Officials herald latest phase of US 12
The widening project is near the halfway point, with 18 miles of highway from Walla Walla to Tri-Cities now four lanes and 21 miles left to go.
WALLA WALLA UNION-BULLETIN
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WALLA WALLA -- The latest effort to widen U.S. Highway 12 was officially welcomed today.
The celebration under the overpass at Myra Road marked the near-completion of two years of work to make more than eight miles of the roadway a four-lane divided highway from the west edge of Walla Walla to the vicinity of Frenchtown.
U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., lauded the broad-based effort to unite public and private interests behind the drive to widen the roadway from Walla Walla to the Snake River in Burbank.
Along with Murray, a host of other state and local officials spoke, emphasizing how the latest phase of work will increase safety on the highway and aid economic development in the Walla Walla Valley."This community has been absolutely amazing," Murray told the crowd of about 60 people gathered for the noon event.
"It's a great day. It shows such a partnership with this coalition," said state Secretary of Transportation Paula Hammond. "The only way we were going to get this done was to band together."
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I am and alwasy have been a strong supporter of the new highway 12 program in WW County but there are at least two aspects I continue to question; one is the design of the interchange at Burbank as shown in the UB tonight, and the other is the continued confusing description used by WSDOT to describe how to use a roundabout. As shown in the paper tonight, when coming to WW a driver will be required to trun off the highway, go off to the roundabout, go around it, then turn back to the highway to continue to WW.I hope someone made an error on the drawing instead.
As for the "how to use a roundabout" instructions, they are written as if all of them are designed the same, with 4 lanes of traffic into and out of them - but they are not all four lanes. They say you cannot change lanes in the RA but if yo are NB on Myra and want to go west on the old highway, you are instructed to be in the left lane when entering. To leave you have to be in the right or outer lane, so you must change to get out. The answer seems to be: stop or remove the lane lines so you all end up in one wide lane, thus you aren't actually changing lanes. Phooey, lanes are lanes, it just makes it confusing. I spent three years driving on all sizes of roundabouts in the UK and these ones we have created in Washington are not comparable to those. Good luck to everyone with the new road. At least the road is great-now all we have to do is wait for all the at-grade crossing crashes like at Clinton Street.
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