‘Stupid and asinine’: Drivers react to new lane restriction on SR 302 between Purdy and Gig Harbor

“Stupid and asinine.” That’s the reaction from many drivers after the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) took away a lane of SR 302 between Purdy and Gig Harbor.

That comment came from KIRO Newsradio listener Kandi describing the recent changes on SR 302, heading south from the Purdy Bridge to SR 16. WSDOT removed the right lane from the highway, heading up the hill from the Purdy Bridge to SR 16, last month, reducing the capacity by half on this one-mile stretch of road.

The right lane is now a bike and pedestrian lane, though very few, if any, bicyclists or pedestrians use this road.

I received more emails about this switch than most transportation projects.

“We want more traffic lanes, not fewer,” Lee wrote me. “People here are really irritated.”

“This area gets slammed with traffic,” Jason wrote me. “So the removal of the lane will only make things worse and likely more dangerous.”

“Any chance they will take it back?” Gary asked me.

I think you get the point. Daily drivers want their lane back.

WSDOT cites safety concerns behind lane change near Gig Harbor

So what was WSDOT thinking by making this change?

I asked WSDOT Olympic Region Traffic Engineer Justin Belk just that. His answer was simple: safety.

“We had experienced a lot of speeding, and most of that speeding was happening in the right-hand lane going up the hill towards SR 16,” Belk said. “Also, aggressive driving behavior. We see last-minute merges when that lane’s already been turned into a right-turn lane to Burnham Drive. People were going through to SR 16.”

If you didn’t catch that, the right lane became exit-only at Burnham Drive, but people kept driving through, illegally, simply to cut off traffic at the merge.

“By taking that lane away and providing the opportunity for a merge sooner, we eliminate the potential for the last-minute merge,” Belk said. “We reduce the potential for speeding and increase safety for all users.”

The addition of a bike and pedestrian lane in its place was just a bonus.

“The bonus is that extra space that we save from that lane is reallocated for people who want to walk and bike on that segment,” Belk said.

There was no great need for a bike or pedestrian lane there. The right lane wasn’t taken just to create it but to eliminate the bad driver behavior in the area.

“If they had been going the speed limit, zipper merging, perhaps we would not have felt that that change was as necessary as it was,” Belk said.

Drivers reportedly using bike lane to bypass traffic

But that bad driver behavior hasn’t really changed. Daily drivers are reporting that people are actually driving in the bike lane to bypass traffic anyway.

“It’s a bike lane,” WSDOT spokesperson Doug Adamson said in disgust. “People never should be driving in a bicycle lane where people have the full expectation, if they’re walking out there riding their bicycle, that they have a car zipping through there, and that’s completely dangerous behavior.”

If that bad behavior continues, WSDOT might have to put up barriers to protect that lane. Right now, the lane is simply striped for bikes and pedestrians.

WSDOT is going to make other changes to the corridor before the end of the year. It will be adding more signs and reducing the speed limit. It will go down to 35 mph near the bridge and 45 mph the rest of the way to SR 16.

The state is also going to eliminate left turns at Burnham Drive. That’s a spot with frequent crashes, many of them T-bones.

WSDOT says congestion hasn’t significantly increased — drivers disagree

And Belk said the changes have not added time to the drives.

“We’ve not seen any significant increase in congestion as a result of this change,” he said.

Many of the 20,000 daily drivers might argue that point.

Like Lee, who wrote me, “Now in the morning commute the bridge traffic can be backed up several miles.”

It’s also only been about a month. There’s always an adjustment when WSDOT takes a lane or makes changes like this.

By the way, the long-term plans in the area call for a roundabout at the east end of the bridge and a whole Purdy Bridge replacement. Those plans are not funded.

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