In case you hadn’t noticed, gas prices are going up again.
The average price for regular in the Seattle area on Friday was $2.98 a gallon and rising, according to SeattleGasPrices.com, a Web site affiliated with the national site GasBuddy.com.
The statewide average on Friday also was $2.98, according to AAA Washington’s Fuel Gauge Report. A week earlier it was $2.93, and a month earlier $2.83, according to AAA.
The reason? It’s a combination of the coming of spring and encouragement about an improved economy, said Dave Overstreet, a spokesman for AAA Washington in Bellevue.
“This is the time of year when a lot of oil refineries are switching over to summer-blended fuels,” he said.
Many states, including Washington, require oil companies to produce lighter, less-polluting fuel blends in the summer, according to Overstreet.
These fuels are more expensive to blend, he said. Also figuring into the equation, though, is oil companies’ annual anticipation of an increase in demand, Overstreet said.
While AAA expects gas prices to continue to rise, they probably won’t spike like they did in the summer of 2008, when they exceeded $4 per gallon, he said.
“There’s still plenty of supply available,” Overstreet said.
For more information, go to www.fuelgaugereport.com or www.seattlegasprices.com.
New bridge on Highway 529 in Marysville: The state plans to begin work this summer on a new bridge across Ebey Slough in Marysville. Traffic won’t be disrupted because the new bridge will be built just to the east of the current one and the road realigned to meet it.
The project, budgeted at $45.4 million, will take three years to build.
It’s expected to be a big improvement over the current bridge, which is more than 80 years old, only two lanes wide and must be opened for boats to pass, holding up vehicle traffic.
The new bridge will have four lanes, sidewalks and bike lanes on both sides, and will be high enough above the slough to allow boats to pass without the bridge opening.
The current bridge is called a swing-span, meaning that instead of opening upward like most drawbridges, it swings around from its center, based on an island in the slough.
A video of the bridge in action can be seen on the state’s Web page on the project at www.wsdot.wa.gov/projects/sr529/ebeysloughbridge.
E-mail Street Smarts at stsmarts@heraldnet.com. Please include your city of residence.
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