While you read this, I’m likely sitting in front of a warm fire in Whistler, B.C., getting ready to go do some cross country skiing (far away from big avalanches).
While I’m up there playing in the snow, I promise to look around to see how preparations for the Olympics are coming along.
Rather than talk to anybody and do any real research, (this is a transportation column and I will be on vacation), I’ll just look out the window and see if the roads are big and wide and smooth.
It is important to make sure our neighbors to the north are ready for us, right? (Do you think I can get away with claiming mileage on this one?)
Locally, it looks as though the state easily is going to deliver on its promise to finish widening I-5 in Everett before the 2010 Winter Olympics starts.
Not soon enough for my trip. Darn.
Seriously, though, there’s obviously more to getting ready for the Olympics than hurrying to finish a widening project that was already planned and paid for before the announcement came that Vancouver and Whistler would play host to winter’s biggest show.
For those of you who are worried, I just got new tires on the family traveling wagon and we’ve got chains, too.
Check back next week for a full report.
New I-5 lanes coming
Speaking of widening roads, visions of having a wider I-5 open in Everett by the start of this year have long faded away.
Now the state is simply saying it will finish the project by its June deadline, hopefully before.
One piece of the new, wider freeway is ready to open, however.
State workers need one dry night to paint stripes on two miles of southbound I-5 from near the Lowell neighborhood down to Highway 526 (the Boeing Freeway). That could happen tonight or sometime this week.
“Just a night of dry weather is what we need,” said Patty Michaud, a state Department of Transportation spokeswoman. “It’s all paved. It’s ready to go. We just need to get it striped in.”
When the wider freeway opens, drivers will see one new lane added: a carpool lane that picks up at Lowell Road and 52nd Street SE and extends to the Boeing Freeway, where the carpool lane now starts.
The carpool lane will extend to the Snohomish River when the project is finished, Michaud said.
Turn lane not for passing
Question: Picture driving on a road that has a turn lane painted into the middle of a five-lane road. As I approach the painted area and begin to merge left (to turn), a car comes zooming up behind me.
This person has been driving down the center lane for hundreds of feet. Who has the right of way? Is the center-lane driver doing anything illegal? Do I have the right to use it as a turn lane?
Kenneth Gross, Silver Lake
Answer: The Washington State Driver Guide does offer guidance for proper use of the two-way left turn lanes your reader writes about. The guide states: “These lanes cannot be used for passing and cannot be used for travel further than 300 feet.”
Brad Benfield, spokesman for the state Department of Licensing
Reporter Lukas Velush: 425-339-3449 or lvelush@heraldnet.com.
Ask us about traffic
Have a question about traffic or street rules around Snohomish and Island counties? E-mail stsmarts@heraldnet.com. The Street Smarts blog is at www.heraldnet.com/streetsmarts.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
