Your drive across I-90 Snoqualmie Pass will look a little different soon. The week of Nov. 6, the Washington State Department of Transportation will switch the westbound lanes onto the second, new avalanche bridge. The first avalanche bridge was completed in summer 2016. This configuration will provide three lanes going westbound and two lanes going eastbound over the bridges.
The completion of the avalanche bridges is part of the larger 15-mile improvement project on I-90 between Hyak and Easton. This seven mile section between Hyak and Price Creek has been under construction since 2010 and by next fall most of the major construction will be completed. The remaining eight miles of the corridor between Price Creek and Easton is scheduled to begin in summer 2021.
This summer contractor crews poured more than 4,000 cubic yards of concrete for new bridges and structures, more than 5,700 cubic yards of concrete for the new roadway and removed more than 234,000 cubic yards of material. They also replaced approximately 2,500 square feet of deteriorating concrete panels and milled about 88,000 square feet of roadway in the eastbound lanes, between North Bend and the Summit of Snoqualmie Pass. Crews also removed approximately 15,000 square feet of deteriorated concrete from the bridge decks in the westbound lanes. Crews will be back next spring to finish the eastbound lanes and the westbound bridge decks.