Traffic Payout

It makes sense that most of the projects we take on are about improving traffic or driver safety. And if you follow our news, you may also notice that when you hear about us doing something off of our highways or freeways, it’s usually to improve fish and wildlife habitat. Well, this weekend we’re celebrating the end of a project that’s about improving the environment for many of our human neighbors in Seattle.

Residents living along I-5 in Seattle’s Green Lake and Licton Springs have experienced increasingly louder levels of noise coming from the freeway since it was built more than 40 years ago. Back then, standards for reducing noise in the neighborhoods were lower than they are today. And as the Seattle and the Puget Sound region have grown over the past decades, there are far more tires hitting the concrete than were ever expected.

To improve the noise environment for residents of these neighborhoods, we designed and constructed three noise walls on the west side of I-5 between Fifth Avenue N.E. and N.E. 92nd Street.

We developed a great working relationship with our neighbors throughout the planning, design and construction phases. After the Legislature funded the project, we first checked in with the neighbors by conducting a poll of property owners to make sure the noise walls were something the neighborhood really wanted. The neighbors overwhelmingly said yes, and we went back to them to get their input about how the walls would look, where and how tall they would be, and ways that we could even save more trees during construction.

Now we want to say thanks for the help and the patience and we hope things are a little quieter from now on. We’ve invited residents that live near the brand new noise walls to join us this Saturday, April 18, to commemorate the improvement to the neighborhood.

Here are the details:

• 10 a.m., Saturday, April 18.
• Dead end of Latona Avenue N.E. just north of N.E. 77th Street.