BELLEVUE – Eight lanes of freeway and a new rail line could be built parallel to I-5 in east Snohomish County as part of a “commerce corridor” currently being studied by the state.
Estimates are it would take as long as 50 years to get such a second north-south corridor built – if ever.
Critics from the Canadian border to Oregon – the length of the proposed route – took shots at the idea at a Friday hearing.
“I’m here to find out if it goes through my front 80, or my back 80,” said Shoreline resident Eugene McPhail, whose family owns 180 acres of land along the proposed route in central Snohomish County. “Our property (value) is not going to be impacted in 50 years, it was impacted yesterday.”
With names like “I-605” and “Foothills Freeway,” the idea of building an alternative to I-5 has been kicked around since the late 1960s.
This version could include lanes for long-haul trucks, toll lanes for passenger vehicles, rail lines for freight and passenger trains and space for moving electricity, natural gas, gasoline and telecommunication lines.
Backers of the $500,000 study say an alternate to I-5 is worth considering because it could help the region keep its competitive edge, both in making it easier to ship goods to and from Asia and Canada, and simply by promoting new job growth in the region.
Critics said the state should focus on fixing I-5 rather than on building a new freeway that they said would destroy the rural character of the Cascade foothills, saying the improved access would promote urban sprawl in what are now hard to get to rural communities.
The state Department of Transportation is studying a commerce corridor on behalf of the Legislature, and will finish a report on the ups and downs of the idea by the end of the year, said Charlie Howard, the department’s director of planning and policy.
“We’re not siting anything. We’re not building anything,” he said. “We trying to see if there’s demand for it.”
With the state unable to pay for the long list of transportation fixes already on its plate, a major part of the study is to find out if the private sector is willing to help foot the bill.
No price tag has been attached to a corridor that, if all the uses being considered were built, would be more than 700 feet wide.
Dollars aside, the cost to the people and the environment in the rural land the freeway would cut through is too high, said Michael Fagan of Acme.
“You guys should be ashamed of yourselves,” he said, saying it’s preposterous to talk about taking the land needed to build such a corridor. “You guys are going to be canned as politicians.”
If the concept ever gets off the ground, Gail Everett of Edmonds said she would be there to put her body in the way – literally.
To her, the foothills are among the most beautiful places in the world.
The possibility of that beauty being “destroyed absolutely breaks my heart,” she said.
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