Does your commute include Redmond Way (SR202)?

Currently more than 30,000 people commute from Sammamish to work. The major destinations are Seattle, Bellevue, and Redmond. About one third travel north on East Lake Sammamish Parkway or Sahalee Way. All of them drive through the intersection of East Lake Sammamish Parkway and Redmond Way (SR 202).

How do you like that intersection?

The new Marymoor Village transit station is ½ mile from this intersection and is destined to become a magnet for more traffic. In addition, Redmond officially plans to grow the area surrounding the transit station. A lot. Building up to 12 stories with up to 70% lot coverage. Redmond plans to add more than 21,000 housing units during the next 25 years. A “significant portion” of them will be within this area.

With this plan, the Level of Service at the intersection of East Lake Sammamish Parkway and Redmond Way (SR 202) is expected to be F.

Expect this to impact Highway 520 as well. Currently Redmond rates the Level of Service for 520 during the PM peak as C on an A to F scale! With the planned growth, this is expected to deteriorate to F.

Meanwhile the city of Sammamish intends to grow the Town Center area to at least 4000 housing units. If the new households follow the existing trends, this could add another 1000 cars to your peak hour commute. With no increase to street capacity. So just getting to and from Redmond Way (SR 202) will be worse.

Enjoy your commute while you can. It is going to get a lot more congested.

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