County takes road plan to Olympia

By Susanna Ray

Herald Writer

OLYMPIA — Highway 9 is being pushed into a starring role by Snohomish County transportation gurus who want to turn it into the county’s I-405, and hopefully help the region emerge from traffic problems that have become the second worst in the nation.

Under a plan unveiled to state lawmakers Tuesday, the county’s road planners have identified changes to a network of state highways. The improvements would cut down on traffic congestion that in places is now in gridlock six to eight hours a day.

But county officials need attention and money from state lawmakers before they can take any action at all.

Under the Snohomish Corridor Action Plan, or SnoCAP, I-5 and Highway 9 make up the north-south rails of a ladderlike grid, and the east-west rungs are highways 524, 96, 204, 528 and U.S. 2. Those are the roads termed the "primary investment corridors" in the SnoCAP brochure released Tuesday.

Highway 9 would be used as a major suburban thoroughfare to bypass Everett and reach such cities as Snohomish and Lake Stevens, much as I-405 works in the Eastside suburbs to get around Seattle.

State Transportation Secretary Doug MacDonald said he had only been on the job for a week last April when he drove to a meeting in Bellingham along Highway 9 instead of I-5.

"Let me tell you, you do not appreciate the problems this state is facing unless you see SR 9," MacDonald told a group of local legislators Tuesday. The highway is a poster child for the failure of state roads to keep up with development, he said.

SnoCAP came out of a meeting in October that local officials had with MacDonald. They told him they were worried Snohomish County was getting left behind when state legislators and the Department of Transportation prioritized roadwork.

"All of us in Snohomish County could not fail to see the amount of attention that large projects like 405, 520, the Alaskan Way Viaduct, etc., were getting, and we were concerned about that," Peter Hahn, the county’s public works director, told lawmakers.

Hahn presented lawmakers with the new SnoCAP brochure. Also present were county Executive Bob Drewel, Everett City Council member Arlan Hatloe and MacDonald.

"We want to help Snohomish County sell this program," MacDonald said, later calling the plan " a tribute to the urgency of the situation."

The hope is that by combining the smaller local projects into one organized plan with an acronym, it will be easier for legislators from other parts of the state to understand what the county’s needs are when it comes time to vote on road projects. In addition to the help MacDonald offered from the Department of Transportation, Snohomish County’s most famous business, the Boeing Co., also is playing a leading role in the SnoCAP push.

Longtime Boeing lobbyist Al Ralston helped lead Tuesday’s meeting with Drewel. It was an unusual appearance for someone who is well known in Olympia but is rarely heard in public.

In the SnoCAP brochure, the name Boeing is represented on the project map in bigger letters than most of the city names. And in the pamphlet chatter detailing the problems along I-5, the company is singled out: "Immediate transportation investments within the I-5 corridor could be a key factor in Boeing’s decision whether or not to manufacture the next-generation Sonic Cruiser Jet airplane at its Boeing-Everett plant site."

The company didn’t provide any monetary support for the SnoCAP brochure, but it will help lobby for the projects in Olympia and it supports the county’s priorities, spokesman Tom Ryan said.

In addition to SnoCAP, the county also provided lawmakers with a brochure outlining the yearly wish list for funding of critical transportation projects, to the tune of more than a billion dollars.

The separation of the two project lists was a concern to some local legislators.

Sen. Jeanine Long, R-Mill Creek, said she agrees with the push to make Highway 9 a major player in the county’s road plan, but she is upset that Highway 522, which Reader’s Digest has listed as one of "America’s Most Dangerous Highways," was left off the SnoCAP list, even if it is included in the more expansive list of priorities.

"I understand the need to get goods to market, and if we lost Boeing, it would just be terrible, given the state’s current economic constraints and all the jobs that have already been lost," Long said. "But the other side of it is, if you’re dead, your job doesn’t matter. And that road has been so deadly, it just needs to be finished."

You can call Herald Writer Susanna Ray at 360-586-3803 or send e-mail to ray@heraldnet.com.

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