New Montlake off ramp debuts after another eastbound SR 520 weekend closure

Getting to the University of Washington (UW) from eastbound SR 520 is changing this weekend. A new temporary off-ramp is opening after a weekend closure.

As if it isn’t hard enough to merge over to the Montlake exit from eastbound 520, drivers are going to have a little less room to do it on Monday. The Washington Department of Transportation (WSDOT) is opening a new temporary off-ramp to Montlake on June 1.

“The reason why they need to do that is just to expand the work zones as we continue building this project,” WSDOT spokesperson Steve Peer said.

Drivers will exit eastbound 520 a little sooner than today. The ramp is actually a straighter shot to Montlake, taking drivers off the freeway along the new construction platform for the new Portage Bay Bridge.

“It is actually a little bit straighter than it is now,” Peer said. “It’s still a one-lane exit, like it is now. It will be, and then once you get a little bit further up the off-ramp, it’ll go into other lanes.”

This new off-ramp will actually be able to hold a few more cars. That should help with the backup. It should only take drivers one time through to get it.

“About 14,000 cars a day are exiting as they go eastbound between I-5 and Montlake, so a good percentage of people are exiting there,” Peer said. “It’s just going to be a new exit, and as usual, if we stripe it right, and we will, people will be able to use that new off-ramp.”

Just follow the car in front of you

“I think the challenge might be, if you’re coming from northbound I-5 to eastbound 520, you’ll have just a little bit less time to be able to merge to your right to get to Montlake,” Peer said.

To make this switch happen, WSDOT will be closing eastbound SR 520 from I-5 to the Eastside all weekend. The closure starts late Friday night and lasts through early Monday morning. Drivers will not be able to access eastbound 520 from Montlake either. The entire ramp system there will be shut down.

But that’s not the last big closure for Montlake this summer. With drivers on the new temporary off-ramp to Montlake, the contractor needs to take the old one down.

“If you look at it from here, you can see the existing ramp that drivers are using that needs to be removed so that we can start shifting things around to create a work zone,” Peer said.  “That’s going to be a pretty high impact. We’re looking at probably August, a seven-day closure.”

So put that one on your calendar. A full weeklong closure of Montlake is coming in August.

We have about five more years of construction from Montlake over to I-5.

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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