Everett, Wash.
Published: Thursday, March 20, 2008

Roundabout could ease traffic

The state says a traffic circle is the best way to control vehicles on the Boeing Freeway if an industrial park is built on the edge of Everett.

By Scott Pesznecker
Herald Writer

 EVERETT -- A large roundabout might be built on the Boeing Freeway if a proposed industrial park is allowed along Japanese Gulch.

The roundabout -- proposed for the intersection of Highway 526 and 40th Avenue W. -- would be the safest, most efficient way to control additional traffic to and from the proposed development, said Mike Swires, Snohomish County area traffic engineer for the state Department of Transportation.

California's Birtcher Development & Investments could be required to pay for the roundabout if the company decides to build a light industrial park at Japanese Gulch.

"The onus would be on them to design it to our standards, and to do what they can to make it fit into the area," Swires said.

An estimated 34,000 cars use the Boeing Freeway each day, Swires said.

Birtcher is studying the possibility of building an industrial park on about 55 acres of a 160-acre site on the west side of the gulch, a swath of woods and wetlands with land in Mukilteo and Everett. The project would be inside Everett city limits.

The development company and the property owner, Metropolitan Creditors' Trust, are aware the state might require a roundabout to accommodate traffic from the project.

"It is a cost that we have taken into consideration," said Jim Edwards, senior vice president for Birtcher's Northwest region, in a written statement. "We think it is a viable traffic management device that improves traffic both in the industrial land in Mukilteo, and the industrial land in Everett, west of Japanese Gulch."

The company has yet to file a project application with the city of Everett, city spokeswoman Kate Reardon said.

State planners would rather see a roundabout than new traffic signals installed at the intersection, Swires said. Traffic tends to move fast on that portion of Highway 526, and a traffic signal would increase the potential for dangerous, angled collisions, he said.

A roundabout would decrease the possibility of serious-injury collisions because traffic would be moving slower and in the same direction, he said.

"Rather than try to have a freeway end at a signal, we'd rather slow them down and have them moving through a roundabout," Swires said.

Although the industrial park would be in Everett, the Boeing Freeway is one of the key roads leading into Mukilteo.

Mukilteo officials support the idea for a roundabout although they would rather see nothing done to impede traffic into the city, Mukilteo public works ­director Larry Waters said.



Reporter Scott Pesznecker: 425-339-3436 or spesznecker@heraldnet.com.
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