Washington State Route 520

State Route 520 marker

State Route 520

Map of King County in western Washington with SR 520 highlighted in red
Route information
Auxiliary route of I‑5
Defined by RCW 47.17.720
Maintained by WSDOT
Length: 12.82 mi[1] (20.63 km)
Major junctions
West end: I‑5 in Seattle
  I‑405 in Bellevue
East end: SR 202 in Redmond
Location
Counties: King
Highway system
← SR 519SR 522 →

State Route 520 is a state highway and freeway in the U.S. state of Washington. It extends 12.82 miles (20.63 km) from Seattle in the west to Redmond in the east.

Route description

SR-520 originates at Interstate 5 in Seattle at the north end of Capitol Hill just south of Roanoke Park.

It bridges Portage Bay on a viaduct, crosses through the Montlake neighborhood, and continues east on a causeway through the marshlands of the Washington Park Arboretum and across Foster Island. From there it crosses Lake Washington on the tolled Evergreen Point Floating Bridge (1963) to Medina. At 7,578 feet (2,310m), it is the longest floating bridge in the world.

From Medina, it traces the border between Hunts Point and Yarrow Point to the north, and Clyde Hill to the south. Intersecting with Interstate 405 in Bellevue, it then runs into Redmond. It bisects the Microsoft campus, passes Nintendo of America headquarters and crosses the Sammamish River and Bear Creek, before ending at a junction with State Route 202. A set of ramps connecting SR-520 to Avondale Road NE were completed in 1996.

The original name of the freeway in planning documents was the Roanoke Expressway and later the Roanoke Freeway, due to its terminus at Interstate 5 near Roanoke Street and Roanoke Park in Seattle.

History

Planning

Aerial view of SR-520 bridge crossing Lake Washington, viewed from southwest.

SR-520 first appears on planning maps in the late 1950s. It is not in the 1956 Comprehensive Plan of Seattle, in which the preferred second bridge crossing of Lake Washington connects Sand Point and Juanita (now part of Kirkland).

In the 1963 and 1967 revisions of the King County Streets and Highways Plan, SR-520 appears in its entirety. The segment from I-5 to I-405 is shown as existing or "to be improved"; the segment from I-405 to SR-202 is shown as "proposed".

The 1967 Puget Sound Regional Council of Governments recommended freeway system omits the segment from I-405 to SR-202, replacing it with a freeway from the Sand Point-Kirkland bridge (then proposed as a third Lake Washington crossing) along the current route of SR-908, deviating southward near West Lake Sammamish Parkway to end at the current SR-520 terminus. In this plan, SR-520 ends at I-405.

All planning maps from 1974 onward show the SR-520 routing as it currently exists.

Construction

With the completion of the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge in August 1963, SR-520 opened to traffic. Originally, it was legislatively defined as PSH-1 EP (Primary State Highway 1, Evergreen Point branch). The road was signed as PSH-1 without the branch designation.

When the new numbering system for Washington highways took effect in 1964, SR-520 ran from I-5 to the junction of Lake Washington Boulevard NE and Lincoln Avenue (now Bellevue Way).

The junction for SR-520 along I-405 in Bellevue.
Bridge from the Sky

The segment from I-405 to 148th Avenue NE opened in the early 1970s. In the mid-1970s, the segment between West Lake Sammamish Parkway and SR-202 opened with the route number State Route 920 as a Super-2 freeway. This segment was widened to a divided 4-lane freeway by 1990.

The final segment of SR-520 between 148th Avenue NE and West Lake Sammamish Parkway opened c. 1979. At this time, SR-920 was redesignated as SR-520.

In 1973, the right-side shoulder of westbound SR-520 from Bellevue Way to the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge was converted for use as a transit-only lane, so that buses could bypass the tollbooths for the bridge. The existing general-purpose lanes were narrowed to accommodate the conversion. In the late 1980s, the lane was redesignated as a HOV lane for carpools of 3 or more, in addition to transit use.

In the 1990s, both sides of SR-520 from the I-405 interchange to W Lake Sammamish Parkway were widened to add a HOV lane on both sides, and collector-distributor lanes were added from NE 40th Street to W Lake Sammamish Parkway. A new interchange was built at NE 40th Street to accommodate expansion of the Microsoft and Nintendo of America corporate campuses.

State Route 920

State Route 920 was a temporary designation of what is now part of State Route 520 between West Lake Sammamish Parkway - known at the time as State Route 901, and State Route 202 in Redmond. The original roadway was a 4 lane undivided link road between the two highways. SR 520 had only been completed to 148th Ave NE when SR 920 was constructed. When the missing link between 148th Ave NE and SR 901 was completed in the early 1980s, SR 920 was replaced by the SR 520 designation. However upon completion, there was a short section crossing SR 901 where SR 520 narrowed to one lane, and then immediately back to two. This section of SR 520 was widened and a new interchange was built at the junction of SR 520, SR 202, and Avondale Road - the former eastern terminus of SR 920.[2]

Completed improvements

Improvements

Ongoing improvements

Because of massive residential, commercial, and industrial growth in the Eastside over the past 15 years, several projects have been proposed to improve the entire stretch of State Route 520.

Proposed improvements

Ghost ramps

Ghost Ramps at SR-520

SR 520 has a set of ghost ramps in the marshlands of Washington Park Arboretum. They are often referred to as "ramps to nowhere". However, one ramp currently used for the on ramp to SR 520 Eastbound. The others are unused. They were originally part of a plan to build the R. H. Thomson Expressway which would have cut through the arboretum and down through Seattle towards the I-90/I-5 interchange. Citizens rallied a freeway revolt against the plan on May 4, 1969. Construction near the Arboretum later continued but citizen protest eventually won out and the plan was dropped in 1971.

The freeway revolt that stopped the R. H. Thomson Expressway had its origins in opposition to SR 520 itself. Architect Victor Steinbrueck, writing in 1962, objected to the "naked brutality of unimaginative structures such as this proposed crossing of Portage Bay, which eliminates fifty houseboats while casting its shadow and noise across this tranquil boat haven."[6]

In 2013 the Washington State Department of Transportation announced plans to dismantle the ghost ramps.[7] To commemorate the ramps and protest their demolition, a local art collective created an installation, Gate to Nowhere, on one of the ramps in 2014.[8][9] The piece consists of a layer of reflective acrylic wrapping a pair of support columns.[10]

In the spring of 2016, some of the SR 520 ghost ramps have begun to be dismantled to make way for the construction of a new causeway linking the new floating bridge to the mainland.

Exit list

The entire highway is in King County.

Locationmi[1]kmDestinationsNotes
Seattle0.00–
0.36		0.00–
0.58		 I‑5 south – Portland
I‑5 north – Vancouver BC		Western terminus
0.360.58Roanoke Street / Harvard AvenueWestbound exit only
0.73–
1.43		1.17–
2.30		Montlake Boulevard (SR 513) – University of WashingtonLast exit eastbound before toll
1.562.51Lake Washington BoulevardWestbound exit and eastbound entrance
Lake Washington1.63–
3.98		2.62–
6.41		Governor Albert D. Rosellini Bridge - Evergreen Point
Hunts Point4.357.0084th Avenue NortheastEastbound exit and westbound entrance
Clyde Hill5.398.6792nd Avenue NortheastWestbound exit and eastbound entrance. Last exit westbound before toll.
Bellevue5.609.01Lake Washington Boulevard Northeast / Bellevue WayEastbound exit and westbound entrance; former SR 908
6.5210.49108th Avenue NortheastNo eastbound exit
6.69–
7.05		10.77–
11.35		 I‑405 – Renton, Everett
7.3411.81124th Avenue NortheastEastbound exit and westbound entrance
8.73–
9.00		14.05–
14.48		148th Avenue Northeast
Redmond9.71–
11.21		15.63–
18.04		Northeast 40th Street / Northeast 51st Street
11.45–
12.04		18.43–
19.38		West Lake Sammamish Parkway NortheastFormer SR 901
12.2519.71 SR 202 (Redmond Way)Eastbound exit and westbound entrance
12.8220.63Avondale RoadContinuation beyond SR 202
1.000 mi = 1.609 km; 1.000 km = 0.621 mi

Gallery

Related routes

References

  1. 1 2 Multimodal Planning Division (2014). "State Highway Log" (PDF). Washington State Department of Transportation. Retrieved August 26, 2015.
  2. ↑ WSDOT: SR 520 - West Lake Sammamish Parkway to State Route 202
  3. ↑ Pak, Samantha (2010-12-15). "Ceremony kicks off the opening of new NE 36th Street Bridge". Redmond Reporter. Retrieved 2016-04-03.
  4. ↑ Grygiel, Chris (April 17, 2009). "House approves 520 bridge tolling". Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
  5. ↑ Lindblom, Mike (June 10, 2011). "Drivers' glee aside, delay in 520 bridge toll costs state". The Seattle Times. Retrieved August 5, 2011.
  6. ↑ Victor Steinbrueck, Seattle Cityscape, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1962, p. 132.
  7. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on February 3, 2013. Retrieved March 13, 2013.
  8. ↑ Graves, Jen (June 18, 2014). "The Arboretum’s Ramps to Nowhere". The Stranger (Seattle).
  9. ↑ Metcalfe, John (July 18, 2014). "A Doomed Seattle Freeway Ramp Gets a Loving Goodbye". CityLab (The Atlantic Monthly Group).
  10. ↑ Palmer-Friedman, Danielle (July 16, 2014). "Ozymandias, ramp of ramps". The Daily of the University of Washington.

External links

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