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Avoid and beware: On the road lessons for Seattle's newly arrived


Mercer Street in Seattle. (KOMO Photo)
Mercer Street in Seattle. (KOMO Photo)
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A Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist, newly arrived from Chicago in the late 1970s, wrote of his serene morning commute from Lake Forest Park into downtown Seattle, contrasting it to such Windy City parking lots as the John F. Kennedy and Dan Ryan Expressways.

Well, that was then. Nowadays, major Puget Sound freeway intersections populate top-10 lists of worst tie up places in America. Several Seattle arterials become parking lots at certain times of day.

Here are some tips of places to avoid, times to travel and flanking maneuvers in the Emerald City:

--Avoid the "Mercer Street Mess": The taxpayers put up millions, but the new two-way Mercer Street Mess is worse at rush hour than the old Mercer Mess. It also tends to be populated by heavy construction vehicles. Motorists stuck in the mess are known to vent anger via emails to friends. Flanking maneuvers through Amazonia are doomed to failure.

--Push back times when you leave and return from work: Morning peak hour traffic tends to thin out, ditto such going-home rush hour bottlenecks as going up Denny Way and heading toward freeway entrances on Boren Avenue. Driving into the city from East Seattle neighborhoods, for instance, becomes a lot easier at 9:30 a.m. than it is at 8:30 or 9 a.m.

--Perfect and responsibly use shortcuts: Leaving downtown on Interstate 5 for Seattle-Tacoma Airport, amidst a mess of merging lanes, is awful in late afternoon. Heading down Martin Luther King Way avoids much of the mess, but requires watching speed limits. The city deploys traffic cameras, the most infamous on a downhill slope near Thurgood Marshall Elementary School.

--Avoid city-created Belltown rush hour congestion: The Seattle Dept. of Transportation, in recent years, has eliminated car lanes to create bus-only lanes on Battery and Broad Streets. The backup on Battery as you head north for state Route 99 is awful. The creation of a protected bicycle lane on Second Avenue, cheered by the influential pedaling lobby, has slowed traffic at certain hours to a crawl ... complicated by articulated Metro buses turning onto and off of the busy street.

--Find alternatives to Rainier Avenue: The main drag out of town toward Renton is not fit for motorists, bicyclists or people trying to cross the street. It has been reduced to one lane in each direction through Columbia City, a popular eating and movie-going neighborhood. How to avoid Rainier? MLK Way takes you partway. Just short of Columbia City, turn east on S. Genesee Street, and then south on 50th which becomes Seward Park S. It eventually reunites you with Rainier Avenue at Rainier Beach.

--Arrive early: Headed for a late afternoon event/appointment on the Eastside? Leave early, get there, have a cup of coffee instead of inching along in traffic. Ditto for one in-city location: Queen Anne Hill is especially difficult to get to -- no kidding -- at certain times of day. If headed out of town on a Saturday or Sunday, take the 8 a.m. Whidbey Island ferry out of Mukilteo, and avoid the lineup late in the morning.

--Tune in for traffic: Interstate 405 is the least predictable of our freeways, often with an open road in one place and traffic at a crawl a couple miles away. Keep your car radio on: I find KOMO at 1000, with reports every 10 minutes, reliable.

--Everett-Marysville is a mess: A lane realignment project, northbound on I-5, has made approaching Everett a little easier. But freeway traffic is often bumper-to-bumper when you get there. It stays that way across the bridge and lowlands to fast-growing Marysville, and beyond that to Quilceda Creek with its WalMart and casino. Only advice: Sometimes the old SR-99 bridge is quicker going south.

--Tacoma on I-5 is a perpetual tie-up: A friend who moved here in the late 1980s recently marveled that construction on Interstate 5 through the City of Destiny has been a constant for three decades. Traffic slows to a crawl, whether you're headed to Olympia on a weekday morning or coming back from the ocean early on a Sunday afternoon. Bear it. Northbound congestion usually begins to clear out at Fife.

--The Washington State Patrol is watching: Slow down, especially at such spots as the 145th Street underpass on I-5 heading north out of town ... Or the sharp turn heading into Nisqually, south of Tacoma en route to Olympia ... or as you approach Issaquah on I-90 out of Bellevue. The 60 mph speed limit north out of Marysville on I-5 should be obeyed. Never mind that you've just shaken off the traffic jam and want to floor it.

--Learn about and use our expanding transit options: the most important option.

Sound Transit was once lampooned as "light rail to Tukwila," until Sen. Patty Murray got money that took it to the airport. When you have visitors, encourage them to take the train in from the airport. When leaving, drop them off -- my favorite place is the station at MLK and Rainier. They're taxpayers. They helped pay for it.

An in-town option: An old friend and Tyee Club member used to tailgate outside Husky Stadium before UW football games. She's now found, along with thousands of other fans, that it's far less stressful to take light rail to the University Station (or whatever Sound Transit is going to call it). The commute for students, staff and faculty at UW has been made much, much more pleasant.

Driving in Seattle, a city built on hills, is awful even when we get only half an inch of snow. Get an Orca Card and take the bus. Follow the example of local journalists, whose patient-bus driver human interest stories fill pages and airwaves whenever we get a "snow event."

During the summer, as many as 200 cars crowd popular trailheads in the Cascades. King County Metro has developed a poppular bus service -- Trailhead Direct -- which begins in Seattle, stops at Eastside locations, and delivers hikers to such popular trailheads as Mt. Si and Mailbox Peak. Given the elevation gain in both places, a bus ride back to town is massively welcome.

Even our demonstrations go easier with rapid transit. The Angle Lake light rail station, just south of the airport, is less than a block from the federal detention center in which the Trump Administration has held undocumented women. Light rail has enabled 10,000 people to gather there to hear Gov. Inslee, AG Ferguson and Rep. Jayapal speak passionately for immigrant rights.

Safe travels!

SeattlePI.com is a media partner with KOMO News. Read more at SeattlePI.com.

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