King County official wants WSDOT to open southbound express lanes during Ship Canal Bridge work

The express lanes will operate only northbound for the next five months, pushing some southbound commutes past 90 minutes.

Dunn sent a letter to Washington State Department of Transportation Secretary Julie Meredith, urging WSDOT to open the southbound express lanes for at least part of the morning commute.

“I am requesting that your department explore the option of reopening the express lanes to southbound traffic for a portion of the morning commute as outlined in today’s Seattle Times article,” Dunn wrote. “Even if express lanes were opened to southbound only in early morning hours, there remains a real possibility that commuters may be able to more realistically change behavior and help the flow of traffic throughout the region while this critical work is completed.”

“These impacts to southbound I-5 traffic have created debilitating conditions,” Dunn added. “This is simply an untenable and unacceptable new norm for commuters.”

KIRO Newsradio has reached out to WSDOT for comment.

WSDOT cites safety concerns, won’t change course

Earlier this week, KIRO Newsradio traffic reporter Chris Sullivan looked into why WSDOT had decided not to open the southbound express lanes.

This was WSDOT’s response.

“WSDOT is not considering any changes at this time,” the agency stated. “We’re constantly evaluating and re-evaluating the entire system, but we also know that during the work last summer with this traffic configuration, we had much greater volume in the express lanes after four weeks than we had during the first few days. Part of that may be that people traveling north of downtown are not used to having the option to use the express in the morning.”

Also, there is a safety component – with only two lanes open on the northbound I-5 mainline, a single collision could block a significant portion of the roadway, or even both lanes, with no way to go north through the city. We need to maintain some northbound capacity at all times.”

We will continue with the traffic control strategy we have in place at this time. We understand people’s frustrations and wanting us to do something different, but today, two days into this work, we are not going to flip the express lanes.”

“It’s not as easy as flipping a switch to switch them, and so we found that it operates better if we maintain a consistent system rather than take them out of service in order to do the flip the switch back and forth,” Meredith recently told KIRO Newsradio. “So, it’s a better system while we have the closures in place.”

Frank Lenzi is the News Director for KIRO Newsradio. Read more of his stories here.