The grass-roots effort to get an overpass built at I-5 and 172nd Street NE has come full circle. The new span opened early Friday, two months ahead of schedule.
“It was just such a thrill to drive across it and honk at the workmen and give them the thumbs up,” said Becky Foster, co-chairwoman of the Smokey Point group that scrounged to find money for the new bridge in 2004.
Scrounging became necessary when the bridge was left off a list of projects to be funded by the 2003 5-cent-a-gallon gas tax increase.
After talking its way into money from several federal, state and local sources, the group of local business owners and officials pulled together the additional $9 million needed to build the bridge.
“One of our friends on the steering committee likened us to the little engine that could,” Foster said.
The overpass has been under construction since August 2004.
Traffic “was pretty bad for a while,” said Travis Phelps, a state Department of Transportation spokesman. “Our goal was to limit the amount of suffering.”
Good weather and an efficient contractor helped get the span open two months early, Phelps said. A ribbon-cutting ceremony is planned for Monday.
The state will keep working at the site through the spring, building sidewalks and doing landscaping, Phelps said.
In 2009, the state will start work on a $17.8 million project that will add a cloverleaf ramp to allow westbound traffic to enter southbound I-5 without having to make a left turn.
That project will be paid for by the 9.5-cent-a-gallon gas tax approved by the Legislature in the spring and upheld by voters in November.
Reporter Lukas Velush: 425-339-3449 or lvelush@heraldnet.com.
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