CHEHALIS – It’s a local lawmaker’s dream: freight trucks lumbering along a 100-mile, three-lane toll road from Chehalis to east-west I-90, bypassing the congested Seattle area.
A new study commissioned by the Legislature suggests the roadway – a goal of state Sen. Dan Swecker – might work.
The proposal is a far cry from Swecker’s 2002 vision – a 710-foot-wide “commerce corridor” for cars, trucks, trains, power lines and natural gas pipelines from southwest Washington to the Canadian border.
The $500,000 draft study by the state Transportation Department says the utility corridor “is too long, has too many components and is too complex.” Many groups north of Seattle strongly opposed the corridor’s northern half, saying it would hurt rural communities and the environment.
Instead, the study suggested a road to move freight trucks on the 100-mile stretch between I-90 and Chehalis, a section that has five times as much truck traffic as I-5 between Seattle and Canada.
The toll road along the base of the Cascade mountains would be financed by and reserved for truckers.
Swecker, a Rochester Republican and co-vice chairman of the Senate Highways and Transportation Committee, is delighted with the idea. He’s been pushing for a new highway north from his district since he was appointed to the state Senate in 1994.
As envisioned, a private entity would build the route and collect tolls. The public might have to help buy rights of way, Swecker said.
If just half of the 22,000 trucks that roll down I-5 south from Seattle each day used the toll route – at 60 cents per mile, or $60 for a one-way run – its $5 billion cost might pencil out, the study suggests.
“Based on existing and projected volumes, there is some potential there,” said Barbara Ivanov, director of freight strategy and policy for the state Department of Transportation.
However, she said the department does not know if the trucking companies and manufacturers would be willing to pay the rates involved.
The I-5 corridor has so much capacity that it’s fairly cheap for trucks to haul products up and down the coast, Ivanov said. The main north-south rail line through Chehalis can barely compete with trucking except on very long trips, she said.
As Swecker sees it, the revised commerce corridor would be three lanes wide – one in each direction and some type of passing lane – and for long-haul freight only. Only a limited number of exits would be built.
“It’s almost like a railroad, but you put trucks on it instead of train cars. They get in a line and stay in a line and just go,” he said.
But opponents say his analogy shows the need to improve the railroad system instead.
“Do you want more trucks and more pollution? It seems to me that the mandate we should be looking at is getting trucks off the road and onto rail,” said transportation consultant Preston Schiller, a part-time instructor at Western Washington University in Bellingham.
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