Drivers on I-90 slam on the brakes as they approach Highway 18

Transitioning from 70 miles an hour to a dead stop is never a good situation, but that’s what drivers routinely have to deal with on I-90 as they approach Highway 18.

This chokepoint is by the far the one that has generated the most comments and emails over the last two months.

Driver Max Potts wrote about routine mile-long backups approaching Highway 18 on both sides on I-90. David Glenn called the interchange the worst design he’s ever seen. It’s become dangerous, David Bocock wrote.

The congestion situation at this interchange is pretty simple. A lot more people have moved to the area so there are more cars, and Highway 18 reduces to a two-lane road shortly after the off-ramps so it can’t handle the volume of people getting off I-90.

The state recently made the eastbound exit to Highway 18 an exit-only lane, but now drivers are simply parked in that lane, and drivers going 70 miles an hour have to make a quick lane change and slam on the brakes.

A lot of drivers believe that better light timing on the exit ramps is the answer.

“We have actually upgraded the signals out there recently,” WSDOT’s Travis Phelps said, but there is only so much signal timing can do he explained.

“It can be an effective tool to help certain movements or an intersection get through a little more quickly, but once you get to the point we’re at now, just having too many darn cars, signal timing you’ll still see a lot of that big-time congestion,” Phelps said.

And like a lot of the Chokepoints I’ve highlighted, there is a fix on the drawing board, but the legislature hasn’t found the money to pay for it. Engineers want to put a direct ramp from I-90 westbound to Highway 18, and they want to widen Highway 18 to handle the extra volume.

“There’s too many cars,” Phelps said. “We don’t have enough funding to get a relief valve built for that interchange, so we’ll continue to see congestion out there, especially as the population grows.”