Revive I-5 returns to Seattle with a full freeway closure

SEATTLE — It’s time to start planning ahead for your travel through Seattle next weekend when Revive I-5 is back with another weekend of closures for the freeway.

You will not want any part of southbound I-5 this weekend. All southbound lanes of the freeway will be closed at the I-90 off-ramp for the Revive I-5 project. The lanes will be shutdown at 7 p.m. on Friday, and they will be closed until 5 a.m. on Monday.

“We’re going to shift all the traffic off of mainline I-5 onto the collector-distributor for the entire weekend,” the Washington Department of Transportation’s Tom Pearce said. “That means we’re only going to have a single lane coming out of the collector-distributor.

The I-5 express lanes will not open southbound for that entire weekend either.

“We can’t really open them southbound because the express lanes join the freeway after the collector-distributor, and that’s part of the area we need closed,” Pearce said.

The northbound express lanes will open as normal.

With only one southbound lane squeezing through the collector-distributor lanes, you can imagine what that is going to do to traffic around the region. Pearce wants you to start thinking about your plans right now.

“Figure out where you’re going and if you really need to take the freeway, " he said.

I-405 will be a good option, if you’re coming from Snohomish County. Highway 99 would be a good option too, but that comes with a toll in the tunnel. That’s a dollar for Good to Go users, $3 pay by mail.

This is the first of 16 weekend closures on this stretch of the freeway over the next two summers. The first two will be for grinding and repaving. The next 14 will be for expansion joint repair.

“This project is going to replace 40 expansion joints on southbound I-5 and another 16 on I-90 and the various ramps in the area,” Pearce said.

And he knows this will be a giant pain for anyone trying to get around downtown Seattle, but Pearce said it’s better than having to make emergency repairs during rush hour.

“We’ve actually had six expansion joints break in the last three months,” he said. “We’ve had to go out late morning or early afternoon and do repairs on these expansion joints during the week, during full traffic.”

So plan ahead.

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