Frustrating ‘squeeze’ through Everett, Marysville hasn’t ended
Jun 22, 2016, 8:19 AM | Updated: 11:18 am
The “SnoCo Squeeze” ended last week but the lanes are still more narrow than usual.
Rain initially delayed the effort to replace 41 aging expansion joints because the state couldn’t re-stripe the lanes to create a construction zone.
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The wet weather is again to blame. Over the last 10 days, the rain has prevented crews from re-striping the lanes to get them back to the proper width of 12 feet.
The rain isn’t the only challenge.
“We need the weather, we also need the striping contractor to be available. So far, we haven’t been able to line them up,” said Kris Olsen with the Washington State Department of Transportation.
The contractor needs just one dry night to re-stripe the lanes. Work is lined up for Thursday, but there’s currently a 60 percent chance of rain during the day.
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“They should put all the lanes back into their normal spots and normal widths in one night,” Olsen said.
Until that can happen, lanes will remain 11 feet wide and the speed limit will stay at 45 mph.
In addition to re-striping the lanes, there is still work to do on the expansion joint replacement project. Because of the heavy rains at the start of construction, crews still have a new weeks of overnight work to finish. WSDOT gave the contractor some extra time to finish the overnight work while holding firm on finishing the weekend work by June 15.
