Paving pain coming to I-5 south of Seattle
Jun 7, 2016, 5:25 AM | Updated: 5:27 am
Your summer travel plans are going to take a huge hit if you don’t plan ahead for some serious construction on I-5 between Sea-Tac and Federal Way.
The construction begins in a month, and it’s expected to cause serious delays.
The freeway is in serious need of some T-L-C. If you’ve driven it recently, that’s not news to you, with all the ruts and cracks.
“I-5 is 50 years old, and it was built to last 25 years so we’ve done very well with it,” Tom Pearce with the Washington Department of Transportation said. “Now is time for some major rehabilitation.”
Contractors have already been working overnights to replace freeways panels on that 13 mile stretch of freeway.
“Some of the sections we will just grind off the old pavement to get the ruts out of the road,” Pearce said. “Other sections we will be putting in new panels.” More than half of the 235 concrete panels have already been replaced.
Contractors will also pave a 2.7-mile section of the freeway where there are 500 broken panels — It would take too long to replace all of them. And that’s where the major impact of this project will be felt.
The state needs to close lanes during five weekends this summer to complete the work. Crews will also do some expansion joint replacement on the Duwamish River Bridge. Southbound I-5 will be reduced to just two lanes during the weekends of July 8-11, 15-18 and 22-25. There will be similar reductions August 12-15 and 19-22. The freeway could be reduced to just one lane overnight.
Next summer crews will do the same work in the northbound direction.
