Even online, Highway 9 traffic isn’t a pretty picture

Published 9:00 pm Friday, December 23, 2005

Highway 9 ain’t the same old two-lane country road that your daddy drove his tractor down to get to work. You see, Snohomish County’s other north-south highway has grown up.

No, the road didn’t suddenly sprout new lanes, although the state is in the beginning stages of widening portions of the heavily traveled highway.

So how does a road graduate from country to city in a single day?

Here’s the secret: It gets its own traffic camera. Two cameras, actually.

The state Department of Transportation this week turned on two cameras that drivers can now use to find out what everyone who uses Highway 9 already knows: Traffic on the road stinks.

The new cameras are set up at Highway 9’s intersection with U.S. 2. One shows Highway 9 looking north, the other looking south.

“This is great news for travelers in the Snohomish area,” said Dave Lindberg, project engineer for the state. “Motorists can now use our Web site to view actual traffic conditions at the intersection of (Highway) 9 and U.S. 2 before they leave home or work.”

The state added the cameras as part of a project to realign Highway 9’s intersection with U.S. 2, said Dongho Chang, the state’s traffic engineer for Snohomish County.

More cameras will be installed as the state moves ahead with plans to spend $133 million widening sections of the highway and rebuilding eight choke-point intersections.

“Our goal is to install enough cameras to provide drivers with accurate travel information,” Chang said. “We would like to have a camera at every mile along that length of State Route 9. As new projects are built along this road, we will look at adding cameras to the critical intersections.”

By next summer, the state expects to have four new cameras up on U.S. 2 in Monroe, and two cameras at Highway 522 where it intersects with Fales and Echo Lake roads.

Reporter Lukas Velush: 425-339-3449 or lvelush@ heraldnet.com.