You could make a basket there’s so much weaving.
The place on I-5 where both the westbound U.S. 2 and Everett Avenue on-ramp converge shortly before the exit to Marine View Drive is a source of frustration for drivers like John Cloakey of Lake Stevens.
Cloakey suggests the state eliminate the solid white line to merge from the trestle, which bumps up pretty close to the exit for Marine View Drive. “This creates a chokepoint,” he argued, not to mention traffic jams.
No changes are planned to the striping, though.
“There’s a lot happening in the quarter-mile section between the U.S. 2/Everett Avenue merge onto northbound I-5 and the interstate’s Marine View Drive exit in Everett. We want to limit the number of actions occurring at one time, which is why we have the white line that keeps U.S. 2 traffic from merging onto northbound I-5 immediately,” said Tom Pearce, spokesman for the Washington State Department of Transportation.
“This design resolves the U.S. 2 and Everett Avenue merge first, creating a single lane of cars that then can merge onto northbound I-5. Shortening the white line between U.S. 2 and northbound I-5 traffic would create a situation where drivers from U.S. 2 could have to deal with merges from two directions at once: from the left as I-5 drivers try to get to the Marine View Drive exit and from the right as drivers from Everett Avenue drivers trying to merge onto northbound I-5.”
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