I-5 has been a war zone in Everett for two months.
Drivers have faced pockmarked roads, the lopsided lips of new asphalt, hard-to-see lane markings, flying rocks, orange barrels and slow-moving trucks as the state rebuilds the busy freeway.
Paving from 41st Street SE to the Boeing Freeway was supposed to finish by mid-September.
Instead, thanks to the sudden arrival of rainy weather, the state still has five nights of paving to do and few, if any, dry nights to finish the work.
It’s a race against time.
If nighttime temperatures drop to 45 degrees — too cold for pavement work — the project might need to take a long winter’s nap.
“I think we’re on the edge,” said Pat McCormick the state Department of Transportation’s chief engineer for the project. “We’re running up against the clock in terms of the weather and temperature.”
On Thursday afternoon McCormick was scrambling to shoehorn in paving time on Thursday and Friday nights, in what looked like the only dry night-time conditions for the next week.
“We’re literally talking hour by hour — to go, not go — trying to get this thing paved,” McCormick said. “I don’t know where we’re going to end up. That’s just how uncomfortable I am.”
If the forecast for a clear Friday night pans out, the state will be aggressive with its paving efforts, starting lane closures on southbound I-5 at 7:30 p.m. and closing the highway down to just one lane by 9 p.m.
That means expect trouble if you head south to Seattle tonight.
“Expect long backups,” said Ryan Bianchi, a Transportation Department spokesman. “We encourage drivers to take alternate routes or to leave early.”
Options include Highway 529 and Highway 99 through Everett or Highway 9.
The backups could be worse Saturday morning, when the state plans to delay opening the highway until 8 a.m. Even at the early hour there is surprisingly heavy traffic, Bianchi said.
Avoiding backups will become less of a priority the longer the project takes, he said. “We’ve got to get this done.”
The next break in the weather looks like it won’t occur until next weekend. The National Weather Service is forecasting two weeks of rainy and overcast weather and a wetter fall and earlier winter than normal.
If the temperature slips to 45 degrees or cooler, the asphalt can’t bond properly with the layer below, which means it would likely have to replaced as soon as next year, McCormick said. Low temperatures have been hovering around 48 degrees for the past few days.
Contractor Atkinson-CH2M Hill lost 14 nights of work to rain and equipment failures since paving started on Sept. 6. The paving project started in the beginning of August, when all of the old asphalt was scraped away.
“We’ve been working any night it’s been dry,” said Dave Doles, project manager for contractor Atkinson-CH2M Hill.
The project involves paving both directions of I-5 from 41st Street SE to just past the Boeing Freeway. Northbound I-5 paving has finished, but only two lanes of southbound I-5 are complete.
The paving is part of an ongoing $263 million widening project on I-5 in Everett.
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