Stuck after a Hood Canal Bridge opening? New traffic signal aims to help

Getting trapped in your neighborhood because of nearby construction or an emergency can be quite an inconvenience. Getting trapped more than 300 times a year because of regular bridge openings? That’s just a giant pain in the backside.

Ask anyone who lives just north of the Hood Canal Bridge.

Traveling SR 104 through the Hood Canal can be quite challenging. You never really know when the bridge might open for boats, leaving you idling on either side of the water for up to an hour.

When the bridge reopens to traffic, you get a steady stream of hundreds of cars moving through. If you are trying to get out of your neighborhood on the north end of the bridge, you might not find a gap to get on the highway.

That’s why the Washington Department of Transportation has made several changes north of the bridge over the last few years. It has added two new roundabouts north of the bridge to help improve access and cut down on the number of bad crashes created by frustrated drivers trying to shoot those small gaps.

WSDOT installs traffic signal north of Hood Canal Bridge

Now WSDOT is adding one more change. It has installed a traffic light for northbound SR 104 traffic approaching Paradise Bay Road. That’s the first road north of the Hood Canal Bridge and where WSDOT just installed one of the new roundabouts.

“The meter will activate during periods of heavy traffic when there are backups on Paradise Bay Road,” WSDOT spokesperson Mark Krulish said. “So what the meter is going to do is it’s going to create gaps to allow those turning from Paradise Bay Road to enter the roundabout more easily.”

These changes are all about safety and keeping people moving.

“The roundabout itself has already been a major improvement in this regard, but during those times of peak congestion, the meter will snap into action and help create those gaps,” Krulish said.

New signal goes active Monday, but bridge traffic will decide when it first turns on

The new traffic signal goes active on Monday morning, but there is no way to know when it will first turn on. That’s up to the bridge openings and the traffic volumes.

“A driver might see it for the first time when there’s heavy enough traffic to warrant it, and we don’t know when that will be,” Krulish said.

WSDOT did not install a corresponding southbound SR 104 traffic signal in the same area. Though backups for bridge openings certainly create lines of traffic in that direction. There are several ways to access 104 from south of the highway.

Nearly 17,000 vehicles a day use SR 104 in this spot. It’s also a popular recreation route.

This new signal wraps up work on the $11 million project.

Chris Sullivan is a traffic reporter for KIRO Newsradio. Read more of his stories here. Follow KIRO Newsradio traffic on X.

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