by Bart Treece

It’s unusual to see stops signs disappear, but that’s what will soon happen where eastbound State Route 518 meets 51st Avenue South in Tukwila. A few years ago, WSDOT made the intersection an all-way stop. Meaning that everyone – drivers exiting eastbound SR 518 and those coming north and south on 51st Avenue South – would need stop and before proceeding through.

The problem with this is, shoppers trying to leave the Westfield Southcenter Mall on Klickitat Drive (which becomes 51st Avenue South), would get backed up because of the stop and go upstream. It’s not ideal, nor was it the intention of the all-way stop.

New configuration
All but a single stop sign will be removed, and that will remain in place for folks who are exiting eastbound SR 518 to turn left to northbound 51st Avenue South. When analyzing this intersection, we noticed a lot fewer vehicles were making that turn anyway. For the ones that do, signs, guardrail and striping will be adjusted to give them a better sightline and they can proceed when the intersection is clear. Traffic exiting the freeway will continue to head south toward the mall without stopping, and soon northbound drivers from 51st Avenue South will continue on through also.

When will this happen?
If the weather holds, maintenance crews will make the changes on Sunday, Aug. 10. Traffic will be flagged from 6 a.m. until around 10 a.m.

The end result
These intersection improvements should help traffic move more efficiently, which also promotes better safety for surface street drivers in the area.

By Afternoon Traffic Gal, aka Harmony Haveman Weinberg

Three weekdays down and just one more to go as we each continue to do our part by adjusting our driving/biking/riding/busing habits during the westbound I-90 lane closures to replace two worn out expansion joints.

WSDOT engineers released the latest traffic volumes on I-90 that show just how the commute looked each day this week so far and compared it to averages taken earlier this month.

Check out the graph below and follow the RED line for Monday, the GREEN line for Tuesday and the PURPLE line for Wednesday up until noon. The BLUE line shows the typical average times and volumes when all lanes are open on westbound I-90. As you read the graph you can see drivers who took westbound I-90 through the construction zone have consistently left earlier each day this week than they usually do. Many drivers found alternate routes or changed up their travel plans all together to avoid getting caught in a major backup.

This graph shows travel time comparisons for the first three commutes of #I90to1 against last week's westbound I-90 commute, which is in grey. With this we can tell that drivers are adjusting their trips with the peaks periods beginning earlier in the day. This helps keep traffic moving through the work zone.



We credit all commuters for helping with #I90to1! Let’s keep it up! We are almost finished!

~ Afternoon Traffic Gal

by Mike Allende

Concrete sealing part of the new expansion joint

The concrete needs about 12 hours to cure but workers will be monitoring it this afternoon. The concrete needs to reach a strength of 2,500 psi (pounds per square inch) for traffic to go over it. Whenever that happens, we’ll be switching the work zone to the other side of the highway to work on the other half of the joints. That is scheduled to happen around 9 p.m. Monday morning drivers will see traffic moving through the work zone in the Phase 2 configuration.

Phase 2 - Monday - Friday morning

There’s one mother who always gets her way. A mother that doesn’t seem to care about anyone’s plans, but her own. Yes, that’s her: Mother Nature.

And that was pretty evident over Thanksgiving weekend, when WSDOT’s traffic data shows 33 percent fewer drivers traveled over Snoqualmie Pass and 45 percent fewer traveled over Stevens Pass compared to the mild 2009 weather.

And those pre-Thanksgiving weather conditions, and lower travel numbers, weren’t just in the mountains. They also showed up in other places. On I-5 near the U.S./Canadian Border, there was a slight decrease (less than one percent) and through the Tacoma/Olympia area, there was a six percent decrease from 2009.

WSDOT tracks holiday travel in locations where travel increases significantly on long weekends. With its five-day break, Thanksgiving tends to see the most highway travelers of the year.

(Side note: let us know in the comment about your Thanksgiving route over the river and through the woods. We have the black and white data, but we're always looking for color commentary.)

In general, lower elevation areas saw decreased travel for the beginning days of the 2010 holiday weekend, and increased travel towards the end. This pattern also tends to favor weather as the key indicator, as the winter storm lost steam Thursday.

In the mountains, travel was down all weekend – as the snow hit hard most of the weekend, even into Sunday.

I-90 Snoqualmie Pass
For Wednesday through Sunday, 126,500 vehicles traveled I-90 over Snoqualmie Pass. This was a decrease of 62,800 vehicles (33 percent) compared to 2009.

• 11,400 fewer (25 percent) traveled Wednesday
• 8,700 fewer (36 percent) traveled Thursday
• 16,600 fewer (50 percent) traveled Friday
• 14,200 fewer (38 percent) traveled Saturday
• 11,900 fewer (24 percent) traveled on Sunday

US 2, Stevens Pass
For Wednesday through Sunday 17,100 vehicles traveled US 2 over Stevens Pass. This was a decrease of 14,200 vehicles (or 45 percent) compared to 2009.

• 2,100 fewer (38 percent) traveled Wednesday
• 1,500 fewer (41 percent) traveled Thursday
• 3,400 fewer (48 percent) traveled Friday
• 3,900 fewer (52 percent) traveled Saturday
• 3,200 fewer (44 percent) traveled Sunday

I-5, Bellingham to Canadian border
For Wednesday through Sunday, 139,800 vehicles traveled I-5 between Bellingham and the Canadian border. This was a decrease of 200 vehicles (less than one percent) compared to 2009.

• 607 fewer (2 percent) traveled Wednesday
• 5,000 fewer (23 percent) traveled Thursday
• 600 fewer (2 percent) traveled Friday
• 2,900 more (10 percent) traveled Saturday
• 3,100 more (11 percent) traveled Sunday

I-5, Olympia to Tacoma
For Wednesday through Sunday, 522,000 vehicles traveled I-5 between Olympia and Tacoma. This was a decrease of 35,600 vehicles (6 percent) compared to 2009.

• 24,500 fewer (18 percent) traveled Wednesday
• 4,800 fewer (5 percent) traveled Thursday
• 7,900 fewer (7 percent) traveled Friday
• 700 more (1 percent) traveled Saturday
• 1000 more (1 percent) traveled Sunday

We are always looking for ways to improve the travel information we offer on our website to help you make the most informed decision and know before you go.  Recently, new technology is available that gives us new ways to display traffic conditions to you.

We'd like to show you what we have been working on internally and hope you'll  take the time to let us know what you think. On this new "alpha website," we have taken most information from our existing traffic website and put it on what we call a "slippery map." (We are calling it alpha, because we don't think it's ready for a beta just yet.) This "slippery map" is one that you can pan and zoom into, to see everything that could be happening on your route to make a truly informed travel decision before you leave.

Let us know what you think of this new website by leaving a comment in the comment area below.  We know it isn't quite finished yet, we have a few things that were left out because we want to check with you to make sure this is the direction that we should be going..

Some things we would like you to think about  while using the map

• Does it give you a better picture of the traffic conditions on roadway?
• Is it harder/easier to find your route home?
• How is the navigation speed of the map?
• Do the layers of information load quickly for you?

There are many unknowns with a site like this and our focus while you are browsing is to collect some metrics.  We need to make sure this site will handle the amount of spiking web traffic we get when it snows or have inclement weather in the Northwest. We average around 700,000 page views per day in the summer months and that number moves up to 1 million page views per day in the winter months.  When it snows in the greater Puget Sound area that number can go as high as 6 million page views per day.  We know that there is nothing more frustrating than a website that is not available when you need it and we want to make sure that no matter what direction we go our website can handle the demand.

Thanks for taking the time to check this site out and offering your feedback, we appreciate it.

Without further ado here is a link to our Alpha Traffic and Travel information website.

(Please leave feedback by clicking on comment icon on top right of this story.)