Highway 2 preparing for a very busy construction season

You know those home improvement projects that you put-off for a while, and then the list of to-do’s is about a mile long? That’s what’s coming on Highway 2 this year — from I-5 to east of Monroe.

“We are repaving it, resurfacing it, working on the bridges, replacing expansion joints,” the Washington Department of Transportation’s Frances Fedoriska said. “You name it, we’re working on it between Bickford Avenue and Gold Bar.”

Contractors are going to add a median between the east and westbound lanes — that ranges between four and six feet wide — between Bickford Avenue and the Pilchuck River Bridge. To do that, though, the lanes are going to be squeezed.

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“Currently, the lanes are 12-feet wide,” Fedoriska said. “We’re going to reduce them to 11-feet wide, and that gives us the extra space that we need to be able to make up that space between the opposite directions of traffic.”

The Pilchuck River Bridge itself is going to get new expansion joints, and this is where drivers are really going to feel the pain. Highway 2 is going to be reduced to just one lane for two entire weekends. Those weekends haven’t been set, but they should be after June.

“It will be alternating traffic with flaggers,” Fedoriska said.

The westbound lanes of the Highway 2 trestle will also be closed for two weekends later this year to complete the paving project that was started last year but not finished. You might remember the detour and delays well.

“Northbound drivers, you are going to have to take State Route 9 up to Marysville and southbound you’re going to have to take it south to State Route 96 through the north end of Mill Creek,” she said. “Last summer, we had 30-percent diversion, and we still had those backups.”

Those dates haven’t been set yet either.

Further east on Highway 2, you can expect resurfacing work and core sampling to test the depth of the asphalt in preparation for a a paving project of Skykomish in the coming years.

Bottom line for Highway 2 users. It’s going to be busy, and you need to prepare for delays in your recreation.

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