Ending I-5’s long battle against trains in Marysville

Interstate 5’s (I-5) lifelong battle against trains in Marysville is about to come to an end. The new interchange at 529 is just months from completion.

As a Snohomish County resident who travels I-5 north of Everett a lot, I have been waiting on this for years. The drive between Everett and Marysville can be one of the worst in the state. It can back up at any time of day and on any day of the week. I’ve run into five-mile backups on Sunday mornings.

Here’s why.

You have all of the on-and-off merging between I-5 and State Route 2 in Everett. Drivers lost a lane at the exit to Marine View Drive, and the HOV lane ended in the same area. All of that traffic being stuffed into the freeway in one area led to long backups to the Marysville exit. And then you added the trains.

Trains and freeways, you ask. Yes. Trains and freeways.

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Downtown Marysville will soon be easier to get to

I’ve lost count of how many times I exited I-5 at Marysville only to be stuck by a train. Washington State Department of Transportation’s (WSDOT) Tom Pearce described the train trouble.

“About a thousand feet off the off-ramp, there’s a railroad crossing, and it’s fairly heavily used,” he said. “Any time a train goes through there, the road is stopped, and we get backed up onto I-5. With the new ramp, people are going to be able to get into downtown Marysville and avoid that rail crossing.”

The new ramps from I-5 to 529 should open late spring or early summer. That will give you an option to get off of I-5 without any train trouble.

This will mark the end of years of construction that saw the extension of the HOV lane from Everett to Marysville, turning the Marine View Drive exit into a through lane plus those new on and off-ramps.

All of these improvements should make a big difference. Checking the math: that’s four lanes from Everett through the Marysville exits, including that HOV lane.

WSDOT did not extend the HOV lane in the southbound lane because that corridor didn’t suffer from the same congestion.

Pearce and WSDOT have a big thank you for people who have lived through the years of construction.

“The work has been a real pain for all the people that commute up there,” Pearce said. “We do appreciate that. We’re going to have a real improvement for them once we get these ramps open.”

You can expect construction closures over the next few months as WSDOT finishes the work.

The next big one will be next weekend when the I-5 south exit to 529 will be closed.

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Chris Sullivan is a traffic reporter for KIRO Newsradio. Follow him on X. Follow KIRO Newsradio Traffic on X. Submit news tips here.

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