Look around some of Snohomish County’s worst traffic bottlenecks these days, and you see hope.
The widening of the Bothell-Everett Highway along Silver Lake is nearly complete. Work to add lanes to I-5 through its legendary chokepoint in Everett is under way. Construction to loosen the daily gridlock at Smokey Point is progressing. The project that will make Highway 9 a five-lane corridor from Woodinville north through Maltby has begun.
Thanks mostly to the Legislature’s nickel hike in the gas tax in 2003, projects like these have put momentum on the side of major traffic improvements.
The transportation package approved by the Legislature this year adds to that momentum, funneling another $472 million into critically needed projects in Snohomish County. Initiative 912, which would repeal the 9.5-cent gas tax increase that funds most of the package, threatens to crush that momentum and offers no solutions for the daily commute. Voters who want to get traffic moving should reject it.
The 2005 package provides major congestion relief to Highway 9, the county’s second major north-south corridor. It will spend $133 million to improve eight major intersections from south of Snohomish to Marysville, improvements that will ease daily backups by adding dedicated turn lanes where the worst backups occur. Growth is already exploding along Highway 9. These projects can’t wait while leaders spend more years trying to figure out a different plan.
There’s plenty more for Snohomish County drivers to like in this package: It would eliminate a major I-5 chokepoint by building a new interchange at 41st Street in Everett, build a new cloverleaf ramp from westbound 172nd Street to southbound I-5 at Smokey Point, bring $51 million in congestion and safety improvements to Highway 532 from I-5 to Camano Island, and make $62 million worth of significant traffic-flow improvements on I-5 through Lynnwood.
These projects are just the start of what’s needed in Snohomish County. The longer they’re delayed, the longer it will take to address pressing needs on corridors like Highway 522 and U.S. 2.
Backers of I-912 complain that a quarter of the 2005 package’s funding goes to the Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle, even though there isn’t an approved design to replace the aging, vulnerable structure. The $2 billion allocated in the package is what it will cost to build a replacement viaduct; the Legislature has made clear that if the City of Seattle wants a more expensive project such as a tunnel, it’ll have to come up with the balance.
The fact is that the viaduct is a crucial route to the entire region. If an earthquake knocks it down, the effects – unimaginable gridlock and a big blow to the economy, in addition to deaths and injuries – will be felt in Snohomish County and beyond.
The Snohomish County Committee for Improved Transportation estimates that by the time the entire 9.5-cent increase is phased in, the additional cost to an average driver will be $4.75 per month. For what most commuters will save in time, lost productivity and gridlock-induced headaches, that’s a bargain.
Keep Snohomish County’s transportation momentum going by saying no to I-912.
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