SR 14's weekend bridge plan starts with direction

The weekend plan for State Route 14 at Camas is not a single closure line on a map. From 8 p.m. Friday, August 14, until 6 a.m. Monday, August 17, the Washington State Department of Transportation says one direction of the West Camas Slough Bridge will close at a time while the other direction remains open. The useful question is therefore not only whether the bridge is under construction, but which side of the trip is being detoured when a traveler reaches it.

Eastbound travelers will leave SR 14 at Exit 12 and follow the signed route through Camas. The eastbound on-ramp at Southwest 6th Avenue will also close. Westbound travelers will use Exit 14 and follow the signed detour through Camas, while the westbound on-ramp at Southeast Union Street closes. Those are different ramp decisions, so a saved route built for the opposite direction is not a complete weekend plan.

The bridge carries about 30,000 vehicles on a typical day, including commuters, commercial trucks and people headed toward the Columbia River Gorge. WSDOT also classifies SR 14 between Camas and Interstate 5 as a top-tier freight corridor, meaning trucks move more than 10 million tons along that part of the route in a year. A bridge repair here reaches well beyond one neighborhood even though the signed detour uses local streets. This is a surface-preservation job rather than a response to a failing bridge structure. The bridge was built in 1966, widened and paved in 2013, and later developed recurring potholes and deep ruts. WSDOT says heavy rain in late 2024 added to the pavement damage. The agency installed rough-road warnings and reduced speeds in 2025 while maintenance crews kept using temporary patches; the structure remains rated fair, but the pavement has reached the end of its service life.

Crews are removing the old asphalt and waterproofing layer, inspecting the concrete deck, repairing any damage they find, installing new waterproofing, paving fresh asphalt and replacing four expansion joints. WSDOT lists the construction cost at about $1.3 million. The longer weekend work window lets crews handle connected deck tasks without reopening the work area after every short overnight shift. A freeway-direction detour through city streets can make travel time less predictable as through trips meet signals, local access and other detoured traffic. That is an inference from the route pattern, not a forecast of a particular queue. Actual delay will depend on the direction closed, traffic demand, incidents and the work schedule, so the live WSDOT map remains more useful than a fixed estimate.

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A practical brief can stay short: confirm the travel direction, identify Exit 12 or Exit 14 before departure, note the closed reentry ramp, and check the current condition before reaching the bridge approach. If conditions change during the trip, a passenger or someone at the destination can handle the update rather than asking the driver to rebuild the route inside the detour.

The weekend closure is not the end of the sequence. WSDOT schedules eastbound SR 14 to close overnight Monday into Tuesday, westbound overnight Tuesday into Wednesday, and eastbound again overnight Wednesday into Thursday, with signed detours continuing. Weather or field conditions can change construction timing, so the safest plan treats the published schedule as a starting point and the posted traffic control as the final instruction.

By Monday morning, the visible result should be a smoother piece of bridge deck. The road-level lesson is less visible: when a project alternates the closed direction, the same bridge can require two different travel plans. Checking the side, ramp and live condition early keeps a regional repair from becoming a last-second local turn.