STANWOOD – Dick Moa remembers a time when the road from Stanwood to Camano Island was virtually empty. Farms dominated the landscape, and a train chugged through town.
Those days are gone.
Now Moa has to wait in traffic to get to the grocery store or to I-5. Subdivisions full of families have replaced cow fields. The train no longer stops in Stanwood.
The retired truck driver misses the open roads of days past. And despite an $88.6 million plan to revamp and unclog Highway 532 from I-5 through Stanwood to Camano Island, he doesn’t expect the roads to ever return to the way they were.
Like many at a community-wide transportation meeting Thursday night, Moa knows growth is inevitable and thinks the government needs to act fast to rectify clogged roads.
When he was in high school, three buses ferried students from Camano Island to Stanwood, he recalled. Today there are 13.
“That shows you how much traffic has changed,” he said. “I can’t get on the road.”
At the meeting, officials from the state Department of Transportation rolled out plans to bring back an Amtrak train station in Stanwood and to make Highway 532 a safer, clearer road.
Planned projects include adding turn lanes at several intersections, repaving parts of the highway, adding truck lanes and synchronizing stoplights. In 2009, construction is scheduled to start on a $33 million new Gen. Mark W. Clark Memorial Bridge, the two-lane bridge leading to Camano Island. The new bridge will still have two-lanes, but it will be built wide enough to expand to four lanes in the future.
On average, 20,000 vehicles travel Highway 532 every day, according to the Department of Transportation. In the last decade, traffic has increased by almost 70 percent in some locations.
Accidents are also on the rise, mostly at intersections. The intersection of 88th Avenue NW and Pioneer Highway is among the most dangerous. From 2004 to 2006, the intersection had almost 30 collisions – more than any other intersection in Stanwood.
The improvements should keep traffic flowing better and reduce accidents, said Kevin Tobin, a project manager for the Department of Transportation.
As for the train station, news wasn’t so good. Construction of a covered platform has been put on hold while the federal government debates proposed new rules regarding platform height. The construction timeline has already been pushed back several times, and Kirk Fredrickson, the project manager, was hesitant to estimate when the Amtrak station may be up and running.
“We’re still trying to hammer this thing forward, but I’m here to apologize to a lot of you here,” he told the crowd Thursday. “This is not going forward as fast as we would like, and I know it’s frustrating.”
The meeting was sponsored by Design Stanwood, a group trying to shape the town’s future, and drew more than 50 people, including state Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, the Stanwood City Council and Mayor Dianne White.
Retiree Vivian Henderson attended to hear the latest on Stanwood’s transportation issues and to support the community.
“I’m committed to the idea of having a train station here,” she said after the meeting. “There was one when I was raised. In the first grade, I rode it, and I remember it well. Not having one disconnects us from a safer, more sane and environmental universe – and I’m looking forward to having it back.”
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