MARYSVILLE – Rear-end collisions are among the problems drivers endure with the interchange at I-5 and Fourth Street.
Ask Sharon Pratt.
“In ‘95 I was rear-ended there and went through a lawsuit,” said Pratt, a Mukilteo resident who travels through Marysville for her job. The accident happened as she was stopped at the light at the bottom of the northbound offramp, preparing to turn right onto Fourth.
“I don’t necessarily go that direction if I don’t have to,” Pratt said.
And her case is not isolated. In just two years, 33 accidents occurred at the offramp, including 25 rear-end collisions.
Now Marysville’s paying more than $361,000 for a study of what can be done.
“The capacity at this interchange has long been exceeded while the traffic demand continually increased,” former state traffic engineer Dongho Chang said in a letter to the city in July 2006.
The City Council approved the study partly at the request of Councilman Jeff Seibert, who’s heard a lot of complaints about the interchange since he took office five years ago.
“They say, ‘Why are you doing things with all these other roads and not doing anything with this one?’” Seibert said.
Growth in the northern part of the city has helped spur action on the city’s other three freeway interchanges.
The bridge at 172nd Street NE was widened two years ago, and plans are in the works to improve the interchanges at 88th Street NE and 116th Street NE. But no changes have been made to the interchange at I-5 and Fourth Street in downtown Marysville – the city’s oldest.
The city hasn’t had the money for improvements, officials said. Doing the study is the way to get the interchange in line for state and federal funding, they said.
The northbound offramp and Fourth Street at the interchange have been tagged as “high accident locations” by the state since 1994, Chang said. The 33 northbound offramp accidents occurred in 2003 and 2004.
Fourth Street – also known as Highway 528 – was the scene of 139 accidents between I-5 and Columbia Avenue in those two years, according to the state.
“The congestion from the interchange spills over into the interstate and the city’s main artery, (Highway) 528,” Chang said.
Backups of westbound drivers waiting to turn left onto southbound I-5 also sometimes block westbound through traffic to the Tulalip reservation and drivers trying to get to the northbound I-5 onramp, assistant city engineer Jeff Massie said.
Massie listed three possibilities for improvement. The southbound onramp could be changed to a loop ramp at the northwest corner of the interchange, so it can be reached with a right turn by westbound drivers.
The interchange could be entirely rebuilt, which would be expensive, Massie said. Connections to Highway 529, which spans the Snohomish River slough to Everett, could be added to and from I-5.
The study by HDR Engineering Inc. of Bellevue will also look at whether improving other roads could take pressure off the Fourth Street interchange.
The study will determine which ideas are best, Massie said. No cost for construction has been determined, but “ultimately it will be tens of millions of dollars,” he said.
The study won’t be done until early next year. Any construction is not likely to happen for at least a couple of years after that, Massie said.
Reporter Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439 or sheets@heraldnet.com.
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