SR 9 - 176th Street SE to SR 96 - Widening

Safety improvements

SR 9 is an important corridor for both commuter and commercial traffic. Traffic volumes have exceeded the capacity of the highway. Higher traffic volumes also increase the risk of serious cross over and head-on collisions as drivers try to turn across heavy traffic.

When fully funded, this project will make the following improvements:

• A raised center median and designated U-turn locations reduce the risk of serious collisions by limiting the conflicts that lead to collisions.
• New guardrails, pedestrian crossings, pavement markings and elimination of roadside hazards will bring the highway up to the most current safety standards.
• Shoulders will provide room for cyclists, pedestrians and other non-motorized highway users in addition to providing a refuge space for disabled vehicles.
• This project will improve traffic capacity and flow by adding an additional northbound lane, and rebuilding and realigning the existing southbound lanes as necessary.
• Widening this section will eliminate the bottleneck that regularly occurs near 176th Street Southeast where the northbound lanes are reduced from two to one.
• Congestion is frequently caused by collisions. Reducing collisions will help ease congestion and improve travel times.

Interim improvements 

After meetings with the Clearview Community Association, a community open house in January 2017, and consultations with Snohomish County Public Works, WSDOT made several interim improvements to provide limited congestion relief on SR 9 through Clearview until the full project can be completed.

In April 2017, WSDOT reconfigured the traffic signal at the SR 9/164th Street Southeast intersection to provide more green light time to northbound drivers. WSDOT also added flashing yellow left turn arrows at the SR 9/Cathcart Way and SR 9/176th Street Southeast intersections. All three changes reduced backups.  

In 2018, WSDOT contractor crews widened and restriped a portion of SR 9 from 136th Street to SR 96 in Clearview to create a second northbound lane. The project extended the existing four-lane section by about 1,500 feet.