Experts study 520 corridor gridlock
KIRKLAND — Congestion has become as routine as morning coffee for commuters between Seattle and the Eastside, but maddening gridlock doesn’t have to be the future of a booming Puget Sound region.
Or so say hopeful organizers and participants of “State Route 520: A Corridor in Crisis” — a coloquiam drawing some of the area’s top transportation experts, planners and politicians to the Carillon Point Woodmark Hotel in Kirkland today.
“I don’t think we can make congestion go away,” said Rob Fellows, a state Department of Transportation project manager who will conduct a seminar at the forum. “A certain amount of congestion is inherent to a healthy economy, but I do think we can make things better.”
Sponsored by the Discovery Institute, a private Seattle research foundation, the two-day forum aims to tap into participants’ expertise to form viable solutions for accommodating growth and improving transportation needs along the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge and State Route 520.
The highway and its lake crossing are one of 14 areas of focus in the institute’s Cascadia Project, an analysis of transportation systems stretching from Vancouver, B.C. to Eugene, Ore. — or “Cascadia.”
Project planners are working with transportation officials, urban planners corporate officials and others across the region to form a 50-year plan that will, with other local projects, create an improved, interrelated transportation system throughout the Northwest.
Organizers say that plan is to be completed this fall and presented to the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Commission, an appointed panel now studying transportation financing needs.
“The 520 corridor is the classic bottleneck in what we call the Cascadia region,” Discovery Institute Director Bruce Chapman said at yesterday’s kick-off session. “Figuring out what to do with it is crucial to long-term regional planning.”
The aging 520 pontoon bridge now accommodates about 120,000 vehicles on an average weekday, state transportation figures show, with peak-hour flows now about equal in both directions.
But even with growth and increased traffic volumes, peak flow counts haven’t changed much in recent years, Fellows said. What has: longer periods of heavy traffic along the state route, as a growing population adjusts work and commute schedules before and after rush-hours, he said.
“What we’re seeing now is volume growth filling in the off-peak periods, accounting for longer periods of congestion,” Fellows said.
Strategies for improving 520 are underway. A corridor study and interchange and transit improvement projects aim to improve Interstate 405. And an I-90 steering committee is now examining ways to create “a viable two-way transit system” from Seattle to the Eastside, said Renee Montgelas, a DOT administrator.
Committee members last week learned from state engineers that a proposal to add two more lanes to the I-90 floating bridge for buses and carpools could create structural problems and hamper emergency responses to the bridge. Other alternatives will be examined at a meeting next month, Montgelas said.
While such projects examine individual corridor needs, they all fit within a larger scheme for the area’s future, Montgelas said.
“The trick is to try to get them all linked together, but not dependent on each other,” she said. “We have to think about the bigger picture, but we don’t want it to end up where you can’t do anything unless you do everything.”
Among current projects on the larger-scale is the Trans-Lake Study, which considers transit possibilities and improvements to 520. Last year, a 47-member committee ended 14 months of study with six alternatives, ranging from taking no action to installing high-capacity transit lines, project manager Fellows said.
During its deliberations, the Trans-Lake committee nixed an idea to build a new bridge between Kirkland and Sand Point. But as the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge ages, such proposals are becoming frequent.
Opened to traffic in 1961, the 520 bridge has a life span of roughly 20 to 25 more years, said Ed Henley, a state bridge management engineer. In the past decade, more than $40 million has been pumped into it for major strengthening and improvement projects, Henley said.
A $288,000 project to replace 15 guide rollers — giant cylinders that retract pontoons to open the bridge for boat traffic — is now under way. It will require four more weeknight closures and one weekend closure, July 7-9.
While today’s forum will examine such long-term solutions as building alternate highways and boring a tunnel beneath the lake, strategies that can be implemented in the short term are just as important.
Creating more transit and light rail services, examining passenger ferries runs and improving local “feeder” roads could all have immediate effects, said Preston Schiller, a Cascadia Project consultant.
“The table is set for addressing the 520 corridor as part of a long-term plan,” added Burce Agnew, Cascadia Project manager. “But the big question we’re dealing with is, how do you pay for it and how to get public support.”