Up to 7,000 people are expected to attend the “Amazon.com All Hands” meeting at the KeyArena today, Thursday, March 31. Attendees will be arriving and departing via shuttle buses between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. Drivers should expect added congestion around the KeyArena and Lower Queen Anne due to the event.

Though the weather report is predicting rain for the weekend, you never know what Seattle weather will do at the last minute. Whether it ends up being a sunny spring weekend or a cloudy one, for those who feel like roaming around town there are going to be a few areas with of lane closures and traffic congestion to avoid:

The Seattle Department of Transportation is closing the northbound right lane of the Battery Street Tunnel from 10 p.m. tonight until 6 a.m. tomorrow, Saturday, March 26 while crews perform electrical work on behalf of the Washington State Department of Transportation.

Drivers should expect temporary lane closures on Aurora Ave N on tomorrow. SDOT crews will be repairing the paving along Aurora, between N 47^th and N 48^th streets, from 7:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. on Saturday, March 26.

The Ballard Bridge will also have lane closures throughout the day on Saturday, March 26 to accommodate SDOT crews, who will be grinding down and paving the northbound and southbound lanes at the north end of the bridge (weather permitting). The work will be taking place between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., and at least one lane will remain open in each direction.

And on Sunday, March 27 the southbound lanes of the Ballard Bridge will be blocked for most of the morning, from 6 to 10 a.m., for a commercial film shoot.

Starting on next week SDOT will be closing the southbound right lanes on the Alaskan Way Viaduct at Jackson Street from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. every weekday from Monday, March 28 to Friday, April 8 so that crews may repair railing that was damaged by accidents, though this work is subject to change in the event of emergency work.

A warning to weekend commuters: a commercial being filmed on the Ballard Bridge this Sunday, March 27 from 6 to 10 a.m. will block the southbound lanes of the bridge for most of the morning.

“We will have the right southbound lane blocked up to the draw span and will be opening and closing the bridge several times during the shoot,” says location manager Doug du Mas. “Traffic across the bridge will be controlled by Seattle Police and people should expect delays. I suggest using the Fremont Bridge instead during these hours.”

The Starbucks annual shareholders meeting is taking place at Seattle Center tomorrow, Wednesday, March 23. SDOT has released a notice to residents and drivers in the area warning them of the possibility of heavier traffic than normal due to this event, which will bring 2,500 shareholders to McCaw Hall. From SDOT:

Attendees are expected to begin arriving when the doors open at 8 a.m.  The meeting starts at 10 a.m. and should wrap up around 12 noon. The Seattle Department of Transportation advises motorists to plan ahead to avoid delays.

The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) is set to begin repaving Dexter Avenue N this coming Monday, March 7. The project, funded by the “Bridging the Gap” levy, will be implemented in three phases to reduce traffic impact. The repaving project is expected to help ease congestion caused by car, bus and bicyclist overlaps along Dexter from Fourth Avenue North (just south of the Fremont Bridge) to Roy Street, approximately one and a half miles.

• Phase 1 (March to April) – Fremont Avenue N (Fourth Avenue N) to McGraw Street
• Phase 2 (April to July) – McGraw Street to Garfield Street
• Phase 3 (July to September) – Garfield Street to Roy Street

From SDOT:

The project has benefits for everyone who uses the street. In accordance with Mayor Mike McGinn’s Walk, Bike Ride initiative and the city’s Complete Streets policy, the work will include improvements for motor vehicles, pedestrians, public transit, and bicyclists. When completed, Dexter will have wider, buffered bike lanes, dedicated left-turn lanes at busy intersections and in-lane bus stops.  The bus stops will have dedicated bus islands that will improve transit speed and reliability and minimize the conflicts with bikes and stopped buses. There will be dedicated load zones for businesses that need them. Sidewalks, street lighting, and drainage will also be improved.

During construction on-street parking and loading availability will be restricted. Dexter Avenue N will be open throughout construction, however traffic will be reduced to one lane in each direction. During this time bicycles will have a choice of either merging with vehicle traffic, or riding on Dexter Avenue’s sidewalks, the Cheshiahud Lake Union Loop, or Westlake Avenue North.

The overnight snowfall may not have been the 2-6 inches forecasters warned us about, but there is a very light dusting of snow on the ground in Queen Anne this morning. The forecast calls for anywhere from a trace to 2 inches more later today.

Live traffic cameras. Refresh to update. See all North Seattle cameras.

With the temperature currently at 26 degrees, commuters are advised to keep an eye out for ice. Metro buses are on snow routes this morning, and Microsoft has canceled all its Connector routes. Here’s SDOT’s first report this AM:

Most city streets are bare and wet this morning. Crews from the Seattle Department of Transportation are treating major arterial streets to guard against the formation of ice in advance of the morning commute period. Snowfall last night was highly variable around the city. Beacon Hill, southern Rainier Valley, and higher parts of West Seattle appear to have had the most snow.

WSDOT crews have been busy treating the freeways. For the most part, traffic is moving smoothly. You can check the latest WSDOT traffic updates, the flow map and the full set of WSDOT cameras.

Drive carefully!

The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) announced this afternoon that the lane closures on the Ballard Bridge planned for this Saturday, February 12, have been canceled “due to an unfavorable weather forecast.” Crews have tentatively planned to resume the scheduled bridge maintenance on Saturday, February 26.

The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) pushed ahead with the much debated Nickerson Street road diet back in August, decreasing the thoroughfare from four lanes to one in each direction, a center turn lane, with bike lanes on either side.

Despite support from a USDOT’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) study that found that rechannelizations in California, Washington and Iowa have not adversely affected roadway capacity, and data that indicates that the controversial Stone Way road diet improved safety and traffic, the decision to revamp Nickerson was met with split support and opposition. A survey we took back in June indicated that, of the 711 who participated, 48.4 percent were in support of the road diet, while 51.6 percent were against the plan.

Some of the major concerns opponents of the road diet argued is that, being one of only two east-west streets directly feeding Ballard industries, decreased lanes on Nickerson would be met with increased congestion and an inability to meet capacity demands. However preliminary data from the city indicates that the road diet is working as planned, according to a report from Publicola published Wednesday.

The city says that data collected three months after the implementation of the Nickerson rechannelization shows that the same number of cars have been able to use the street, and that speeds along the street have slowed somewhat since the restriping. From Publicola:

SDOT traffic manager Eric Widstrand says the data are still preliminary; the city will continue to do traffic counts through the rest of 2011 and release a full report after the end of the year. However, so far, the study shows that car and freight traffic haven’t been harmed by the lane reduction, and that traffic has slowed to be somewhat closer to the 30-mph speed limit on the road.

“Capacity has not decreased,” Widstrand says. “We’re still able to accommodate” between 15,000 and 18,000 vehicles a day.

Proponents of the project note that decreased speeding along Nickerson as a result of the rechannelization is a good thing. Since the road diet, the average speed along Nickerson has gone down from 40 to 44 miles per hour, to between 34 and 37 mph, according to Publicola. From the report:

“We aren’t slowing anyone down excessively,” Widstrand says. The new speeds remain higher than the 30 mph speed limit, but are still safer for cyclists and pedestrians. A pedestrian hit at 40 mph is about 85 percent likely to die; a pedestrian hit at 30 mph is about 40 percent likely to be killed.

Cascade Bicycle Club representative David Hiller says that neither the group nor the city has yet studied whether the number of cyclists using Nickerson has increased since the rechannelization (which was the case after the Stone Way road diet).

Tracking the progress of potholes in your neighborhood, or along your commute, just got a whole lot easier. The Seattle Department of Transportation, taking a feather from the hat of The Seattle Times, has launched a Pothole Status Map where you can see all the city’s potholes that have been reported since March 15, 2010.

SDOT recently increased its number of “Pothole Rangers”, and according to the SDOT webpage, the crews filled 2,584 potholes in December 2010.

On the map above you can see all the potholes that have been reported, and filled across the city. The green dots indicate potholes that have been fixed in the last three months. Blue dots indicate new reports, and pink dots indicate potholes that are currently in the process of being repaired. The full map can be found here.

Know of an untended pothole that’s not on this map? The city would like you to report it so that it can be fixed. According to SDOT the map is updated nightly, though its currently posted statistics are not as up-to-date. SDOT says that as of Januart 30 there were 1,175 open requests to fix potholes, and that 1,365 others had been repaired in the previous seven days.

In 2010, we reviewed our methods of patching potholes. We found that there were better methods that would provide a longer-lasting patch, and have made those changes. This method takes more time when a pothole is fixed, but will last much longer than the method we have used in the past. In the long run, this will leave Seattle streets better off for a longer period of time. Our goal now is to repair potholes within three business days of receiving a report.

Have a pothole you’d like to report? Use this form to report potholes and other non-emergency problems (minor street repairs, malfunctioning traffic signals,  damaged street signs) to SDOT.