohhhh…foreshadowing!) well then forget about it. The entire morning or evening was shot.
Day in and day out I made the drive across the bridge, slowly descending into madness. The symbol of my madness, little yellow stickie notes that I would keep in my car to frantically write down the make, model and license plate of carpool cheaters. Yes, daily commutes on the 520 will turn you into a carpool narc (
). It really is the only way to stem the aggravation you feel as you watch one asshat after another drive their BMW SUV SOV in the carpool lane or on-​ramps with impunity because they are never monitored by law enforcement.
And then one morning in late 2007 I was driving my 17 year old, totally beat up Mazda pickup with 157,000 miles on it and just at the apex of the west high-​rise, it died. Right in traffic. Right during rush hour.
There was something poetic about it, although I doubt the people I inconvenienced felt that way. While waiting for the tow truck to arrive I called my wife and asked her what the over/​under was on getting the pickup repaired and she said $ 50.
From that moment on I became a fan of public transportation and learned to love the slow traffic crossing the bridge.
Time to read.
Time to think.
Time to space.
Of course the list of issues with the current 520 bridge is as long as the bridge itself — from not enough capacity, to no pedestrian or bike lanes and, oh yea, the little fact that the whole damn thing might sink into Lake Washington. Is it any wonder that, much like a middle aged guy chasing twenty year olds in his sports car, I’m intrigued and excited by the sexy new bridge going up?
Featuring six lanes, including two general-​purpose lanes and one new transit/​HOV lane in each direction, noise reduction barriers, the ability to accommodate light rail in the future and a 14-​foot wide shared-​use path which includes multiple viewpoints along the way, the new 520 bridge promises to be a vast improvement and one which we’ll still be paying for well into the future. (Source:
).

Neat bridge — got to pass under it twice on a pleasure cruise with coworkers two weeks ago. It was probably a lot nicer than being in a car on top of it though traffic looked like it was moving. It’s an interesting bridge, architecturally — highly recommend a boat trip underneath it.

I like to use 520 Bridge. I hope they add more lanes on the east-​side of the bridge and open more lanes towards UW. In addition to the spectacular view, you have your Bald Eagle friend towards the Stadium hanging on the light pole.

Wow, what a bridge.
Yes, traffic sucks, but the view is wonderful and when it’s windy, traveling on the bridge is extra exciting. I very rarely use this bridge but when I do, I think, my goodness, this has got to be one of my favorite bridges.
So as far as bridges go, I say EPFB is a-​ok in my book.

You can review the floating bridge?
Speed limit is always 50 here I think. I try to take buses crossing the bridge to avoid the toll. Otherwise I drive across the bridge on a regularly basis.
Normally the traffic isn’t bad. It is also because I try to avoid the rush hour whenever I can. The downside of not going through 520 during rush hour is the chance of bridge closure due to boat traffic. That can last for up to 30 minutes. I have only had that happen to me once where the traffic slowed down significantly and I realized there would be boat traffic. Everyone got out of their cars and enjoyed the nice view. Luckily it was summer and wasn’t raining on that day.
Get the Good 2 Go pass because tolls add up and can be very expensive.

I no longer consider myself to be a tourist on my visits to Seattle these days. So, I tend to stay in Redmond for cheaper accommodation rather than the expensive hustly, bustly downtown area
The 520 represents my quickest route over to the westside from the eastside. I hadn’t been aware that it’s a floating bridge until I read about that fact in a local tourist magazine. It’s always felt very stable when driving over it though local friends have told me that it has to close in really bad weather
From my location in Redmond, it’s much more convenient that the 90, the other east-​west bridge crossing. However, I was saddened to find on my recent trip that it’s now a toll bridge. They’ve tried to make your journey seamless by making it an electronic toll so there’s no need to slow down and cameras take pictures of your license plate and automtically bill you
Hertz, my rental car company. automatically put the PlatePass system on all their cars to allow toll billing but it does work out quite expensive as they charge a daily Platepass admin fee as well as the cost of the tolls — once the system is triggered once by using a toll road once, you’re charged the daily admin fee everyday til the end of your rental even if you never cross the bridge again
The other star deduction is for the epic traffic jams that can build up. The eastern approach is dreadfully designed with so many roads filtering into the 520 over a short distance just before the bridge. The other thing I’ve learned about driving in Seattle is that rush hour extends much longer than you’d expect — 7 – 11 in the mornings and 3 – 7 in the evenigns, so you have to make sure to leave a lot of time for traffic delays
I feel bad for giving this very pretty bridge with magnificent views such a low score but the traffic and toll are a real pain

520? I can’t complain too much! This bridge gets me to the eastside within 20 mins without traffic. 2 lanes each way, speed limit 50. The best part here would be the amazing scenery whether it’s Mt. Rainier or Lake Washington.
I love this briget when there’s no traffic!

Reviewing a bridge? Really???
When this came up as reviewable (since I check in here often on my commute) I was first surprised at the number of reviews, and then the low stars!
I love the 520 (yes, there is traffic. Note to all: there is traffic EVERYWHERE in Seattle during rush hour. It is not the bridge’s fault). Every evening as I cross I love to see how one side of the lake is usually calm while the other side is varying degrees of rough. And in weather (rain, sleet, generally stormy stuff) I love to see the occasional whitecaps on the lake as I cross.
Phenomenal views in all directions, what’s not to like?

I used to have 2 jobs. I was poor, I had just graduated from College. I needed to pay the bills. My day job was in Seattle, my night job in Redmond. I worked near the Montlake Bridge, and would have to take this bridge everyday to my other job. I had to be at work at 4 pm, it was only 10 miles away. But I had to leave my first job by 230 pm in order to hopefully make it to work on time. I was late at least once a week. I would sit in my car waiting to just get onto the 520 for at least an hour. I would have conversations with my father about how I could get into the carpool lane. We decided that I needed to kill someone and put them into the passenger seat because blow up-​doll or a crash-​test dummy didn’t look realistic enough. This bridge made me not only want to kill someone, but to keep their decomposing body in my car just so I could take the carpool lane.
When I got my current job in Bellevue, I moved to Redmond.