MILL CREEK — From wagon track, to rural crossroads, to full-fledged suburbia, the area once known as Osborn’s Corner only promises to get busier.
Morning and afternoon commutes along Seattle Hill Road have slowed, even as buildings sprout on all sides. An $8 million grant infusion aims to help Snohomish County ease traffic problems through this corridor on the eastern edge of Mill Creek. The state and federal money materialized this fall.
If the county succeeds in buying rights of way, work to widen the two-lane arterial could get going in 2017, county engineer Owen Carter said.
“You have traffic congestion. You also have safety problems for both bicycles and pedestrians,” Carter said. “Until these grants came through, we would not have been able to follow through with construction.”
The work is planned for 1.6 miles of Seattle Hill Road, from 132nd Street SE to 35th Avenue SE. The improvements would add a continuous center lane as well as bike lanes, curbs and sidewalks on both sides of the road.
Work is expected to take place over two summers, Carter said.
State traffic data for 2013 show an average of 27,000 daily car trips through the area.
Seattle Hill Road is important to Mill Creek because it skirts the city’s East Gateway Urban Village, south of 132nd Street. New apartments and townhomes there now cover the former Henry’s Plant Farm. A recently built medical office building stands nearby.
The city’s vision for the area was to encourage development along the lines of Mill Creek Town Center, but with more homes mixed in with stores and office space.
For city leaders, the work on Seattle Hill Road should make the area more pleasant to travel by foot or bike, as well as by car.
“We’re a real walkable community and that is one place where we don’t have continuous sidewalks,” City Councilman Mike Todd said. “The thing that sold me on it was fixing the missing sidewalk.”
Mill Creek is contributing $200,000 to the project, city public works director Tom Gathmann said.
The total project cost exceeds $12 million. The new grants include $4 million from the state Transportation Improvement Board awarded in November. Another $4 million came through the Puget Sound Regional Council’s Transportation Improvement Program, and was announced in late October.
The work also aims to improve drainage. Porous sidewalk pavement would allow rainwater to seep through, rather than stream into gutters.
Right-of-way negotiations involve more than 50 parcels of land.
Other aspects of the project aim to improve sight lines and smooth out curves. No new traffic signals are proposed.
Noah Haglund: 425-339-3465; nhaglund@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @NWhaglund.
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