MEDINA, Wash. — If you ever drive across the new State Route 520 floating bridge across Lake Washington, you’ve probably heard them.
The loud thumps as cars, trucks, and buses hit the expansion joints are driving some nearby homeowners nuts. The noise is especially loud on clear days during off-peak hours when drivers aren’t impacted by congestion, several homeowners told KOMO News.
Even when the rain falls, Dave Martin and his wife Penny can hear them loud and clear from inside their Medina home. The noise has been going non-stop since the new span opened in April, they said.
“Cuh-click. Cuh-click. Cuh-click, Cuh-clink. It’s like somebody going over railroad ties,” Martin said. “It’s all hours of the day intermittently.”
Officials with the Washington State Department of Transportation said they are looking into the problem after more than 200 homeowners complained about the noise.
Crews continue to take noise measurements at locations on both ends of the bridge, a spokesman said. Click here for more information on the update sent to neighbors on April 29. WSDOT is expected to present its findings to the Medina City Council on June 13.
Medina Mayor Alex Morcos hopes to hear some solutions soon.
“It might be a combination of many different things to fix the bridge. We just don’t know at this point,” said Morcos. “They did a very good job. It’s super engineered. It’s one of the greatest bridges in the world, with the exception of this minor problem.”
“When the weather is calm and the water’s calm, you can hear this all the way up to the south of Clyde Hill,” said Medina homeowner Perry Satterlee. “When I’m outdoors, I would prefer not to have it around. I would prefer that the state look at a way to take care of this right away because it’s irritating when you’re outside.”
During construction, crews used quieter concrete pavement to try to keep the noise down, encapsulated the expansion joints on the underside of the bridge, and built noise walls where they could, a WSDOT spokesman said. Later this year, WSDOT’S contractor will build a noise wall and screening wall south of the bridge near the shoreline in Medina.
The Martins worry the problem could eventually impact the value of their property, if it’s not addressed.
“Look, if we can put a man on the moon, we should be able to stop clack, clack, clack on a bridge. And I don’t know who’s gonna do it, but somebody’s gonna do it,” said Dave Martin. “I don’t think there’s an easy answer.”
