Benson Road to close weeknights for I-405, off-ramp work

The state and its I-405 contractor will close Benson Road near City Hall weeknights for about eight weeks as part of construction of a new freeway off-ramp to Talbot Road.

The weeknight closures – 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. – will start Friday, March 19. Signs will mark the closure, which runs from Benson and Grady Way at City Hall south to Benson and Puget Drive.

That stretch of Benson also will close for an entire weekend, 8 p.m. Friday, March 26, to 5 a.m. Monday, March 29, for major modifications to Benson to accommodate a new bridge for the off-ramp.

Local access will remain open between Puget Drive and Eagle Ridge Drive on Benson Road. The suggested detour for the closures is Puget Drive, Talbot Road and Grady Way.

The weeknight closures will help ease construction impacts on daytime commuters, according to the state Department of Transportation.

The closure will allow workers to pave, relocate utilities, complete retaining walls and build the new bridge structures for the new I-405 off-ramp to Talbot Road.

This week, crews continued to remove existing walls so Benson can run closer to the freeway. The weekend closure in March will allow crews to lower part of Benson by about two feet to accommodate the new bridge.

The new bridge will carry the off-ramp to Talbot over Benson Road.

The state and the design-builder, I-405 Corridor Design-Builders, originally had asked the city for the full closure of Benson Road during the roughly two-year project. That request was denied, with the council mindful of the impacts to residents and businesses in the Highlands when Duvall Avenue was closed for a major project.

Instead, single-lane closures have kept traffic moving through the construction zone.

The state and contractor worked with the city on the current road-closure proposal, said Lisa Hodgson, the I-405 Stage 2 project engineer for the transportation department.

The project is already ahead of schedule and could finish even sooner – sometime in spring 2011 – because of the night closures, she said. Originally, the project was to finish in late 2011.

The project, Hodgson said, is "going well."

Work on the $83.6 million project is easily visible from the freeway, Benson Road, downtown Renton and City Hall. The project is creating a half-diamond interchange, with a new onramp from Talbot Road to northbound I-405 and the new off-ramp from southbound I-405 to Talbot. Construction work will become more apparent on Talbot in April.

The off-ramp bridge is the second new one in a relatively short distance.

The contractor has already placed the girders for a bridge that will replace the current Benson Road bridge over I-405. The new Benson Road bridge will be 10-feet higher than the current one.

The old bridge will be removed sometime in July, requiring the closure of each direction of 405 separately during two weekends.

Contact Renton Reporter Editor Dean Radford at editor@rentonreporter.com or 425-255-3484, ext. 5050.

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