A multibillion-dollar proposal to replace the Interstate 5 Bridge across the Columbia River will continue to generate newspaper headlines this year, as project planners finalize the design and Clark County voters weigh a ballot initiative to support it.
Several lower-profile highway projects, meanwhile, are also in the works to ultimately ease life for motorists and commuters in Clark County.
• Ridgefield
A $23.1 million project to improve the city of Ridgefield’s single interchange with Interstate 5 is expected to move into its second phase in April.
The project added two lanes in each direction with turn lanes, and sidewalks for bicycle and pedestrian travel. That portion of the project, estimated to cost $6 million, will realign 65th Avenue and add roundabout intersections on Pioneer Street east and west of the freeway.
• Salmon Creek
A $133 million project will untangle one of the county’s most notorious traffic bottlenecks, the spot where Northeast 134th Street currently cinches together I-5, Interstate 205 and the former state Highway 99.
Clark County began its portion of the project last year, with a new park-and-ride lot for C-Tran commuters.
The project’s linchpin will be a major new east-to-west thoroughfare — Northeast 139th Street — that connects Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center on the east side of I-5 and I-205 to the area near Fred Meyer to the west.
The project will also reconfigure on- and offramps and convert the existing park-and-ride lot into a mitigation pond. County officials expect the long-sought project will relieve an off-and-on building moratorium that’s plagued the Salmon Creek area over the past several years.
The Washington State Department of Transportation expects the first phase of the project to be finished by late 2013 or early 2014.
• St. Johns
This $57.4 million interchange project, expected to get under way in May, will eliminate one of the last traffic impediments to the free flow of traffic on state Highway 500 along the northern edge of the city of Vancouver.
The project is intended to improve safety while moving toward the goal of turning state Highway 500 into a free-flowing freeway. Since 1996, the state has installed three new interchanges between I-5 and Orchards. The new interchange at St. Johns Boulevard is expected to be finished by 2013, leaving just two traffic lights on Highway 500 in Vancouver — at Falk Road/42nd Avenue and Stapleton Road/54th Avenue.
No time frame has been established for tackling those last two traffic signals.
But when those projects are finished, motorists will be able to cruise along Highway 500 through the city’s northern fringe unfettered by traffic signals of any kind.
• Highway 14
Construction will get under way this summer on a $57 million project to widen 3 miles of state Highway 14 from two lanes to four between Camas and Washougal.
The project will include a new bridge on the east end of Lady Island within sight of the Georgia-Pacific paper mill.
It will also include a “split diamond” interchange with onramps and offramps at Union Street in Camas and a half-mile east at Second Street in Washougal. The interchange will replace traffic signals on the highway at Second and Union streets.
WSDOT spokeswoman Abbi Russell said the project will use 140,000 tons of rock and dirt excavated from a highway-straightening project in the Cape Horn area in the Columbia River Gorge.
“It’s a big cost savings,” she said.
