I-5 widening in Everett to wrap up in February

Published 11:02 am Monday, November 5, 2007

Dreams of finishing the Everett I-5 widening project by the end of the year have been quashed.

“It’s been a goal — we wanted to get done a construction season early,” said Mike Cotten, project director for the state Department of Transportation’s I-5 widening project in Everett.

Instead, thanks to too many rainy days and problems building a new left-hand exit at Broadway, the project is now set to finish in February.

That still means finishing four months ahead of a June deadline, and far ahead of the state Legislature’s requirement that the project finish before the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, B.C.

It also means contractor Atkinson-CH2M Hill remains on track to get a $600,000 bonus for finishing more than 60 days early. The company stands to lose $10,000 a day in bonus money for each day the end of construction slips past April 28, the beginning of that 60-day window.

Paid for by a 2003 nickel-per-gallon gas tax hike, the $263 million I-5 widening project initially was supposed to start in 2009 and finish in 2012.

The Legislature sped up the schedule so that the freeway wouldn’t be torn up during the Olympics. It also asked the DOT to cut a year out of the construction window by designing the project on the fly.

Doing the work sooner and quickly also was used as a way to please the Boeing Co., which in 2004 still hadn’t announced where it would build the new 787 Dreamliner. The company eventually decided to assemble it in Everett.

The design-build nature of the contract, the third-largest ever issued by DOT, gave the agency flexibility in how it approached widening the freeway, including allowing it to at the last minute include plans to rebuild the 41st Street overpass in the project.

“There’s a lot that has been accomplished,” Cotten said. “We’re a little bit over 80 percent complete.”

Drivers are already using a new 41st Street SE overpass (one ramp is still to come), a flyover ramp from northbound I-5 to Broadway, and an extra northbound I-5 merging lane between 41st Street and U.S. 2.

Still to come are carpool lanes in both directions from the Boeing Freeway to U.S. 2, an extra southbound all-purpose lane from U.S. 2 to 41st Street, and a new carpool left-hand exit to Broadway.

And let’s not forget the bridges. Eighteen had to be widened, and there will be five new bridges when the project is complete.

The new carpool lane on northbound I-5 is expected to finish by the end of the year, Cotten said. That will complement the already open all-purpose lane that connects 41st Street and U.S. 2, he said.

Matching southbound carpool and all-purpose lanes are expected to open by February, the same date when the state expects to open a ramp from 41st Street to southbound I-5 and a new left-hand ramp to Broadway. That left-hand exit will be for carpools only and will allow southbound carpool traffic on Broadway to directly merge onto the new carpool lane.

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