There’s no fix for the daily crawl along State Route 522
Mar 15, 2018, 6:25 AM | Updated: 8:11 am
An additional lane in each direction was added to Highway 522 between the Snohomish River Bridge and US 2. But there are no plans to expand the congested roadway in the other direction. (WSDOT)
(WSDOT)
Most drivers aren’t sure what will greet them on their morning commute. Will it be manageable or a mess? But there’s never a question about State Route 522, the primary route out of Monroe.
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State Route 522 is always congested. It’s going to stay that way for a while.
The highway connects Monroe and Woodinville. It’s the gateway for those communities to I-405. Every morning, the westbound drive bogs down across the Snohomish River. The highway is reduced from two lanes to one. A three-mile stretch of the highway has not been widened to meet demand.
Four years ago, the State Route 522 was widened, but only east of the Snohomish River. That leaves drivers backed up for miles every morning. It’s usually about a four-mile backup, and there is no relief coming.
Washington State Department of Transportation spokesperson Kris Olsen said the Legislature hasn’t put aside any money for relief in this area.
“There is no funding at this point for any design or construction for the actual widening that needs to occur between that interchange and the Snohomish River Bridge,” she said.
There is some cash under the 2015 Connecting Washington budget to work on one of the interchanges between the Snohomish River and Maltby Road, but it’s not much.
“The state Legislature gave us $750,000 to do some early design and analysis work for the Paradise Lake Road Interchange,” Olsen said. “In 2025, we receive $10 million more to continue that design work.”
All that money is just for design work. There is no money for actually building the interchange.
I asked Olsen if the state was looking at any short-term fixes to make the highway work better.
“I know we’ve looked at some shoulder driving,” she said. “Are there areas where we can widen just a little bit here and there? But the problem with that is that there are a lot of fish culverts under 522. If we start widening and start touching those roads and fish culverts, by law, we have to replace the fish culverts.”
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That environmental work would make any potential projects on State Route 522 even more expensive. Considering this corridor had a widening project in recent history, any new projects are at the bottom of the list.
