Results tagged “i5”

I-5 was closed for several hours this past Friday as police arrested two men who had been firing assault rifles from the 92nd Street overpass over I-5. Local residents heard shots fired at around 9:30 p.m. Upon arrival, police heard gunfire within 50 yards and saw tracer rounds fired from a wooded area. A SWAT team was called in, I-5 was shut down, and roadblocks were set up. The suspects, who have not yet been named, were found and arrested after a two-hour search.

We mentioned a few days ago that WSDOT is doing construction on southbound I-5 this weekend, and that a lane will be closed from Yale to Union Street from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Saturday. But we want to warn you that northbound traffic won't be all giggles and schadenfreude--they're keeping the express lanes open southbound all day to help with the lane closure, so northbound is gonna be molasses in January, too. Plus, Seahawks fans, getting near Qwest Field is just part of the fun: "WSDOT is building a bridge over the railroad tracks on S. Royal Brougham Way and a new off-ramp from I-90 and I-5 to S. Atlantic Street/Edgar Martinez Drive S. Construction is also under way on nearby city of Seattle projects and on WSDOT’s Alaskan Way Viaduct Electrical Line Relocation project. Fans should expect construction-related lane, parking and pedestrian access restrictions related to these projects south of Qwest Field."

WSDOT tells us that from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. this Saturday, they're closing the onramp from Yale Avenue to southbound I-5 and one lane of southbound I-5 between Yale and Union Street.

Smoke from a brush fire that started at about 1:15 today has got traffic backed up for miles on I-5. Q13 has raw video. The fire blocked all southbound I-5 lanes and four northbound, but WSDOT Twitter tells us that now 3 lanes are open each direction. Somewhere in all that traffic are people who were trying to head to Southcenter Mall just for the air conditioning, and got stuck on a sweltering, smoky I-5 instead. We feel for them. But this is exactly why we never leave Capitol Hill--wait, what's this about a brush fire on Broadway near Harborview? Folks, the end is officially near.

Earlier today, we were smiling over the Seattle Times trying to use the first day of light rail ridership as a benchmark. "What was the Times headline on February 4, 1965?" we asked, thinking of the opening of I-5. Then we really wanted to know, so we looked it up.

"Seattle at Night from Rizal Bridge" by David Hogan (Cap'n Surly), from our Flickr pool

Seattlest headed south on I-5 this past weekend for our annual Oregon coast getaway. Instead of boring you with details about rugged ocean scenery, we thought we’d detail what must be the least beautiful of the major interstate commutes from Seattle.

"I Love Seattle" by James Hall (seattleye)

The slurry hits the fan tonight on southbound I-5 under the Convention Center, we're told by WSDOT Twitter. Lanes are being closed while the broken, cracked, 40-year-old concrete is being fixed. WSDOT, break it down:
• Contractor crews will begin closing the southbound lanes of I-5 at Stewart Street at 8 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 13. Three out of five lanes will be closed by 11 p.m.
• The Union Street off-ramp and Howell Street on-ramp will also be closed. Detour signs are in place. You can find detour maps here.
• The I-5 express lanes will remain open in the southbound direction all weekend so drivers can get to downtown Seattle. We want to remind drivers that the Pike/Pine and 5th/Columbia exits are HOV only. Mercer Street, Stewart Street and through traffic is for all drivers.

WSDOT has announced they will be re-opening I-5 this afternoon after flooding and debris forced the state to close the highway by Chehalis on Wednesday. The road crews are hard at work making sure the stretch is safe, and will be letting trucks and then regular traffic through at some point later today. That's great news for commerce in general, commuters, and all the weekend shows who were looking at cancellation. Won't it be nice when spring is here and the weather stops wreaking havoc on our city?

We're irritated enough about people who were too cheap to fork over the cash for a hotel room or cab fare home after drinking that next year, we might resort to shooting drunk people's cars with paintballs, like this guy from Kennewick did. Kennewick Man did end up going to jail for his creative problem-solving, though, so paintballs might not be the best course of action after all. Please drive safely, city. Driving drunk isn't worth the risk.

      

Still a little shaken by the charter bus collision yesterday that almost sent one (if not both) buses full of Job Corps kids plummeting 30 feet onto I-5, we walked back down to the scene, East Thomas Street and Melrose, this morning. The buses had been towed away last night. The west end of East Thomas was vigorously sanded to give the trucks traction, and a temporary guardrail installed. Thank god for the days of plentiful rebar.

            

Today, two charter buses slid down icy, cobblestone East Thomas Street on Capitol Hill, across Melrose, and crashed through the guardrail, almost plummeting onto I-5. One bus made it several feet past the guardrail before coming to a stop. Buses frequently use East Thomas Street--they exit I-5 at Olive but can't make the left turn down Denny, so they go two blocks up, turn left at East Thomas and then right on Denny to get to the Greyhound station. This time it appears two of them attempted East Thomas at the same time, and the results were heart-stopping. At this point we're not hearing of any major injuries. Updates to come.

It's a tour bus, not Metro, but there were 75-some people in two buses hanging over I-5 on Bellevue Street (Capitol Hill). Apparently they were all visiting from Moses Lake. How many times did we tell ya'll not to try to drive in these conditions?! Here's live video coverage from NWCN, and here's the Seattle Times's current coverage. Holy crap. Everybody, please walk around if you must leave your cozy houses, because we do not want to have to report on any of our readers getting injured in accidents out there today.

           

Photos from December 17-18, 2009.

Last night, concerned citizens met at Town Hall to discuss the remaining two viaduct replacement options on the table. Though there are some still holding out for options that have already been discarded, Gregoire, Sims and Nickels will be deciding between these two only: a surface transit hybrid (map [pdf], fact sheet [pdf])and an elevated bypass four-lane scenario (map [pdf], fact sheet [pdf]). We couldn't make it to the meeting, so we'd like to stage our own Seattlest version right here, right now: what do you think, and why? (Comments are welcome, poll closes at noon tomorrow.)

It's always hard to come back to work after a holiday weekend; furthermore, even though it's Wednesday, last week Wednesday was Friday (so to speak). Today it's merely a run-of-the-mill Wednesday, which could be considered depressing. Maybe that's why this guy jumped into traffic on I-5 by NE 50th St. this morning. He wasn't hit, but other than that no one seems to know exactly how he's doing or what possibly made him think that was a healthy and life-affirming hump-day activity.

Thirty-seven Washington State troopers on motorcycles will be scrutinizing the behavior of drivers on I-5 today and tomorrow in what the P-I reports is a two-day push against dangerous freeway speed and aggression. That means if you're on I-5 in the next couple of days, 84% of the state's motorcycle troopers will be dedicating their full resources towards disciplining bad behavior on the road. It's all too easy to cruise way over 60mph during non-peak traffic hours, so be careful out there or you might find yourself with a ticket. (Put down those cell phones, too....)

If you walk up or down Pine Street toward downtown, you may have seen a group of people intently watching the dog run over I-5 just to the west of Minor Ave. If you slowed your gait and took a gander yourself, you would have had the shock we did last night of seeing a bunch of goats munching away at the hillside. It was strange enough that we stopped our run to the bus to snap a quick photo.

After sitting around Centralia College as the heat soared towards ninety while David re-hydrated, we headed back to the car and hit I-5 for one of our last stops along the way to Portland. But just south of Centralia, we decided to make a quick stop to check out one of the sites that's always fascinated us—and nearly everyone else who takes I-5: the infamous "Uncle Sam" billboard.

Exactly one month ago, Seattlest told you about the fastest speeder ever clocked on I-5 at a whopping 164 mph. The driver of the speeding motorcycle, Ben Howard Kelly, was arrested on I-5, but claimed he had digital camera footage of his record-setting and law-breaking ride.

As a driver, we admit we've cursed our bicycle brethren more than once and occasionally blamed them for things far beyond their two-wheeled control. That being said, we've never blamed cyclists for interstate or highway traffic, but after an incident on I-5 yesterday, that may change.

Writing news for Seattlest, we spend a lot of time feeling slightly befuddled by local news headlines. Last night's perusal of headlines offered us this gem: "Semi road rage leads to big mess on I-5." We read it as a case of mild road rage, somehow causing a traffic jam. A sentence into the story, we realized our error. In reality, the driver of a semi truck suffered a case of road rage when another truck driver tailed his truck too closely. The angry driver slammed on the brakes, damaging his trailer and sending him careening onto the highway's dirt shoulder.

A motorcyclist was arrested on Sunday outside of Eugene on charges of reckless driving. Ben Howard Kelley was clocked at going 164 mph on I-5. It is the top speed a trooper has ever verified for a speeder on I-5. Kelley was arrested wearing a helmet, one law he didn't break, but we imagine that wouldn't help much if you crashed at 164 mph.

Usually, when traffic is dawdling on I-5 at 30 m.p.h., we're longing for the arterial: same speed, fewer Seattle drivers. But starting next year, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) may be intentionally slowing down drivers on I-5 in hopes that it will ease traffic.

"I5 looking south" by futileboy We humbly suggest a subtitle for this jigsaw-puzzle shot: The Kingdom of Amazonia. Have you joined the Seattlest Flickr pool yet?

We found out about the Bettie Page house on I-5 from Metblogs, mere hours before we first saw it for ourselves. We could've just linked to the photo Metblogger Josh pointed out, but we figured, why not see if we can get a snapshot ourselves?