This past weekend, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) completed a spot improvement to the eastbound I-90 on-ramp at Rainier Avenue. Within a matter of hours, one of the most treacherous spots to cross along Rainier, with two lanes of vehicle traffic already angling to get on the highway, was made a little bit safer as it got narrowed to one lane using paint and plastic posts. Of course, it remains to be seen how long the posts last and how the redesign influences driver behavior. But the spot improvement will make a real positive difference for people using Rainier Avenue that aren’t in a car.
This change may not have happened without the work of transportation advocates pushing hard for significant improvements in areas around I-90’s ramps in anticipation of Sound Transit’s Judkins Park Station opening in 2023. WSDOT’s Jordan Longacre describes how it happened: “These changes came through a collaborative effort between WSDOT, the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT), King County Metro and Disability Rights WA. We have a shared interest in improving the pedestrian crossing and relieving the back-ups from the I-90 on-ramp onto Rainier Ave.” We covered how the Disability Mobility Initiative is leading the charge for changes along Rainier earlier this year.
This isn’t the only recent spot improvement made to an I-90 ramp along Rainier — in early 2020 a marked crosswalk was added to the westbound on-ramp, a feature that it amazingly did not have before then.
