The state may be able to help design improvements to the Warren Avenue bridge after all.

Now if the nesting cormorants would just cooperate.

Warren Avenue bridge improvements have been delayed for various reasons, but the city of Bremerton hopes some meetings this month will move the project forward. Bremerton is working to upgrade pedestrian features on the bridge, but there have been design challenges, workforce limitations, and wildlife and environmental concerns.

The timeline to complete the bridge project was toward the end of 2026. But in late July, the state Department of Transporation told the city it was unable to design the bridge due to too many bridge maintenance and rebuilding projects statewide. “They committed a couple of years ago to design the project for us, but they then emailed us and said they didn’t have the workforce to commit to it,” said Shane Weber, engineering manager for Bremerton’s capital transportation projects. “Well, the alternative is to hire private consultants to do that, and that’s not nearly as cost-effective.”

Discussions between the city and WSDOT, however, have resumed, and it’s coming “back to the table” to try to fit the project into its schedule. “We should be able to get together with them next week,” Weber said.

In addition, since the bridge spans a waterway, work can only occur during certain times of the year determined in cooperation with the Department of Fish and Wildlife. “There are also cormorants nesting on the bridge, and they’re a protected species, so there will also be requirements we’re anticipating for not performing the work while the birds are nesting or rearing their young,” Weber said. “We should be getting into those conversations in the next couple of months.”

Weber said that while discussions are occurring between WSDOT, DFG and other interested parties, it’s hard to predict a timeline for completion of the bridge project.

Background

The third-of-a-milelong Warren Avenue bridge spans the Port Washington Narrows and is part of the Bridge to Bridge Trail, which runs from the one at Warren Avenue to the Manette Bridge. Its sidewalks are less than 4 feet wide, and as early as 2007 the city identified it as a pedestrian improvement project. “The idea was that we would widen the sidewalks on the bridge and make it safer,” Weber said.

It’s not Americans with Disabilities Act accessible. Weber said that the city applied for a state grant in 2019 for around $1.5 million to make improvements. In 2021, Weber said he went to the City Council with a proposal to widen both of the bridge’s sidewalks to 8 feet with allowances for the WSDOT to maintain it.

“There was some interest and input from the community to make the sidewalks even wider than that because they felt that still wasn’t wide enough,” Weber said. So, the city investigated how much wider the sidewalks could be. “That took a couple of years, and what we came up with is a preferred alternative of a 12-foot sidewalk on the east side, or northbound side of the bridge, and a five-foot sidewalk on the west side.”