The NE 190th Street Culvert project at the intersection of 61st Ave NE and NE 190th is scheduled to be mostly completed by March. Painting and some other weather-dependent tasks will be completed in late Spring or early Summer.
The $2.4 million project replaced the deteriorating culvert with a larger fish-passable culvert for Tributary Stream 0056. It removed a 60-inch diameter asphalt-lined pipe and replaced it with a new 15-foot wide, 12.2- foot high, and 60-foot long, concrete fish passable culvert.
Work also repaired and stabilized the stream banks, and roadway, and repaired and restored the sidewalk. The work was delayed at times due to timing of in water work that had to be done during the ‘fish window’ – the time that in stream bed work can be done was set by Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW).
During construction the slip-lane transition from eastbound NE 190th to southbound 61st AVE NE had been closed and used as a staging area for construction equipment and materials. Now the city has announced the slip-lane will remain closed permanently due to safety considerations.
The right-turn slip-lane has been directly associated with at least a third of the crashes occurring at that intersection, including at least one reported bicycle crash and six reported injury crashes in the past ten years.
Since the slip-lane was closed in July 2023, zero crashes related to right-turning vehicles have occurred, and crashes for the intersection as a whole have decreased by 70%. For that reason the city has decided that closing the slip-lane permanently offers a substantial safety benefit for all road users, and will greatly reduce the risk of future crash injuries.
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