At least three years before Highway 9 chokepoint will be fixed

Snohomish County drivers grind to a daily halt on Highway 9 between Woodinville and Snohomish because of a three mile stretch of roadway that has not been widened to handle the increased traffic in the region.

The northbound direction of Highway 9 between 180th and Broadway is the only spot left between Woodinville and Snohomish that does not have two lanes.

Verne, Sean, and Dave are among the listeners who have asked me when the state is going to finish the job and get rid of a chokepoint that backs up northbound traffic for miles every day.

Tell us about a chokepoint

Travis Phelps with the Washington State Department of Transportation said the road system on what used to be a rural part of the county just hasn’t caught up with all the new development.

“You’ll see a lot of these corridors we have, especially in these rural areas, that have become these massive urban commuter routes all of a sudden,” he said.

Phelps said the state is starting to put a plan together to eliminate this chokepoint.

“We’ve just started design on that,” Phelp said. “We also need to get input from surrounding agencies and complete that so we’re just barely starting to get the actual idea of what we want to do. If we got funding soon, we would probably about three years out from construction &#8212 give or take.”

And again, that’s with funding. This project is part of a long list of state transportation projects that currently have no funding. So even if the design gets finished today, the state would still need to find the money.

Phelps estimated it will cost $50-66 million to widen the three-mile stretch of northbound Highway 9.