The Highway 101 widening project is steadily moving toward Sequim. This is the view looking west as 101 climbs the hill past Kitchen-Dick Road. The plan is to widen the highway to two lanes in both directions with a westbound merge lane entering here. Left turns from eastbound 101 at this location will no longer be allowed.
To the east the new road will merge into the highway where it is already four lanes.
Do you think this widening is a good thing? Sometimes here in Florida, they’ll take a very picturesque road along a canal and destroy the canal to put in another lane. Then everybody drives on the new road and it’s immediately too crowded and no fun at all. If they had left it alone, it would not have been crowded because people in a hurry would have taken another route, and one could still enjoy the beauty of the original landscape!
Going eastbound how will drivers now access K-D? Continue to Carlsborg Rd and U-turn?
My question is the same as Lowell’s; how do you feel about this redesign and construction of the road?
@Ginny, I’m pretty certain I read that there were no turns from the eastbound lane…I’m not sure what will happen when the road’s done.
The highway will only be 2 lanes each way between Sequim & Port Angeles. East of Sequim and west of Port Angeles the roads effectively neck down to 1 lane each way. I think the road will mostly serve traffic between the two cities. The work also replaces a very old wooden bridge.
There was a big road widening project here just before the Olympics in British Columbia – what a pain – several years of interrupted travel on Guide Meridian – and we lived out that road back then. Now it is done – the traffic is not enough to really need that wide of a road – but they said it would bring new businesses even after the Olympics and all the people traveling from Seattle to BC – most of them went up the freeway anyway – and the businesses along Meridian have mostly died out for lack of traffic and difficulty getting to and from them now – plus we have 8 round-abouts instead of traffic signals – go figure.
The comments illustrate that we have all had experience in which road projects end up having unanticipated consequences. I hope your road expansion is a wise one.