Final weekend of major I-5 closures this year
Oct 27, 2017, 7:54 AM | Updated: 8:24 am
Prepare for traffic delays and road closures along northbound I-5 this weekend. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
(AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
We have one final weekend of major I-5 closures to get through before we can put a bow on the northbound construction.
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However, we will have two more summers of lane restrictions to look forward to before the effort to “revive I-5” is complete.
The Washington State Department of Transportation has been doing concrete and expansion joint replacement on the aging freeway. This weekend, northbound I-5 will be down to just two lanes between Southcenter and the Duwamish River. That work starts Friday night and lasts through Monday morning.
Both the Huskies and Seahawks have home games this weekend, which means drivers should consider alternative routes if they planned on taking I-5 north into Seattle.
“Maybe think about taking SR 599,” WSDOT spokesperson Tom Pearce said of getting to the Hawks game. “We’re going to have both ramps from northbound I-5 to 599 open. So drivers can take that … to the stadium.” He said light rail is another option.
If you exit at SR 599, you will follow it and go across the First Avenue South Bridge or you can use East Marginal Way all the way in.
Pearce’s advice for getting to the Huskies game:
“SR 167 and I-405 are actually good alternate routes,” he said. “If you’re headed to the Husky game on Saturday you could take those and then take either I-90 or 520 to get over by Husky Stadium and then you can avoid the whole ‘Revive I-5’ to begin with.”
As I previously mention, we have two more summers of I-5 construction to endure.
“We’ve got another big project that we’re going to be doing next year to help revive I-5 when we’re working from Martin Luther King Jr. Way to Northeast Ravenna. So we’re going to have some big weekend impacts for the next couple of years.”
The state will replace concrete and expansion joints over that 12-mile stretch of northbound I-5.
There will be a smaller southbound project out of downtown Seattle to handle.
“At the same time, we’ve got another project between Spring Street and Lucille on southbound I-5. That work is almost all going to be done at night, however.”
