Construction work caused heavy traffic on southbound Interstate 5 in and around Woodland throughout the day Friday.
The Washington State Department of Transportation cautions travelers to expect delays of up to 90 minutes in the area for the next few weeks as the $17.4 million North Fork Lewis River Bridge rehabilitation project continues. The bridge sees the heaviest traffic between 11 a.m. and 8 p.m. each day, which worsens on weekends.
The project began Monday and will require an estimated 50 days of around-the-clock work this summer, transportation officials said. Motorists may remember the northbound span of the same bridge was closed for about the same amount of time last summer for the same rehabilitation project.
“We’re stripping away the deck, pouring concrete to create a new roadway across the bridge,” said state Department of Transportation spokeswoman Kelly Hanahan. “This is great because there were a lot of potholes on the bridge decks. There were so many patches that patchwork was attached to patchwork.”
Despite the persistent delays, the agency is warning freight and non-local traffic against exiting the interstate because of potentially dangerous county and city roads around Woodland, specifically Green Mountain Road.
“What GPS is telling people to do is to get off at Exit 27. That takes you to Green Mountain Road. It is windy, twisty, sharp, steep and it is not a road built to be able to manage interstate-level traffic volumes, never mind freight and semi-trucks,” Hanrahan said.
Additional traffic on Green Mountain Road will likely lead to further accidents and delays that local agencies are already struggling to handle, she said.
While not ideal, she said travelers’ best option is just to stay on I-5 while construction continues.
“It usually takes about a week or two weeks even for travelers to start to expect that really slow travel time,” Hanrahan said. “So at first those delays are going to be significant.”
Motorists can receive real-time travel information via the WSDOT mobile app, or by visiting the department’s real-time online travel map.
