Early results from The Herald’s Fix Your Commute transportation project show that widening I-5 in Everett is the top priority for ticked-off commuters in the Puget Sound region. But just barely.
After the Everett I-5 fix, Snohomish County participants said their top commuting headaches are in King County, lending credence to the idea of a regional transportation fix.
"It’s the King County roads that we have a problem with," said Mark Briggs, The Herald’s new media editor who helped spearhead the Fix Your Commute project. "(Our results) show it’s truly a regional problem."
State Department of Transportation officials look forward to hearing what readers and viewers participating in Fix Your Commute have to say, said Linda Mullen, the department’s director of communications.
"Which projects would the public like to see? Which projects are the public interested in funding?" Mullen said.
She said the information will help in the agency’s constant struggle to balance the public’s desire for transportation improvements with its hesitancy to raise taxes to pay for the improvements.
So far, more than 1,700 people have told us what their top five worst traffic headaches are.
Among projects getting 15 or more votes, widening I-5 in Everett had nabbed 273 votes as of Saturday afternoon. With 269 votes, fixing I-5 in downtown Seattle was a close second.
Widening the Highway 520 floating bridge over Lake Washington between Seattle and the Eastside came in third, with 229 votes, and adding carpool lanes on I-5 in Tacoma placed fourth, with 217 votes.
Fixing backups on I-5 that occur when drivers leaving Seattle on Mercer Street weave across the interstate so they can head east on Highway 520 rounded out the top five, with 200 votes.
Based on population, the greatest percentage of votes have come from Snohomish County. Still, except for widening I-5 in Everett, no local traffic hot spots made the top 10 of overall vote-getters.
Second on Snohomish County’s list of traffic headaches is I-5’s 41st Street interchange, a project that came in 15th overall among all voters.
Next up for the county, coming in at 23rd, 24th and 25th, are widening the south end of Highway 9, building new ramps at I-5’s intersection with Highway 96, and adding lanes on the U.S. 2 trestle between Highway 204 and the Snohomish River. Highway 9 received more than 100 votes, the Highway 96 and I-5 interchange project received near 100 votes, as did the trestle.
Twenty-five other Snohomish County projects received at least 15 votes.
Although most participants chose from a suggested list of major transportation problem areas, many told us about their individual, often unique, commuting problems.
Suggestions ranged from building a new north-south freeway parallel to Highway 9, to opening up carpool lanes to all traffic outside of morning and evening rush hours, to creating reversible lanes on I-5 in Everett for through traffic.
One constant theme among the suggestions was to have state troopers ticket drivers for driving slow in the fast lanes on Puget Sound area freeways, to get these slow pokes out of the way and speed up commute times.
Several of the top projects identified by readers and viewers — including widening I-5 in Everett — would be paid for by the 5-cent-a-gallon gas tax increase that the Legislature recently approved.
Reporter Lukas Velush: 425-339-3449 or lvelush@heraldnet.com.
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