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Westbound Highway 512 &#8212 where it meets with I-5 &#8212 backs up every day and at all times of the day.

“Traffic volumes have grown at a rate that was really never expected in the original design of the interchange,” said Kevin Dayton, the Regional Administrator for the Olympic Region of the Department of Transportation.

Tell us about a chokepoint

We’re at capacity, but what about the design issues that are contributing to this daily nightmare?

Dayton said it’s a combination of the worst contributing factors of congestion. We have a freeway-to-freeway connection and ramps that are just too close together.

Highway 7 joins 512 and then a mile and a half later, Steele Street enters the equation. After that you have I-5. There is a lot of weaving, and as Dayton said, a lot of driver behavior at play.

“People do compete for that and we get secondary factors that people think, ‘You’re trying to get over, you didn’t wait your turn in line, I’m not going to let you in,'” he said. “We get a little bit of push and shove going on.”

Dayton said the WSDOT has planned for some minor improvements.

“We have a project coming up in the next construction cycle that will actually add ramp meters to the SR 7 on-ramp to westbound 512 and also add a ramp meter at the westbound on-ramp at Steele Street,” he said.

But the takeaway here, long-term, is that the state has nothing on the drawing board to fix this westbound chokepoint. It would take a major redesign and that’s not even on the WSDOT’s wish list from the Legislature yet.