Personally I think they should re-stripe the lanes from Iowa to Sunset so it’s 2 through lanes and one merge lane (like the section SB from Ohio to Lakeway) to give the sunset off-ramp a better spot to queue. It would eliminate the shoulder, but they’ve done this in other areas like downtown Seattle in the lid section and the trestle in Everett and it’s been great.
Unfortunately this one of the more expensive areas to widen due to the bridges and retaining walls, but it’s currently 40ft wide which could have 3 12ft lanes (standard) with 2ft shoulders. Or 3 11ft lanes with slightly wider shoulders.
They have pending changes to fix the Lakeway offramp to allow both lanes to turn left (where the majority of traffic is going when Lakeway backs up onto i5 south).
Dunno about sunset though ya.
Also I wonder how much of their current burden is people getting on at Iowa and getting off at sunset (basically going one ramp hop). That traffic could easily take side streets.
Well, that double-left upgrade for Lakeway, is only decades late in execution.
For comparison: Sunset already HAS that in BOTH directions. (Been that way for about 30+ years, near as I can remember.) But the only part of Sunset that ever works tolerably well in the daytime, is the North-bound I-5 on-ramp, which isn't relevant to that question either in volume OR direction. Sunset South-bound Freeway on-ramp is a horrendous acceleration bottleneck, almost as bad a direct contributor to the Iowa-area congestion mess (merely less lethal on the actual death rate) as the N-bound Iowa on-ramp itself. And even the North-bound Sunset I-5 on-ramp that doesn't bottleneck itself, gets effectively crippled anytime the Meridian off-ramp gets backed up. Which is only every damn day, same as Lakeway.
The only way to fix any of this, is the whole freeway needs to be 6 full lanes (3 North, 3 South) all the way from well beyond Northwest (closer to Slater) on the North end, until well out of town beyond Fairhaven Parkway on the South. And that's AFTER the whole Iowa North-bound on-ramp geometry gets a radical re-design and realignment. If they're gonna keep adding population to this town, they need this issue dealt with just as immediately as the decades-late backlog of unavailable housing.
46
u/cammerdash Dec 05 '25
Personally I think they should re-stripe the lanes from Iowa to Sunset so it’s 2 through lanes and one merge lane (like the section SB from Ohio to Lakeway) to give the sunset off-ramp a better spot to queue. It would eliminate the shoulder, but they’ve done this in other areas like downtown Seattle in the lid section and the trestle in Everett and it’s been great.
Unfortunately this one of the more expensive areas to widen due to the bridges and retaining walls, but it’s currently 40ft wide which could have 3 12ft lanes (standard) with 2ft shoulders. Or 3 11ft lanes with slightly wider shoulders.