State Route 302 corridor construction work in progress

Staff Report

Roadwork started on the State Route 302 corridor in mid August. Here, workers begin the project set to add turn lanes at the 118th Street and SR-302 intersection.

The construction work on State Route 302 started Aug. 18.

The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) contractors will focus their efforts at 118th through September where a contractor will be adding street lighting and making left turn lanes.

According to Steve Fuchs, WSDOT project engineer, a team made up of design, safety and traffic engineers met to evaluate the best way to lower the incidence of “run off the road accidents” throughout the SR-302 corridor.

Fuchs said the team identified that the leading causes of collisions seems to be related to inattention, speed, drowsy driving and nighttime collisions.

“While the collision history is significant, they appear to be very random in where they occur,” he said.

Fuchs said the team expressed a concern that the planned tree removal would open up the corridor and ultimately lead to an increase in the operating speed of the traveling public.

“Based on that probability, the team suggested the following ‘emerging countermeasures’ be considered in this corridor in lieu of the tree removal.”

• Widened edge stripe: Provide a 6 or 8 inch edge stripe that would increase the visibility to the driver and at the same time slightly narrow the appearance of the lane to improve compliance to the posted speed. The wider stripe would encroach into the lane so as not to reduce the width of the shoulder for bicycles and pedestrians.

• Widened center line strip: Provide a double 6 or 8 inch center line to further provide a slight narrowing appearance of the lane to improve compliance to the posted speed.

• Increase guideposts: Provide additional guide posts with closer spacing in wooded areas and curves to better delineate the road and catch drivers’ attention.

• Increased reflective lane markers: Provide a doubling of the number of reflectorized lane markers used to delineate the centerline.

Speed limits: Monitor speeds after the above changes and construction of enforcement pullouts to see if additional measures are needed.

Fuchs said the main “corridor” work area is in-between the Key Peninsula Highway/SR-302 intersection and the Purdy spit.

He said the emergency pullout work is not currently scheduled until later in September/early October. Most of the work should be complete by early October with final striping occurring in mid to late October, Fuchs said.

“I want to encourage the traveling public to stay focused on driving safely through the work zones and to avoid being distracted by construction equipment and the changing landscape,” Fuchs said.

For information, visit wsdot.wa.gov.