MALTBY – Commuters who get caught in the daily traffic jam that is Highway 522 have a slow-rolling front-row seat to watch as a new kind of freeway overpass is built at Fales-Echo Lake Road over the next year.
Construction on the Puget Sound region’s first ever single-point overpass began in earnest after Highway 522 traffic was detoured around the crowded intersection late last month.
When the show ends about this time next year, the closing act will be the debut of a bridge that allows traffic to work its way under the highway with one traffic signal, not two.
The more efficient bridge structure gets cars through the intersection quicker while using less land, a key reason it has become more popular in recent years, said Dave Lindberg, project engineer for the state Department of Transportation.
“The footprint is a little smaller so you don’t have as much impact on the surrounding environment,” Lindberg said.
A similar bridge is proposed at I-5 and 116th Street NE in Marysville. There are two other bridges like this in the state, one in Vancouver and the other west of Olympia.
Lindberg said traffic exiting from both directions on Highway 522 will drive to one traffic signal that’s underneath the bridge, as will all the traffic on Fales-Echo Lake Road.
The state is spending $35 million to build essentially half of a bridge, Lindberg said, explaining that a second bridge will have to be built when the two-lane highway is expanded into a four-lane divided freeway. The five-cent gas tax hike the Legislature adopted in 2003 is paying for the project.
The state doesn’t have money to widen the road from Paradise Lake Road to the Snohomish River Bridge, nor does it have money to build an overpass at Paradise Lake Road, the last two hurdles before the road can become a divided freeway all the way to the Snohomish River.
To some commuters, it may look like the state has already started widening 522 from Fales-Echo Lake Road to the Snohomish River, but the state has really only been installing a storm water drainage pipe along that two-mile stretch of highway, Lindberg said.
When money comes available, the flat, dirt path that looks like it should be a highway will indeed become the eastbound section of the new four-lane divided freeway, he said.
The state does have $110 million to widen Highway 522 from Monroe to the Snohomish River to a divided four-lane freeway. Environmental work is under way, and construction on that project is scheduled to start in 2009.
The project will take two to three years to complete. It will include building a second Snohomish River bridge and rebuilding the Highway 522 and U.S. 2 intersection in Monroe.
Reporter Lukas Velush: 425-339-3449 or lvelush@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
