MARYSVILLE – A new idea is emerging to ease huge traffic jams in Lakewood where Costco, Target and other new stores are dumping more than 13,000 cars and trucks onto nearby roads every day.
City officials believe slapping a $10 million overpass across I-5 at 156th Street NE would offer the best chance of clearing up the bottleneck.
Residents who live near the new stores sometimes have been stuck in traffic for a half-hour or more while driving only three or four blocks from their homes to 172nd Street NE.
JoAnn DeLazzari, who lives in the Crystal Tree Mobile Home Park near the stores, agrees with the overpass plan.
“Hopefully this will alleviate our traffic congestion, but it’s going to be two or three years before it’s completed,” she said.
She is part of a group of residents and officials from local governments and the state who met Tuesday and endorsed the idea.
The next step is to hire consultants to start designing the overpass, city engineer Kevin Nielsen said.
Most of the money would likely come from the state, which would have to approve the project. Several property owners on both sides of I-5 also have said they’re willing to tax themselves to pay for improving the roads.
Costco and Target opened last fall along Twin Lakes Boulevard just south of 172nd Street NE and west of I-5. Best Buy and Red Robin opened earlier this year. The area was recently annexed into Marysville.
The 13,000-plus new vehicle trips per day are expected to rise to 28,800 when more stores are finished later this year. Other housing developments are also planned.
The stores and more than 200 homes all share one outlet: 27th Avenue NE, opening onto 172nd Street NE just west of I-5.
The city has proposed two primary traffic fixes to create outlets to the south. One was a $1 million southbound freeway onramp at 156th Street NE, as the first step of an overpass and interchange.
The other was a $20 million, north-south road connecting the south end of Twin Lakes Avenue to 140th Street NE. The projected completion date for both projects was 2010 at the earliest.
The thinking now is to build the overpass over I-5 first, many hope, within two years. The overpass would not provide access to the freeway initially, but onramps and offramps could be added later.
The overpass would also give through traffic another way to get across I-5 without having to go through the busy interchange at 172nd Street NE, Nielsen said. The bridge would connect Twin Lakes Avenue west of the freeway to Smokey Point Boulevard on the east side.
The plan would likely substitute the $20 million connector road to 140th Street NE with a second span over the railroad tracks to 156th Street NE. The street is blocked at the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway tracks west of I-5.
Nielsen said a road over the tracks would provide another outlet to the south.
Owners of more than 1,000 acres of property on both sides of the freeway have signed a petition declaring their willingness to contribute to a local improvement district that would speed up construction of the bridge, said Joel Hylback, owner of the Plant Farm at Smokey Point, on Twin Lakes Avenue.
“It was absolutely property-owner initiated,” Hylback said, adding that he and others understand a traffic remedy is needed.
In addition to the stores, business parks could contribute to traffic volume in the future. Marysville has plans to annex a 130-acre triangle known as Lakewood South, south of 156th Street NE between the railroad tracks and I-5. The area is now rural but will be zoned for business parks.
Hylback owns about 45 acres, including his plant nursery, in the triangle. He said he currently has no plans to sell or develop the area for business parks, and the same goes for other property owners with whom he has talked, he said.
Nielsen said if the business park zoning pans out, in 20 years the triangle could generate more than 1,600 afternoon rush-hour trips per hour, roughly comparable to the current volume on Grove Street in central Marysville.
Reporter Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439 or sheets@heraldnet.com.
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