Commuters in the Kennydale areas should see a little relief this summer as the Washington State Department of Transportation has announced plans to add an additional ramp meter to the North 30th Street on-ramp in an attempt to cut down on the back-ups through the neighborhood.
Noting that ramp meters are “one of the things people have a love/hate relationship with,” WSDOT Northwest Region Assistant Traffic Engineer Morgan Balogh told the city council on Monday that they should improve speeds and reduce collisions.
Balogh said the city contacted WSDOT earlier this year with their concerns about traffic through the area and suggested moving the meters closer to the freeway and adding a second metered lane to the northbound entrance to Interstate 405, which Balogh called “good ideas.”
As it stands now, the line to get on the highway in the morning routinely backs up on Kennewick Place Northeast past Kennydale Elementary School, sometimes all the way to Aberdeen Avenue Northeast.
The city has been studying the issue for about two years and earlier this year announced plans to re-stripe the roadway and eliminate parking, creating a right turn lane for those waiting to get on the highway and hopefully opening up the road for through traffic.
The city is still planning to do that work, but it admits it will not be enough without the additional capacity on the ramp and the highway.
“I-405 is so congested in the morning that people are trying to fins parallel routes,” former Public Works Administrator Doug Jacobson said last month prior to his retirement. “On the east, the parallel routes stop at 30th.”
At Monday’s meeting, Balogh told the council that WSDOT now plans to widen the on-ramp to add an additional lane, which will be used during ramp meter operations. Balogh said this will “effectively double” the ramp’s capacity and should relieve some of the pressure on the surface streets, though he said the new design would eliminate the HOV lane on the ramp.
But North 30th is not the only on-ramp with backups in the Kennydale area and WSDOT also has plans to increase capacity on the Northeast 44th Street ramp as well.
At 44th, WSDOT plans to move the meters closer to the highway and upgrade the equipment to allow for two lines of metered vehicles instead of one. According to Balogh, when completed it should provide four times the storage on the ramp itself.
But Balogh called the Northeast 44th Street project an “interim solution” because the entire interchange is set to be rebuilt as a part of the I-405 widening project. In addition, Northeast 44th has been identified for a bus rapid transit station if the ST3 package passes this fall.
“More capacity on the freeway is really what’s need to address the bigger problem,” said WSDOT I-405/SR167 Program Director Kim Henry.
“We appreciate you doing this very much,” Mayor Denis Law told the WSDOT representatives on Monday. “I’m sure it’s going to make a big difference to the significant backups we’re experiencing now.”
According to the WSDOT, the contract for these projects is scheduled to be advertised in July, with a contract awarded in August and the new lanes are set to open to traffic this Fall.
Reach Editor Brian Beckley at 425-336-4959.
