PORT TOWNSEND — The state Department of Transportation will hold fast to its original plan to move traffic around the Hood Canal Bridge when the floating span is severed for six weeks in 2009.

That’s because the project is federally funded through a Bridge Preservation Fund, said Becky Hixson, Hood Canal Bridge communications manager.

“The whole mitigation plan was already formed,” Hixson told about 40 attending the Port Townsend Chamber of Commerce’s weekly luncheon Monday at Fort Worden State Park Commons.

“We considered the best ways to help drivers get around [the bridge project].”

The eastern half of the floating bridge, opened in 1961, is due to be replaced in a six-week project starting in May 2009.

Pontoons and anchors for the east half are being constructed in Tacoma and Seattle after a graving yard project to build them in Port Angeles was canceled two years ago after an ancient Native American burial ground was found on the site.

The western half of the bridge, 20 years newer, has been widened and upgraded in anticipation of the new eastern half floated into position in 2009.

But the North Olympic Peninsula’s lifeline to and from the Puget Sound area will be cut for six weeks.

$10 million mitigation

Transportation is investing $10 million in Hood Canal Bridge closure mitigation for future transit/park-and-ride facilities, passenger ferry service and tourism improvements that benefit Jefferson and Kitsap counties, Hixson said.

In Jefferson County, that includes widening of the Mount Walker section of U.S. Highway 101, said Hixson.

Traffic volumes on U.S. 101 along Hood Canal to Olympia are expected to grow by 50 percent during the bridge closure, she said.

The Transportation Department in the late 1990s decided to spend $10 million for temporary parking lots and facilities for passenger ferries from South Point south of the bridge in Jefferson County to Port Gamble in Kitsap County.

The lots and ferry landings will be removed after the bridge is reopened, she said.

Also planned, Hixson said, are special bus service for commuters, and additional special runs for car ferries to make commuting during the bridge work as seamless as possible.