Drivers in traffic jam also had stop-and-go cell phone service

Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, August 14, 2001

By Sharon Salyer

Herald Writer

With little to do besides sit and fume, drivers stuck in Everett’s massive, construction-related traffic jam on Monday created another backup of their own.

Cell phone traffic increased by as 40 percent over a typical Monday in the downtown Everett area, said Nextel Communications spokeswoman Tanea Stephens. Ten percent of the calls were blocked due to high traffic loads.

"When the numbers began to spike, we knew there was something going on," Stephens said.

Technicians diagnosed the problem area as overlapping with the construction zone: downtown Everett, I-5 from Everett north to the Snohomish River, and the Lowell and U.S. 2 areas.

"They won’t have this (problem) for 40 days, I can guarantee that," Stephens said, referring to the projected length of the Highway 529 construction project.

The highway is closed to northbound traffic at the Steamboat Slough bridge, closing off one of the main routes north out of Everett and forcing even more traffic than usual onto I-5.

Extra radios will be installed in the area by next week to help with increased cell phone demand, she said.

Meanwhile, software is being installed to shift cell phone traffic to lower-use portions of the network, Stephens said.

Cingular Wireless blamed its problems in the Everett area on conventional line problems, perhaps a blown telephone circuit, not its cellular network.

Workers were scheduled to replace the faulty equipment Tuesday evening.

"Our customers (are) our number on concern," said spokeswoman Becky Vieira. "We’ve taken steps to rapidly fix this."

So even though Everett-area connection problems corresponded with the Monday evening’s traffic mess, Vieira said it was unrelated.

A representative for Sprint PCS said the company has had no connection problems in the Everett area so far this week.

"We have already added a number of towers in the Everett area," said Kirk Dawson, regional director of marketing.

When cell phone companies are jammed with phone calls and callers can’t get through, it’s not always the cell phone company’s fault, he said.

Phone companies that provide local service "may have their circuits busy," Dawson said. "All those (cell phone) calls go through a central switching office."

You can call Herald Writer Sharon Salyer at 425-339-3486

or send e-mail to salyer@heraldnet.com.