SEATTLE — The “Month of Hell” showed up in a big way on the first commuting day of I-5 construction. Is this what it’s going to be like for the entire project?
Monday was going to go one of two ways. Commuters didn’t believe it was really going to impact them, or they all went somewhere else because they were worried about back-ups.
Unfortunately, it went the first way. Without the I-5 express lanes open in the southbound direction, commuters ran into a 10-mile backup that extended from Mountlake Terrace to downtown Seattle. The travel time from Everett to Seattle hovered around an hour and 40 minutes through most of the morning, double the normal time.
Commuters bailed to I-405 south in Lynnwood, creating a travel time from Everett to Bellevue that stayed well over an hour for the morning.
“We expected this could happen simply because anytime we have the express lanes closed, then we do see these backups,” Tom Pearce, spokesperson for the Washington Department of Transportation (WSDOT), said.
WSDOT spokesperson says drivers will adapt to I-5 construction
He believes drivers are just testing the waters at the beginning of the construction work.
“People will adapt to this,” Pearce said. “We see it all the time. Whenever we’re doing road work, they just need to kind of experience it a little bit sometimes, and then they get used to it. They make changes in their behavior, and that just helps keep traffic moving.”
To put Monday morning into perspective, Monday is usually one of the lightest volume days of the week. If we saw these kinds of backups with lighter traffic, the rest of the week could be brutal.
It will take commuters trying something different to keep this from becoming a daily experience.
“People will likely adjust their schedule,” Pearce said. “They will look more at using transit. So there are options out there. It’s going to take people a few days to sort these out and just get used to it.”
The one benefit we noticed on day one was that the I-5 north drive into Seattle was not as bad as usual. The drive from Federal Way to Seattle was running as much as 15 minutes faster than on a typical day.
One day is not a trend, but it was a pleasant surprise. Pearce expects having the express lanes open northbound to have an impact on that morning drive.
“A lot of people aren’t really used to that idea yet that, ‘Hey, I could jump in the Express Lanes,’” he said. “I think we will start to see more traffic, I think, move out of the main line and into the express lanes.”
The drive through the construction zone itself was manageable. Only the two right lanes are open across the Ship Canal Bridge, and traffic backed up to about Seneca most of the day. It added about 15 minutes to drive through the city.
Will this be our daily commute through mid-August? It’s a little too early to predict, but daily commuters have the power to improve it with the choices they make going forward.
Chris Sullivan is a traffic reporter for KIRO Newsradio. Read more of his stories here. Follow KIRO Newsradio traffic on X.
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